This paper introduces the Thot Sign List (TSL), a sourced digital repertoire of hieroglyphic signs that documents the hieroglyphic signs and their uses (http://thotsignlist.org). We present the underlying data model and describe the front-end that allows the users to navigate the complexity of the hieroglyphic script and to search for signs based on functional and iconic criteria.

In this paper, we present the Thot Sign List (TSL), an international project that aims at building an online repertoire of hieroglyphic signs and functions (http://thotsignlist.org/). After a brief history of the project, we introduce the data model, which meets the requirements formulated in Meeks (2013) and Polis & Rosmorduc (2013, 2015), and discuss the use of shared thesauri for the metadata (Thesauri and Ontologies for documenting ancient Egyptian resources; http://thot.philo.ulg.ac.be). In a second step, we describe the end-user interface, highlighting the interest of this tool for scholars and students alike.

Publication d’un ostracon du milieu de la 20e dynastie provenant de Deir el-Médineh et mentionnant la location d’un âne appartenant à Nebnéfer (xii), fils de Pentaouret (vii).

In this paper, we present the Thot Sign List (TSL), an international project that aims at building an online repertoire of hieroglyphic signs and functions (http://thotsignlist.org/). After a brief history of the project, we introduce the data model, which meets the requirements formulated in Meeks (2013) and Polis & Rosmorduc (2013, 2015), and discuss the use of shared thesauri for the metadata (Thesauri and Ontologies for documenting ancient Egyptian resources; http://thot.philo.ulg.ac.be). In a second step, we describe the end-user interface, highlighting the interest of this tool for scholars and students alike.

This paper studies how the scribes handled the testimonies given during the trials related to the Great Tomb Robbery case at the end of the 20th Dynasty in Egypt. Some stylistic uniformisation inevitably took place, for instance in the narrative sections that were subjected to some general canvass. This is also illustrated by the way the scribes completed and modified the evidence given during the trial to match administrative format (this can best be seen in the function titles and in the lists of the stolen items), and by the way they re-phrased words spoken by the accused/witnesses. In some cases, verbatim quotations could be kept, as shown by occasional intrusions of slang. Variation also occurred even in very general formulae, in the spelling of very common words, or in phraseology. The paper finally presents some case studies directly relevant for the discussion of variation: 1) one case reported by two witnesses in the same papyrus, 2) one case reported by one witness in two different papyri, 3) parallel wording in two unrelated cases reported by two witnesses in the same papyrus, and 4) parallel wording in two unrelated cases reported by two witnesses in two different papyri.

Ce volume rassemble 45 essais offert en hommage à Pascal Vernus.

Préface et introduction du volume : Aere perennius. Mélanges égyptologiques en l'honneur de Pascal Vernus.

The Ramses project was first introduced to Egyptologists in 2008, during the 10th interna-tional congress of Egyptologists held in Rhodes (Winand et al. in press). After eight years of IT developments (under the responsibility of S. Rosmorduc) and of annotation of Late Egyptian texts (Polis et al. 2013; Polis & Winand 2013), the data can now progressively be made available online. After an introduction providing general information about the annotated corpus (510 000+ tokens; 65 000+ hieroglyphic spellings; 10 000+ lemmata; 4000+ texts), this paper will focus on three main aspects: 1. Description of the functionalities of the annotating tool (the TextEditor), with a special attention to the metadata that are used for describing the documents and texts that are integrated in the corpus. This section will include proposals regarding the creation of shared thesauri for describing (written) Egyptian material. 2. Discussion of the solution that has been designed for handling the evolution of the database (see already Rosmorduc 2013), both as regards its content — namely, any change that affects texts, lemmata, inflexions, spellings, etc. — and its structure — types and structure of the metadata, evolution of the texts representation format, etc. In a nutshell, the new database will use the technique of event sourcing, where the database is seen as a sequence of editing events, which allows both “time travel” in the database history, and easy fix of editing mistakes. 3. Presentation of the first Online version of Ramses. Several corpora of Late Egyptian texts (the so-called Tomb Robberies, the Late Egyptian Stories, the Late Ramesside letters and a selection of ostraca from Deir el-Medineh) will be made available for the first time at the occasion the 11th International Congress in Florence. The website will of course allow users to browse the annotated texts and lexemes, and to make simple or complex queries. Besides, we will also encourage Egyptologists to interact directly with the data, e.g., by flagging inaccuracies or signaling alternative analysis.

First official presentation of the "Ramses Project", an richly annotated corpus of Late Egyptian [Paper submitted in 2008/2009]

This paper reviews the experience of the Ramses Project in constructing a richly annotated corpus of Late Egyptian that consists of 300 000 words in 2011 (and is expected to grow up to more than 1 million words in coming years). During the first five years of the project, this corpus has been encoded in hieroglyphic script, translated in French or English and received annotations for part-of-speech information, lemmatization, and morphological analysis. The methodology and working tools that have been developed in order to build this corpus are here discussed and future developments are presented.

This paper is an updated presentation of the Ramses project being currently developed at the University of Liège. The first section stresses the main objectives and gives a technical description of the general architecture of Ramses software. The second part describes the encoding procedures and reviews the current state of the annotation. In the third section, some changes brought about by the use of large-scale corpora are discussed from an epistemological viewpoint. The paper ends with the presentation of some new avenues for research that will ensue from the use of a complex multilevel corpus.

This volume represents the outcome of the meeting of the Computer Working Group of the Interna-tional Association of Egyptologists (Informatique & Égyptologie) held in Liège in 2010 (6-8 July) under the auspices of the Ramses Project. The papers are based on presentations given during this meeting and have been selected in order to cover three main thematic areas of research at the intersection of Egyptology and Information Technology: (1) the construction, management and use of Ancient Egyptian annotated corpora; (2) the problems linked to hieroglyphic encoding; (3) the development of databases in the fields of art history, philology and prosopography. The contributions offer an up-to-date state of the art, they discuss the most promising avenues for future research, developments and implementation, and they suggest solutions to longstanding issues in the field. Two general trends characterize the projects laid out here: the desire for online accessibility made available to the widest possible audience; and the search for standardization and interoperability. The efforts in these directions are admittedly of paramount importance for the future of Egyptological research in general. Indeed, for the present and increasingly for the future, one cannot overemphasize the (empirical and methodological) impact of a generalized access to structured data of the highest possible quality that can be browsed and/or exchanged without loss of information.

The Ramses project — developed at the University of Liège since 2006 — aims at building a richly annotated historical corpus of Late Egyptian texts and, more broadly, of all the written material whose linguistic registers attest Late Egyptian evolutionary features from the 18th dynasty down to the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1350-700 BCE). It has been specially designed with the idea of having a tool specifically dedicated to research in Egyptian linguistics. The corpus includes, for each text, the relevant graphemic (hieroglyphic transcription with transliteration) and linguistic information (complete morpho-syntactic analysis) as well as a full set of meta-data (description and categorization of the corpus, plus bibliographical references). Starting in 2013, we will progressively provide online access to the Ramses corpus. From a technical point of view, Ramses is a relational database in SQL where the texts are represented and stored in XML. Currently, ca. 1350 texts have been included in the database and received multifaceted annotations: they have been encoded in hieroglyphic script, translated in French and/or English and received annotations for part-of-speech information, lemmatization, and morphological analysis. The corpus consists of slightly more than 300 000 words at the end of 2011 (and is expected to grow up to more than 1 million words in coming years), which amounts to ca. 8000 lemmata, 14 000 inflexions and 45 000 spellings. In this paper, we review the experience of the Ramses Project in building a richly annotated corpus of an ancient language with a complex writing system. A particular emphasis will be put on the new avenues of research that a tool like Ramses opens up for the study of ancient text languages. First, we present the state of the art in Egyptology and the reasons for launching such a project. Second, we introduce the editing software and the annotation scheme. Third, we present a series of case studies (study of classifiers; relation between the graphemic and morphological level; valency pattern alternation; diaphasic variation) in order to highlight the capabilities of the search engine and the new avenues that it opens up for research in Ancient Egyptian linguistics.

Au cours des dernières décennies, la question des corpus, de leur composition et de leur définition, a pris une importance croissante. Des réflexions diverses sur la nature des textes et sur la manière de les catégoriser ont vu le jour ; des systèmes de classification mobilisant des critères variés ont été proposés. La réflexion a surtout porté sur des textes homogènes par la forme et par le contenu. Si les questions soulevées par la classification d’un texte peuvent parfois être ardues, le problème est évidemment plus complexe dès lors qu’on s’attaque à un texte de nature composite. C’est ce que nous avons proposé d’étudier dans cette publication, en concentrant nos recherches sur un texte, le papyrus Harris, document composite mêlant hymnes et incantations magiques. Si le caractère non-homogène du texte apparaît de manière évidente de par son contenu, nous avons tenté de mettre en évidence sa nature composite par une série de traits linguistiques. Ainsi, l’analyse linguistique, particulièrement, la morphologie et la syntaxe, a permis de faire émerger deux grands ensembles au sein du document : le premier regroupant les sections A à H, se caractérise par l’emploi de l’égyptien de tradition (= partie I) ; le second, qui comprend les sections I à Y, puise largement dans les ressources du néo-égyptien (= partie II). Cette première approche doit tout de suite être nuancée. En effet, la partie I contient parfois des traits de néo-égyptien, et la partie II n’est pas – loin s’en faut – exempte de tournures venant de l’égyptien de tradition. Le papyrus Harris apparaît comme une adaptation de passages préexistants auxquels sont venus s’ajouter de nouvelles rédactions originales. L’analyse linguistique du texte semble indiquer que le rédacteur a d’abord utilisé du matériel ancien (partie I) avant d’exploiter des sources plus récentes.

This paper introduces Ramses, a database of Late Egyptian texts, currently under development at the University of Liège (Belgium). Ramses sets out to be a new and powerful research tool. Its main applications are linguistically and philologically orientated. After a general overview of the structure of the database, the search engines are described with some detail.