Digital epigraphy

The Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy (EAGLE) brings together most repositories of ancient epigraphical documents and aims to provide scholars not just with a "useful" research tool, but with a curated online edition which has high quality contents as well as high quality data.
In this paper, the choices of the EAGLE BPN will be presented as a case of decisions about data driven by the community need for multiple approaches and the desire to enlarge the existing network.
The EAGLE Best Practice Network chose multiplicity of editions, interactivity, engagement and multilingualism in order to offer a complete and critically structured endpoint to the user. To encode inscriptions, EAGLE developed a
metadata format that assessed the provider's metadata structures and considered two sets of standards: TEI EpiDoc and CIDOC CRM.
EpiDoc allows a full description of the text of inscriptions. CIDOC CRM enables a further full description which is instead oriented to consider inscriptions as objects, thus reflecting the different souls of Epigraphy, the philological and the Archaeological one, pushing the boundaries of fling and collecting in order to meet the deepest intellectual needs of research.
The EAGLE BPN choice of the two standards grants full meaning and all possibilities to connect and link other data with external annotation or by alignment. Beside usefulness, the choice of complexity will be rewarding as a choice of semantic quality, but entails deeper changes of perspective.

Repaso sumario al estado actual del estudio de la epigrafía funeraria emeritense en el marco de uno de los proyectos encargados de la nueva edición del CIL II: concretamente el correspondiente al Conventus Emeritensis: “1.- Augusta Emerita. Tituli sepulcrales urbanos” (2015-2018), denominado con el acrónimo CILAESEP.

In this article, I use two methodologies, Decorrelation Stretch (DStretch) and archival research, to propose a new transcription for a painted inscription from Herculaneum: CIL IV.10479. In addition to this new transcription, I show the immense promise and capability of DStretch to visualize painted inscriptions. While DStretch has been applied to pictographs and wall paintings at various sites, to my knowledge it
has never before been applied to Campanian graffiti or dipinti. This process, especially when coupled with archival research, allows us to visualize the letters of the inscription and, subsequently, provide a new reading of the text. The results suggest that DStretch should hereafter be the standard methodology for presenting and visualizing painted inscriptions.

The Ancient Egyptian Book of Caverns is one of the Great Netherworld Books from the Egyptian New Kingdom (16th–11th centuries BCE). In 80 scenes and ca. twelve thousand text words, it describes the nightly journey of the sun god from the western to the eastern horizon, leading through a sequence of six caverns in the underworld. With this book, the author publishes the text and the images of the formerly unpublished text witness of the Book of Caverns in the tomb of the Chief Lector Priest Padiamenope (Theban Tomb 33, Asasif, Luxor). The text witness in TT33 is one of the three important complete text witnesses of this book. It is put on the wall of a sequence of three rooms and corridors that lead to the sarcophagus chamber in an astute way, and it is comparatively well preserved. This publication offers a short introduction into the research history, the layout and execution of the text witness, as well as a detailed description of the making of the edition -- all in German. The main part of the publication consists of ca. 80 line drawings of scenes and wall layouts with column nos., 135 plates with digitally typeset hieroglyphic texts, and 29 plates of wall overviews. For all texts and scenes, DOIs point to a digital online publication of arbeitsphotos in the online repository of Edition Topoi. [publication in German]

The governors’ tombs located at Dayr al-Barsha are considered among the most important monuments of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Unfortunately, due to quarrying activities, looting, and natural catastrophes, the archaeological remains are now in a dilapidated state. Their documentation therefore becomes a necessary task towards the preservation and research of this provincial elite cemetery. Traditional geomatics-based heritage recording methods and sensors are, however, not sufficient to yield a full and comprehensive documentation. Inspired by emergent technologies, this paper proposes a symbiosis of digital epigraphy, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS), image-based digitalization techniques, and 3D visualization platforms, to provide experts with a digital tool able to yield high-level information in terms of accurate digital drawings of decorated sections and dense 3D mesh models. Results show that the proposed approach provides a reliable alternative to answer research questions, especially in the context of ancient Egyptian heritage, as the level of detail captured enables the academic community to further explore decoration techniques, damage recognition, and digital reconstruction.

The paper discusses possible models of interactions for projects in Digital Epigraphy starting from a selection of existing paradigms from the context of Digital Classics which are simply evaluated for their applicability. The Distributed Text Services specification is proposed as the basis for an optimal interoperation, and a test prototype is presented based on the use of this specification by four demo applications. A recommendation is then formulated on this for the future of digital epigraphy. Il presente contributo tratta di possibili modelli di interazione tra progetti di Epigrafia Digitale a cominciare da una selezione di modelli esistenti nel contesto delle Antichità greco-romane digitali, dei quali è offerta una valutazione di applicabilità semplificata. La specifica Distributed Text Services è quindi presentata come base per un modello di interazione ottimale e un prototipo viene presentato il quale si basa sull'utilizzo di questa specifica per una rete di quattro applicazioni demo. Per concludere viene avanzata una proposta su questa base mirata a superare i limiti tradizionali.