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3 Egyptian Texts

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Gabriel Bodard edited this page Dec 12, 2024 · 20 revisions

Working with Egyptian texts

SunoikisisDC Digital Classics: Session 3

Date: Thursday January 30, 2025. 16:00-17:30 GMT.

Convenors: Eliese-Sophia Lincke (Freie Universität Berlin), Franziska Naether (Leipzig)

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/zelmcZmoa7E

Slides: tba

Outline

This session introduces basic digital tools and instruments used to decipher and analyze Ancient Egyptian Texts. We begin with a thorough introduction to Ancient Egyptian languages and scripts, including Hieroglyphic, Demotic and Coptic. The main digital tool discussed is the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), which recently received a major makeover, and to which new functionalities are added every year. Other topics covered include text alignment (with Ugarit), and the state of the art of Unicode for Egyptian scripts.

Required readings

  • S. Rosmorduc. 2015. "Computational Linguistics in Egyptology." In J. Stauder-Porchet, A. Stauder & W. Wendrich (eds.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles. Available: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fk4n4gv
  • W. Wendrich. 2023. "Chapter 1 Ethics of Digital Representation in Egyptology". In Ancient Egypt, New Technology. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004501294_002

Further readings

  • M. Amin, A. Barmpoutis. M. Berti, E. Bozia, J. Hensel & F. Naether. 2022. "The Digital Rosetta Stone Project." In R. Lucarelli, J. Roberson & S. Vinson (eds.), Ancient Egypt, New Technology. The Present and Future of Computer Visualization, Virtual Reality and Other Digital Humanities in Egyptology. Harvard Egyptological Studies 17. Leiden / Boston: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004501294_004.
  • M. Berti & F. Naether (eds.). 2016. Altertumswissenschaften in a Digital Age – Egyptology, Papyrology and Beyond. Proceedings of a Conference and Workshop in Leipzig, November 4-6, 2015. Available: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-201500.
  • Frederik Elwert, Simone Gerhards & Sven Sellmer. 2017. "Gods, graves and graphs – social and semantic network analysis based on Ancient Egyptian and Indian corpora." Digital Classics Online 3,2. Available: https://doi.org/10.11588/dco.2017.0.36017
  • Ulrike Henny, Jonathan Blumtritt, Marcel Schaeben & Patrick Sahle. 2017. "The life cycle of the Book of the Dead as a Digital Humanities resource." Digital Classics Online 3,2. Available: https://doi.org/10.11588/dco.2017.0.35896
  • R. Lucarelli. 2023. "From Virtual Reality to virtual restitution: How 3D-Egyptology can contribute to decolonizing the field and the question of digital copies vs the original." In: Palladino C. & Bodard G (eds.), Can’t Touch This. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bcv.i.
  • S. Polis & V. Razanajao. 2016. "Ancient Egyptian Texts in Context: Towards a conceptual data model (the THOT data model – TDM)." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 59: 24-41. Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2016.12036.x
  • S. Schweitzer. 2013. "Dating Egyptian literary texts: Lexical approaches." In G. Moers, A. Giewekemeyer & K. Widmaier (eds.), Dating Egyptian literary texts: Proceedings of the Conference Göttingen 9.-12.6.2010, Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 11, pp. 177-190. Hamburg: Widmaier Verlag.
  • On the TLA, see also:

Resources

Exercise

  1. TLA Exercise:
  • Go to the latest version of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), the electronic corpus of Egyptian texts.
  • Familiarize yourself with the text corpus by searching for a literary text: the Late Egyptian wisdom text "The Teaching of Amenemope" from the period of the New Kingdom ('cheat sheet': relevant German terms are "Weisheitslehre", "Neuägyptisch", "Die Lehre des Amenemope")
  • Look at the attestations. How many copies of the text do exist, which parts of the wisdom text do they preserve, and how are they dated?
  • Load the papyrus with the sentences of the beginning of the text. Check out the different view of hieroglyphs, transliteration, (German) translation etc., and switch on/off the different options of the "annotation/block view", including the linguistic glossing.
  • Check out the word "sbꜣ.yt". What does it mean? When and where is it attested? What else does the TLA offer to find out about this word?
  1. Rosetta Stone exercise:
  • Go to the visual alignment on the Digital Rosetta Stone.
  • Hover over a line on the photograph. A transliteration of the line will appear, and matching passages in the other versions of the text will also be displayed. Click on a line to go to the aligned translation.
  • Do this for several different lines. What words align perfectly? What words align imperfectly, or not at all? What words are missing across the texts? What is the overall percentage of matches? Are there any differences you can see between the various versions of the text?
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