EpiDoc Projects

‘A nastro’ inscriptions from Roman Catacombs

Status: in preparation (description as of January 2008)

The project’s aim is an online edition (using the Epidoc standard) of the corpus of ‘a nastro’ (ribbon) inscriptions from the Roman Catacombs, prepared by the Dipartimento di Studi classici e cristiani (University of Bari), under the stewardship of Antonio Felle and Anita Rocco. ‘A nastro’ inscriptions are epitaphs drawn with a pointed tool in the fresh mortar spread all around the perimeter of the loculi’s closures, and between elements (tiles, stone slabs) that are part of it. Such inscriptions -- like papyri and graffiti -- are particularly precious as they provide rare evidence for writing features and their spread in Late Antiquity. The corpus will include inscriptions already published in Inscriptiones Christianae Vrbis Romae, Nova Series and now in EDB, and particularly unpublished ones. Whenever possible, photos and/or apographs will be included.

Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity

Status: complete (description as of April 2006)

ALA2004 = Charlotte Roueché, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity: The Late Roman and Byzantine Inscriptions, revised second edition, 2004, < http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/ala2004 >, ISBN 1 897747 17 9.

This work is expanded and revised from the version published by the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in 1989. The editions and commentary are by Charlotte Roueché, except for Text 1, by Joyce Reynolds. It includes: over 250 epigraphic texts, commentary, indices, reference materials and information about the project. The epigraphic texts are available for ready on-line viewing in HTML; the EpiDoc XML files from which these pages were generated are also available for immediate inspection or download under the terms of an open content license (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic).

Archimedes Palimpsest

Status: in preparation (description as of November 2007)

An international team of scholars, organized by The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore Maryland, is preparing a digital publication of the Archimedes Palimpsest. The publication, comprising digital images, transcriptions and metadata, represents the culmination of a decade of work on this important manuscript. It will be released to the public in 2008. Participating scholars are preparing XML transcriptions that conform to the EpiDoc customization of the TEI P4 guidelines, and these will be included in the digital publication. More information about the palimpsest and the project is available at http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org.

Beischriften on Wall and Floor Decoration in the Greek and Roman World

Status: an on-going personal project (description as of November 2007)

Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais maintains in EpiDoc format a reference collection of primary texts to support her research into Beischriften (captions, legends and other texts associated with artistic works). These are generally not "freestanding" inscriptions; rather, they comment in some way upon figural decoration. Her collection includes dipinti (painted texts) on frescoes and Greek, Roman and Etruscan wall paintings, as well as mosaic inscriptions. Rather than simply using word-processing files to collect and maintain this information, F. decided to mark them up in XML so that they might eventually be of use to others.

DDBDP / HGV / APIS

Status: in preparation (description as of November 2007)

The Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri, the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens, and the Advanced Papyrological Information System have launched a project to integrate these three papyrological resources. Under this phase, the team is creating a merged DDBDP-HGV data-set, which is marked up in a papyrological customization to EpiDoc and mapped to corresponding APIS records, where they exist. The entire suite of data will be searchable via the Papyrological Navigator, in development at Columbia University (see http://papyri.info). This first year, of what is envisaged as a 2-3 year project, is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Etruscan Texts Project

Status: under revision (description as of November 2007)

ETP = Rex Wallace, Michael Shamgochian and James Patterson (eds.), Etruscan Texts Project, http://etp.classics.umass.edu

ETP is an online editio minor of Etruscan inscriptions. When completed, the ETP database will include all Etruscan inscriptions that have been recovered and made public since 1990, the date at which Helmut Rix et al. Etruskische Texte (1991) went to press. The ETP Web site includes a searchable online database of recently recovered Etruscan inscriptions (presently more than 300 texts) and a guide that provides general information about the organization of the Web site, the structure of the database, and the conventions employed in the presentation of texts. A completely new version of ETP is currently under development (anticipated release end 2007). It will employ EpiDoc encodings and feature improved search capabilities, seamless integration with Etruscan News Online, new additions to the corpus, and an entirely new design and interface.

Inscriptiones Graecae in Croatia Repertae (IGCR)

Status: in preparation (description as of October 2007)

Nino Zubovic's pilot project, which received startup assistance from the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, aims to create a digital, EpiDoc corpus of the Greek inscriptions attested and preserved on the territory of present-day Croatia. Methodologically, it shares goals with the U.S. Epigraphy Project, but excludes Latin inscriptions as these are being researched for CIL by the Department of Archaeology.

Inscriptions of Aphrodisias

Status: complete (description as of November 2007)

IAph = Joyce Reynolds, Charlotte Roueché and Gabriel Bodard, Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (2007), available at http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007, ISBN 978-1-897747-19-3

IAph is the definitive scholarly publication of 1500 texts from Aphrodisias, a single city in south-central Turkey, approximately 40% of which were previously unpublished. Mostly in the Greek language, these texts were collected and refined over 30 years by Joyce Reynolds. With funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, this corpus was prepared and published online in 2007 by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College, London. The texts, together with descriptive metadata, commentary and translations, were encoded using EpiDoc. The IAph website provides the raw XML for download under the terms of an open content license (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0), and also employs XSL Transformations to give users a dynamic online interface to the publication, complete with indices, search tools, and supporting materials.

Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica

Status: in preparation (description as of November 2007)

IRCyr = Joyce Reynolds, Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica, in progress: http://ircyr.kcl.ac.uk.

The Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica, collected by Joyce Reynolds, comprises 1500 Greek and Latin texts from a small African province within the borders of modern Libya. As many as 50% of these inscriptions may be as yet unpublished. IRCyr is being prepared for publication at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College, London with support from the Leverhulme Foundation. This project is actively collaborating with the Pleiades Project to update its gazetteer with high-resolution coordinates for Cyrenaican sites (gathered in the field with GPS receivers), new records for extra-urban epigraphic places of finding, and references to documentary source texts that provide attestation for placename variants. For the epigraphic editions, IRCyr employs the same formats, software and tooling as IAph2007, and will be released under the same open content license. "Beta" versions of the texts will be ready in August 2008.

Iscrizioni Latine Arcaiche – Digital Corpus of Archaic Latin Inscriptions

Status: in preparation (description as of November 2007)

Giovanna Rocca, Iscrizioni Latine Arcaiche, in progress.

With funding of the IULM University in Milan, Giovanna Rocca, together with a small team of scholars, has launched a two-year project that aims to realize a digital corpus of all the archaic Latin inscriptions (VII-V century BC) recovered up to now. This corpus will cover a period that has not been included in EDR yet.

For each text, that will be encoded using EpiDoc, descriptive data together with linguistic and epigraphical commentaries, bibliographical references, photographs and apographs will be provided. The work will also include indices, concordance, search tools and supporting materials.

Latin Inscriptions from Albania

Status: in preparation (description as of November 2007)

This project is located at the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Munich and was undertaken in preparation for a second edition of CIL III. Initial work by Dirk Kossmann and Rudolf Haensch in 2007 was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as part of an excavation project at Lissus in northern Albania. In 2008, the Kommission will fund the second and final part by means of a contract. This work will make available online the Latin inscriptions of Albania, which are often only documented at present in obscure publications. Wherever possible, the texts will be illustrated with good photos. The collection comprises approximately 180 inscriptions, of which about 115 have been worked on to date. They will be published on the website of the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik.

Pandektes

Status: in preparation (description as of October 2007)

The project’s aim is an online presentation of eleven collections of documentary evidence from all periods of Greek history, prepared by the three humanistic Institutes of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. The Institute of Greek and Roman Antiquity’s contribution, under the stewardship of Paschalis Paschidis and Kalliope Lempidaki, consists in the online and updated publication of three of the corpora of inscriptions it has produced over the years, namely EAM (Inscriptions of Upper Macedonia), IThrAeg (Inscriptions of Aegean Thrace) and Achaïe II (Inscriptions of Patras). EpiDoc files have been produced for all the material; its integration into the publication interface of the overall project is under preparation.

U.S. Epigraphy Project

Status: in progress (description as of April 2006)

USEP = U.S. Epigraphy Project, < http://usepigraphy.brown.edu >.

The goal of the U.S. Epigraphy Project is to gather and distribute information about ancient (mainly but not only) Greek and Latin inscriptions preserved in the United States of America. 2,300 inscriptions (720 Greek, 1,575 Latin) were registered by the Project by the middle of 1997 and are listed in Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the USA. A Checklist, by J. Bodel and S. Tracy (Rome and New York, 1997). The USEP website produces in a digital format the information from the book, updated and revised, as well as new collections and inscriptions. The project is developing a database of Latin inscriptions in American collections marked-up in EpiDoc XML, but example texts are not yet available.

Vindolanda Tablets Online

Status: complete (description as of April 2006)

Vindolanda Tablets Online < http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk >

This online edition of the Vindolanda writing tablets, excavated from the Roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England, includes: a searchable online edition of the tablets (volumes I and II), an introduction to the tablets and their context, a reference guide to aspects of the tablets’ content and a help section. The website also provides an overview of EpiDoc and XML technologies used by the project, providing access to the XML and XSLT files, as well as the 2002 version of the EpiDoc DTD employed by the project.