I’m curious. Is it a matter of these record not surviving?
I know there’s a certain amount of Mesopotamian correspondence and record s that survived (being made of clay) and Egyptian records (pressed into the walls of temples, or papyrus records buried in the dry desert in jars). I assume that other than a few Ostraka and the odd inscription on a Greek object, very little of the Greek mundaneousness (?) survives?
A lot of mundane stuff in Greek survives on papyruses buried in the desert in Egypt
It is certainly possible that there are undiscovered Greek texts which have thus not been translated, on papyrus.
And it is also possible that there are some texts which have been translated into eg German but not English or French. I can’t think of any offhand.
And I know from bitter experience that there are a lot of texts, particularly obscure or heterodox early Christian writings, which have not been translated since the 19th century, and thus said translations are woefully inadequate as a guide to what the Greek (Latin/Syriac/Aramaic/Coptic) text actually says, because scurrilous, heretical or profane bits were either left out entirely or “smoothed out” by the translators. Most of these texts cannot be said to have been translated in their entirety if one takes a sense of fidelity to the text to be important, or paramount.
See my post #17.
You know this how?
Egypt has not exactly been left alone, over the millennia, by archeologists, treasure hunters and the like. There might be some stuff still buried there, but I doubt there is a lot.
And, again, see my post #17 for why mundane stuff, in the Greek world, rarely ever have made it onto papyrus in the first place.
Furthermore, anything written in Greek in Egypt would not be ancient or classical Greek material; it would be from the later Hellenistic, or Roman, or even Byzantine eras. There could be some copies of ancient or classical works that were considered important, but, even in the unlikely event that any mundane stuff made it onto expensive papyrus (or parchment, which came into use in Hellenistic times, but was still expensive) it would not be from “ancient” Greece.
I think #18 meant to ask why are the texts called Linnear - what does the word L. mean?
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Linear, of writing , means laid out in lines. In this context linear writing is distinguished from pictographic writing, in which concepts are expressed by drawing pictures - usually a narrow range of stylised pictures. In general, the order in which symbols appear is crucial to meaning in a linear script (GOD means something very different from DOG), which is why laying out in lines is characteristic of the way the script is used.
But business and administrative records in Mesopotamia survived because they were written on clay. I find it hard to believe that Greece either (a) had so little need to write down business and administrivia or (b) they would write it on wax, which would probably have a lifespan of days.
(In one case in Egypt we have the papyri correspondence between the local high priest/warlord of Luxor and his minion discussing their enterprise to “mine” the New Kingdom treasures including the Valley of the Kings. The lack of treasure there is not thieves in the night, but authorities taking anything they could find; the mummy caches were not the local priests trying to tidy up after looters, but the priestly looters themselves tidying up their beloved god-kings once they’d stripped them of earthly valuables.)
There is still a huge amount of excavated papyrus which has not been catalogued, translated or otherwise examined. It is sitting in bins waiting to be looked at. Tons of it. Probably, it will be mostly copies of stuff we already have, but it is statistically likely that there are still undiscovered fragments of Greek and Latin literature or otherwise interesting texts.
Greek material from the Hellenistic and Roman periods should still be considered “ancient” in any meaningful sense. Fifth-century Athens was not the only place and time Greeks were doing and writing interesting stuff.
One good example of the kind of “mundane” thing found on papyrus is a large number of magic spells, of a wide variety and incorporating a mindbogglingly large number of different religious systems. The magical papyri have been translated, insofar as that is possible with the “magic words” in there, but there could certainly be more of that out there. These documents have been hugely enriching of our understanding of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean.
Let me go back a step. Why should every Greek text be translated?
Presumably everybody who is qualified to do a translation can already read the Greek. Articles can be published with the text in the original, and everybody who wants to read the text does.
And what language does it get translated into? Scholars from dozens of countries around the world study Greek. Just to translate the texts into every one of those languages would take up an enormous amount of time and effort.
Sometimes the effort would be worth it, granted. I’m sure all the major plays and histories and scientific texts have been translated into many languages many times. The differences in translations alone can be an interesting subject. I had a brief fad of collecting translations of Dante, because some were in terza rima, some in other rhyme schemes, some in prose, and no two alike. But any real Dante scholar would use only the original.
Other than the idle curiosity of the layperson, who are these translations of lesser known works supposed to be for?
Usually, students. This stuff is worth studying, even if you can’t read Greek, or are just starting to learn.
I personally think that texts should be translated in part so that there isn’t some idea that such-and-such a text is worthwhile, but this other isn’t. That doesn’t apply to fragments, of course, most of which aren’t translated anyway. Nor does it necessarily apply to technical texts, but even there it is a net good, I think.
Also, preparing a translation is a great way to study a text. The Translated Texts for Historians series by Liverpool both broadens the audience for important historical works that are difficult or impossible to find in English but also provides excellent research on these texts, as well as other useful tools for the student.
Frylock could also try his hand on the Voynich Manuscript.
A few additional links to get you started:
How do you get access to these bins? Old texts that have been cataloged are regularly made available as part of “rare book rooms” at libraries and access can be had rather casually (walk in the door, lol) as long as you are ok with using the books under the supervision of a librarian and don’t want to check anything out. I happened to be at a university recently for another purpose and after I had accomplished what I came for, I decided to check out the library. It was kind of a slow day there and a librarian came up to me and asked if I wanted to see the rare book room, and I was soon wandering through dozens of 16th century books in German. Too bad I don’t know German :(.
What happens if you show up at a university or museum that has a “misc uncatalogued papyrus” bin and say you want to rummage through it? Do you have to take a test on ancient languages and score above 80%? Do you need at least a master’s degree in classics? Any degree in anything, to prove that you have scholarship skills? Do you have to have X number of prior scholarly publications regarding classical language texts? Do you need a criminal background check to convince them you aren’t going to steal stuff and sell it in a dark alley in the 'hood? “I’ll trade you a 2000 year old debt collection notice for that bag of weed.”
Greek papyri have huge amounts of mundane material. Lots of it has never been translated or even read by anyone post-ancient times. Part of the problem is that you not only must be well trained in ancient Greek, you must also be trained in papyrology. Papyrology includes the art/science of deciphering shredded papyrus and dealing with a variety of handwriting conventions.
Modern publication of hitherto lost ancient Greek continues apace in journals like Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik [sorry can’t get the umlaut on ‘fur’ here]. Rarely this includes new material from ancient high culture, such as the parts of Sappho 58 published in 2005. The backlog of unpublished papyri is immense.
The Loeb Classical Library has the most coverage of high culture ancient Greek and Latin, but it is nowhere near complete. A few immediate things that haven’t been translated leap to mind: ancient scholars’ literary commentary (Servius, Homeric scholia, come to think of it most if not all scholia on everything – reams of that), a lot of late antique Christian texts (even as recently as the 90s, for instance, Peter Brown was setting graduate students to translate for first time publication sermons by Augustine), and generally things which are fragments, papyri or inscriptions.
Anecdote time. I’ve occasionally found myself puzzled by handwritten English-language letters less than a hundred years old, but I was able to access the handwritten 19th century will and other miscellaneous documents of my great-great-great-grandfather (yay, cancelled Victorian-era checks!) and the writing was as clear as day, and it could have been my own from a few days prior. I wonder if related people tend to write similarly, either due to DNA or due to cultural traits taught from parent to child.
My mom has two different handwritings: A neat handwriting for things meant to be read by others, and a quick-and-dirty handwriting for notes meant only for herself. Well, I can’t write neatly no matter how I try (though I have gotten to where I can print neatly), but my handwriting is identical to Mom’s messy writing. As in, there have been times I’ve seen something she wrote, and couldn’t figure out when I wrote it.
To the extent my mom’s teaching influenced my writing, I would certainly hope that she taught me her neat writing, not her messy.
There’s a zooniverse project to translate Greek texts.
However as I’m not studying Greek until next year, you can find me over at Snapshot Serengeti. 
Most literature written in Greek in antiquity is untranslated.
The ecclesiastical texts fill many volumes in the Patrologia Graeca.
Roman-era literary texts like Libanius are mainly not done.
Technical works like Galen are not done.
I commission translations myself but it is a drop in the ocean.
Http:// www.roger-pearse.com
Really, there are works by, for example Galen, that have never been translated?
I suppose since Latin was taught in high school until a few decades ago, it’s not been necessary? I still find that incredulous. Someone, somewhere would translate these. Heck, classes probably did pages of it as an assignment.
(My grade 9 class, 1968, was the last one to get Latin as a part of the curriculum. After that, it was one of several options for a few years (didn’t take it) and then no longer offered. My brother-in-law, quite a bit older, still had textbooks in Latin of the Aenid, Virgil, Caesar until he moved about 20 years ago…)
MD2000, FWIW I was pleasantly surprised to discover that at least some of the High Schools in Frederick MD are teaching Latin and apparently have been dong so for some years.