- NICOSIA (Reuters) - A ancient
play is to be staged for the first time in more than 2,050 years after
fragments of the text were found stuffed in an Egyptian mummy.
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- Cyprus's national theater company, Thoc, plans a modern-day
world premiere of Aeschylus's Trojan War story Achilles in Cyprus next
summer. The play will then be performed in Cyprus and Greece.
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- Scholars had believed the trilogy to be lost forever
when the Library of Alexandria burned to ashes in 48 BC.
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- "But in the last decades archaeologists found mummies
in Egypt which were stuffed with papyrus, containing excerpts of the original
plays of Aeschylus," Thoc director Andy Bargilly told Reuters.
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- Drawing on references to the trilogy by other ancient
playwrights and the recently discovered papyrus texts, Thoc and researchers
believe they have the closest possible adaptation of Aeschylus's masterpiece.
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- "This is a new production, based on a very ancient
text," Bargilly said.
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- The play revolves around Achilles, the supposedly invincible
Trojan warrior who was killed by Paris with a poisoned arrow at his only
vulnerable spot, the heel.
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- Achilles recounts the warrior's many brushes with death
and the slaying of Hector, son of Priam, the King of Troy.
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- "People working on ancient texts knew that the trilogy
existed because it was mentioned in Aristophanes and other writers of ancient
Greece," Bargilly said.
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- A Greek author, Elias Malandris, worked on the project
for a decade, using the ancient texts, excerpts of Homer's Iliad and references
to Achilles found in other Greek plays.
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- "We do think it is a faithful adaptation to a large
extent, but nobody can say 100 percent," Bargilly said.
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- Stuffing mummies with papyrus scrolls, or creating a
papier mache mixture to encase a corpse was a common practice in ancient
Egypt dating from at least the third century BC.
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- "Papyrus was a good material for stuffing mummies,
fortunately for us," said Bargilly.
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- Described as the Father of Tragedy, Aeschylus is said
to have written some 90 plays but only a handful survive.
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