Digital database of the early inscriptions of Egypt - final phase

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Richard Bußmann
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 427895496

The project aims to create a new basis for research into the earliest written evidence of ancient Egypt from the period from approx. 3300 to 2700 BC. The inscriptions bear witness to an administrative elite forming in the early phase of the Egyptian state and provide insight into new forms of representation and communication. So far, however, the inscriptions have not been systematically transliterated, translated and annotated. In the project, the inscriptions are entered into the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA) of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The TLA is a digital text corpus of ancient Egyptian texts that are available in lemmatised and annotated form, linked to an electronic dictionary and enriched with metadata. In addition to transliteration and translation, the incorporation of the early inscriptions also includes the recording of archaeological metadata. On the interface of philology, archaeology and digital humanities, a new research tool is thus being developed for cultural historical research into the formative phase of Pharaonic Egypt. The project is designed for the research-based incorporation of the remaining ca. 1,000 inscriptions, building on the experience and infrastructure of the ongoing project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Tonio Sebastian Richter