James Tabor / UNCC

A replica of the "Jonah Fish" bone box, on display at Discovery Times Square in New York, shows a fishlike figure on the left side of the box's front. Small fish figures are inscribed in a border along the top of the box. The right side of the box's front is incomplete because that area was obscured by an adjacent bone box.

The debate over a 1st-century "Jesus Discovery" tomb that may, or may not, contain the earliest known evidence of Christian iconography has taken on some of the fervor of a holy war, with some scriptural scholars protesting what they see as the "Da Vinci Codification" of modern culture.

The controversy focused on whether a fishlike figure carved into one of the limestone bone boxes from the Jerusalem tomb was really meant to be a fish — or something else. It's a key point, because fish have historically been seen as early Christian symbols, and such symbols have not previously been found on Jerusalem bone boxes.

"The 'Jonah Fish' is just the next installment in the Jesus-archaeology franchise — timed, as always, to precede a major Christian feast," Steven Fine, director of Yeshiva University's Center for Israel Studies, complained in a posting to the ASOR Blog, which is published by the American Schools of Oriental Research. "I, for one, am wearied by the almost yearly 'teaching moment' presented by these types of 'discoveries.' I am hopeful, however, that — this time — a forceful and quick display of unanimous dissent by the leading members of the academic community will be taken seriously by the media and the public at large."

The underground chamber, known as the Patio Tomb because it lies beneath the patio of a present-day condo building, was explored a couple of years ago with the aid of a camera-equipped robotic arm. The project came into the global spotlight this week with the publication of "The Jesus Discovery," a book about the finds made there.

A documentary TV show, reportedly titled "The Resurrection Tomb," is due to air on the Discovery Channel this spring. It's not yet clear whether that show will be broadcast around the time of Easter Sunday, which falls on April 8 this year (April 15 for Orthodox Christians).

Discovery Times Square

In addition to the "Jonah Fish" bone box, investigators examined a different limestone bone box that had an inscription scrawled in the central area of the front face. They interpreted the third line of the inscription as referring to "lifting up" or resurrection. Such a reference could be read as a statement of faith. This is a replica of the casket that is on display at Discovery Times Square in New York.

This week's claims about the Christian character of the bone boxes seen in the Patio Tomb have attracted sharp criticism from outside experts. The tone of the debate has become so sharp that one of the scriptural scholars behind the discovery, James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, appealed today for an end to the "personal innuendos and ugly charges about greed and corruption."

"I ask my fellow bloggers in our field to circulate this call for a change in our tone and approach to one another," he wrote on his own blog. "Enough is enough. ..."

One of Tabor's partners in the tomb study is Rami Arav, an Israeli-born archaeologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who has directed excavations in Israel for more than two decades. Arav told me today that the controversy over the findings was not unexpected.

"Whenever you make a pioneering discovery ... there will always be questions about the interpretation of what you see, particularly when things are not unequivocal," he said. "My philosophy in this kind of thing is that a good theory ... is elegant and solves more problems than it creates."

Bebeto Matthews / AP

Biblical scholar James Tabor glances over at replicas of two bone boxes found in Jerusalem's Patio Tomb during a Tuesday news conference at Discovery Times Square. A camera-equipped robotic arm like the one seen here was used to examine the boxes remotely.

Believing a fish story
For some, the claims about the "Jonah Fish" constitute a big problem. Tabor, Arav and another partner, documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, have suggested that the figure alludes to the biblical story of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a sea creature and vomited up alive three days later. That story held extra significance for Christians, who believed Jesus died on the cross and rose from his tomb on the third day.

The critics of the "Jesus Discovery" team say they're not swallowing the fish story. Instead, they maintain that the figure depicts a type of funerary pillar or tower, known as a "nephesh tower," or perhaps an amphora or vase. Some experts included pictures from other bone boxes, showing nephesh towers with pointed roofs.

Arav and Tabor said they had considered the interpretation of the picture as a tower or a vase, but decided that the fish made more sense. "If we suggest it could have been a tower, then we would have to put the ossuary upside down," Arav said. "This doesn't have any precedent, and I think this is even more problematic than saying it is a fish."

The team's video examination of the box also spotted several small, simple fish figures carved into an ornamental border around the main figure.

"It creates problems which I indeed don't think are problems," Arav said. "We know that the Jonah motif appears later on, but that doesn't mean that it began later on. This is not a real problem."

Jacobovici told me that he put the picture to the "Mishi test," named after his 5-year-old daughter. When he heard that some experts were suggesting that the picture showed a tower, he called Mishi over to take a look. "I said, 'What do you see here, sweetie?' She looks very intense, and says, 'A person inside a fish?'" Jacobovici recalled. "It passed the Mishi test."

Why fuss over a fish?
What difference does it make whether the picture shows a fish or a tower? The eventual outcome of the debate could have a big impact on the course of biblical archaeology. If the iconography is determined to be Christian, that would lend much more significance to what otherwise might be seen as a run-of-the-mill Jewish tomb.

What's more, Tabor and Jacobovici contend that the discovery of a Christian tomb strengthens their far more controversial claim, first made in 2007, that bone boxes in a nearby tomb might contain the earthly remains of Jesus and members of his family. The investigators reached that conclusion based on the names inscribed on the boxes, and their similarity to the names listed in biblical accounts of Jesus' brothers and sisters. Tabor says additional studies published since 2007 have strengthened his case, but other scholars are unconvinced.

Arav isn't getting involved in the debate over the "Jesus Family Tomb." But he does want to return to the Patio Tomb and go beyond the fishy debate. "We did non-invasive research in this place, and we discovered what we discovered," Arav said. "But we need also to do some invasive research."

Current estimates suggest that the Patio Tomb was used sometime between 20 B.C. and A.D. 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Arav would like to get a better sense of the date, and perhaps run DNA tests on the remains "to see if they are associated with groups of people that we know of." It might also be possible to run tests on a cooking pot that was brought out from the tomb years ago, "to see what was offered to the dead," he said.

"There are a lot of things that hard science can help us with," Arav observed. "There are a lot of things to do."

More about bone boxes and biblical archaeology:

• New find revives 'Jesus Tomb' debate
• Doubts voiced about the 'Jesus Discovery'
• 2007: Claims about Jesus' tomb stir up a tempest
• Ancient bone box might point to Caiaphas' home
• Gallery: The archaeology of Christianity

Replicas of bone boxes from the Patio Tomb and the Jesus Family Tomb are on display at Discovery Times Square in New York City, which is also hosting an exhibit about the Dead Sea Scrolls and daily life in biblical times. The exhibit runs through April 15.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, co-author of the new book "The Jesus Discovery," discusses how a robotic arm was used to make archaeological discoveries during a New York news conference today.

Now that the word about "the Jesus Discovery" is out in the open, outside experts are weighing in — and many of them look upon the robotic exploration of a 1st-century Jerusalem tomb as a technological tour de force resulting in an archaeological faux pas.

On one level, the "Jesus Discovery" investigators saw this project as a follow-up on the sensational claim they made five years earlier in "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," that Jesus and members of his family were buried in what is now a southeast residential neighborhood of Jerusalem. On another level, they set forth what they said were the earliest known evidence of Christian references in the Holy City — in the form of an inscription referring to resurrection on one casket, and a fishlike design on another casket.

Today, several experts specializing in 1st-century Christianity said the investigators failed to make their case on either level.

"In my assessment, there's zero percent chance that their theory is correct," said Andrew Vaughn, executive director of the American Schools of Oriental Research, or ASOR.

Christopher Rollston, an expert in Semitic epigraphy at Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Tennessee, said that although the underground chamber is "a nice tomb ... it's hard to press it into service as an impressive find."

Some archaeologists were familiar with the project months before it came into the spotlight, but non-disclosure agreements kept them from commenting  until today's press announcement at Discovery Times Square in New York. The project has already spawned a book by scriptural scholar James Tabor and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, titled "The Jesus Discovery," and a documentary about the find is due to air on the Discovery Channel this spring.

When today's embargo lifted, the criticism from outside experts hit with full force on the ASOR Blog.

"Nothing in the book 'revolutionizes our understanding of Jesus or early Christianity,' as the authors and publisher claim, and we may regard this book as yet another in a long list of presentations that misuse not only the Bible but also archaeology," Duke University biblical scholar Eric Meyers declared.

Jodi Magness, a religious-studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said "it pains me to see archaeology hijacked in the service of non-scientific interests, whether they are religious, financial, or other." In her view, Tabor, Jacobovici and their colleagues set out to dig up evidence to support their earlier claims about a different tomb nearby, the so-called "Jesus Family Tomb" — and then rustle up a fresh round of media attention.

"Professional archaeologists do not search for objects or treasures such as Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Grail," she wrote. "Usually these sorts of expeditions are led by amateurs (nonspecialists) or academics who are not archaeologists. Archaeology is a scientific process."

Old and new claims
The main objection to the claims for the Jesus Family Tomb, like the claims themselves, retraces ground that's been well trod since 2007: Just because bone boxes are marked with the name "Jesus" and the names of his brothers and sisters, as mentioned in the Bible, doesn't necessarily mean these are the actual biblical figures.

Tabor and Jacobovici produced a statistical analysis looking at the frequency of names in ancient Jerusalem, and claimed that the close fit to the names on Jesus' family tree couldn't be just a coincidence. Last month, Tabor said further research has strengthened the case he and Jacobovici laid out in 2007.

The critics insisted once again that a statistical argument could never win the day. "Dramatic claims require dramatic evidence. ... The claims of Tabor and Jacobovici for this tomb are no more convincing now than they were then," Rollston wrote.

But what about the inscription in the more recently explored tomb, known as the Patio Tomb? And what about the fish? Rollston said the fish was more probably a type of ornamental design typically seen on Jewish bone boxes, known as a nephesh tower. Where Tabor and Jacobovici saw the "fins" of the fish, Rollston saw the eaves of the tower's roof.

Even if it was intended to be a fish, "it would most naturally be understood as simply a reflection of a nautical motif in a tomb," or perhaps representative of the deceased's occupation — for example, a fishmonger. Unlike Tabor, Rollston did not rule out the possibility that a Jew would have such a design engraved on the bone box.

James Tabor / UNCC

James Tabor, a religious-studies researcher at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, outlined these designs found in various contexts, including "nephesh" images that have been found carved on 1st-century Jewish caskets, a fish drawing found in a Christian catacomb, and the "Patio Tomb fish" design seen in the tomb that Tabor and his colleagues explored using a camera-equipped robotic arm. Tabor's critics say the fishlike design is actually a variant of the nephesh tower design.

As for the inscription, Rollston said the resurrection connection was questionable. Tabor, Jacobovici and their colleagues suggested that it could be interpreted as reading, "Divine Jehovah (Yahweh), lift up, lift up," or "The Divine Jehovah raises up from [the dead]." But Rollston said the first letter in the word that was said to refer to Jehovah — IAEO — looked like a T rather than an I.

"This can't be an iota," he told me, "and that's the one letter that has to be there."

He also questioned the interpretation of the inscription's key word, "UPsOO," or "hupso," which would be a form of the verb "to lift up." Even if one assumes that's what was intended, the word wouldn't necessarily refer to raising up in the resurrection sense, he said. And even if one assumes it was indeed meant as a reference to resurrection, there were some Jewish sects back then — such as the Pharisees — that believed in a general resurrection.

"For someone to state that this is an early Christian tomb, there really has to be some clear and decisive evidence to back up that statement," Rollston told me. "And it just really isn't here."

In a follow-up email, Tabor told me that the "tower will not float" as an alternate explanation for the fishlike image. He also pointed to the comments he posted on the ASOR Blog, taking further issue with the nephesh tower interpretation. In a comment addressed to Rollston, he said, "We have much to discuss, but I look forward to doing it face to face."

On the positive side...
Not every outside expert was totally critical: The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Yuval Baruch, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, as saying that Tabor and Jacobovici may well be right about the fish. Baruch noted that the fishlike image was not photographed "in the best light," but added: "If it is indeed a fish, it is fantastic. It has no parallel."

Baruch cautioned against reading too much into a single decoration, however. "Different decorations are being discovered all the time," he told Haaretz.

Rollston and ASOR's Vaughn both said the robotic-arm exploration technique that Tabor and his colleagues used to explore the 1st-century tomb held promise for future digs. Israel's religious and civil authorities are reluctant to have ancient sites disturbed, and even if the excavations are approved, they can create huge disruptions for residential areas like the one where the tomb currently in question is located. Tabor and his colleagues circumvented many of those typical problems by using a camera-equipped robotic arm that they snaked down through a pipe going into the tomb.

"The robotic-arm technology used by James Tabor is truly amazing," Vaughn said. "To be able to explore in a relatively non-invasive way, and to respect the artifacts and bones that may be present there, is certainly of much value."

Magness, however, stressed in her blog posting that robotic-arm video couldn't take the place of a full-fledged dig.

"The archaeological endeavor involves piecing together all available information, not just one artifact taken out of context," she wrote. "Context is the reason that archaeologists go to so much trouble to document the provenance of every feature and artifact dug up on an excavation. The current claim is based on finds that have no context, as they have not been excavated. All we have are photos taken by a robotic arm of objects (or parts of objects), the dates and identification of which are unknown or unclear."

Rollston said further analysis could well shed more light on the central question raised by the current controversy: How did the first Christian communities emerge and manifest themselves? But the process of getting definitive answers doesn't necessarily match the typical time frame for a television production or book project.

"The wheels of scholarship, like the wheels of justice, grind slowly but surely," he told me.

More about biblical brouhahas:

• New find revives 'Jesus Tomb' flap
• Claims about tomb stir tempest
• Messianic message stirs debate
• Return to King Solomon's mines
• Help scientists decipher 'lost' gospel
• Gallery: The archaeology of Christianity
• Experts stumped by markings in Jerusalem

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

One of the designs etched on a bone box found within a 1st-century Jerusalem tomb suggests the biblical story of Jonah and the fish, which held significant symbolism for early Christians.

Using a remote-controlled camera on the end of a robotic arm, investigators have found what could be the earliest evidence of a Christian iconography in Jerusalem, engraved on a set of "bone boxes" inside a nearly intact 1st-century tomb.

One of the limestone boxes, known more formally as an ossuary, carries a Greek inscription calling on God to "rise up" or "raise up" someone. Another box appears to show the carved image of a fish, perhaps with the prophet Jonah in its mouth. Allusions to fish and the "sign of Jonah" came to be widely used among early Christians, but not among Jerusalem's Jews.

Update: Doubts raised about the 'Jesus Discovery'

Those discoveries alone would be enough to get biblical scholars excited. But the investigators in this case are the same people who claimed five years ago that ossuaries from a nearby tomb were engraved with the names of the biblical Jesus and his family. They're putting forth this new find as supporting evidence for their earlier claims, and resurrecting the topic in a newly published book ("The Jesus Discovery") as well as a Discovery Channel documentary that's due to air this spring.

"This does reopen the whole question about the 'Jesus Tomb,'" James Tabor, a scriptural scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told me.

That almost guarantees that the link to Jesus will take center stage once again in the discussion of the discovery, with most archaeologists discounting the connection. There's even a chance that the renewed controversy would push this most recent find out of the spotlight. That would be a terrible shame, said John Dominic Crossan, an expert on 1st-century Christianity and former Catholic priest who is a professor emeritus at DePaul University.

"It's a stunning discovery," he said. "It's a stunning piece of technology. As a scholar, I really don't want to get lost in saying, 'Oh, come on, it's off the wall.' Yeah, it's off the wall. But look at the wall!"

James Tabor / UNCC

Engineer Walter Klassen and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici hold the camera-equipped robotic arm in its folded-up configuration.

Or in this case, look at the box.

How the boxes were found
Tabor and documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici located both of the 1st-century tombs — the so-called Jesus Family Tomb as well as the one with the newly revealed inscriptions — in a Jerusalem neighborhood known as Talpiot years ago. They looked into previous claims that the bone boxes in the Jesus Family Tomb were marked with names that meshed with the names of Jesus' brothers and sisters, as mentioned in the Gospels. The investigators went on to cite a statistical analysis of name frequency as evidence that the family interred in the caskets was that of Jesus.

Most provocatively, they pointed to one box that was said to contain the remains of Jesus, and another containing the remains of "Judah, son of Jesus." These claims ran counter to the mainstream Christian view that Jesus made a bodily resurrection after his crucifixion and death, and that he did not marry or have children. To explain the seeming discrepancy with the Gospels, Tabor and his colleagues suggested that early Christians did not necessarily believe in a bodily resurrection, but rather a spiritual resurrection in which Jesus left behind the "old clothes" of the flesh.

The first book ("The Jesus Family Tomb") and TV documentary ("The Lost Tomb of Jesus") set off a wave of protests, with skeptics saying that Tabor and Jacobovici were sensationalizing an unprovable assertion. Despite the criticism, the team continued their work, focusing on the other tomb. This tomb was only briefly examined in 1981 before protests by Orthodox Jews, concerned about the disturbance of a gravesite, forced an end to the archaeological study. The tomb was sealed back up, and a condominium was built over it. Tabor and his colleagues refer to this tomb as the "Patio Tomb," because a patio sits almost directly above the tomb.

Israel's civil and religious authorities were resistant to efforts to reopen the Patio Tomb, so Tabor, Jacobovici and their colleagues came up with an unorthodox alternative: They suggested building a robotic arm that could be extended down vent holes and drill holes into the tomb, to a maximum length of more than 15 feet. The authorities gave their permission, and the documentary team proceeded with their remote-controlled video exploration in June 2010.

James Tabor / UNCC

Investigators shot imagery of the 1st-century Jerusalem tomb and the bone boxes inside the tomb using a robotic arm, as shown in this video frame.

The filmmakers peered into niches cut into the tomb and found several inscribed bone boxes, including one that was left ajar to reveal the bones still within. In one of the niches, two boxes were jammed close together. As the robotic arm maneuvered to look at the side of one of the boxes, one of the investigators cried out, "Wait, wait, stop there!" A design had been etched into the limestone — a design that could be interpreted as a fish with a stick figure hanging out of its mouth.

The meaning of the inscriptions
After consulting with other scriptural experts, the investigators concluded that the etching showed a representation of Jonah and the fish. The biblical tale of the prophet who was swallowed by a giant fish, only to be vomited up alive three days later, had a special resonance for early Christians, who believed in Jesus' resurrection after three days in a tomb. The image of the fish, which would not typically be carved on a Jewish ossuary, suggested to Tabor and his colleagues that this might be the earliest surviving example of a Christian marking on an artifact in Jerusalem.

The team's excitement grew when they saw the inscription on the box sitting next to the one with the fish: A four-line inscription in Greek appeared to refer to a belief in the resurrection. The inscription could be read as "Divine Jehovah, raise up, raise up," or "The Divine Jehovah raises up to the Holy Place," or "Divine Jehovah, raise up [abbreviated name]."

"This inscription has something to do with resurrection of the dead, either of the deceased in the ossuary, or perhaps, given the Jonah image nearby, an expression of faith in Jesus' resurrection," Tabor said in a news release.

The Jesus connection
Tabor and his colleagues tie this latest discovery to their earlier claims by suggesting that the two tombs were part of one complex, which might have been chiseled out by a wealthy supporter of Jesus and his disciples. They even name their prime suspect: Joseph of Arimathea, a high-ranking religious official who was said in the Gospels to have arranged Jesus' burial. In the investigators' view, the fact that they found such a strong connection to early Christianity in the Patio Tomb strengthens their original claims for the Jesus Family Tomb, which is 200 feet away.

"We now have the new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus' earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead — with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away," Tabor and Jacobovici wrote.

Crossan said that was too much of a leap. "There's nothing that associates [the Patio Tomb] with Joseph of Arimathea," he said.

He said the two tombs may well have no relationship to each other: "This whole area is riddled with tombs, as far as we can tell."

Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary, voiced a similar view. "The attempt to connect [the Patio Tomb] to the other tombs is sheer conjecture, unless the tombs were connected," he told me.

Witherington said the connections made in the newly published book were similar to those put forth in Tabor's earlier work. "Most of us who have evaluated his work would say, OK, all very interesting, but it's building one speculation on another speculation," he said.

However, Witherington was intrigued by the fish carving. "We have early Christian ossuaries with the fish symbol ... in the 2nd century, if not back into the 1st century," he said. "That is the early Christian symbol for I-Ch-Th-Y-S ... 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.' What we don't have any evidence for is that symbol on Jewish ossuaries."

The words of the inscription also caught Witherington's interest. "They imply a belief about the resurrection," he said.

It is thought that the use of such bone boxes in Jerusalem ceased in the year 70, due to the Roman destruction of the city. Thus, there's a chance that the residents buried in the Patio Tomb actually lived during the time of Jesus and his first disciples. However, Crossan noted that Christians weren't the only ones in 1st-century Jerusalem who held a religious belief in resurrection. The Pharisees and the Essenes also looked forward to the resurrection of the righteous, he said.

"What I would say is ... this is a rich Pharisee, a rich person in the 1st century who believes in the resurrection," Crossan told me. "We always thought that [the image of] Jonah coming out of the fish was peculiarly Christian. Maybe that's one more thing that the early Christians took from Jewish tradition, and this would be the first evidence."

More about biblical archaeology:

• Messianic message stirs debate
• Return to King Solomon's mines
• Help scientists decipher 'lost' gospel
• Gallery: The archaeology of Christianity
• Experts stumped by markings in Jerusalem
• Claims about Jesus' 'lost tomb' stir up tempest

An academic paper on the Patio Tomb project is being posted to The Bible and Interpretation on Tuesday, and Tabor says the paper will be submitted for print publication as well. A press event about the project and the Discovery Channel documentary has been scheduled for 11 a.m. ET Tuesday at Discovery Times Square in New York City. Funding for the project was provided by Discovery Channel / Vision Television / Associated Producers. Tabor's colleague in obtaining the excavation license from the Israel Antiquities Authority was Rami Arav, professor of archaeology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Egypt Exploration Society / Oxford Imaging Papyri Project

A 3rd-century papyrus fragment contains a snippet of text from a non-canonical Christian gospel.

Scientists are recruiting thousands of armchair archaeologists to help them decipher a "lost" gospel and other fragments of texts from ancient Egypt.

The Ancient Lives project draws upon the same type of people power that drives citizen-science projects such as Galaxy Zoo, Planet Hunters,  Foldit and EteRNA. In all these cases, legions of human eyes and brains can do a better job of sifting through massive databases than supercomputers. For this particular project, however, the monster database that needs to be tamed does not consist of sky-survey data or molecular combinations — rather, they're ink letters, scrawled in Greek on centuries-old bits of papyrus.

Oxford University launched Ancient Lives just a couple of days ago, but project leader Chris Lintott told me that more than 400,000 papyrus images have already been served up as of today. "It's been a crazy few days," he said in an email.

Deluge of documents
That's the kind of participation Ancient Lives will need in order to cope with the deluge of documents from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. More than a century ago, archaeologists unearthed piles of papyrus pieces in an ancient rubbish dump near an Egyptian city once known as Oxyrhynchus, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Cairo. The manuscripts have been dated to between the 1st and the 6th century, covering a time when Greek and Roman culture was dominant in Egypt.

Egypt Exploration Society / Oxford Imaging Papyri Project

This papyrus from the 2nd or 3rd century is inscribed with an ink drawing showing the goddess Agnoia ("Ignorance"), from an illustrated edition of Menander's comedy "Perikeiromene," or "The Girl Who Had Her Hair Shorn."

Since its discovery, the treasure trove has yielded up some masterpieces of the age, including the comedies of Menander, the poems of Sappho and the gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Thousands of fragments have been cataloged and decoded. The only problem is, there are hundreds of thousands of fragments to go.

"Most of these haven't been read, and they weren't cataloged in what must have been extremely trying conditions in the field," said Lintott, an Oxford physicist and one of the pioneers behind Galaxy Zoo and its Zooniverse spin-offs. "As a result, our professional colleagues have been searching blind for the last century, like trying to do research by randomly selecting books off the Bodleian Library shelves."

University of Minnesota physicist Lucy Fortson, another project leader, said the fragments are completely out of sequence. "It's like if you have thousands of puzzles, take all the pieces and mix them together in one big box. Then you try to put the puzzles together," she said in a news release. "It's an enormous task."

Now the puzzle pieces have been digitized and made available for any Internet user to peruse.

"Until now, only experts could explore this incredible collection," Lintott said in this week's project announcement. "But with so much of the collection unstudied, there's plenty for everyone. We're excited to see what visitors can unearth."

Other leaders of the effort include Oxford's William MacFarlane, the lead developer and designer; James Brusuelas, the team's papyrologist; and Paul Ellis, an imaging specialist who helped digitize the texts. "It's with the digital advancements of our own age that we're able to open up this window into the past, and see a common human experience in that intimate, traditional medium, handwriting," MacFarlane said.

How you can help
The beauty part is that you don't even have to know Greek to help out. The online interface asks only that you compare the letters on each fragment with the shapes displayed on a keyboard. Lintott told me that the current plan calls for each fragment to be checked five times or so, to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds. Think of it as a variant of the "Captcha" type-in-the-phrase system that's used to block spammers.

Another task involves measuring the dimensions of the fragments, to help scholars figure out which fragments go together. You don't need a ruler: A click-and-drag measuring tool does all the work.

The transcribed fragments will be sent over to experts in ancient manuscripts for review, translation and potential publication. Will Internet users get credit for the work they've done? "Absolutely," Lintott said, "as with all Zooniverse projects, we'll take great care to attribute credit correctly."

Among the items recently picked out of the pile are fragments of a previously unknown apocryphal gospel that describes Jesus casting out demons, a lost play by Euripides titled "Melanippe the Wise" and newfound letters attributed to the philosopher Epicurus.

Who knows what else is waiting to be discovered? If you've ever wanted to put on an Indiana Jones fedora and delve into ancient mysteries, here's your chance. This tutorial shows you how the job is done, and this Zooniverse page is where you sign up to participate.

Update for 5:30 p.m. ET Aug. 1: Over the weekend, Oxford papyrologist James Brusuelas sent an email with further details about the juiciest bits of papyri:

"Gospel: In its current edited state, the gospel has not been overtly connected to any other sources. It remains a hot topic amongst historians of religion and Christianity. One must think about how the wider apocryphal (i.e., not included in the accepted canon of biblical texts) and biblical stories of Jesus relate to and inform the very act of casting out demons. Where does this particular narrative fit in the tradition of Jesus' acts? We have the text, we've identified it. Now it has to be studied and debated (that's why this project can be so cool).

"As for Euripides, we have the gist of the mythological story concerning Melanippe, her rape or seduction at the hands of Poseidon and the subsequent birth of twin sons, whom she tries to hide from her father Aeolus. All we know about the play is that it roughly begins as such:

"The children were hidden in a stable and discovered by a herdsman, who thought they were the unnatural offspring of a cow.

"Aeolus is persuaded to kill the twin as unnatural beings.

"Melanippe steps forward to rationally defend the children as the offspring of an unidentified girl.

"We've learned this from other sources that have quoted and given the background story to the myth, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Aristotle, and Aristophanes.

"This roughly amounts to about 60 lines of the original text; everything pertains to the beginning of the story.

"Why is she wise? Her mother, Hippe, was the daughter of the wise centaur Chiron, the teacher and tutor of such great heroes as Ajax, Achilles, and Jason.

"How does the play unfold? We have no idea. And we don't know what we'll find, but we are waiting to learn how this story turns out."

More about citizen science:

• Archaeological vacations you'll really dig
• Japan's citizen scientists map radiation
• Join the online search for icy worlds
• Social networking to save frogs

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.