This is amazing.

Via The Independent:

Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time using technology which experts believe will unlock the secrets of the ancient world.

Among treasures already discovered by a team from Oxford University are previously unseen writings by classical giants including Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod. Invisible under ordinary light, the faded ink comes clearly into view when placed under infra-red light, using techniques developed from satellite imaging.

The Oxford documents form part of the great papyrus hoard salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus more than a century ago. The thousands of remaining documents, which will be analysed over the next decade, are expected to include works by Ovid and Aeschylus, plus a series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years. [More.]

I well remember my Graeco-Roman theatre history class during my first year of graduate school, in which my professor required that we read ALL the extant ancient Greek and Roman plays. And the thing of it is, you can: there are so few left of the hundreds that once existed, it's possible to read them all in the space of a quarter (it's a lot of reading, but it is possible). Plowing through the canon of works was literally tantalizing - you got just enough of a sense for the style of each great storyteller to want more, and it was almost agonizing to know that there had been works out there, "published," that were irrevocably lost to the modern researcher. My professor, the great Alan Woods, used the experience as a metaphor for the life of the historian: if you're intrigued and excited (rather than frustrated and annoyed) by these fragments of culture, then maybe history is for you. I was, and it has been. How very exciting that we may be able to read more of those texts in the very near future.