Among the rubble of an ancient tabernacle , archeologist have dusted off the sometime strong-arm written matter of one of the greatest stories ever tell .
TheGreek Culture Ministryhas harbinger the discovery of the oldest write extract of Homer’sOdyssey . Initial analysis of the slab strongly suggests it dates back to around the third one C CE during the Roman earned run average , although the team is yet to reassert this through scientific proficiency .
The clay tablet , engraved with 13 verse line of Christian Bible 14 of the larger-than-life poem , was unearthed near a ruin Temple of Zeus during a three - year mining in the ancient city of Olympia , Greece . This grand temple was also once home to theStatue of Zeusat Olympia , a since - destroy prodigious statue that is consider one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World .
The Odysseyis a story of timeless grandness . Homer is believed to have composed the poem near the final stage of the eighth century BCE , make it the second oldest extant work of Western lit , only narrowly beaten by the “ prequel ” to the work , The Iliad . It tell the storey of the complicated grinder Odysseus , King of Ithaca , who spends 10 years drift the sea and land to get home to his realm and married woman and son after the 10 - year warfare and eventual descent of Troy .
But the body of work is much more than a story about one character ’s adventure . The 12,000 lines of poetry also document the grand historical event ofthe Trojan Warand the drop of Troy in the 13th century BCE , one of the defining episodes of Ancient Greece . For this ground , the story is of great historical grandness . In fact , a quite a little of what we know about Grecian history , politics , culture , and mythology comes from the characters ’ trial and tribulations with the Gods and mythological beasts , such as the Cyclops .
Homer – if he live – would n’t have actually indite the story in the same way we think of an author writing a book today . The story was most likely write orally and was more probably intended to be get a line than take . Since most stories were transmit this way , it ’s actually pretty favorable we have any stories date from Ancient Greece at all . This Modern discovery is crucial because it ’s the close we have come to the original story , or at least when it was first written down , as like most stories recount after the issue and passed down orally , it ’s very likely that the story changes number - by - snatch with each retelling .
