Quite accidentally I find that colour photographs of the pages of Didymus the Blind’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes are online here. I can only say “wow!”
This work was lost until 1941. In that year, the threat of Rommel’s Afrika Corps caused the British Government to order works carried out at the Tura quarries near Cairo, to store ammunition. The quarries themselves were used in ancient times. At some point native workmen discovered a pile of leaves of papyrus hidden under apparently random chunks of stone. They promptly spirited them away and sold them for a song to the antiquities dealers. But word got out, and most of the find was recovered. The main portion of it was biblical commentaries by Didymus the Blind and Origen.
Now wouldn’t it be nice if an English translation of this work was also online?
