Its Greek to Me

4911-U34567-thumb-144x143-4910.jpg

I’m a volunteer for the Oxford study translating ancient Greek manuscripts and I’m having trouble figuring out this one character. I was wondering if anyone out here could help me? I can’t find this in any of my source material and it’s a frequently repeated character. It looks like a U only with the tails on either side which makes it look like an M with a wide rounded center portion. I’ve been going with that (M), but if I’m wrong it could foul up my translation when the times comes. So far I’ve translated about 120 characters on this particular manuscript that is about 1400 years old. We’re dealing with a lot of fragments and that really complicates things too. Any help would be appreciated.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to Its Greek to Me

  1. Toby says:

    Have you asked any Greeks? Or find that letter in something that has been translated already and that should do it shouldnt it?

  2. Mark Sorensen says:

    .
    Lower case Mu

  3. Post Scripts says:

    Ah, thanks Mark that’s what i thought, but wasn’t sure. The manuscript I’m decoding looks like it is an inventory of goods, should be very interesting when done. About half way there.

  4. Post Scripts says:

    Toby, yeah I tried to ask for some technical support but couldn’t get through. My ciphers didn’t show this symbol, but I think its because they are printed and not written in long hand. That would be a big help if translations were shown in long hand and printed. I think Mark hit on it. This is what I guessed anyway so I’m going with it until I learn otherwise.

    This is pretty cool to be working on this. You never know what you are going to find, could shed new light on history. The citizens of Oxyrhynchu in Greece wrote this stuff over 1400 years ago.
    If you are interested in being a volunteer check out… http://www.zooniverse.org/projects

Comments are closed.