The argument about the holes
Some of what this library holds is not a book but the part of one that survived. A tablet broken across, a codex missing eight leaves, two lines scraped down to the vellum in antiquity by someone who did not want them read. Their editors marked every gap, and often measured it, and then the question of what stood there disappeared into a literature almost nobody sees.
68 of those gaps are set out here, with the text on either side, the editor’s own estimate of how much is missing, and what two independent readers made of each one.
Nothing on this page is the text. These books are served exactly as their editors left them, holes and all. Every restoration below sits beside the passage and never inside it, because an invented line of a lost book, once loose, is quoted forever.
3 readers, asked separately. Each was given the same passages and the same instructions, and none saw another’s answers. All were told that refusing was a complete answer and that a confident wrong restoration was the worst possible outcome.
Reader C came later, and blind. It was put only the 20 gaps on which the first two readers disagreed, mixed with 6 gaps both had refused, and was told nothing of either. On the disputed gaps it sided with the reader who refused 17 times and with the reader who restored 3; of the 6 controls it refused 6. Its willingness to answer is therefore not the explanation of its answers.
Where they disagree, both are shown. There is no ground truth for a line that burned in 612 BC. This library is not in a position to settle these, and pretending otherwise would be the same mistake as filling the hole.
What the two readers did
The middle row is the one to be careful with. Two readers can both call a gap formulaic, and both be confident, and still name different words — on the Testament of Solomon’s two missing demons, one supplies names and a manuscript to source them from, and the other says plainly that no two manuscripts agree on the names and the slot should be printed empty. Counting agreements does not settle that, and this page does not pretend it does.
The volumes
- Devils and Evil Spirits of BabyloniaR. Campbell Thompson · 48 gaps · 28 refused by both, 8 answered by both, 12 disputed
- The Epic of Gilgamish A Fragment of the Gilgamish Legend in Old-Babylonian CuneiformLangdon, Stephen · 10 gaps · 0 refused by both, 4 answered by both, 6 disputed
- The Testament of SolomonF. C. Conybeare (trans.) · 6 gaps · 2 refused by both, 2 answered by both, 2 disputed
- Pistis SophiaG. R. S. Mead · 3 gaps · 3 refused by both, 0 answered by both, 0 disputed
- Instructions Respecting The Art Of Transmuting And Ameliorating The MetalsWilliam Baron Von Shroeder · 1 gaps · 0 refused by both, 1 answered by both, 0 disputed