"What ancient text are you hoping is found?" Topic

This discussion got me to thinking TMP link

What ancient text are you hoping is found using this new technology?

An early copy of the Bible?
Some lost History?
A signed copy of Homer?

Keith Richard's memoirs of his school days.

Pyrrhus' writings on tactics.

Warband army versus warband army battle histories.
Just how good was Caesar?

martin

The missing portions of Tacitus' Annals and Histories would be my dream find, but they're too late for Herculanium.

The Emperor Claudius' history of the Etruscans would be fun. Or one of the original eyewitness histories of Alexander – Ptolemy's memoirs, or Aristobulus.

The lost history of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms

Anything from the Library of Alexandria. Imagine the knowledge that was lost.

A second on the Tacitus and Claudius. Maybe Ennius.

Sallust's Historiae. He was well regarded and he covered a very eventful few decades, a period including the Sertorian war and the 3rd Mith War. Surviving extracts of e.g. the Spartacus War show that he included the kind of details we wargamers would be after.

Well since I started the original topic (thanks for the interest, I thought it was very interesting).

Lost Christian texts. Doubt this happens, but would be interesting if some of the Gnostic texts were confirmed. Was Jesus married, etc.

Previously unheard of books.

Medicines useful, but unknown.

Actual history of the building of the Pyramids

Histories of other kingdoms

A new Rosetta Stone of languages

My social security card.

A purchase order for three warhorses signed by Arthur himself.

Right on RittervonBek….I really wonder what kind of a world we're going to leave him….

Ptolemy's memoirs on Alexander
Sulla's memoirs
Julius Caesar's love poems
Emperor Claudius' book on dice games

The royal archives from Troy (Wilusia)
The royal archives from Mycenae
The royal archives from any of the various tells/talls within the western Anatolian plain that relate to the LBA

Agree on the Library of Alexandria – would be great to find something!

I remember seeing an interview with one of the surviving members of the Memphis Belle crew. It was concerning a recently released book about the aircraft and its' crew, covering the period leading up to their being rotated home.

In an offhand comment, he said the book that ought to be written would be about the exploits of the crew on their promotional war bond tour, once they'd gotten back home. It was apparently a months long cross country bacchanal.

A sort of 1940's "Entourage."

We'd likely get a Latin grammar primer enabling us to correctly translate:

Romans Go Home

I'm with nnascati. It would be nice to see what was actually at the Library in Alexandria.

The full and un-redacted FBI and CIA JFK files???

Polybius' Numantine War

Operators manual and blueprints for the Antikythera mechanism.

The lost writings of the dinosuars..they were here for so long something must have survived!

I'm not really worried about translation issues. Latin is pretty well mastered, for a "dead" language. Also, the penmanship of the fragment deciphered so far is typically excellent. Evidently, being a scribe required it, particularly as hand copied mss were an expensive commodity that would never sell if not perfectly legible.

That said, I too hope for the chance of any early gospels, or that longed for source, "Q", New Testament scholars have deduced was used by several of the standard gospels as a common source, but which itself has never been found--so far!

Especially titillating is that the excavation at the House of Papyri stopped years ago at a doorway that appears to lead into another library room. The emphasis in the last couple of decades on preservation of what has already been uncovered in Herculaneum, as well as Pompeii, has severely reduced available funds for new digs. The feeling is that before new sites/artifacts are exposed to inevitable deterioration, every effort should be made to protect what's already been recovered. This thinking has been applied to the presumed other wing of the library.

From previous "sorta" successful attempts to access some of the carbonized scrolls, it was already apparent that works of philosophy were the primary subject of the known collection. If that holds true, it might be that the next wing may consist of different subjects such as histories, political works, etc, perhaps even other works by Caesar himself.

Alas, few if any of us here who would hang on every new translation of recovered texts will be around to find out what may be in unopened portion of the library as archaeology has become slower and more painstaking over time. Still, I'm sure that the techniques developed to make the surviving scrolls readable will improve with time and practice, accelerating the process, but opening that remaining door may take years, if not decades.

Then again, as scrolls are read, and perhaps as some truly eye-opening discoveries are made, pressure from the public and scholarly communities may bring the day sooner.

Next to the Library of Alexandria itself--definitively lost after multiple fires and disasters over centuries--this collection of scrolls is the best chance humanity likely will ever have of being able to shed light into Classical History's understanding of itself.

But, lest we forget, Vesuvius has it's own timeline and must, someday, re-bury everything all over again.

TVAG

Anything that enlightens us!

Or something written by the enemies of Rome describing how they dressed and fought!!!

"How to Build a Quinquereme" is my dream. A treatise on the construction and operation of the huge polyremes (septiremes and up) is a nice stretch goal, but seems unlikely – the Romans had little interest in Greek monster ships.

I would be happy to regain any of the missing chapters by Polybius.

Probably no such documentation
But more Information concerning the lands of Gaul.
Maps, trails ,Roads, etc.
More information as to the various tribes-- from largest to the smallest?
Hell, I don't know, just something?
Same with the Germans across the rhne??

Regards
Russ Dunaway

Plutarch's lost "Life of Leonidas", Sosylus' history of Hannibal's war, any of the lost plays of the classic Athenian playwrights of the late 5th century.

Oh, and complete works by later neo-Platonist philosophers that we only know of from excerpts quoted by their Christian rivals.

Something to prove Velikovsky was right, just to watch every ancient scholar's head explode.

Claudius's treatise on the Etruscans ?

Whatever rules set they ACTUALLY used for ancient battles.

How about any of the Trojan War epic poems not attributed to Homer? Quite possible at Herculanium, though probably not in this set. What might very well be recovered is unknown Aristotle. For later material, any of the Aramaic gospels.

Another vote for the entire library of Alexandria. And a pet peeve--a drill book for the Roman Army much earlier that Vegetius.

The one where they collated the exact relationship between different troop types in convenient wargame rules-friendly format :~}

Cheers,
John

Something from Ammianus' earlier books would be nice.

Really special would be any form of administrative records from the Sasanian empire.

Wildly unlikely, but something written about Sparta by a Spartan? Everything we have was written by Athenians. For that matter, a description of Periclean Athens written by a rival or victim.

A first edition Gospel so we can learn how transmission worked in the early church.

Robert Louis Stevenson's rules for the wargames he played with his stepson Lloyd Osborne.

I echo R. Piepenbrink's remarks. Herodotus notes that he knew of all the names of the 300 Spartans who fell at Thermopylae -- would that a record of this would re-emerge! Or anything else from the archaic age Spartan poets like Alcman, Tyrtaeus, Terpander, Alcaeus.

I'd read anything they recovered and translated (even though any books about them would never make it to my county library…)

Proof of visitors from other solar systems.

Wolfhag

Aristotle's Poetics Volume 2 – Comedy

Good call, Andrew. Given the dating and the nature of the library, that one's an actual possibility.

Arc of the Covenant would be awesome

It is in a warehouse in Washington DC. A Dr. Jones rescued it from the Nazis.

And the American officials don't dare open it either.

In some surviving texts, there is mention of a parody of "The Illiad", called "the Dilliad", which there are no surviving texts of. That would be fun to find!

The uniform list of Roman units with colours.

EW

Was that written by Montius Pythonius? 😉

JcFrog and their shield designs.

Another vote for Emperor Claudius' history of the Etruscans.