Re-drawing the Map? gest, from the seventh-century Florentine manuscript which, if at the limits
of the chronological definition suggested, has the distinction of having been
written only about a century after the compilation of the work in question.
Quite apart from their intrinsic literary or intellectual significance, manu-
scripts or documents which themselves actually date from the Ancient World
have an extra relevance, as providing direct evidence for the history of lan-
guage, vocabulary, grammar, lay-out, and script. From them, in other words,
we can see the texts as they were written or copied, not as corrected by
medieval scribes, Renaissance printers, or modern scholars. Even if contem-
poraries would themselves have regarded some of these texts as inaccurate
or ungrammatical, they still represent historical evidence of language and
writing as practised by a particular person at a particular moment, and which
therefore has an importance which cannot be matched, in this respect, by
any medieval manuscript, or any printed text based on it.
So far, however, all the propositions put forward have related, in a very
conventional way, only to Latin and Greek. That is not unreasonable, for
however profoundly one wishes to (pretend to) start again, and to look at the
ancient world as it was, and not as filtered for us by medieval manuscripts and
Renaissance and modern printed texts, that ‘‘ancient world’’ which is the ob-
ject of attention here is quite properly defined by the use of Greek and Latin.
There were, however, other languages and/or scripts which were in use in
the ancient world in question, from the Atlantic to northern India, and from
the second millennium..to the seventh century..—for instance Celtic,
Etruscan, the Italic dialects, Punic, Phoenician, Egyptian, various branches
of Aramaic, including Syriac, and also Hebrew, Old and Middle Persian,
Parthian, Akkadian, and Indian languages related to Sanskrit.^13 Many of these
languages do not in general suffer the ‘‘disadvantage’’ of being seen through
the lens of a vast store of medieval manuscripts which have been studied,
printed, and re-produced in corrected editions for several centuries. In their
case there is no option for us but to relate to them in the forms on which
they were written in antiquity. The proposition that all of these languages
and cultures should play a part in our overall view of the ancient world—not
of course that they can all do so in the work of any one person—is clearly
implied by mentioning them at all. Among these, the great challenge, hardly
seum. If copies, on a reasonable scale, were more readily available, either would, like the
Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran (n. below), offer students the possibility of reading
canonical ancient texts directly, in facsimile.
. See now the invaluableCambridge Encyclopaedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, ed.
R. D. Woodard ().