The subject of the interdisciplinary project, which combines egyptological research with methods from computer philology, consists of the ancient Egyptian scripts called Hieratic and cursive hieroglyphic script, both having been used alongside monumental hieroglyphic script for over 3000 years. The inventory of signs taken from selected texts is systematically and digitally recorded with different…
The systematic research into the Ethiopian manuscript culture is the aim of the long-term project “Die Schriftkultur des christlichen Äthiopiens und Eritreas: Eine multimediale Forschungsumgebung” (“Beta maṣāḥǝft: Manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea”). Ethiopia and Eritrea are situated, from the perspective of cultural history, both at the periphery of the so-called Christian Orient and in the…
The ancient Egyptian funerary texts are one of the most important and extensive literary areas of this culture. Three large collections of texts - roughly arranged according to time and place - define them: the pyramid texts of the Old Empire, the coffin texts of the Middle Empire and the Book of the Dead from the New Empire until the Roman times. In contrast to pyramid and coffin texts, the…
The project Hethitische Forschungen has been based in Mainz for more than 20 years. The project has grown out of fifty years of collecting and editing and of participating in the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute in Bogazköy-Hattuša (Turkey).
The task has existed since the beginning of the research project in:
1. the archival collection of cuneiform tablets found during…
The "Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RlA)" is an international encyclopedia for the archaeology, history and culture of the Ancient Orient. From the 4th to the 1st millennium BC, numerous languages were written in Mesopotamia (today Iraq), Syria, Turkey, Western Iran, Armenia, Lebanon and Israel, including Sumerian, Babylonian-Assyrian and Hittite, with cuneiform…
The Egyptian-Coptic language is the human language with the longest documented lifetime, clocking at 4,500 years prior to its extinction. Its vocabulary reflects the knowledge and worldviews of one of the formative cultures of the ancient world. In order to explore the linguistic and cultural evidence of this historical episteme, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and…