

800 year old Magna Carta manuscript reveals its secrets - Thevet
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/collectioncare/2014/10/800-year-old-magna-carta-manuscript-reveals-its-secrets.html

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JacobAldridge
Alas, this article does not reveal its secrets.

Does anybody know if the 'new' text is expected to differ from what is in the
other 3 extant copies?

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kristopolous
My bet is a "no" otherwise I think historians would be going bonkers over it
and it would probably make CNN front page style material.

* - what I mean is that they probably won't find an unseen paragraph of text outlining entirely new provisions not previously known. Typographical differences and variations of spelling I'm sure may be found.

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frederickf
"In February 2015, the four manuscripts will be brought together for the first
time in history for a special 3-day event, which will allow further academic
study of them side by side..."

Maybe I'm being paranoid but it seems risky to bring the remaining four
manuscripts together in one place.

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PeterWhittaker
I had the same thought. Occupational hazard (security consultant).

If security is properly managed, risk should be acceptable, in the sense that
only the most unlikely umanageable disasters would remain, and the impacts of
the worst of these would be such that few if any of us would miss the Magna
Cartas for a long, long time.

If security is properly managed. I sure hope they've done thorough TRAs
(threat-risk assessments) with independent review.

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pluma
It's not like bad things never happen, either.

In my home town _this_ happened:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/history-in-
ruins...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/history-in-ruins-
archive-collapse-disaster-for-historians-a-611311.html)

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Did they determine whether or not _construction of a subway line beneath the
same street where the archive is located_ was the cause?

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pluma
They determined that the construction tunnel was miraculously missing (as in,
according to the paper trail, they were supposed to be there but weren't) a
vast number of the pumps that were meant to keep the gravel from being washed
away by the ground water (leading to the gravel being washed away, hollowing
out the ground and, well, gravity took its course).

Thanks to bureaucracy and politics, it's still not clear who is _officially_
to blame, although it's mind-numbingly obvious that it's a mix of really
stupid decisions in the planning stages ("let's run the subway line right
underneath an extremely important building through an area that almost
entirely consists of gravel and water") and corruption at some level of the
building companies (which seems to be SOP for public building projects in
Germany).

Let's just say that most parties involved are pretty happy the investigation
hasn't really been going anywhere over the past five years, which is entirely
coincidentally enough time to allow all politicians that might be blamed to
transition to greener pastures (communal elections in the Land are held every
five years).

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ptaffs
>> subsequently staff at the British Museum Library used 19th century
techniques to try to flatten and mount it, which has contributed to its
current condition today rendering the text very difficult to see.

The article says today's specialists have the answer, when previously they
were amateur: preservation specialists are having to glean as much as they
can, since previous staff didn't really know how to preserve something this
important, patronizingly calling them 19th century techniques. I imagine in
another few hundred years the specialists of the time will call today's
techniques damaging.

It's a common habit to forget learning is continual and we should never stop
questioning and challenging the so-called experts. They should stop digging up
Dinosaur bones and think twice (or more) before excavating historical sites.

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bostonpete
> patronizingly calling them 19th century > techniques. I imagine in another
> few hundred > years the specialists of the time will call > today's
> techniques damaging.

How is it patronizing to mention that techniques from more than a 100 years
ago are less effective than what we could do with today's
knowledge/techniques? I would hope that specialists in a few hundred years
time _would_ be able to spot certain damaging practices that we're not aware
of today.

Was there some derogatory comment that I missed about how amateurish experts
of the past were?

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ctdonath
So...what does it say? Where is a high-res image of the revealed text?

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lnanek2
I don't think anyone cares since it is just one of several copies and everyone
knows what it says, except for maybe a transcription error or two by the
scribe.

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pbhjpbhj
Indeed this sort of historical preservation seems to me rather like my own
inability to throw things out. The manuscript got burnt, we know what it said,
why go to all this trouble to re-reveal the wording?

I can see useful practice has been had, beyond that it seems like a waste of
time and resources?

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jnem
I was hoping for something along the lines of, "King John actually a captain
of an outer-space starship known as Enterprise."

~~~
acheron
Beethoven was an alien spy:
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeethovenWasAnAli...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy)

