Trismegistos: Standardizing

Source References,

Onomastics, Toponymy et

al. for the Ancient World

Mark Depauw

Science and Scholarship

Experiments in Life Sciences

(Primary) Sources in History

(Primary) Sources in (more) Ancient History

Published

Texts

People

- image (photo, drawing)

- transliteration / transcription

- translation

- metadata (date, provenance, ...)

Unpublished

Handling Texts of the Ancient World

No issues of privacy

Limited number of sources

Published

Texts

People

Unpublished

Handling Texts of the Ancient World

Greek

Latin

Egyptian

Etruscan

Cuneiform

Literary

Documentary

Manuscripts

Papyrus

Stone

Magical

Published

Texts

People

Unpublished

Handling Texts of the Ancient World

Greek

Latin

Egyptian

Etruscan

Cuneiform

Literary

Documentary

Manuscripts

Papyrus

Stone

Magical

BM

Louvre

Berkeley Papyrus

Collection

British

Library RMAH

• Various conventions for identifying texts

– names

– publication numbers

– inventory numbers

• Digitization

– separate projects

– per discipline

Identifying Texts of the Ancient World

Identifying Texts of the Ancient World

– OGIS (I) 90

– British Museum, EA 24

– Rosetta Stone

– www.trismegistos.org/text/8809 (TM 8809)

– serial number, meaningless

• Sofja Kovalevskaja Award 2004

– Humboldt Foundation; Sem. Ägyptologie, Univ. zu Köln

– Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Graeco-Roman Egypt

• Focus: texts

– creation of Egyptological Metadata Databases

• counterparts to existing Greek counterparts (HGV

and LDAB)

• DAHT-database and HHP-database

– creation of universal system of identity for texts

from Egypt, 800 BC – AD 800

MaMiGRE (January 2005 – September 2008)

Trismegistos as aggregator

Papyrological Epigraphic

Documentary Literary

Greek & LatinHGV

54704 recordsLDAB [Gr.-Lat.]10774 records

IGLEnow 11097 records

Demotic & Abnormal HieraticDAHT (incl. LDAB [Dem.])

14566 records (incl. 671 LDAB [Dem.])

CopticBCD

7309 recordsLDAB [Copt.]1677 records

no partnernow 1438 records

Hieroglyphic & HieraticHHP

1550 recordsHHI

now 4059 records

AramaicATE

1299 records

Meroiticno partner940 records

ArabicAPD

564 recordsno partnerno records

no partnerno records

other languages & scriptsno partners

ca. 500 records

• Ancient History

– research: strong Egyptian, Ptolemaic focus

– teaching: Ancient Mediterranean, Greek and Roman worlds

– course ‘Language Diversity in the Roman Empire’

• Limitations?

– creation of universal system of identity for

texts, 800 BC – AD 800?

Leuven (September 2008 – )

×

• Egypt?– Jan 2010 first contacts with Latin epigraphy

– Sept 2010 pilot projects Macedonia and Venetia et Histria

– Apr 2013 meeting Rome and Europeana application

• 800 BC? – Jan 2010 contacts Totenbuchprojekt Bonn, concrete in

Apr 2011, integration Feb 2012

– Dec 2011 contacts Deir el-Medina database, integr. Jan 2012

– Dec 2011 contacts with Topographical Bibliography Oxford

• 800 AD– no extention planned (or wanted ...)

Limitations Trismegistos?

whole of (western) antiquity

also pre-800 BC

×

• Latin epigraphy: Europeana EAGLE project (ca. 120.000)– main data providers: EDH, EDR, HispEpOl and EDB

– total of ca. 350.000 (?) inscriptions

• ‘smaller’ local languages: one-off collaboration (or not)– Etruscan: complete thanks to cooperation Meiser, 10.000

– Italic: complete (Imagines Italicae), 1.000

– Messapian: complete (Monumenta Linguae Messapicae), 600

– Lepontic: complete (Lexicon Leponticum open source Wiki), 450

– Runic (Ouder Futhark) [450], Ogham [450], ...

• Greek epigraphy: good contacts– ca. 250.000 inscriptions

• future: cuneiform and pre-800 texts– cuneiform: C. Waerzeggers (Leiden), K. Abraham

– pre-800 Egypt: Oxford

• eventually: numeric identifier for all texts of the ancient world

• Now 356,744 ca. 1.000.000 – 1.500.000 texts?

Expanding Trismegistos

×

• Egypt?– Jan 2010 first contacts with Latin epigraphy

– Sept 2010 pilot projects Macedonia and Venetia et Histria

– Apr 2013 meeting Rome and Europeana application

• 800 BC? – Jan 2010 contacts Totenbuchprojekt Bonn, concrete in Apr 2011,

integration Feb 2012

– Dec 2011 contacts Deir el-Medina database, integr. Jan 2012

– Dec 2011 contacts with Topographical Bibliography Oxford

• 800 AD– no extention planned (or wanted ...)

• Published texts?– difference published – unpublished less relevant because of Internet

– more and more contacts with collections with online presence

Limitations Trismegistos?

whole of (western) antiquity

unpublished also

also pre-800 BC

× Expanding Trismegistos

backgroundstandardisation

↓better

communication

× Expanding Trismegistos

better communication

↓progress

scholarship

Trismegistos databases and identifiers

• Tagging PDFs with underlying URIs

• Automated bibliographies

• RDF-isation

New possibilities

New possibilities: RDF

ontology

gazetteer

URI

gazetteer

URI

Trismegistos

Trismegistos People and SNAP

(358,617) PER

REF (466,222)

NAM (34,099)

NAMVAR (148,637)

Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies

Data and Relations in Graeco-Roman Names

snapdrgn.net

Trismegistos People

(EGYPT mainly)

NAMVARCASE (648,060)

Year 1 Year 19

Year 18