Demotic Palaeographical Database Project - DPDP

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joachim Friedrich Quack
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393538161

The Demotic Palaeographical Database Project - DPDP creates the first comprehensive demotic palaeography in the form of a digital database based on thoroughly and completely annotated textual sources. The project provides a versatile digital tool for the decipherment and scientific analysis of demotic texts and objects that can be expanded at any time and enables Demotists and Egyptologists as well as other scholars of antiquity with an interest in demotic sources to date and situate texts, to identify scribal hands, to analyse the developments of the demotic script and language, and to understand palaeographical and orthographical assessments of experts. The project pays special attention to all visual aspects of the demotic sources, which are annotated and analysed down to the level of the individual sign. This makes it possible to compare each attestation of a sign in a text to representations of the same sign in other texts and to study its occurrences in different words. A specially created web-application with different modules enables searching the different levels of annotations and conducting automated scientific analyses in an unprecedented way, thereby setting standards for modern day palaeographies that reach beyond the field of Demotic studies. The digital editions of texts also ensure the preservation of cultural heritage.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants