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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hi, my name is Joe McCormick and this is The Art Effect, a short form series from Stuff

to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time.

You can learn a lot from looking at trash.

There's a city in Egypt on the western side of the Nile Valley.

Today, it's called Albanasa, but during the Roman period, it was known as OxyRinkus.

Although lots of people might not recognize the name, OxyRinkus is without a doubt one

of the most important sources of original, handwritten, ancient manuscripts in the entire

world, and nearly all of these manuscripts trace back to crusty pits where for hundreds

of years, in layer upon layer, people threw their trash.

Usually, unless they're carved into stone, written documents are relatively quick to decay,

but the dry conditions at OxyRinkus kept these trash pits largely protected from natural

degradation, and safely guarded thousands of archeologically precious papyrus documents

across the ages.

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