New Electronic Resources for Indo-European

(From the UCLA Indo-European Studies Bulletin, Vol. 11, Number 1, September 2005. For subscription information to the full hardcopy version, see the IES Bulletin page.)

POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online

The POxy website, <http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk>, makes available images of Oxyrhynchus papyri texts along with a searchable indexed database. The database includes information on the publication data, the author, date of the text, provenance, location of the papyrus, genre, format (i.e., roll/codex/sheet), and material (parchment/papyrus). The papyri appear in reduced and full-sized images. References to volumes with a transcription are also included; some transcriptions are made available on the webpage. The user interface is available in English, Spanish, Russian, and French (access this option via “preferences”). Besides searching information in the database, users can scan through authors “a-z”, titles “a-z” (“Account of Jars,” “Account of Meat,” etc.), genres (“Astrology,” “Astronomy,” etc.), dates (“First century B.C./first century A.D.,” “Reign of Augustus,” etc.), and papyrus IDs. The project is overseen by Dr. Dirk Obbink, Christ Church, Oxford. Note that more texts are being entered. The project is part of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents at Oxford.

The website includes links to the April 2005 news reports of the use of multi-spectral imaging to view hitherto unreadable papyri (<http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/papyri/the_papyri.html>). One can see a demonstration of the type of results that are available with multi-spectral imaging at the “Results” link on <http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/multi/index.html>.

POxy is part of a larger collection of edited papyri, the PINAX library, which allows one to access and search Supplementum Magicum (Suppl.Mag.), Antinoopolis Papyri (P.Ant.), Herculaneum Papyri (P.Herc.), and The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (P.Oxy.). The entire collection is accessed at: <http://163.1.169.40/cgi-bin/library?a=p&p=home&l=en&w=utf-8>.

Center for Hellenic Studies: Database of Homeric papyri

The CHS now makes available a searchable relational database of Homeric papyri fragments as part of the “Homer and the Papyri” project, first created by Dana Sutton. The editor-in-charge of the current edition is Greg Nagy. New papyri published since 1998 and the variants they contain are being added to the database, with new additions added over the summer 2005. It is possible to search variants by specifying Iliad or Odyssey, book number of either the Iliad or Odyssey, or a particular witness. The website welcomes feedback on potential improve-ments in capabilities, as well as errors in the database. Please contact the project at: <papyri(at)fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu>.

Updated Website: Bibliographie linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography

The BLonline, a web version of Bibliographie linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography, has improved its website, now making simple and advanced searches possible. BLonline covers over 190,000 references from 1993 until the present and is updated monthly; it is produced and hosted by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. To search, go to: <www.blonline.nl> (no password or login name is required).

Updated Version of Bloomfield’s Vedic Concordance (Downloadable)

In March 2005 a new version of the Vedic Concordance, updated by Dr. Marco Franceschini, was made available. It includes 20,000 additional Mantras (with many corrections) from six Vedic texts that were not included in the earlier version (or those texts that were in need of revision). The basic structure of Bloomfield’s work has been maintained, with additional or emended text appearing in red in the new Concordance. The 7 – 9 MB archive includes the Concordance itself, abbreviations, an introduction, a copyright notice, and a special font that is needed to read the Concordance. The archive is available for free download for research work and study from either the Bologna website (<http://www.dslo.unibo.it/iniz.html>) or Michael Witzel’s website (<http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewitzel/VedicConcordance/ReadmeEng.html>).

New List: Indo-Eurasian Research List

A new list devoted to topics relating to Indo-Iranian, Central Asian, and comparative history began in April 2005. The moderated list focuses on major problems in the field, particularly those with a broad theoretical significance. One recent thread addresses the introduction of script into NW India, and the dating and canonization of Vedic and Avestan sources (as well as the role the Persians may have played). For information on the list, see: <http://www.safarmer.com/Indo-Eurasian.html>. The list is moderated by Michael Witzel, George Thompson, and Steve Farmer. To enroll, go to: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research>.

Updates to the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (IED)

Recently the IED project has added an etymological lexicon of Proto-Celtic (an ongoing compilation by Ranko Matasović;), an Old Norse etymological database (by Gerhard Koebler), and a Phrygian etymological database (an ongoing compilation by A. Lubotsky). These additions are found on the IED website alongside other works whose materials have already been completely entered or are “in progress.” In the latter group may be counted a Baltic inherited lexicon (Rick Derksen), a Greek Etymological Dictionary (a replacement for Frisk by R.S.P. Beekes [note that Frisk is also hosted on IED]), A Dictionary of the Iranian Verb (J. Cheung), and an Indo-Aryan inherited lexicon (Lubotsky). Through the generous support of the Leiden University Faculty of Arts, the IED received a new server for the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary project in 2004, and can now be accessed through the following addresses: <www.indo-european.nl>, <www.indoeuropean.nl>, or <www.ieed.nl>. For further inquiries, please contact: Alexander Lubotsky at <a(dot)m(dot)lubotsky(at)let(dot)leidenuniv(dot)nl>.

Etruscan Texts Project

A project to make the Etruscan texts available online has been established at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Rex Wallace, director of the project, reports 350 inscriptions will be online in early September 2005 at <http://etp.classics.umass.edu/>, with a database that will offer search capabilities. The overall project aims to ultimately make available 2,000 Etruscan inscriptions recovered from 1990 until the present. Eventually users will be able to search by inscription number, geographical area, type of document, names, places and date of production. The user interface is being developed so that editors can add new inscriptions easily, without requiring detailed technical skills. The advantage of such an electronic publication is that it will make newly discovered inscriptions quickly available, and can offer the potential to include linguistic and historical data as well as images. For further information, contact Rex Wallace at: <rwallace(at)classics(dot)umass(dot)edu>.

Vindolanda Tablets Online

This project, located at <http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/>, makes accessible the Vindolanda writing tablets. Dating to the late first and early second centuries A.D., these Latin tablets were written for soldiers, merchants, women, and slaves. They were written in ink on small pieces of wood and were excavated from the fort of Vindolanda, just south of Hadrian’s Wall in England. The website has been up since 2003, and acts as one model for making such materials available. It relies on EpiDoc (<http://www.ibiblio.org/telliott/epidoc/>), a developing XML markup standard for epigraphic materials used in a variety of other projects.

The website allows readers to view the images of the tablets (and zoom in), read a transcription, translation, commentary, and linguistic notes on the text, as well as offering the capability to search the text, translation, notes, and other fields in the database. Supplementary background materials on Vindolanda are also available (see “Exhibition” from the menu on the top of the homepage and “Links and Further Reading”). This project is part of the larger “Script, Image and the Culture of Writing in the Ancient World” program, hosted at Oxford and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Comments and questions should be sent to: <csad(at)classics(dot)ox(dot)ac(dot)uk>.

Inscriptions of Aphrodisias Project (InsAph)

Using technology similar to that used for the Vindolanda tablets (i.e., EpiDoc, cited above), the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias project (<http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/>) seeks to ultimately provide access to the over 1000 inscriptions from Aphrodisias, the ancient city in Caria. This project builds upon work gained from a pilot project (EPAPP) which used EpiDoc guidelines for work on 250 inscriptions.

InsAph will make available stable texts on its website. The first publication of the project, the electronic revised second edition of C. Roueché’s Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity, appeared in March 2005 and can be directly accessed at: <http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/ala2004/>. For the inscriptions, the project provides a description, the text itself, a translation, a critical apparatus, photographs, commentary, information on the location of the inscription, and history of the original recording as well as citations of other printed sources. Inscriptions can be accessed by number, section, findspot, date, text category, and monument type, or searched by Greek and Latin indices, as well by other database indices. One can also go to a plan of the site and click on an area (which brings up a more detailed view), then click on the inscription number (which then takes the reader to the inscription and information about it). The project is overseen by Charlotte Roueché, University College London, who can be contacted at: <charlotte(dot)roueche(at)kcl(dot)ac(dot)uk>.

SMIDonline

All volumes of the Studies in Mycenaean Inscriptions and Dialect (SMID) published by the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP) at UT Austin are now accessible online at <http://paspserver.class.utexas.edu/index.html>. The volumes cover thirteen years of scholarship, from 1979–1985 and 1994–1999; the volume covering 2000–2001 is still being indexed and is not yet available. SMIDonline can be searched by author, title, citation, or by Linear A or Linear B sign, ideogram, word, or text.

Abbreviations on the IE Documentation Center Website (and other new additions)

The IE Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin continues to be built up with additional resources. It now makes available an online list of Hittite abbreviations from Hethitisches Wörterbuch 2, updated with the assistance of Albertine Hagenbuchner-Dresel. The list is located at: <http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/HW/HW-2.html>, and includes a link to abbreviations used in Assyriology, provided by the UCLA Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. Comments should be directed to Carol Justus at: <cjustus(at)mail(dot)utexas(dot)edu>.

Other new additions to the website include additional listings of scholar’s publications (under “Scholars’ Publications” link), additional online course lessons (including Hittite, Baltic, Old Norse, and Old Iranian, found under “Early Indo-European Languages Online” page at <http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/index.html>), and links to online contents and indices of IE journals (JIES, General Linguistics, Die Sprache, and Historische Sprachforschung), found on <http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/sitemap.html>.

Website: Epigraphic Sources for Early Greek Writing: Anne Jeffery Archive

This website will provide information and links to the notes, drawings, and photographs of L.H. (“Anne”) Jeffery, author of The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (LSAG). The project, located at <http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/LSAG/ESEGW.01.html>, was initiated in 2001 by the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents at Oxford, part of a larger program entitled “Script, Image and the Culture of Writing in the Ancient World” (<http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/Mellon/>).

There are over 5,000 pages of notes and drawings, most associated with the LSAG, but a lesser number of other materials as well, including some on non-Greek scripts of Asia Minor (see <http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/LSAG/ESEGW.02.html>). This multi-faceted project plans to:

• digitize the unpublished papers and photos;
• create an electronic concordance of LSAG materials, allowing searches of the inscriptions (by author, publication inscription number, date, local scripts, and find-spot);
• add translations to the texts of LSAG using EpiDoc guidelines (see above, entry under Vindolanda tablets);
• provide a means to access information on the letter forms of LSAG (so users could sort the distribution of letter-forms by date, the material they are inscribed on, etc.);
• offer a map-making facility that will permit users to customize the results of their queries geographically (plot, for example, the distribution of seventh-century texts in the Euboian scripts).

Currently, over 50 photos and scanned images of notes may currently be viewed in the “Introduction” section of the website (and the “List of Photographs”). For further information, contact: Charles Crowther at <charles(dot)crowther(at)classics(dot)ox(dot)ac(dot)uk>.

The Digital Classicist

A new collaborative online project, The Digital Classicist, was launched in June 2005. It is intended to act as a resource for students and scholars interested in Humanities Computing as a research tool into the ancient world. It will provide guidelines and advice on technical issues, reports on events, links to publications and projects, and a Wiki-based FAQ. An e-mail discussion list has also been established. The site is hosted by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London. The site is located at: <http://www.digitalclassicist.org/>.

Unicode Update

Unicode 4.1, released on March 31, 2005, now includes Glagolitic, Old Persian cuneiform, and Kharoshthi, as well as a large variety of characters needed for ancient Greek (including metrical symbols, acrophonic numerals, punctuation signs, and symbols needed for papyrology and musical notation). With the inclusion in Unicode, these scripts (and characters) can now be included in standardized fonts and, eventually, exchanged in electronic text documents, searched across the Internet, and viewed on webpages. (To see the new scripts and most characters, go to: <http://www.unicode.org/charts/>. Some Greek punctuation characters are found in the “Combining Diacritics Supplement,” linked to <http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html>.)

Work on adding the Anatolian scripts (Lycian, Lydian, Carian, and Hieroglyphic Luwian) into Unicode continues, and draft proposals are in preparation. Note that cuneiform Hittite is slated to be officially approved in early 2006. (Its characters are included in a new “Sumero-Akkadian” block.)

For further information on the developments in Unicode, contact Deborah Anderson, Dept. of Linguistics, 1203 Dwinelle Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2650; e-mail: <dwanders(at)berkeley(dot)edu>.

Development of Unicode Font for IEists

Gerfrid Müller and Alfredo Rizza are working on a Unicode font (see <http://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/keyboards/>). This will provide another option for Indo-Europeanists besides TITUS Cyberbit (<http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp>) and Arial Unicode MS.