The Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia 2.0

The Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia 2.0

The project “The Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia” has been in progress since 2015 at the Institute of Linguistic Research of Ilia State University. Its aim is to document the wealthy epigraphic legacy discovered or preserved in Georgia, according to the standards of EpiDoc, the digital heir to the Leiden Convention. The first electronic publication of the Armazi Bilingual produced according to those standards was prepared in 2014 by Tamar Kalkhitashvili within the framework of her MA research. Because of its use of the latest approaches to digital humanities, this publication merited a high score at the International Conference of Digital Epigraphics organized by EAGLE (The Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy). At this stage, the Epigraphic Corpus (head of the project: Prf. N. Doborjginidze) includes the 1st-9th cc AD. Georgian, Aramaic and Greek inscriptions. The project is long term, and besides the Georgian, it also aims at preparing, according to the above mentioned standards, the publication of the corpora of the Urartian, Aramaic, Greek, Jewish, Arabic, Persian and Armenian inscriptions.

Mark up of the texts and Linked data

All meta data and texts are marked up in XML according to the EpiDoc guidelines. HTTP URI-s are used in:

  1. the description of object type and material:

<objectType ref=”http://www.eagle-network.eu/voc/objtyp/lod/250”>Stele</objectType>

<material ref=”http://www.eagle-network.eu/voc/material/lod/16”>Basalt</material>

  1. the description of placename:

<placeName type=”ancientFindspot” ref=”http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/863746”>Armazi</placeName>

  1. the description of photos:

<facsimile><graphic url=”https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armazi_Bilingual.jpg”><desc><ref type=”licence” target=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en”>Pictures are available</ref></desc></graphic></facsimile>

The high-resolution photo documentation has been made for this edition and can be observed in the diplomatic and critical editions of the listed inscriptions. Photos were taken in the lapidary repository of The National Museum of Georgia and on archeological sites.

Web page is being built on Asp.Net MVC technology. Database is Sql, for UI we use Html5, css3 javascript technologies.

We will be sharing English XML-s with other databases, such as Trismegistos, where "it only has the literary texts pre-dating AD 800, in Asomtavruli script. The early inscriptions are currently missing, but we hope to add them in cooperation with the project 'Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia'."