If a truly large archive were found then who’s to say that it could survive long enough to be properly studied? There are multiple sources of untouched ancient texts today which aren’t much studied. Off the top of my head, I’ve heard there are chests full of (roughly 1000-year-old) Arabic manuscripts littering the Archbishop’s palace in Toledo, largely untouched due to a lack of interest/number of scholars (and perhaps it is hard to get access). There are also many manuscripts spread out across private basements in Timbuktu, those have survived several threats but who’s to say they will survive more? On the other hand we have hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, most of which are unread (they had the advantage that when a library burns down the tablets are often fired instead of destroyed). It is hard to decide what is worth prioritising before it has been read.
The one solace we can take is that modern techniques may let us read manuscripts after they have been largely destroyed.
This reminds me of one of the episodes of the documentary series "Endangered Civilizations". From the description[1]:
> 9. The Books Under the Sand
> During the time of trans-Saharan trading, its strategic location along the caravan route enabled it to prosper. It was also the gathering place for the pilgrims from western Sahara as they began their journey to Mecca. It had already attained the position as a prestigious economic and spiritual center. Chinguetti was considered the capital of the "Land of the Moors".
In the episode, they reference and show a lot of very old texts. If I remember correctly, they mostly came from the days when the area was replete with trading activity, around the 12th or 13th century. One of the things they discuss in the episode is the fact that there aren't enough researchers/scientists that are studying them, so many of the books end up being inadvertently destroyed or buried under the always-shifting sands.
While I was watching the show, I remember thinking how awesome it would be to have some sort-of machine that you could point at the ground and be able to just see what's buried deep underfoot, for a wide radius. There's so much history in that area that is just completely inaccessible to us because of the climate and geography.
> There are also many manuscripts spread out across private basements in Timbuktu, those have survived several threats but who’s to say they will survive more?
-Which reminds me of Joshua Hammer's brilliant book 'The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu', detailing the efforts to save those collections from the latest threat to them - islamic militants.
The title alone was enough to make me want to read the book, I'll admit.
At least for cuneiform tablets, somewhere I read most of them are utterly boring, mostly inventory and transactions. Maybe you could pass years sifting through it to finally find something valuable.
In the aggregate that data might be incredibly valuable, and valuable in a way that might not be obvious to the gatekeepers of these materials. You never know what people can do with more data until you put it out there.
But neither do the people who might do something with it, which I guess is why there's little funding for such endeavors. You need somebody with the money and conviction to make the gamble.
This is very true. A lot about civilisation can be learned from tax records but just because there are lots of tax records it does not mean they are particularly easy to read or to recognise, even for an expert.
The one solace we can take is that modern techniques may let us read manuscripts after they have been largely destroyed.