Blood wrote:Must be a seriously mixed blessing for Trobisch. He was undoubtedly lured away from academia with a lot of cash, and he gets to work with ancient texts.
He was also recently named as one of about 5 or 6 editors of the next UBS edition. Does seem like an odd mixture.
I'm uneasy about some of the criticism. Whoever heard of people complaining about dismantling cartonage until now? It's been a standard technique to retrieve papyri. So I fear the complaints are motivated by envy or spite.
I actually agree with you Roger. An early gospel fragment is worth more than a dummy mummy mask. I am baffled with how we can possibly know it is from the first century and not the early second century. But I guess we will find out soon enough.
If I understand correctly, then there are techniques in which the mask can be saved. The problem seems to be that there are few experts who master this technique. Against this background, I find the criticism justified.
Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:If I understand correctly, then there are techniques in which the mask can be saved. The problem seems to be that there are few experts who master this technique. Against this background, I find the criticism justified.
My take on this is that the value to humanity of finding (and reading/publishing) new mss fragments from the Roman period and before far outweighs that of the mask itself. There are literally thousands of mummy masks, and unless it was believed to have been covering a pharaohs' face or the face of an important historical figure (Marc Antony, Antony's girlfriend Cleopatra, etc), their value as archaeological artifacts will not be as important as the value they would have as literary relics. We simply have far fewer literary than non-literary relics. I bet every museum in the world has several such masks in storage and will likely never ever display them. There are also many in private hands displayed on mantle tops.
Maybe this is the crowd which howls when a mask is disassembled for the mss inside it. Perhaps ... just perhaps ... they fear the mummy police will come to call on their castle, rappelling down like commandos, as they do, from their black unmarked helicopters.
