Ancient Scriptures With Lost Languages Discovered Inside Saint Catherine’s Monastery On The Sinai Peninsula

AncientPages.com - While chronicling Saint Catherine’s Monastery’s library on the Sinai Peninsula, scientists discovered several scriptures with ancient lost languages. In ancient times monks often wrote copies of the Bible on top of old texts, meaning many ancient texts have been lost.

St. Catherine’s Monastery is home to the oldest continuously run library in the world, and contains manuscripts that have ancient texts hidden on their parchment.

Some of the scripts contain earliest copies of texts from Greek physician Hippocrates, the groundbreaking ancient Greek physician for whom the Hippocratic Oath, the ethical oath that modern doctors take, was named.

 The hidden text also included words written in Caucasian Albanian, a language that had previously only been found on some stone inscriptions and there several works with extremely rare languages.

Three medical texts written in ancient Greek were also brought to light, including some written by Hippocrates, the groundbreaking ancient Greek physician for whom the Hippocratic Oath, the ethical oath that modern doctors take, was named.

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Using new imaging techniques, researcher have been able to uncover ancient scripts scrubbed off parchment centuries ago. Hidden text was revealed by taking photographs from a number of angles and using different parts of the light spectrum to reveal traces of ink left by early scribes before the text was washed off. Images of the parchment are then combined using computer algorithms to highlight the text beneath.

A mural at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt, where scientists have uncovered ancient texts hidden on parchment.

“At some point the material the manuscript was on became more valuable than what was written on it,” researcher Michael Phelps, from the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library in California, told the Times. “So it was deemed worthy of being recycled.”

Researchers are now hopeful long-lost documents, such as those written by ancient philosopher Aristotle, could now be rediscovered on texts in libraries across the world using their technique.

These ancient works hailed a “new golden age of discovery”, are of great importance to scholars. More details on the content of these finds are expected as scientists study the texts more closely.

Saint Catherine's monastery is the oldest continually operating library in the world, having been in use for 1,500 years.

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