Thesaurus Linguarum Hethaeorum digitalis (TLHdig): A dynamic and multiply interconnected online repository for transliterated and richly an-notated cuneiform manuscripts from Hittite tablet collections

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Gerfrid G. W. Müller; Professorin Dr. Doris Prechel; Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Rieken; Professor Dr. Daniel Schwemer
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 437298794

The TLHdig digital infrastructure is designed as a living archive of cuneiform manuscripts in transliteration. It is therefore neither a lexicographical project nor a commented text edition, but will support, as a digital tool, any kind of advanced philological, lexicographical, and linguistic research on the culture and history of the Hittites.The objective of the project "Thesaurus Linguarum Hethaeorum digitalis" (TLHdig) is the creation of the digital infrastructure for a comprehensive repository of cuneiform manuscripts from tablet collections in Hittite Anatolia and Northern Syria (ca. 1650-1200 BC).As an additional component of the digital infrastructure Hethitologie-Portal Mainz (HPM; http://hethiter.net), the open access TLHdig will give online access to ca. 30,000 transliterated cuneiform manuscripts in Hittite and other languages used by Hittite scribes (Luwian, Palaic, Hattic, Hurrian, Akkadian, Sumerian).The Unicode encoding of the transliterated texts is done by cuneiform signs as well as Latin characters; the Hittite and Akkadian texts are richly annotated with linguistic metadata; and all manuscripts are linked to the Konkordanz der hethitischen Keilschrifttafeln (http://www.hethiter.net/hetkonk), from which further metadata (provenance, date, genre, joins, bibliography) are retrieved. These features support a user interface that enables a complex searchability of the text corpus.By being embedded in the HPM digital infrastructure, TLHdig will be multiply interconnected with other Hittitological research databases (e.g., critical text editions, manuscript catalogues, bibliographies, media databases with photos and 3D models of cuneiform fragments). TLHdig will also benefit from the high acceptance of HPM in the scholarly community.The corpus of cuneiform texts from Hittite sites is constantly growing. Therefore, TLHdig is designed as an open and growing repository. A creator interface will facilitate the submission of new texts to the repository and automatize, as far as possible, the validation of the submitted texts and their conversion into a TLHdig-compliant format. With regard to quality assurance, TLHdig will operate in a similar fashion to edited and peer-reviewed academic journals.The TLHdig digital infrastructure is designed as a living archive of cuneiform manuscripts in transliteration. It is therefore neither a lexicographical project nor a commented text edition, but will support, as a digital tool, any kind of advanced philological, lexicographical, and linguistic research on the culture and history of the Hittites.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)