Hey, Historians!
I'm writing a book about a haunted library, and I have a question on how historians would react if, say, the library of Alexandria was suddenly uncovered. How would you deal with, and more importantly, how would you scale a research project of that nature? How would you protect against people who have an interest in preserving world history as we know it, rather than expanding it with new evidentiary support?
@MoonlightBard
Hi!
Ancient historian here.
Discovered where? If it was discovered on site (which is not plausible) or that a large part of its collection was discovered elsewhere in Egypt, this would cause mass panic among egyptologists and classicists. Then, it would become politic in no time, because the Egyptian government would immediately want to protect the documents against illegal trade or some other stuff.
The opinion of historians would be crushed under the negociations between governments, billionnaire art collectors, big museums, etc. It's History, but also World Heritage, so there are other players here.
The excavations would probably be done by the Ministry of Antiquities, locally. Maybe there are a few chances an international team works on this, like at Abu Simbel?
About people trying to «preserve history as we know it»: I don't think historians would even consider they pose a threat. It would come as a surprise that people would try to directly harm research.
So much time would be spent preserving and classifying the fragile documents... Info would only leak drop by drop. Time and filling forms and having to talk to the right person would probably be a bigger threat.
Todd Tyrtle
Haly, the Moonlight Bard
Umzidiu Meiktok
la bibliotequetress