Reviewing : Manuscript 512 and The Real Lost City of "Z" [13 Feb 2023] (YT video: 11:11).
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Manuscript 512 (Portuguese: Manuscrito 512) is a ten-page manuscript of dubious veracity and unknown authorship that relates the discovery of a "lost city" in the Brazilian province (now state) of Bahia by a group of bandeirantes in 1753. Originally found in 1839 at the National Library of Brazil, where it is kept to this day, the document describes curious sights, monuments, and artifacts of Graeco-Roman appearance found by the group in the abandoned settlement.
The manuscript is one of the most famed documents of the National Library's collection and some Brazilian historians consider it "the greatest myth of national archaeology",[1] while others praise its vivid and picturesque writing style. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Manuscript 512 was the object of intense debate and instigated many expeditions by adventurers and investigators, notably Sir Richard F. Burton, who published the work Highlands of Brazil in 1869, and Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, who disappeared in one of his "Lost City of Z" expeditions through inner Brazil, resulting in several attempts to find him.
Manuscript 512 (Wiki).
Jason Colavito's
take on it:
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The document known as Manuscript 512 is housed in the Brazilian National Library in Rio de Janeiro. It tells of a group of explorers who chanced upon a ruined stone city in the east of Brazil in 1753. The text is worm-eaten and missing many sections of the original 1754 Portuguese text.
The digitised MS -
https://web.archive.org/web/20210126070231/[objdigital.bn.br]
(More links to translations in the Jason Colavito blog).
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