According to today’s Guardian, a recently rediscovered (and to some degree reconstructed) Aeschylus play about the Trojan War is to be performed by the Cypriot national theatre company.

Aeschylus’ take on the Trojan War took the form of a trilogy of dramas of which only Agamemnon was thought to have survived. Out of 90-some plays Aeschylus is thought to have written, only seven survived into the modern age. Most of the texts were lost in the torching of the Library at Alexandria. However, apparently partial copies of this play, Achilles, were retrieved from a mummy’s coffin in Egypt. It seems that mummies were frequently packed in loose paper and somebody used a copy of the play with their dearly departed.

I would think this to be the longest period between performances of a play in theatre history.

The whole thing brings to mind the image of some future archeologist rediscovering the lost works of L. Ron Hubbard by digging through boxes of unwanted Christmas presents, but that’s just me…