Friday, August 29, 2014

Open Access Monograph Series: Fieldiana Anthropology

Fieldiana Anthropology: A Collection of Digitized Books
Publications from the Chicago Field Museum's Fieldiana Anthropology series, digitized with permission of the Museum. The collection is a subset of the University of Illinois Digitized Books Collection.
Listed below are those titles relating to antiquity (old world):
Japanese temples and houses / Fieldiana, Popular Series, Anthropology, no. 14 External Link 
Gunsaulus, Helen Cowen, 1886-1954.

Report on the excavation of the "A" cemetery at Kish, Mesopotamia. Part I / Fieldiana Anthropology M External Link 
Mackay, Ernest John Henry, 1880-1943.

Three Etruscan painted sarcophagi / Fieldiana, Anthropology, v. 6, no.4 External Link

Tarbell, Frank Bigelow, 1853-1920.

Catalogue of bronzes, etc., in Field Museum of Natural History: reproduced from originals in the Nat External Link 
Tarbell, Frank Bigelow, 1853-1920.
Dorsey, George Amos, 1868-1931 [editor] Curator of [Anthropology] Dept. at Field Museum of Natural History

The giraffe in history and art / Fieldiana, Popular Series, Anthropology, no. 27 External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.

Chinese clay figures. Part I. Prolegomena on the history of defensive armor / Fieldiana, Anthropolog External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.
Moodie, Roy Lee, 1880-1934.
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934, ed. Curator of Anthropology

Sino-Iranica; Chinese contributions to the history of civilization in ancient Iran, with special ref External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.

Catalogue of Chinese rubbings from Field Museum / Fieldiana, Anthropology, new series, no.3 External Link 
Walravens, Hartmut, 1944-
Tchen, Hoshien
Starr, M. Kenneth
Schneider, Alice K.
Newton, Herta

The Field Museum-Oxford University expedition to Kish, Mesopotamia, 1923-1929 / Fieldiana, Popular S External Link 
Field, Henry, 1902-

Old Akkadian inscriptions in Chicago Natural History Museum; texts of legal and business interest /  External Link 
Gelb, Ignace Jay, 1907-1985
Martin, Paul S. (Paul Sidney), 1899-1974. editor Chief Curator, Department of Anthropology
Ross, Lillian A. editor Associate Editor, Scientific Publications

A Sumerian Palace and the "A" cemetery at Kish, Mesopotamia. Part II. / Fieldiana Anthropology Memoi External Link 
Mackay, Ernest John Henry, 1880-1943.
Langdon, Stephen, 1876-1937, contributor, Professor of Assyriology, Jesus College, Oxford.
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934, ed. Curator of Anthropology

Ancient seals of the Near East / Fieldiana, Popular Series, Anthropology, no. 34 External Link 
Martin, Richard A. (Richard Arthur)

Ostrich egg-shell cups of Mesopotamia and the ostrich in ancient and modern times / Fieldiana, Popul External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.

An annotated bibliography on the origin and descent of domestic mammals, 1900-1955 / Fieldiana, Anth External Link 
Angress, Shimon, 1924-1958.
Reed, Charles A. Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University
Ross, Lillian A. editor 

Jade: a study in Chinese archaeology and religion / Fieldiana, Anthropology, v. 10 External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934. 

Egyptian stelae in Field Museum of Natural History / Fieldiana, Anthropology, v. 24, no.1 External LinkAllen, Thomas George, b. 1885
Martin, Paul S. (Paul Sidney), 1899-1974. editor
  
Report on excavations at Jemdet Nasr, Iraq / Fieldiana, Anthropology Memoirs, Vol. 1, No. 3 External Link 
Mackay, Ernest John Henry, 1880-1943.
Langdon, Stephen, 1876-1937, contributor, Professor of Assyriology, Jesus College, Oxford.
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934, ed. Curator of Anthropology

Notes on turquois in the East / Fieldiana, Anthropology, v. 13, no.1 External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.

Ivory in China / Fieldiana, Popular Series, Anthropology, no. 21 External Link 
Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.

Mummies / Fieldiana, Popular Series, Anthropology, no. 36 External Link 
Martin, Richard A. (Richard Arthur)

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Dissertation: The Religious Iconography of Cappadocian Glyptic in the Assyrian Colony Period and its Significance in the Hittite New Kingdom

Grace White dissertation now available online
August 28, 2014
The dissertation of Grace White entitled The Religious Iconography of Cappadocian Glyptic in the Assyrian Colony Period and its Significance in the Hittite New Kingdom is now available online through the Dissertations page of the Research Archives. The study was completed in December 1993 for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. The purpose of White's study "is to analyze the themes and motifs on native Anatolian seal impressions representative of the Cappadocian glyptic of the Assyrian Colony period. The analysis is made from many points of view and on many levels. The local glyptic is studied in the context of other glyptic styles, such as Old Babylonian, Old Assyrian, Middle Assyrian, and Mitannian. A precise identification of objects utilized on the local Anatolian glyptic is attempted, using textual evidence and giving archaeological parallels for pottery types, etc."
Seal drawing by Grace White, plate 13
 And see

The Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies Extensible Database

The Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies
http://trendallarchive.latrobe.edu.au/images/headers/brand_marks_for_web1/brand%20marks%20for%20web/ox_brand3_rev_rect.gif
The Trendall Research Centre databases are intended for anyone interested in researching the art of the ancient world.
The contents of the databases are subject to copyright. In many cases the Trendall Research Centre does not hold the copyright on images and other content. You must not reproduce these without permission from the copyright owners (often the museums in which objects are held). Images are protected by watermarks. For further information including commercial requests please contact m.kosten@latrobe.edu.au. We regret that we are not normally able to grant permission to publish or reproduce images on the databases.
You may continue to search the Trendall Research Centre databases without logging in or if you want to preserve your Photograph Album for future sessions you may register and login to your account.

Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents (CCED)

Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents (CCED)
http://www.epigraphy.ca/images/canadian4312.jpg 

The Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents (CCED) was founded in order to archive, catalogue, and digitize epigraphic materials. The digitized images are to be placed online, allowing scholars easy access to these documents.

The Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents (CCED) is a non-profit organization staffed entirely by volunteer information professionals and graduate students in Information Studies.

Our goal is to become a repository for world inscriptions.

The CCED would be pleased to consider accepting additional collections to add to our online library. Those wishing to donate/make available an epigraphic collection to the Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents should contact the CCED before submitting any material.

Many epigraphic texts are in danger of being lost through environment, negligence, or willful destruction. The CCED regularly works with collections that contain only extant copies of deteriorated or now missing inscriptions. To enable us to continue our work conserving and placing rare and endangered documents online, please consider donating to the CCED.

Help us to protect our world heritage in texts.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Jew and Judean: A Forum on Politics and Historiography in the Translation of Ancient Texts

Jew and Judean: A Forum on Politics and Historiography in the Translation of Ancient Texts
August 26, 2014

Have scholars erased the Jews from Antiquity?

Jew or Judean SliderThe Marginalia Review of Books aims to host conversations about serious books and important ideas. Taking advantage of the opportunities supplied by new media, we are providing space for constructive debates on the questions that shape how we understand the world.
Adele Reinhartz’s essay in MRB on June 24 set off a vibrant discussion in the comments section and in the MRB editors’ inboxes. The range of responses to the piece dotted the spectrum from full support to indignation, proving that a sizable readership wanted to debate these ideas further. The forum is released today only two months after the Reinhartz essay thanks to the good will and the efficiency of the participants. The essays, beginning with Reinhartz’s original piece and concluding with her response to the collection, investigate the political and historiographical considerations involved in the translation of ancient texts, in particular how modern translators and historians ought to deal with the translation of the Greek word ioudaios (Ἰουδαῖος).
Along with the forum, MRB is excited to release an e-book version of the discussion free for our readers. We hope that you will read and share with as many people as you wish, and we hope it becomes a resource for use in seminars, classrooms, and other group settings. You can download the e-book in epub format (most readers) or in mobi format (Amazon Kindle).     — Timothy Michael Law
Adele Reinhartz
I am alarmed by the growing invisibility of Jews and Judaism in English translations of ancient texts and scholarship about them. The use of “Judeans” to translate all occurrences of ioudaioi achieves neither the scholarly precision nor the ethical high ground that scholars claim. On the contrary, the proliferation of Judeans inadvertently creates confusion and misunderstanding and merely sidesteps the issue without addressing the anti-Jewish or even anti-Semitic potential of texts such as the Gospel of John.
Steve Mason
All humanities disciplines invite us to explore the possibilities of human existence, but history opens the door to conditions that have really existed before our time. No one should be naïve enough, however, to think that we can simply enter the distant past as it really was, for it does not exist now. The vehicle that takes us there we construct today. We pose our questions about the past and gather any surviving evidence that seems relevant.
The problem of translating with sensitivity to ancient contexts is basic to the research and teaching of all ancient historians.
Daniel Schwartz
The question whether we should use “Jew” or “Judean” when writing about antiquity should, I assume, be approached no differently than other questions concerning the use of our modern English vocabulary for ancient phenomena. Just as we normally look at the evidence concerning antiquity and, when turning to describing what we see, strive to choose the English words that best correspond to what we see, so too in this case.
Annette Yoshiko Reed
At first sight, the debate might seem to pivot on the choice between Mason’s search for the most accurate English equivalent of the term’s meaning in the first century and Reinhartz’s concern to tailor its translation to the understanding (and potential misunderstandings) of present-day readers. Yet the ramifications are also much wider. Just as Mason shows how the translation of a single term can engage the very nature of identity in the ancient world, so Reinhartz also calls us to critical reflection concerning the degree to which modern historical research can be isolated from its own historical contexts. Rather than arguing for one side or another, I would thus like to push further on both fronts — in part by asking what we miss when we plot the different meanings of ioudaios along a straight line towards the concept of “Judaism” as “religion.”
Joan Taylor
To say, as Malina does, that a “Jew” is an anachronistic category in the first century erects a wall between modernity and antiquity. I do not want to sever Jesus from the designation “Jew” and insist on it being relevant only to a later time, because that might sever him from a Judaism today that embraces diversity within its past. To say that Jesus was a Jew is not to say that he was a Jew as the rabbis would define that term but a Jew as one might define him in the first century.
Malcolm Lowe
If a word — or some use of that word — is lacking in ancient sources before a certain date, we should be cautious both about assuming and about denying that it existed in earlier times. Moreover, we should beware of assuming that if a word or use of a word is not found in ancient authors, then those authors did not have the concept denoted by that word.
Jonathan Klawans
Is it really the case that the translation “Jew” has done great harm? If I am not mistaken, the question about “Jew” and “Judean” is, as it is taking place here, primarily an English-language question. Far be it from me to deny the influence of anti-Semitism in the English-speaking world. But lets be frank: on the whole, Jews have been and continue to be rather safe wherever the English language is spoken, even though all the Bibles talk about Jews.
Ruth Sheridan
It is not sufficient to say that subsequent Christian interpreters of the Gospel of John mistakenly identified the narrative’s “Jews” with real flesh-and-blood Jews living among them — with disastrously violent consequences — and that they misinterpreted John’s sense. It is also not enough to claim, on that basis, that the imperative facing us now is to “restore” the correct meaning (the entho-geographic one) to the text, translating hoi Ioudaioi as “the Judeans.” This avoids the fact that texts do carry within them the potential to become loosed from their authorial moorings and to reach beyond the particularities of their original reception.
James Crossley
The ioudaios debate is an especially good example of the impossibility of escaping ideology, no matter how disinterested a given scholar might be and no matter how unware a scholar might be. We have seen how easy it is to detect what we might crudely label “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” stances, ethical concerns about anti-Semitism, and a marginalizing of Palestinian concerns. Of course, there are genuine concerns about the pervasiveness of ideology for academic research. But we can perhaps calm some of these fears.
Adele Reinhartz
While not all participants in the Forum explicitly address anti-Semitism or its seemingly more benign variant, anti-Judaism, I believe that all recognize that the ioudaios question does have implications for this sensitive issue. As some of the responses note, the question of translation may matter less when readers have ready access to commentaries and more in the case, for example, of New Testaments that are used liturgically and therefore, in most cases, without commentary.

The Fouad Debbas Collection: assessment and digitisation of a precious private collection. Photographs from Maison Bonfils (1867-1910s), Beirut, Lebanon

The Fouad Debbas Collection: assessment and digitisation of a precious private collection. Photographs from Maison Bonfils (1867-1910s), Beirut, Lebanon
British Library Endangered Archives Programme
http://eap.bl.uk/EAPDigitalItems/EAP644/EAP644_1_16-TFDC_139_031_0236bis_01_L.jpg
The aim of this project is to clean, list, index, catalogue and digitise a collection of 3,000 photographs produced in the Middle East by the Maison Bonfils, from 1867 to the 1910s.

The 3,000 items consist of albumen prints gathered in albums and portfolios, glass plates, stereos, cabinet cards and cartes de visite. They are part of the general Fouad Debbas Collection, which contains more than 40,000 photographs. The objective is to undertake a survey, and increase access to and visibility of this most valuable and endangered collection.

The Fouad Debbas Bonfils collection is the most extensive, varied and richest photographic collection produced in the Levant at the end of the Ottoman period. It is in fact one of the very few photographic collections produced in Beirut from the late Ottoman period which are still preserved.
Established in 1867 in Beirut, the Bonfils house set out the first photographic studio in Beirut and established photography as a business. As such Mr Bonfils, his wife Lydie, (apparently the first woman photographer of the whole area at that time) and children, all succeeded in capturing a region of immense physical beauty (the landscape photos of Beirut and Baalbeck), of varied ethnic composition (various portraits), and of rapid socio-economic change, at a crucial moment of the region’s history. The Bonfils Debbas collection is clearly an invaluable document registering the history of a region at a crucial crossroads in the wake of great historical upheaval which was about to sweep the region and bring about the Modern Middle East as we know it...
VIEW FILES FROM THIS PROJECT
The catalogue is available here.

Partially Open Access Journal: Eikasmos: Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica

[First posted in AWOL 30 October 2010, updates 26 August 2014]

Eikasmos: Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica
Fondata da Enzo Degani nel 1990, la rivista «Eikasmós. Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica» si è sempre caratterizzata per una vocazione squisitamente critico-testuale ed esegetica (la prima sezione di ogni numero è per l'appunto di «Esegesi e critica testuale»), per una rigorosa attenzione alla storia della filologia classica (cui è consacrata la seconda sezione di ogni volume) e per un costante impegno di aggiornamento e valutazione degli studi del settore (alle recensioni e alle segnalazioni bibliografiche sono riservate le ultime due sezioni della rivista).


Founded by Enzo Degani in 1990, the review «Eikasmós. Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica» is devoted to textual criticism and exegesis (the first section of each issue is dedicated to «Esegesi e critica testuale»), to the history of classical scholarship (the second section of each volume), and to a systematic and up-to-date survey of scholarly works in the fields of classical studies (the two last sections of each issue include reviews and a bibliographical supplement).

Collection «Eikasmós Online»
1. Claudio De Stefani, Galeni De differentiis febrium versio Arabica (Bologna 2004)

2. Barbara Zipser (ed.), Medical Books in the Byzantine World (Bologna 2013)

Data Bank «Eikasmós»

From this page it is possible to enter the data bank «Eikasmós», yearly updated with the complete tables of contents of the review, an abstract and the full text (as a searchable pdf file) of all the articles and reviews (except those published in the last two issues). It offers several ways of searching and consulting all these data.


Saturday, August 23, 2014

New Book from the Oriental Institute: Mesopotamian Pottery: A Guide to the Babylonian Tradition in the Second Millennium B.C.

Mesopotamian Pottery: A Guide to the Babylonian Tradition in the Second Millennium B.C.

Mesopotamian Pottery 

By James A. Armstrong and Hermann Gasche, with contributions by Steven W. Cole, Abraham Van As, and Loe Jacobs

Purchase Download Terms of Use
As a result of the long-term cooperation between archaeologists from the University of Ghent and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and with the collaboration of other excavators in southern Iraq and surrounding regions, James A. Armstrong and Hermann Gasche have produced a guide to the Babylonian pottery of the second millennium B.C. The focus is on more recent excavations, where the pottery has been stratigraphically excavated and well recorded. The vessels are presented in groups based on shape. On the plates the groups are laid out both chronologically and geographically, so that developments over time and regional distinctions are readily apparent. Maps show where each group is attested. Synoptic tables permit the reader to find groups quickly.  There are detailed discussions of the forms and their geographical distribution, as well as a treatment of the historical implications of the evidence. In addition, ceramic specialists Abraham Van As and Loe Jacobs present their comprehensive study “The Babylonian Potter: Environment, Clay and Techniques,” and cuneiformist Steven W. Cole reviews recent chronological debates.
  • Mesopotamian Pottery
  • Mesopotamian History and Environment, Series II, Memoirs IV
  • Ghent and Chicago: A Joint Publication of the University of Ghent and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014
  • Printed in Belgium
  • Pp. xix + 102; 48 figures, 136 plates, 9 tables
  • Hardback, 24 x 34.5 cm
  • ISBN 978-940032-18-1 (CH)
  • ISBN 978-1-61491-018-3 (USA)
  • $180.00
And for an up to date list of all Oriental Institute publications available online see

BBC Radio 4: In Our Time: Ancient Greece

BBC Radio 4: In Our Time
Archive by Era: Ancient Greece
  1. Archimedes
    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Greek mathematician Archimedes and his famous cry of “eureka!”
  2. Aristotle's Poetics
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics.
  3. Aristotle's Politics
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle’s ‘Politics’.
  4. Averroes
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 12th century Islamic philosopher, Averroes.
  5. Comedy in Ancient Greek Theatre
    Melvyn Bragg explores comedy in Ancient Greek theatre including Aristophanes and Menander.
  6. Cultural Imperialism
    Melvyn Bragg examines how a dominant power can exert a cultural influence on its empire.
  7. Cynicism
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cynics, the performance artists of philosophy.
  8. Democracy
    Melvyn Bragg examines the origins of the most cherished form of government in the world.
  9. Friendship
    Melvyn Bragg explores the concept of friendship; ‘a single soul dwelling in two bodies’.
  10. Greek and Roman Love Poetry
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Greek and Roman love poetry.
  11. Happiness
    Melvyn Bragg considers whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue.
  12. Heraclitus
    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
  13. Heroism
    Melvyn Bragg explores what defines a hero, and their place in classical society.
  14. Logic
    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic.
  15. Pi
    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of the longest and most detailed number in nature.
  16. Prime Numbers
    Melvyn Bragg examines prime numbers and their mysterious role in the universe of numbers.
  17. Pythagoras
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans.
  18. Relativism
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss relativism; a philosophy with no absolute truths.
  19. Rhetoric
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discusses rhetoric; supported by Aristotle but reviled by Plato.
  20. Socrates
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher, Socrates.
  21. Sparta
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta.
  22. Stoicism
    Melvyn Bragg explore Stoicism, the most influential philosophy in the Ancient World.
  23. The Amazons
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Amazons, formidable female warriors of classical myth.
  24. The Artist
    Melvyn Bragg explores the history and changing the status of the artist.
  25. The Delphic Oracle
    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Delphic Oracle.
  26. The Examined Life
    Melvyn Bragg investigates how our preoccupations about how to live have altered over time.
  27. The Greek Myths
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek myths from Achilles to Zeus.
  28. The Hippocratic Oath
    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Hippocratic Oath.
  29. The Library of Alexandria
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library of Alexandria.
  30. The Oath
    Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the importance of the oath in the Classical World.
  31. The Odyssey
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the monster filled epic, Homer’s Odyssey.
  32. The Oresteia
    Melvyn Bragg examines the ‘Oresteia’, the seminal trilogy of tragedies by Aeschylus.
  33. The School of Athens
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Raphael's depiction of Plato and Aristotle.
  34. The Translation Movement
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss classical Greek ideas in the Arabic and the Islamic world.
  35. The Trojan War
    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Trojan War, a central event of Ancient Greek mythology
  36. Thermopylae
    Melvyn Bragg examines the Battle of Thermopylae, a defining clash between East and West.
  37. Tragedy
    Melvyn Bragg examines whether the ancient genre of tragedy has a place in our own time.
  38. Virtue
    Melvyn Bragg explores the meaning and purpose of the philosophical concept of virtue.
  39. Xenophon
    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

Friday, August 22, 2014

t3.wy Foundation for Historical Research in Egyptology: "Excavating in Archives"

t3.wy Foundation for Historical Research in Egyptology: "Excavating in Archives"
 http://www.t3wy.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/cropped-cropped-Banner.png
Somewhere in the mid-19th century, the word “Egyptology” was coined: The name connotes the scientific study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of the 4th century AD.  Some 165 years later, Egyptology has become part of history, and now there is a movement afoot to investigate and study its evolution.
The t3.wy Project has been a frontrunner in this field: In June 2009, with the aid of a small staff, Marcel and Monica Maessen set up a website to draw attention to the subject of Egyptian dig houses.  These houses, scattered all over Egypt, are where the first Egyptologists spent their professional as well as their private lives while excavating in Egypt. These houses were usually built close to their work, and therefore their histories contain much information about the excavations and also about the people who lived there.
This specific subject ánd the accompanying website provoked an outpouring of interest from academics and the general public alike. As a result, it was decided to take this private project to the next level by starting a non-profit Foundation. The t3.wy Foundation, as it will be called for short, was established on July 4., 2014. The reason for establishing a Foundation was to raise much-needed funds enabling the team to continue and expand in-depth research on dig houses and other topics, directly related to the history of Egyptology. Since the Foundation will be based in the Netherlands, it also has a Dutch name, “Stichting t3.wy Historisch Onderzoek Egyptologie”. In English: “The t3.wy Foundation for Historical Research in Egyptology
Project Goals:
Travellers and scientists began to visit Egypt many centuries ago, and when they left, a lot of information left the country with them. We are not only talking about the obvious objects leaving the country to wind up in museums, universities and private collections all over the world, but also about photographic evidence and correspondence. Unfortunately, many of these valuable pieces of information were never documented, studied or published. In fact, thousands of letters and photographic evidence are stored in museum archives, while hundreds of thousands object languish in storehouses, some still in the original box or crate they arrived in. Lack of interest, funds and/or manpower has prevented specialists from giving the objects the attention they deserved. Research associated with the history of Egyptology can be useful in helping track down the original location of unplaced objects and bring them to light. Besides that, Research associated with history of Egyptology can also shed lights on other aspects, such as: The Egyptologist’s social life; Context between Ancient artefacts, which has been overlooked until now, the way of constructing houses in Egypt and the influence foreigners had on this, etc.
Not unlike Egyptology itself, the history of Egyptology potentially has many different aspects that could be researched. For the time being, the t3.wy Foundation for Historical Research in Egyptologyfocuses its attention to the following three subjects:
  1. The research, description and publication of dig houses in Egypt, DHP (Dig House Project),
  2. Discovering, researching, describing and, if necessary, restoring historical photographs and (glass) negatives and slides of Egyptian antiquities, HPRPP (Historical Photo Research & Preservation Project),
  3. Investigating and publishing correspondence from Egyptologists from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, ECP (Egyptologist Correspondence Project).
In due time – and this part of the project would rely heavily on funding – the Foundation would like to set up the jewel in its crown: AIPP, the Antiquities Inventory and Publication Project, in which we would like to bring together all those “forgotten” objects, at one time brought from Egypt and “dropped” al over the world in Museums and bring them together in one central database for scholars to be studied. Since this would require efforts beyond the  – current – capabilities of the Foundation, we will not start with this project immediately, but gradually start working on it.

Call for Collaboration: Are you an Ancient Geek?

Call for Collaboration: Are you an Ancient Geek?
Dear Classicists,

Our eLearning team in the Digital Humanities department at the University of Leipzig (Germany) wishes to learn more about which methods of teaching Ancient Greek are most effective and engaging for learners.  For this reason we have put together a TEST and short survey that we would love you to take in order to help us in our research.

If you can spare a few minutes, please click on the following link and you will be able to easily take the test:

ancientgeek.co

The test will be a lot easier to take if you are familiar with Ancient Greek grammar! You may answer as many or as few questions you like and at any point in the test you can skip to the end survey.
Thank you ever so much for your time and help!

Warm Regards,
The Leipzig eLearning Team

--
Digital Humanities
Department of Computer Science
University of Leipzig
Augustusplatz 10-11
04109 Leipzig, Germany
 
Email: efranzini@informatik.uni-leipzig.de
Web: www.dh.uni-leipzig.de

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Online Map Supplement to Duane Roller’s new English translation of Strabo’s Geography.

Cambridge University Press Publishes The Geography of Strabo

Strabo Image 
Duane W. Roller’s remarkable new English translation of Strabo’s Geography is now available from Cambridge University Press ( ISBN: 9781107038257; e-book ISBN: 9781139950374). To accompany it, the Center has produced a seamless, interactive online map which is accessible free: http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/strabo.  The map is built on the Antiquity À-la-carte interface, and has immense coverage because it plots all the locatable geographical and cultural features mentioned in the 17 books of this fundamentally important Greek source – over 3,000 of them, stretching from Ireland to the Ganges delta and deep into north Africa. In the e-version of the translation, the gazetteer offers embedded hyperlinks to each toponym’s stable URI within the digital module, making it possible to move directly between Strabo’s text and its cartographic realization

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Released as Linked Open Data

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Released as Linked Open Data
James Cuno

Second of four Getty Vocabularies now available for free download; two more to follow within a year
Linked Open Data / Ellora Caves in India
We’re delighted to announce that the Getty Research Institute has released the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)® as Linked Open Data. This represents an important step in the Getty’s ongoing work to make our knowledge resources freely available to all.
Following the release of the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)® in February, TGN is now the second of the four Getty vocabularies to be made entirely free to download, share, and modify. Both data sets are available for download at vocab.getty.edu under an Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC BY 1.0).

What Is TGN?

The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names is a resource of over 2,000,000 names of current and historical places, including cities, archaeological sites, nations, and physical features. It focuses mainly on places relevant to art, architecture, archaeology, art conservation, and related fields.
TGN is powerful for humanities research because of its linkages to the three other Getty vocabularies—the Union List of Artist Names, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, and the Cultural Objects Name Authority. Together the vocabularies provide a suite of research resources covering a vast range of places, makers, objects, and artistic concepts. The work of three decades, the Getty vocabularies are living resources that continue to grow and improve.
Because they serve as standard references for cataloguing, the Getty vocabularies are also the conduits through which data published by museums, archives, libraries, and other cultural institutions can find and connect to each other.

Why Linked Open Data?

Linked Open Data - The Getty VocabulariesWhen data is linked and open, it is structured and published in ways that allow it to be recombined with data from other sources to create new knowledge. In other words, Linked Open Data connects information from diverse publishers and areas of scholarship, enabling the dramatic expansion and acceleration of research.
When the vast trove of data in the Getty vocabularies is released into the Linked Open Data ecosystem, researchers will not only be able to retrieve more complete data, but hone it to their precise requests. In short, they can ask, and answer, ever more complex queries.
What artists were working in Venice in the 1520s? When, where, and under whose patronage were Buddhist temples built in India? What museums or libraries currently own folios from a disassembled 14th-century medieval Psalter? What was the iconography of the illuminations in this Psalter? Today these questions are time-consuming and difficult to answer. In the world of Linked Open Data, they could be just a few clicks away.

A Rich Data Ecosystem

To show how Linked Open Data from TGN can enhance research, let’s take the single example of Ellora Caves in Maharashtra, India, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famed for its astonishing rock-cut architecture. TGN contains not only the caves’ location but also their geographical hierarchy, variant names in multiple languages, and the religious traditions represented there. Now imagine that this data is linked to other data—such as maps, books and articles, and photographs depicting this location. A vast trove of interrelated resources, currently only findable individually through manual search using variant spellings, becomes click away.
Within the Getty alone, in a future Linked Open Data world multiple resources could be interlinked: a digitized volume from the early 1800s from the special collections of the Getty Research Institute; art historically significant early photographs of the site by English, French, and Indian photographers in the collection of the Getty Museum; and multiple publications from the Getty Conservation Institute including an update on conservation efforts.

Next Steps and Feedback

All four Getty vocabularies will be released as Linked Open Data by late 2015. To follow the progress of the project at the Getty Research Institute, see our Linked Open Data page.
We’re grateful to members of the digital humanities community who have taken the time to make suggestions or to let us know how they are making use of Art & Architecture Thesaurus data released in February. We welcome the continued comments and input of the user community; if you have a suggestion or find the Getty’s Linked Open Data useful in your own work, please share it here or email the Getty’s Linked Open Data team at vocabLOD@getty.edu.
- See more at: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/getty-thesaurus-of-geographic-names-released-as-linked-open-data/#sthash.ecNKj6Be.dpuf

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery Online Publications

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery: Collections Research
http://www.bmag.org.uk/images/header/back-3.jpg

Archaeology

Birmingham Cuneiform Texts - Translations

  • The tablets translated in Birmingham Cuneiform Texts - Translations Part 1 (PDF document) were first published in Watson, P.J., Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets in Birmingham City Museum Volume 1 – Neo-Sumerian Texts from Drehem (Aris & Phillips, Warminster, 1986). The majority of the tablets here come from the Sumerian town of Puzrish-Dagan which was on the modern site of Drehem in southern Iraq.
  • The tablets translated in Birmingham Cuneiform Texts - Translations Part 2 (PDF document) were first published in Watson, P.J., Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets in Birmingham City Museum Volume 2 – Neo-Sumerian Texts from Umma and Other Sites (Aris & Phillips, Warminster, 1993). The majority of the tablets in Part 2 below came from the Sumerian city of Umma in what is now southern Iraq.
  • At the time the standard practice for editions of such tablets was to publish copies (line drawings), summary contents and indices making them accessible only to those who could read the cuneiform script. Subsequently they were made available online by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative where scans of the tablets can be found together with transliterations. However, as neither the original publication nor the cdli site contain translations it has been decided to make these available here. To access those scans relevant to Birmingham Cuneiform Texts Part 1, log on to http://cdli.ucla.edu click on cdli search and then select primary publication “begins with” and enter BCT 1 and click search. To access those scans relevant to Birmingham Cuneiform Texts Part 2 enter BCT 2.

A New Allen and Greenough

A New Allen and Greenough
With support from the Mellon Digital Humanities Fund and the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies at Dickinson, we have completed a new digital version of that perennially useful tool, Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges, edited by J.B. Greenough, G.L. Kitteredge, A.A. Howard, and Benjamin L. D’Ooge. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1903.
Allen_and_Greenough_screenshot
The project involved re-scanning the book to have good quality page images, then editing a set of existing XML files kindly provided by the Perseus Project. We added to that the newly digitized index, which was not in the Perseus XML. The purpose there was to make the book browsable via the index, which is important for user utility, and absent in all other online versions. On March 23, 2014, Kaylin Bednarz (Dickinson ’15) finished revision of XML files for Allen & Grenough, and the creation of html files based on the new XML. She was assisted and trained in the use of Oxygen software (which converts the XML into web-ready html) by Matthew Kochis, Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities, who also helped with day to day project management.
In late March, Dickinson web developer Ryan Burke uploaded the html and XML files to Dickinson servers, and created the web interface for A&G in html. This revealed issues of formatting: indentations were often not preserved, resulting in lack of clarity. Some character formatting was not right, and footnotes from the original print resource were not clearly displayed. Forward and back buttons had to be put in for each of the 638 sections.
On May 20, 2014, Meagan Ayer (PhD in classics and ancient history, University of Buffalo, 2013) began work hand-editing Allen & Greenough html files, removing errors and fixing formatting, adding navigational infrastructure using Adobe Dreamweaver. A few missing XML files had to be added and converted to html, and those finishing touches were put on last week.
The differences between our version of A&G and others available on the internet are:
  • Page images attached to every section
  • Analytical index makes finding what you need easier
  • Functioning word search for the entire work
  • Attractive presentation with readable fonts and formatting
  • Fully edited to remove spelling errors and OCR misreads (further error notifications appreciated!)
And of course the whole is freely available under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. We plan to systematically link to this version of A&G in our Latin commentaries, and we are planning to have a similar work on the Greek side up soon:
Thomas Dwight Goodell, A School Grammar of Attic Greek (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1902). This excellent work was scanned by the Internet Archive. Last year Bruce Robertson of Mont Allison University kindly performed the OCR using Rigaudon, the output of which is available on Lace. At Dickinson the OCR output was edited and the XML and html pages created by Christina Errico. Ryan Burke has created the web interface. Meagan Ayer is in the process of editing and correcting the html pages. So look for that in the next few months!
And see also AWOL's  list of

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Entrepôts et lieux de stockage du monde gréco-romain antique

[First posted in AWOL 27 November 2012, updated 20 August 2014]

Entrepôts et lieux de stockage du monde gréco-romain antique
http://www.entrepots-anr.fr/sitefiles/images/contenu/illus_6.jpg
Le projet "Entrepôts et lieux de stockage du monde gréco-romain antique" est un projet de recherche financé par l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) et porté par trois laboratoires français de recherche en sciences de l'Antiquité: le Centre Camille Jullian (CCJ), l'Institut de Recherche en Architecture Antique (IRAA) et l'Ecole Française d'Athènes (EfA).

Jusqu’à la fin de l’Ancien Régime, le stockage a été une des solutions les plus fréquemment utilisées pour venir à bout des problèmes particuliers causés par l’approvisionnement de ces populations non rurales que constituaient les citadins et les soldats. Le grenier occupe une position centrale dans ces systèmes d’approvisionnement, tant d’un point de vue matériel, par les possibilités de conservation à plus ou moins long terme qu’il permet, que d’un point de vue politique, par les enjeux qu’il soulève en matière de propriété et de gestion.

Ce sujet touche aux grandes interrogations en histoire économique des sociétés d’Ancien Régime dans l’aire méditerranéenne et il est susceptible de faire progresser la connaissance de ces questions et de renouveler les problématiques de recherche. Le projet a l'ambition de parvenir à une connaissance plus solide des systèmes de stockage antiques, notamment en créant un réseau international entre les chercheurs travaillant actuellement sur cette question et en suscitant de nouvelles recherches sur ce thème. Le présent site Internet relève d'un double objectif : d'une part diffuser largement les informations relatives au projet, d'autre part en constituer l'un des outils scientifiques de recherche par la création d'une base de données collaborative en ligne. Cette base de données, actuellement accessible par les seuls chercheurs associés au projet, sera à terme (2012) ouverte au public sur le présent site Internet.
Pour plus de détails :
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