Want to aid transcribe ancient Greek texts from the comfort of your couch ? Have no sympathy of the Grecian speech communication ? That ’s ok ! With Egypt Exploration Society and Oxford University’sAncient Livesproject , you could contribute to the work of researchers who are digitizing — and eventually decoding — the vast keeping of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri , a mystifying stilt of Greek papers discovered in an ancient wasteyard outside Egypt . And you could do it just by playing a puzzle game .
What are the Oxyrhynchus Papyri ?
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were find by a group of archaeologists during an expedition that began west of the Nile River in 1896 . The two - thousand - yr - old documents were preserved on the site of an ancient trash dump near the city of Oxyrynchus , a five day journeying in the south of hustle Memphis in ancient Egypt . The papyri contain manuscripts range from spiritual texts , democratic plays from the time period , and married couple credential , to a loanword papers in which a sausage balloon Jehovah postulation to take out a loan for 9,000 denarri ( roughly $ 200,000 US today ) .

Time has made the papyri quite brittle , with the vast bulk discovered as only crumbled fragments , creating an additional problem for researcher – the fragments not only have to be translated , but pieced back together to tell a prominent story . 500,000 individual fragments were recuperate in the ten year that the site at Oxyrynchus was excavate , pass water for 100 of life of work . Researchers need to transcribe what ’s written on the shard , to help with dissipated translation and finally help them piece the fragment together . That ’s where you’re able to avail .
Recognizing symbol
If you ’d like to become a citizen linguistic scientist and facilitate make digital written text of these fragments , first visit the free gameAncient survive . In it , your task is to decipher the individual Greek letters in a given fragment of papyri . A keyboard with a serial publication of symbols ( upper - case and lower - case Grecian letters ) is presented underneath the scanned papyri shard you are transcribing . When your shiner move over a letter on the keyboard , the Hellenic analog in distinctive hand is show in monastic order to aid recognition . Once you recognize a letter on the papyri , you pick out the corresponding missive on the keyboard and save the notation . Also , if the paper rush is too difficult or faded to decipher , you may redeem your study and move to another at anytime .

Ancient Livesalso pop the question the opportunity to measure the single fragment , which will aid in construct them into a larger section , which is maybe the most difficult aspect of put together the puzzle pieces that are the Oxyrhynchus Papyri .
Gameplay
I have spend a couple of hours onAncient Lives , and I must admit , it draws you in . The overall approach is unlike from a lot of the citizen skill projects out there , and it plays very much like a puzzler picture secret plan . Only a little percentage of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have been translated and compile in the 100 + years since they were discovered , so there is plenty of work to do . The manuscripts available on Ancient life sentence , once transcribe and translated , will be published and numbered in the Egypt Exploration Society’sGreco - Roman Memoirsseries .

So get begin transcribing ! Who knows what ancient closed book your puzzle - solving could eventually uncover ?
Images good manners of the Egypt Exploration Society and Oxford University .
Ancient EgyptanthropologyCitizen scienceEgyptologyGamingHistoryScience

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