3 Egyptian Texts

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

• …

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
• 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.
• On the TLA, see also:
  • Silke Grallert, Tonio Sebastian Richter, Daniel A. Werning, "TLA – Introduction" https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/info/introduction
  • Daniel A. Werning, "TLA Development" https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/info/tla-development

Resources

• Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae
• Ugarit iAligner
• Arethusa
• THOT data model
• Digital Rosetta Stone Project
• Persons and Names of the Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom project, see especially the 'tools' section

Exercise

1. TLA Exercise:

tba

2. 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 version of the text?