How did we learn about ancient Greek culture: through Arabian manuscripts or was it preserved in Greece?

by atomlib_com
rhoadsalive

Byzantium existed far longer than the Western Roman Empire so fortunately quite a bit survived from that era and it is not like there was a straight cut between modern and ancient Greece, culture gets naturally preserved and developed, many of the works that were deemed "important" have survived since they were copied over and over again usually by monks, which also sometimes leads to different versions of the same text.

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Most Papyri and original inscriptions however are from Egypt which was one of the greatest Greek culture hubs and also luckily so dry that a lot of ancient texts could survive so incredibly long.

The Egyptian papyri are fairly interesting when it comes to every day life since most of them are just about that, you will find cheques, receipts , shopping lists , bank statements and other things that can provide a great look into every day life and culture.

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Thanks to the Arabians several important works have been preserved as well e.g. Aristotle which would otherwise be lost, you have to imagine that many people back then thought of these texts as irrelevant and outdated, often even recycled paper and wrote over the existing text, fortunately again there is technology nowadays to find those texts beneath the text and this also lead to the rediscovery of some works.

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There are many many authors and works that we know existed, because they are quoted by other authors but much still got lost, from the famous Aristophanes we merely have 11 pieces even though he wrote 40 or more.

Often we only have one page or half a page to work with.

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Another Example : The last existing complete copy of Callimachus Aitia was sadly destroyed by Crusaders when they literally set Constantinople on fire, now we only have torn fragments left.

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However, many important ones are preserved because monks simply mastered the copying of texts and knew that the work had some sort of significance in the past.