@Olivier5,
Quote:Greco-Egyptians used this sort of papier collé for sarcophagi, funerary masks, but also more mundane things, e.g. to fill a hole in the wall. The technique of accessing papyri within cartonnages has been practiced for more than a century. The right way to do it is to start with a study of the cartonnage itself, its provenance, technique employed, use, etc. and then take off the papyri without destroying the artifact, as done by these Fins in 87;
Conserving ancient artifacts is not part of science but the duty of history. History can use scientific techniques and science finds historical records useful for testing. Both are related, however, they are independent at the moment of deciding what is important and what is not.
Quote:I understand that there are so far 0 fragment of the gospels from the 1st century, and hundreds of funerary or other ancient pieces of cartonnage out there on a legit basis, and perhaps many more on the black market, from loots including from the Cairo Museum which was looted during the upheaval in 2011. So as of today, a gospel fragment is seen as more valuable than the mask it's taken from. But if tomorrow we find a dozen fragments from, say, 50-80 CE, this sort of papyri will become much less valuable. It's best to conserve whatever we can.
I am concerned that this could set the wrong example. These authors are almost encouraging others to follow suit: they are saying it's so easy to do with water and palmolive soap [sic]: you just dissolve the whole mask and bingo! St Mark may be hiding in the mask! Many amateur Indiana Jones are going to follow their bad example, i fear.
One can say that in the museums of Germany and UK there are more mummies and golden ancient figures of the Incan empire than the same figures found in the museums of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador all together. If not "looting", how in the world this has happened?
Please don't tell me that some looters are legal and that the rest are not.
Conserving historical records is a duty, but giving them irrational value is laughable. How in the world an ancient stone with unknown carved drawings can reach thousands and thousands of dollars?
The ancient man who made the drawings probably was drunk, playing around, or trying to give some important information. Whatever the reason was, there is a kind of business doing silly appraisals for an old piece of stone. The black market takes advantage of these ridiculous prices and gives affordable prices and ways to obtain the relics that are accepted by most people.
People have the choice to decide what to obtain from their relics, or keeping the ancient mask intact or looking for ancient writings.
Quote:Science tries to conserve / retrieve the maximum info from stuff. They are better, more effective, more scientific and more respectful ways than palmolive soap to analyse a 2 thousand year old artifact.
I kind of disagree with your last point. I saw brand new Mercedes Benz destroyed completely in accident simulations just for checking their safety. And all the car manufacturers do the same, destroying in order to obtain safety data, and this is
science.
Historians won't allow the same scientists to take and old Ford model T to be destroyed while testing its "safety" in an accident simulation... in order to be compared with modern cars.
If historians are not around, for sure scientists will do it.
The point here with the papyrus of the funeral masks, is that we have a new possibility of obtaining more data of the biblical New Testament, and probably more information about this historical Jesus.
