Decoding ancient texts using astrophysics

Physicists from the University of Oxford are helping classics scholars analyse ancient papyrus faster than ever before by using using citizen science to help transcribe their texts.

In 1896, two archaeology students from Queen’s College, Oxford, descended on Oxyrhynchus -- the “City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish” -- in Egypt for a summer’s dig. The site proved disappointing but, as the team was giving up hope, a papyrus containing the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas was unearthed. Then, they uncovered fragments of St. Matthew’s Gospel.

The team had stumbled upon an ancient rubbish dump and, by the end of digging in 1907, 700 boxes of papyri, totalling up to 500,000 fragments, had been discovered. When the texts were sent to the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford, the discipline of papyrology was born.

Fast-forward a century, though, and only a small percentage has been edited by scholars. It’s slow work: each scrap of text is studied character-by- character; words are transcribed; and then the texts are classified and documented. Despite advances in computer technology, classics scholars haven’t found a reliable way to automate any part of the process.

Which is where researchers from the Department of Physics stepped in. Recently a team of scientists led by Dr. Chris Lintott has been busy running Galaxy Zoo, a project which uses large groups of online participants to help identify galaxies. That project has proven a runaway success, spawning numerous other scientific projects under the umbrella of Zooniverse -- and now Lintott is helping academics around the world to engage enthusiastic amateurs in their research, scientific or otherwise.

In the case of papyrus, Lintott’s team has developed the Ancient Lives project: a website which presents volunteers with digital images of papyrus scraps and asks them to transcribe the letters they see. It’s more inclusive than it sounds, because no knowledge of Greek is required -- the volunteers just match characters to an on-screen keyboard.

The results are verified by comparing results from different participants, using computational techniques borrowed from DNA analysis. The result is a searchable, digital database of the Oxyrhynchus texts, which is growing more rapidly than ever before. Instead of a handful of scholars sifting through the collection one fragment at a time, now users of Ancient Lives allow them to process, study and understand batches of data much more efficiently.

So far, the project has unearthed everything from ancient shopping lists to original, unseen poetry by Simonides -- but with 700 boxes of papyri to sift through, we can expect far more to follow.

Funded by: AHRC and the University Fell Fund.