The Christian Architecture of the Levant

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Last updated: 9/22/23

The Christian Architecture of the Levant is an online image archive of approximately 3,300 photos, plans, and maps from 118 late antique and medieval sites (churches, monasteries, fortresses, etc.) located in modern Türkiye. The bulk of the photographs are by Robert W. Edwards. The archive is under construction and intends to expand coverage to include Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

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Mapping Eastern Europe

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Last updated: 8/30/23

Mapping Eastern Europe is a digital platform intended to promote study, research, and teaching about the history, art, and culture of Eastern Europe between the 13th and 17th centuries among students, teachers, scholars, and the wider public.

Users can access content written by specialists in the form of historical and thematic overviews, art historical case studies and videos, short notices about ongoing research projects, and reviews of recent books and exhibitions. The historical overviews offer concise accounts of key regions of Eastern Europe and their interactions with neighbors during the period in question, offering historical details related to political, economic, military, social, and religious matters that would supplement the material presented on the site. The thematic overviews explore topics and themes related to theology, liturgy, iconographies, key historical figures and events, etc., creating connections between different regions across Eastern Europe and offering a comparative approach. The case studies and videos focus on the visual and material culture of the regions set against the backdrop of the historical context, and also introduce methodological and theoretical questions that could be pursued further in classes, teaching, or research. The ongoing projects allow scholars to present and disseminate in brief their ideas and work. Finally, the reviews of recent books and exhibitions enable readers to learn more about current scholarship and exhibitions that may not be easily accessible otherwise. The content on the site is regularly updated with new scholarship and contributions.

Mapping Eastern Europe aims to make the material evidence known and accessible, and thereby help expand the temporal and geographic parameters of the study of medieval, early modern, Byzantine, and post-Byzantine art, architecture, and visual culture. The project stems from the North of Byzantium initiative, which probes the history, art, and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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Sunoikisis DC

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Last updated: 8/24/23

Sunoikisis Digital Classics Consortium (Sunoikisis DC) is an international, collaborative, and open teaching program for digital humanities and cultural heritage, delivered roughly at Masters level. Students of both the humanities and computer science are welcome to join the courses and work together by contributing to digital classics projects in a collaborative environment. Sunoikisis DC was originally developed by the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Leipzig in collaboration with the Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and the Institute of Classical Studies, London. The current program director are Monica Berti (University of Leipzig) and Gabriel Bodard (ICS London).

Currently, programming is offered in the winter, spring, and summer semesters. All sessions are freely available online. The core of the syllabus is the online session, delivered by one or more presenters via live YouTube video, with slides, demos, discussion panels and the potential for student interaction via chat. Sessions are accompanied by (open access) reading lists, resources and exercises for students to gain hands-on experience in tools, methods and skills discussed. Contents of the SunoikisisDC Program remain available on GitHub and YouTube indefinitely, and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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VisColl

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Last updated: 8/22/23

VisColl (Collation Visualization) is a system for modeling and visualizing the physical collation of medieval manuscript codices. The core of VisColl is the data model, which defines the structure of individual manuscripts and which can be built and visualized by different tools.

The current version of the VisColl Data Model is version 2.0, which launched in Fall 2021.

The VisColl project is led by Dot Porter at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Alberto Campagnolo at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), in collaboration with the University of Toronto Libraries and the Old Books New Science lab.

VCEditor is the software that you can use to create models and visualizations based on the VisColl Data Model 2.0. It is free and available for anyone to use.

Developed at the University of Toronto Libraries through the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, VisCodex is a visual collation web application based upon Viscoll’s data model. The tool can be used to produce interactive visualizations of a manuscripts’ quire structure, add leaf-level metadata, present diagrams alongside manuscript images, share visualizations with others and export diagrams as images.

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Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI)

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Last updated: 8/22/23

Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) is a database specifically designed to record and search the material evidence (or copy specific, post-production evidence and provenance information) of 15th-century printed books: ownership, decoration, binding, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc. Developed as a research tool that frames the international program 15cBOOKTRADE, MEI operates under the auspices of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL). It is constantly updated and supplemented by librarians and researchers in more than 450 libraries in Europe and the United States. MEI is linked to the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC), provided by the British Library, from which it derives the bibliographical records, and it allows the user to combine searches of bibliographical records (extracted from ISTC) with copy specific records.

Personal and institutional names of ownership are collected in the satellite database Owners of Incunabula, where further bio-bibliographical information can be found. This provides links to all the copies owned by the same person or institution, allowing for the reconstruction of dispersed collections. Provenance locations are also linked to another satellite database Geographic Regions, which offers geocoordinates and map locations. Finally, the database Holding Institutions contains the names of the libraries listed in MEI and ISTC. In MEI we are also capturing evidence of specific copies known to have existed at a certain time in a certain place, from documentary evidence, and now lost.

MEI has been developed to provide a physical representation of the circulation of books throughout the centuries, from place of production, to their present locations. The visualisation tool 15cV is currently unavailable. In February 2021, a map showing the location of collections of incunabula recorded in MEI was set up.

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Artefacts and Raw Materials in Byzantine Archival Documents (ByzAD)

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Last updated: 8/22/23

Artefacts and Raw Materials in Byzantine Archival Documents / Objets et matériaux dans les documents d'archives byzantins, hosted by the Comité Français des Études Byzantines, is an open access database that aims to bring together all the terms for artifacts and raw materials mentioned in Byzantine archival documents. The regularly updated database includes over 5000 entries. Users can browse the database by artifact, document, or “synthesis.” 

Artifact records constitute the core of the database. Each record corresponds to one occurrence of a term in a document. These records provide commentary on the specifics of the term and the passage in which of the text in which it is found as well as a transliteration of the term, French and English translations of the term in the context of the entry, material(s) used for its manufacture, and classification categories. Document records provides a bibliographic reference and basic information about document type, date, and issuing authority. Synthesis records compile and summarize different occurrences of the same term within the database. The website is in French, but the database can be searched in English.

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Digital Tabula Imperii Byzantini (DigTIB)

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Last updated: 8/18/23

The Digital Tabula Imperii Byzantini (DigTIB), created by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, is an ongoing effort to make the data presented in the Tabula Imperii Byzantini (TIB) accessible digitally. The TIB carries out systematic research in the historical geography of the Byzantine Empire, from the beginning of the 4th century to the mid-15th century. The aim of the project is to create a historical atlas of the Byzantine space from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period.

The ultimate goal of DigTIB is to archive and digitally (re)process the published and unpublished data of the TIB, which has been collected from 1966 until 2016, when the TIB became a long-term project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This data comprises slides, which were made during TIB surveys from 1966 until 2007/08 (about 52,000), thousands of black-and-white photographs from the 1960s and 1970s from different areas of research, and the published TIB volumes 1–13 and 15. Datasets for TIB volumes created since 2016 are being digitized and made available through third-party funded subprojects. The scholarly results and digital photography of the TIB Balkans and of related subprojects are regularly added in English to the TIB Balkans OpenAtlas database.

DigTIB makes available in the TIB Toponym Register the lists of the geographic registers of each published TIB volume (1–13 and 15). The list will be expanded to include future TIB volumes. The next step for the TIB Toponym Register will be to assign Unique Identifiers, which will facilitate the comparison of TIB data with that of other digital projects. Lists for volumes 1–7, 12, and 13 include links to pdf files of the respective TIB volume. Also available are over 7,000 scanned slides from TIB volumes 5, 12, and 16. Each slide is embedded with metadata. At present, these slides and associated metadata maybe viewed but may not be downloaded for any purpose due to copyright restrictions.

The related Maps of Power, an historical atlas of Byzantium developed by TIB Balkans, aims to make available the current TIB content using state of the art geocommunication tools. The original version (Maps of Power: Historical Atlas of Places, Borderzones and Migration Dynamics in Byzantium (TIB Balkans)) is offline as a version 2.0 is under construction. The new version is expected to launch in fall 2023 at maps-of-power.oeaw.ac.at.

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Qalamos

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Last updated: 8/11/23

Qalamos is the portal for manuscripts and block prints from Asian and African script traditions. It contains approximately 150,000 datasets describing 110,000 physical objects written in 162 languages and 81 scripts (as of June 2022). Qalamos aims at providing metadata and digitized copies of all collections kept in German institutions. In addition, the portal also includes holdings of international cooperation partners.

The three central modules of the database are manuscripts, persons, and works. The manuscript datasets contain information on the title, author, and content of a text, as well as on the materiality of the object. In addition, they provide information about the provenance of the manuscript. The persons module comprises authority records of authors, copyists, previous owners, and other individuals connected to a manuscript. Via the title datasets available in the works module, users can search Qalamos for available copies of a work in addition to commentaries, translations, and other expressions.

The DFG-funded project Orient-Digital (project duration 2020–2023) develops the portal in collaboration with Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and Rechenzentrum der Universität Leipzig. 

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AGAPE: A Database of Greek Patristic Editions (1465–1600)

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Last updated: 8/11/23

AGAPE: A Database of Greek Patristic Editions (1465–1600) is an open-access database, which aims to map the reception of the Greek Church Fathers in print throughout early modern Europe. AGAPE records every edition of Greek patristic works printed in Europe from 1465 to 1600, in the original language, as well as in Latin and vernacular translations. It links each work to the unique identification number established by the Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG) and thoroughly describes all the contents (texts and paratexts). Descriptions reply on the first-hand inspection of at least one copy of each edition.

AGAPE currently provides access to all editions printed in the fifteenth century (c. 310). Data related to the sixteenth century will be disclosed decade by decade (1501–1510, 1511–1520, 1521–1530 etc.) to ensure reliability.

The database is the main outcome of the four-year FNS Ambizione project The Greek Imprint on Europe: Patristics and Publishing in the Early Swiss Reformation, led by Paolo Sachet and based at the Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, University of Geneva.

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Electronic Database of Georgian Monumental Painting

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Last updated: 8/11/23

The Electronic Database of Georgian Monumental Painting is a project of the Institute of Art History and Theory at Tbilisi State University. The project is ongoing and will eventually include monuments dating from the 5th–18th centuries. Each entry includes a brief description of the wall paintings, images, and bibliography. The database is available in English and Georgian.

The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture of Georgia (Georgian version) and Tbilisi State University (English version).

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Sinai Digital Archive

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Last updated: 8/10/23

The Sinai Digital Archive is a collaborative digital project that supports inter-institutional sharing of archives into a single, public, and scholarly resource. The project makes available for study, teaching, and research the vast collections of icons, manuscripts, liturgical objects, and archival material from the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. The website brings together for the first time the photographic archives from the Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Sinai in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1963, and 1965, now held in the Visual Resources Collections at Princeton University and the University of Michigan. The images display the scans of the 5 x 7 inch Ektachrome transparencies and the 35mm slides in color and black & white from the "Sinai Archives" at both institutions.

The project has received support from Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and Tufts University, in collaboration with Saint Catherine Monastery at Mount Sinai.

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American Academy in Rome Digital Humanities Center

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Last updated: 8/10/23

The Digital Humanities Center (DHC) of the American Academy in Rome unites the Academy's archival resources in one single search interface. The DHC contains close to 60,000 high-resolution images and digitized documents  (and growing) from the Photographic Archive and the Fototeca Unione Collection; photographs and descriptions for close to 10,000 archaeological objects in the Norton-Van Buren Archaeological Study Collection; photographs, archival documents, and oral history interviews from the Academy's institutional Archive, as well as scanned drawings and photographs from the Academy’s excavations at Cosa (Ansedonia, Tuscany) and the Regia (Forum Romanum).

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Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean

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Last updated: 8/10/23

The ERC-funded project Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean (2016–2021), based at the University of Warwick, is the first major study of ancient tokens in the ancient Mediterranean. The project explores how these objects actively generated different types of community, contextualising the contemporary rise of alternative and community currencies. It focuses on the Hellenistic world (c. 323–30 BC) and the Roman world prior to late antiquity (first century BC–AD 284).

Two ongoing databases were created as part of the project. Tokens of the Ancient Mediterranean (TAM) collects types of tokens from the Greek and Roman worlds. Additional funding supported the inclusion of tokens minted in the fourth and fifth centuries AD.

Token Specimens of the Ancient Mediterranean brings together examples of tokens from museums, excavations and other publications. Additional funding supported the inclusion of tokens minted in the fourth and fifth centuries AD.

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Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature

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Last updated: 8/11/23

The Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature is the product of the ERC-funded PAThs project (Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths. An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Literary Texts in Their Original Context. Production, Copying, Usage, Dissemination and Storage) aimed at providing an in-depth diachronic understanding and effective representation of the geography of Coptic literary production and in particular of the corpus of literary writings, almost exclusively of religious contents, produced in Egypt between the 3rd and the 13th centuries in the Coptic language. 

The Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature allows detailed and focused research and correlation of chronological, regional, and thematic data. It also illustrates the relationship between settlements uncovered by the archaeological and topographical investigations and intellectual activity revealed in manuscripts. 

It is based on a central database that will be continuously updated. The database is composed of eight sections dedicated to Places, Manuscripts, Works, Authors, Titles, Colophons, Persons, and Collections.

PAThs data are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Version 2.3.1.

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A Digital Corpus of Early Christian Churches and Monasteries in the Holy Land

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Last updated: 8/11/23

A Digital Corpus of Early Christian Churches and Monasteries in the Holy Land aims to compile all published data on the Early Christian churches and monasteries of the Holy Land. The initial project, financed by the Israel Science Foundation, ran from October 2014 to September 2020. It includes material from the Constantinian period up to the Abbasid period in the three provinces of Palaestina (excluding sites in present-day Jordan).

The Digital Corpus is divided into eight sections: Churches, Monasteries, Literary Sources, Epigraphy, floor and wall Decorations, decorative Architectural Members, and Bibliography. Images and/or site plans are included when available. Sites are plotted on a calibrated Google Map that allows plain, terrain, or satellite views and can be overlaid with six additional layers (Roman Roads, Urban territories/Bishoprics, Precipitation, Lithography, Springs, and Streams).

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BLAGO Fund

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Last updated: 5/9/23

BLAGO Fund is a non-profit organization that preserves and promotes Serbian cultural heritage. A primary objective of the Blago Fund is to record, archive, and conserve the most vulnerable products of Serbian culture in a systematic and organized way and to disseminate this information to specialists and the general public alike. 

The BLAGO Fund website makes available its archive of photographs and virtual tours of medieval Serbian monuments. All the material contained in the BLAGO archives is property of the BLAGO Fund, Inc. and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Public use of the material is possible only with the written permission of the BLAGO Fund and provided appropriate credit is given. Certain material presented on the BLAGO web page is additionally protected by the copyright of its respective authors, and their public use might require additional arrangements.

The BLAGO Digital Library links to fully digitized medieval and pre-modern Serbian Menaia as well as a number of other medieval Serbian manuscripts.

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BSR Digital Collections

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Last updated: 8/13/21

The British School at Rome Digital Collections platform brings together materials housed in the Library and Archive repositories. The platform launched with over 9,000 digital objects and will be expanded. 

The Library & Archive Special Collections include a broad range of materials acquired by the BSR since its foundation and they occupy ca. 91 linear meters of shelves. These collections comprise rare bound and unbound books, manuscripts and unique archival resources relating to the activities of Institutions or individuals associated with the BSR as well as papers, publications, hand-written notes, photographs, prints, drawings and notebooks. Items currently available in the BSR Digital Collections comprise, prints, drawings, and maps.

The BSR Photographic Archive [1855 ca. - present] includes over 100,000 items. A broad range of subjects is covered and make these collections of invaluable importance for research in the humanities, art history, architecture, visual studies and many other related disciplines. Topics concerned are Italian and North African archaeology and topography, ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman art, in particular sculpture, and European medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. Collections of images relating to BSR events and activities, and the work of BSR Fine Art Fellows, have also been accurately preserved.

All low resolution images on the BSR Digital Collections platform may be downloaded and freely used for educational and scholarly purposes.

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Athos Digital Heritage

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Last updated: 8/12/21

Athos Digital Heritage is the portal for the project of the Holy Community of Mount Athos to document, digitize, and disseminate its culture heritage. The portal's over two million digital records include around 200,000 items (documents, letters, photographs, etc.) from the historical archive, over 3,000 manuscripts (fully digitized), over 1,500 incunabula (fully digitized), and 22,000 objects (icons, metalwork, textiles, etc.).

The portal also includes content aimed at a wider audience. This content includes a digital Proskinitarion (pilgrimage narrative) for each of the participating Monasteries, Athos Digital Pathways (interactive maps of the ancient footpaths used for communication and travel), educational modules, an audio visual archive (liturgical services, drone views, etc.), and digital exhibitions.  

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Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME)

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Last updated: 8/9/23

The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) offers free and open access to the rich cultural legacy of the Middle East and North Africa by bringing together collections from a wide range of cultural heritage institutions. Developed by an engineering team from The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries, the platform federates and makes accessible data about collections from around the world. The platform is built upon the open source Spotlight and Blacklight frameworks, and supports presentation of resources compliant with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) using the Mirador viewer.

Items in the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) are described in different languages. Currently, the DLME offers two interfaces: an Arabic view and an English view. 

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A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo

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Last updated: 8/11/21

Tasha Vorderstrasse and Tanya Treptow, eds. A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo. Oriental Institute Museum Publications (OIMP) 38. The Oriental Institute, 2015.

This companion volume to the exhibit of the same name examines the multicultural city of Fustat, capital of medieval Egypt and predecessor to modern Cairo. It explores the interactions of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities within urban city life. These three communities practiced their own beliefs and enacted communal self-government, but they also intermingled on a daily basis and practiced shared traditions of life. Essays by leading scholars examine the different religions and languages found at Fustat, as well as cultural aspects of daily life such as food, industry, and education. The lavishly illustrated catalog presents a new analysis of the Oriental Institute’s collection of artifacts and textual materials from 7th through 12th-century Egypt. Highlights include documents from the Cairo Genizah (a document repository) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue as well as never-before-published artifacts from archaeological excavations conducted at Fustat by George Scanlon on behalf of the American Research Center in Egypt. The volume encourages discussion on the challenges of understanding religion through objects of daily life.

This volume contains 12 essays: The Muslim Community of Fustat (Jonathan M. Bloom) • The Oriental Institute Genizah Documents: A Glimpse of Jewish Life in Medieval Cairo (Michael G. Wechsler and Tasha Vorderstrasse) • Christians of Fustat in the First Three Centuries of Islam: The Making of a New Society (Audrey Dridi) • Fustat and Its Governor: Administering the Province (Arietta Papaconstantinou) • Industries, Manufacturing, and Labor (Maya Schatzmiller) • Linguistic Diversity at Fustat (Tasha Vorderstrasse) • Childhood at Fustat: Archaeological and Textual Sources (Tasha Vorderstrasse) • From Fustat to Palestine: Identifying Fatimid Jewelry Using the Genizah Documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue (Ayala Lester) • Fustat: The Town, Its Inhabitants, Their Food (Paulina Lewicka) • Observations on Antiquities in Later Contexts (Vanessa Davies) • Fustat to Cairo: An Essay on “Old Cairo” (Donald Whitcomb) • A History of Excavations at Fustat (Tanya Treptow)

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Mouse&Manuscript, Leiden University Libraries

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Last updated: 8/11/21

Mouse&Manuscript is a collection of lessons in codicology – the study of handwritten documents or codices - and palaeography from the Muslim world. The lessons will guide the user through the ways books were made and used there before the printing press, by investigating the traces left by producers, owners and readers of manuscripts. 

The lessons are centered around fully digitalised manuscripts from the oriental collection of Leiden University Libraries. They include samples in Arabic, Persian and Coptic, from cultures ranging from the Maghrib to Mughal India. The lessons can be read in any order. All include suggestions for further reading and questions (with answers) or assignments.

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ARCE Conservation Archives

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Last updated: 8/12/21

Beginning in the early 1990s with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), ARCE engaged in vital conservation work at monuments and sites throughout Egypt, leading to a unique collection of material documenting conservation projects that constitute the ARCE Conservation Archives. In total, the Conservation Archives includes 79 collections, each documenting a different project conducted in Egypt.

The Conservation Archives covers a wide range of Egyptian history spanning over 7,000 years. Geographically and historically diverse, the projects include Pharaonic, Coptic, Islamic, and other Egyptian cultural heritage sites of significance. 

Each collection contains photographic and written material including 35mm and 120mm color and black & white slides, born-digital images, technical reports, and various grant-related documentation, in addition to a select number of project artifacts and architectural drawings. There are around 70,000 photographic slides, 200,000 images, 1,200 documents, 1,000 drawings, as well as a small selection of artifacts and multimedia content. 

The ARCE Archives website launched in Fall 2020 with five collections from the Conservation Archives. The online archives includes the two projects previously published on UCLA's International Digital Ephemera Project (IDEP) site, the Conservation of the Tomb of Anen in the Theban Necropolis, and the Conservation of the Roman Wall Paintings in Luxor Temple, and three additional projects: the Conservation of Aslam al-Silahdar mosque in Historic Cairo, the Architectural Conservation at the Red Monastery in Sohag, Egypt, and the Preservation of the Funerary Enclosure of King Khasekhemwy (Shunet el-Zebib) in Abydos. ARCE is currently seeking out additional funding to digitize and publish the remainder of the collections in the Conservation Archives. 

All Conservation Archives material and copyright belongs to ARCE. The material is freely accessible and available for low-resolution download for public research and use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Founded in 1948, the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a private, nonprofit organization composed of educational and cultural institutions, professional scholars, and private individuals. ARCE's mission is to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture, foster a broader knowledge about Egypt among the general public, and strengthen American Egyptian cultural ties. 

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Bergen Open Research Archive (BORA)

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Last updated: 8/2/21

Bergen Open Research Archive (BORA) is the open research archive at the University of Bergen. BORA contains master theses, PhD theses and other scientific publications in full-text. BORA includes publications from The Norwegian Institute at Athens (Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, Papers and Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, and Skrifter utgitt av det Norske Institutt i Athen).

The Norwegian Institute at Athens connects the Norwegian and Greek academic communities and is dedicated to teaching, research and dissemination of scientific results related to humanities and social sciences. Its particular focus is on the cultural heritage, history and archaeology of Greece and the Mediterranean.

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Trismegistos

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Last updated: 8/9/23

Trismegistos [TM] is a platform aiming to surmount barriers of language and discipline in the study of texts from the ancient world, particularly late period Egypt and the Nile valley (roughly BC 800 - 800 AD).

The core component of TM is Trismegistos Texts, currently counting 952243 entries. When the database was created in 2005, it focused on providing information (metadata) on published papyrological documents from Graeco-Roman Egypt. It now covers the period BC 800 and AD 800 and includes papyri and epigraphic material from across the ancient world, both published and unpublished. Its aim is to be a platform where information can be found about all texts from antiquity, thus facilitating cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research.

Several aspects of the Texts database have been elaborated in the course of successive projects and have become separate databases linked with the core Trismegistos Texts database.

The Collections database, built on the Leuven Homepage of Papyrus Collections, is a set of currently 4280 modern institutional and private collections of texts and their 273827 inventory numbers. It is searchable both separately and in the Texts database.

The Archives database, built on the Leuven Homepage of Papyrus Archives, is a set of currently 609 collections of texts in antiquity, mainly in Egypt, and the 21565 texts that are part of these archives. It is searchable separately, leading to the texts themselves.

The People database, building on the Prosopographia Ptolemaica, is a complex set of prosopographical and onomastic databases. It currently contains 547740 attestations of personal names of non-royal individuals living in Egypt between BC 800 and AD 800, including all languages and scripts and written on any surface.

The Places database, expanding the geographic database of the Fayum project, is a set of currently 61473 places in Egypt and increasingly also outside (in view of the expansion of TM to the ancient world in general). It contains the currently 233890 attestations of toponyms in texts from Egypt (BC 800 – AD 800), but is also linked to the provenance field in Trismegistos Texts.

There is also a Bibliography to assist with short references used in Trismegistos.

More Tools

Trismegistos Data Services is a set of open services (API's and table dumps) developed in the Linked Open Data framework of DARIAH-BE and CLARIAH-VL. Open access to data is offered on a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Trismegistos Online Publications (TOP) provides freely downloadable pdf-documents with scholarly tools based upon or providing links to the Trismegistos database. TOP Special Series is intended for PhD theses or other scholarly manuscripts that would otherwise remain unpublished.

Trismegistos Corpus Data publishes data sets that were assembled for journal papers.

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Byzantine Monuments of Attica

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Last updated: 7/28/20

Byzantine Monuments of Attica provides information on the medieval monuments of Attica. Detailed entries are organized as monuments (listed alphabetically, by type, or geographically on a map) and associated objects (sculpture-mosaic and wall paintings). Entries are illustrated with thumbnail images, including unpublished material from the collections of the British School at Athens.

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ArchiveGrid

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Last updated: 8/7/23

ArchiveGrid is a collection of over 7 million records describing archival materials, including historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. Records represent collections from over 1400 archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies, primarily in the United States.

Material descriptions include MARC records from WorldCat and finding aids harvested from the web. Content is re-harvested and re-indexed about every six weeks so finding aids are updated. Descriptions also provide contact information for the institutions where collections are kept.

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Hilandar Research Library

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Last updated: 7/28/20

Hilandar Research Library (HRL) at the Ohio State University has the world’s largest collection of medieval Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts on microform.

HRL is associated with Ohio State's Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies (RCMSS) and the department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures (SEELC), which together co-sponsor the Medieval Slavic Summer Institute every other year for qualified graduate students.

Hilandar Research Library houses microform (predominately microfilm) collections of Slavic, primarily Cyrillic, manuscripts from numerous repositories in dozens of countries. Various other languages, scripts and cultures are also represented, including over a hundred Greek manuscripts on microfilm from Hilandar Monastery. Related material supplements the manuscript collection. Among the collections are

  • Microfilms of the Slavic manuscript library of Hilandar Monastery and portions of several other monastic collections on Mount Athos
  • 700+ early Slavic imprints on microform
  • A 10,000 volume reference collection
  • Over 45 original Cyrillic manuscripts and early printed books
  • Mount Athos slide collection
  • Steven Enich Serbian Orthodox Culture Slide collection
  • Much of the personal library and archives of the 20th-century iconographer, Pimen Maksimovich Sofronov
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Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchates in Jerusalem, Library of Congress

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Last updated: 7/26/22

As Jerusalem, the location of Christ’s Passion, has been central to the Christian religion since its inception, all the early churches sought a presence in that storied and holy city. The Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church, for example, both maintain ancient patriarchates in Jerusalem and both have created renowned libraries in them.

In 1949 Kenneth W. Clark arrived in Jerusalem to begin a project that would microfilm manuscripts from the great libraries of the Middle East under the auspices of the Library of Congress and the American Schools of Oriental research. In Jerusalem, his team examined the Greek Patriarchate’s collection of 2,400 manuscripts in 11 languages and chose 998 to be filmed in their entirety. From the 4,000 manuscripts then in the custody of the Armenian Patriarchate, the team chose 32. Finally, the group also prepared under his direction a Checklist of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchates in Jerusalem Microfilmed for the Library of Congress (1949-1950), which gave researchers access to both the microfilmed manuscript and the black and white transparencies of select illuminations in them. The microfilm collection is in the custody of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, where it still may be requested.

Since its appearance, the Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchates in Jerusalem Collection and the companion collections from Mt. Sinai and Mt. Athos have been so widely consulted by scholars around the globe that the Library has now digitized the microfilms to facilitate their use by scholars worldwide. At the same time the descriptions of the manuscripts as found in the Checklist have also been edited and updated.

From the Greek patriarchate, Clark’s group also chose 755 illuminations from 998 manuscripts (pages 25–32 of the Checklist) and from the Armenian Patriarchate, 432 illuminations from 22 manuscripts (pages 41–44 of the Checklist) to be photographed in 4 x 5 inch black and white format. These have not been digitized at this time but are available to researchers in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.

Researchers may now consult and download the digitized versions of these manuscripts or order microfilm reproductions through Duplication Services.

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Manuscripts in St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Library of Congress

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Last updated: 7/26/22

The renowned Eastern Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai was constructed by the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I, in the late sixth century AD over the relics of the martyred saint and the place of the biblical burning bush as identified by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. It is home to reputedly the oldest continuously run library in existence today. Its holdings of religious and secular manuscripts are legendary and allegedly second only in number to the collection held by the Vatican: from bibles, to patristic works, to liturgies and prayers books, and on to legal documents such as deeds, court cases, Fatwahs (legal opinions). The greater proportion of the manuscripts were copied in Greek, and then in Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, Armenian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Ethiopic, as well as Old Church Slavonic.

In 1949, Kenneth W. Clark, led an expedition to the Middle East under the Auspices of the Library of Congress and its partners, to microfilm old manuscripts in various libraries of the Middle East, the largest and most isolated of which was that at St. Catherine’s. His group evaluated the 3,300 manuscripts held there and chose 1,687 for filming. Finally, the group also prepared under his direction a Checklist of Manuscripts in St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai Microfilmed for the Library of Congress (1950), which gave researchers access to both the Manuscripts microfilms and the black and white transparencies. The microfilm collection is in the custody of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, where it still may be requested.

Since its appearance, the Manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery Collection has been so widely consulted by scholars around the globe that the Library has now digitized the microfilms to facilitate their use by scholars worldwide. At the same time the descriptions of the manuscripts as found in the Checklist have also been edited and updated.

Clark’s group also chose 1,284 illuminations from 113 manuscripts to be photographed in 4 x 5 inch black and white format. These have been listed on pages 22-32 of the Checklist. These have not been digitized at this time but are available to researchers in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.

Researchers may now consult and download the digitized versions of these manuscripts or order microfilm reproductions through Duplication Services.

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Pleiades

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Last updated: 8/11/23

Pleiades is a community-built gazetteer and graph of ancient places. It publishes authoritative information about ancient places and spaces, providing unique services for finding, displaying, and reusing that information under open license. It publishes not just for individual human users, but also for search engines and for the widening array of computational research and visualization tools that support humanities teaching and research.

Pleiades gives scholars, students, and enthusiasts worldwide the ability to use, create, and share historical geographic information about the ancient world in digital form. At present, Pleiades has extensive coverage for the Greek and Roman world, and is expanding into Ancient Near Eastern, Byzantine, Celtic, and Early Medieval geography.

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Antiquity À-la-carte

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Last updated: 1/15/19

The Antiquity À-la-carte application is a web-based GIS interface and interactive digital atlas of the ancient world, featuring accurate historical, cultural, and geographical data produced by the Ancient World Mapping Center in addition to the entire Pleiades Project feature set.  

The AWMC application allows users to create their own maps for classroom use. The map is completely searchable with customizable features, allowing for the creation of any map covering Archaic Greece to Late Antiquity and beyond.

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Ancient World Mapping Center

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Last updated: 1/15/19

The Ancient World Mapping Center is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Center promotes cartography, historical geography, and geographic information science as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies through innovative and collaborative research, teaching, and community outreach activities.

The Center invites inquiries from scholars, authors, educators, students, and the general public engaged in (or contemplating) projects related to cartography, historical geography, and geographic information science in the context of ancient studies. AWMC is committed to facilitating discussion, guidance, information exchange, collaboration, and access to cartographic and bibliographic resources in cooperation with such projects.

AWMC continues the work of the Classical Atlas Project that produced the landmark Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (R. J. A. Talbert ed., 2000). With the publication of the print edition of the atlas in 2000, the Center began its work as an institute devoted not only to the continuation of the work of the atlas itself, but also to the advancement of a research agenda focused on the geography of the ancient Mediterranean world. The Center promotes its own independent research projects and also collaborates with scholars to produce maps on specification for scholarly publication. AWMC continues to refine the geographic dataset (both cultural and physical) for the ancient world in partnership with Pleiades.

Since its foundation, AWMC has been engaged in the creation of map content for use both in scholarly publication and in the classroom. As the technology that drives mapmaking continues to advance, AWMC now creates maps using means much different than those of a decade ago. The latest mapmaking application aimed at developing maps for classroom use is the Antiquity À-la-carte application that allows the user to create their own maps. AWMC encourages educators and all others interested in mapmaking to become part of the À-la-carte community.

AWMC hosts a series of freely available maps that are available for free educational use (under the CC BY-NC 3.0 license) and also can be licensed for publication at nominal cost. These maps are organized according to rough geographic regions.

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Manuscripts from the Monasteries of Mt. Athos, Library of Congress

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Last updated: 8/9/23

The twenty monasteries which comprise the historic and legendary yet largely inaccessible monastic complex on Mt. Athos in Greece house a rich collection of over 11,000 manuscripts. In 1952 and 1953, the Library of Congress and the International Greek New Testament Project filmed the largest group of manuscripts in the history of Athos. This collection included 209 Greek and Georgian manuscripts of the Bible along with some 44 apocryphal writings as well as various documents on Byzantine music and letters. A Descriptive Checklist of Selected Manuscripts in the Monasteries of Mount Athos which gave access to the collection arranged according to manuscripts from each monastery within Athos was prepared by Ernest W. Saunders and Charles G. Lahood, Jr. and published in 1957. The microfilm collection resides in the custody of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, where the microfilm collection still may be requested.

Since its appearance, the Manuscripts from the Monasteries of Mt. Athos Collection has been so widely consulted by scholars around the globe that the Library has now digitized the microfilms to facilitate their use by researchers worldwide. At the same time the descriptions of the manuscripts as found in the Checklist have also been edited and updated.

Researchers may now consult and download the digitized versions of these manuscripts or order microfilm reproductions through Duplication Services.

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AWOL - The Ancient World Online

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Last updated: 7/28/20

AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique /early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.

AWOL is syndicated to Facebook and Twitter.

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DMMapp

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Last updated: 8/12/21

The DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App) is an open source app that links to digital repositories containing digitized western medieval manuscripts from all over the world. The DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App) links to more than 500 libraries.

The DMMapp is developed by the Sexy Codicology Team. Sexy Codicology is an independent project focused on medieval illuminated manuscripts and social media.

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MANTIS, American Numismatic Society

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Last updated: 1/15/19

MANTIS, the American Numismatic Society database, contains information on more than 600,000 objects in the Society’s collections. These include coins, paper money, tokens, ‘primitive’ money, medals and decorations, from all parts of the world, and dating from 650 BCE to the present.

The Byzantine collection comprises some 13,000 coins struck at Byzantium and at the regional mints of the Byzantine Empire from the reign of Anastasius I (AD 419-518).

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OPenn

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Last updated: 8/9/23

OPenn contains complete sets of high-resolution archival images of manuscripts from the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and other institutions, along with machine-readable TEI P5 descriptions and technical metadata. All materials on the site are in the public domain or released under Creative Commons licenses as Free Cultural Works. Images and metadata may be downloaded under the license assigned to each document.

OPenn hosted repositories: Abraham Lincoln Foundation of The Union League of Philadelphia; African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas; American Baptist Historical Society; American Philosophical Society; Benjamin Zucker Family Ketubah Collection; British Library; Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections; Christ Church Philadelphia; College of Physicians of Philadelphia, The Historical Medical Library; Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library; Columbia University, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary; Congregation Mikveh Israel; Drexel University College of Medicine, Legacy Center; Drexel University, Archives and Special Collections; Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Archives; Folger Shakespeare Library; Franklin & Marshall College Library, Archives & Special Collections; Free Library of Philadelphia, Special Collections; Free Library of Philadelphia, The Rosenbach; German Society of Pennsylvania; Gloria Dei Church; Haverford College, Quaker and Special Collections; The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML); Historical Society of Pennsylvania; The Huntington Library; Independence Seaport Museum, J. Welles Henderson Archives and Library; La Salle University, Department of Special Collections; Lehigh University Libraries, Special Collections; The Library Company of Philadelphia; Library of Congress; Lutheran Archives Center at Philadelphia; Palmer Family Collection; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Presbyterian Historical Society; Princeton University Library; Private Collection A (Archimedes Palimpsest and the Galen Syriac Palimpsest); Saint George's United Methodist Church of Philadelphia; Science History Institute, Othmer Library; St. Peter's Church of Philadelphia; State Library of Pennsylvania, Rare Collections Library; Swarthmore College, Friends Historical Library; Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center; University of Delaware Library; University of Manchester Library, Special Collections; University of Miami, Jay I. Kislak Collection; University of Pennsylvania Archives and Records Center; University of Pennsylvania Libraries; University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Manuscripts; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Archives; University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Barbara Bates Center; Villanova University Libraries, Special Collections; and The Walters Art Museum.

 

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Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant and Hymnody, Library of Congress

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Last updated: 7/29/21

With its roots in Ancient Egyptian music, Coptic Christian chant is one of the oldest liturgical genres still performed today. Drawing on the Ragheb Moftah Collection, the Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant and Hymnody digital collection explores some of the earliest music transcriptions by explorers, missionaries, and scholars in Egypt, highlighting Moftah's efforts to notate, record, and preserve all Coptic Orthodox hymns. Learn more about current scholarship and what is happening in the Coptic community today.

The Ragheb Moftah Collection in the Library of Congress documents Moftah's 75-year career as an ethnomusicologist who served as the chair of the Music Department at the Institute of Coptic Studies in Egypt from 1954 until he died in 2001. The collection includes 14 folios of Ernest Newlandsmith's transcriptions, the work of a British violinist and composer whom Moftah sponsored to transcribe the Coptic liturgy of St. Basil and other seasonal hymns from 1926 to 1936. The collection also consists of correspondence between Moftah and other scholars, though the bulk of these letters outline Newlandsmith and Moftah's working relationship for 10 years. Furthermore, the collection also contains Moftah's recordings of the great cantor, Mu'allim Mikhā'īl Jirjis al-Batanūnī, between 1940 and 1957, and recordings of the St. Basil liturgy made by the Institute of Coptic Studies Choir starting in 1954.

Marian Roberston-Wilson's Revised Guide to the Ragheb Moftah Collection of Coptic Chant accompanies the 21 converted CDs and provides the Coptic texts, transliteration, and English translation for the liturgy of St. Basil. There are also audiocassettes of the Liturgy of St. Basil as chanted by Mu'allim Sadek Atallah, as well as the Nativity Feast, the Great Lent, the Pentecostal Feast, the Midnight Psalmody, music of a wedding ceremony, and recordings of other Coptic Church occasions.

Additional materials from the Ragheb Moftah Collection include photographs and videos of Moftah's centennial birthday party on December 21, 1998, his funeral on June 18, 2001 and final burial on April 25, 2002, autobiographical interviews conducted by Raymond Stock between 1996 and 1997, and Laurence Moftah's interviews with Martha Roy and Margit Tóth on March 13, 2002. The recordings and videos from the Ragheb Moftah Collection are housed in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. All other materials are in the Music Division.

In order to contextualize Moftah's great contribution to the field of Coptic studies, and to understand more fully Coptic music, culturally and historically, this digital collection also features materials from other divisions of the Library of Congress, such as books from the African and Middle Eastern Division, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and General Collections; historical maps of Egypt from the Geography and Maps Division; photographs of Coptic churches in Cairo from the Prints and Photographs Division; and the John E. Gillespie Collection of Coptic recordings, courtesy of the American Folklife Center.

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Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries

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Last updated: 7/26/22

Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries: A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges provides descriptions of all known Western medieval manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and of medieval manuscripts in selected Oxford colleges (currently Christ Church). It is the result of a project generously funded by the Tolkien Trust.

“Western” denotes manuscripts written in Latin, Greek, and the European vernaculars (including Slavonic languages). “Medieval” denotes manuscripts written before approximately 1500 and includes papyri from the classical period. The distinction between “medieval” and “renaissance” or “early modern” manuscripts naturally varies according to region and subject-matter and is frequently a matter of judgement.

“Manuscripts” as traditionally understood in the Bodleian include some documentary materials, but the Bodleian’s collections of charters and rolls (i.e. manuscripts whose shelfmarks begin “MS. Ch.” or “MS. Rolls” or “MS. Pedigree Rolls”) are not currently included in this catalogue.

The Bodleian's papyri are briefly described.

The website was launched on 4 August 2017. Major changes are summarized in the release history.

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Mapping Past Societies (DARMC)

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Last updated: 7/26/22

Mapping Past Societies, formerly the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations, makes freely available on the internet the best available materials for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to mapping and spatial analysis of the Roman and medieval worlds. Mapping Past Societies allows innovative spatial and temporal analyses of all aspects of the civilizations of western Eurasia in the first 1500 years of our era, as well as the generation of original maps illustrating differing aspects of ancient and medieval civilization.

The resource is currently undergoing a technical update. To ensure data access, the current DARMC version remains online.

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Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies

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Last updated: 8/5/20

Between the 8th and 10th centuries CE, hundreds of Greek philosophical, medical and scientific works were translated into Arabic. These translations helped shape the development of philosophy and science in the Islamic world. Through later Latin translations, they also exerted some influence in the Latin West.

Most importantly, Arabic translations were crucial for preserving, transmitting and extending ancient Greek thought: many Greek texts were lost in the intervening centuries and are now only extant in Arabic translation. The Arabic translators also had access to manuscripts that were often several centuries older and potentially closer to the Greek originals than those available to editors of ancient Greek texts today.

The Arabic translators’ understanding of their Greek sources was informed by their historical, cultural, religious and linguistic background. Their reading of these texts offers a new perspective on the ancient world that has the potential to enhance our own understanding.

The Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies assembles a wide range of Greek texts and their Arabic counterparts. It also includes a number of Arabic commentaries and important secondary sources. The texts in the corpus can be consulted individually or side by side with their translation. The majority of texts can also be downloaded for further analysis.

The texts assembled in the corpus cover a wide range of subjects, but as a result of availability and copyright considerations, philosophical and medical works, especially by Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates, are particularly prominent. The corpus also contains a sizable sample of mathematical texts. Other fields represented by one or more texts are astronomy, biology, zoology and psychology as well as doxography.

The Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies is the result of a collaborative project at Harvard and Tufts University, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Index of Medieval Art

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Last updated: 8/9/23

The Index of Medieval Art houses, contextualizes, and presents images and information relating to the iconographic traditions of the medieval world. Founded in 1917 and maintained by a specialized staff of art historians, it serves iconographic researchers through both its physical archive on the Princeton University campus and an expanding online database. Its ongoing program of conferences and publications provides a center for continuing scholarly and public discourse about the visual culture of the Middle Ages.

For nearly a century, the Index of Medieval Art has provided researchers at Princeton and beyond with both visual images and scholarly expertise. Our physical index and online database make available approximately 200,000 images and data from the “Long Middle Ages,” from early apostolic times until the sixteenth century. Originally called the Index of Christian Art, reflecting its beginnings as a focused resource for the study of early Christian art, the Index now sets its parameters more broadly, including works from multiple medieval faith traditions as well as secular imagery. The medievalist scholars who maintain and develop these files also offer individual consultations and training for visiting researchers and area faculty and students. A 6,000-volume research library is available for consultation on site.

The Index also serves as a scholarly hub, hosting university classes, research workshops, and international conferences concerned with the meaning and reception of medieval visual culture. It maintains an active publications program, collaborating with several university presses to produce conference publications and the annual journal Studies in Iconography.

The Index of Christian Art has digitized slides of several personal research collections that are of significant medieval interest. Among the collections are historical photographs that document key European and Eastern monuments and notable works of art from Classical, Byzantine, and Gothic stylistic periods. These digitized collections include The Svetlana Tomekovic Database of Byzantine Art and The Gabriel Millet Collection.

As of July 1, 2023, a paid subscription is no longer required for access to the Index of Medieval Art database. This transition was made possible by a generous grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the support of the Index’s parent department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

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Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams

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Last updated: 7/28/20

The Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams (DBBE) is an ongoing project that makes available both textual and contextual data of book epigrams - also known as “metrical paratexts” - from medieval Greek manuscripts dating up to the fifteenth century. We define book epigrams as poems in and on books: they have as subject the very manuscript in which they are found, elaborating on its production, contents and use. We distinguish between two kinds of textual material, namely occurrences and types. 

The user can access the database by searching or browsing through four categories:

  • Occurrences: Book epigrams exactly as they occur in one specific manuscript. The data collected here is largely the result of careful manuscript consultation, either in situ or based on (digital) reproductions, conducted by the DBBE team. The remainder is compiled from descriptive catalogues and other relevant publications. Individual verses found in multiple occurrences are linked together by means of dedicated Verse variants pages.
  • Types: Book epigrams independently of how exactly they occur in the manuscripts, often - yet not always - regrouping several occurrences that have an identical or at least very similar text. If available, the text of a type is drawn from a critical edition. If not, it is a normalised version of a single representative occurrence.
  • Manuscripts: The medieval Greek manuscripts in which these book epigrams have come down to us. Manuscripts are identified by city, library, collection, and shelfmark. We generally follow the system used by the Pinakes database and for each manuscript provide the unique Diktyon identifier.
  • Persons: Byzantine people involved in the production of book epigrams, not only poets but also scribes and patrons of manuscripts. If available, basic information such as a (tentative) date or date range as well as references to the repertoria is provided consistently. Bibliographical references are recorded occasionally.

DBBE is hosted by Ghent University, Department of Literary Studies, Greek Section.

Version: A beta version of the database was released on September 1, 2015. A new version of the database was launched in June 2019.

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Manar al-Athar

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Last updated: 8/9/23

The Manar al-Athar website and digital archive aims to provide high resolution, searchable images for teaching, research, and publication. These images of archaeological sites, with buildings and art, cover the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule, such as Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. The chronological range is from Alexander the Great (i.e., from about 300 BC) through the Islamic period to the present. It is the first website of its kind providing such material labelled jointly in both Arabic and English.

Manar al-Athar is based at the University of Oxford.

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Digital.Bodleian

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Last updated: 7/29/21

Digital.Bodleian brings together years of digitization efforts at the Bodleian Libraries within a single innovative online resource. At present, Digital.Bodleian contains over 650,000 freely available digital objects and almost another 1 million images await release.

Digital.Bodleian maintains a shelfmark index. Clicking on a shelfmark will open the digitized object in the IIIF Universal Viewer, which can be easily shared or embedded. The list is not a complete account of everything in Digital.Bodleian; some items do not have shelfmarks.

Currently, Digital.Bodleian provides access to over 250 Greek manuscripts, a handful of Georgian manuscripts, and several examples of early printed books in Greek and Russian. The majority of these manuscripts were digitized as part of the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project.

Information about Western medieval manuscripts in the Bodleian Library can be found in Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries: A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges (version 1.0, release date 4 August 2017). “Western” denotes manuscripts written in Latin, Greek, and the European vernaculars (including Slavonic languages). “Medieval” denotes manuscripts written before approximately 1500 and includes papyri from the classical period.

The Online Catalogues of Archives and Manuscripts provides information about manuscripts dating from c. 1500–c. 1900. This resource includes descriptions of archives and manuscripts which have been catalogued after 2001; some retrospective digital conversions of earlier unpublished catalogues; and collection-level descriptions of most of the collections catalogued in published hardcopy catalogues.

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DigiVatLib

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Last updated: 7/28/20

DigiVatLib is a digital library service providing free access to the Vatican Library’s digitized collections: manuscripts, incunabula, archival materials and inventories as well as graphic materials, coins and medals, and printed materials (special projects).

DigiVatLib is based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) technology. This technology allows researchers to compare digital objects from DigiVatLib with digital material from other IIIF repositories. Descriptions and bibliographic references from DigiVatLib’s online catalogues are indexed and linked to digital materials. OPACs provide access to the Vatican Library's collections. The set of the online catalouges includes archives, manuscripts, coins and medals, printed materials as well as special catalogues (incunabula, visual materials) and a general catalogue able to search on any holdings.

In 2010, the Vatican Library began digitizing its 80,000 manuscripts (excluding archival materials). Incunabula and Greek, Hebrew, and Latin manuscripts were digitized as part of the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project.

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Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project

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Last updated: 8/5/20

Between 2012 and 2017 the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library) joined efforts in the landmark Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project with the aim of opening up their repositories of ancient texts. More than 1.5 million pages from their remarkable collections have been made freely available online to researchers and to the general public.

The digitization project has focussed on three main groups of texts: Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, and incunabula, or 15th-century printed books. These groups were chosen for their scholarly importance and for the strength of their collections in both libraries, and they include both religious and secular texts. An important group of Latin texts in the Vatican Library has also been made available online.

Through the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project website, users can access all the digitized items and browse consolidated lists of digitized items by subject, date, and place of origin.

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Persée

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Last updated: 7/26/22

Launched in 2005, Persée.fr is an open access digital library of mostly French-language publications. The portal brings together complete collections of journals, conference proceedings, serials, primary sources, etc. It now hosts 300 collections with more than 700,000 documents.

Persée is supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.

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Pyle. A Gateway to Greek Manuscripts

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Last updated: 8/6/20

Pyle is a collaborative tool for teaching and scholarly research in the field of Greek palaeography and codicology; it aims to collect scattered resources from various individuals and institutions, gradually adding new information, materials and services.

Pyle also aims to promote interaction among scholars, students and all other persons interested in ancient and medieval Greek manuscript books, providing a place to share knowledge, ideas, projects and news.

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ACOR Digital Archive

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Last updated: 8/9/23

The ACOR Library Photographic Archive, a grant-funded project carried out from 2016–2020, digitized 30,000 images of cultural heritage sites from Jordan and the surrounding region. A second four-year project (2020–2024), The ACOR Digital Archive, also funded by the U.S. Department of Education, will make available over 18,000 additional images and multimedia media resources.

The resources presented online through the database are intended for open access, and are free to use for research and academic purposes.

The American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan, is a non‑profit academic institution dedicated to promoting research and publication in the humanities and social sciences, with a particular focus on issues related to Jordan bu​t also encompassing the broader Middle East. ACOR facilitates research by postgraduate researchers and senior scholars and assists in the training of specialists who focus on all phases of Jordan’s past and present.

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Ethiopic Manuscript Collections, Princeton University Library

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Last updated: 7/28/20

Over the past century, the Princeton University Library has become one of the leading repositories for Ethiopic manuscripts in North America. The collection, one of the largest outside Ethiopia, includes nearly 180 codices and more than 500 magic scrolls (amulets), dating from the 17th to 20th centuries, chiefly written in Ge'ez, the sacred language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, with small amounts of text in Amharic. Text manuscripts include Gospel Books, Psalters, the Book of Enoch, homilies, liturgy, chant, saints’ lives and miracles, theology, law, and compilations of texts related to divination and popular magic. There are also several manuscripts illuminated in the Second (or late) Gondar style, which emerged in the old imperial capital of Gondar in northern Ethiopia from the 1720s and 1730s.

The principal collector was Robert Garrett, Class of 1897, who donated his collection to Princeton in 1942. He acquired the bulk of his Ethiopic manuscripts from the eminent German philologist Enno Littmann, who (with Garrett’s financial backing) led a Princeton expedition to Tigray in 1905. The following year, Littmann led a German expedition to Aksum. In the 70 years since the Garrett donation, Ethiopic manuscript holdings have continued to grow by gift and purchase. In recent years, Bruce C. Willsie, Princeton Class of 1986, has been the principal donor of Ethiopic manuscripts, especially magic scrolls.

Nearly all of the Ethiopian manuscripts at Princeton are in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections; plus one each in the Scheide Library and Cotsen Library, and an additional one in the Princeton University Art Museum.

Cataloging information and descriptions of the manuscripts are available in the 450-page online catalog Ethiopic Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library.

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Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Princeton University Library

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Last updated: 7/29/21

The Princeton University Library has very significant holdings of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, Western European documents that date from the 11th-16th centuries. Most of them are in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, including 172 in the Robert Garrett Collection, 58 in the Grenville Kane Collection, 19 in the Robert Taylor Collection, and 201 in the growing Princeton Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. In addition, there are a number of manuscripts in the Cotsen Library, other manuscripts in other manuscript series or bound with printed books; more than 250 separate miniatures, leaves, and cuttings; and about 100 manuscripts in the Scheide Library.

Princeton's manuscripts range in date from the 8th to 16th centuries. While Latin texts are predominant, there are excellent holdings of Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greek manuscripts, and vernacular manuscripts in Middle English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Dutch or Flemish.

Digital versions of a number of manuscripts are available online. Among these is Princeton MS. 173, a late 13th-century Byzantine manuscript from Constantinople, containing Aristotle, Organon, with extensive annotations and diagrams added during the Paleologan Renaissance, 1259-1448.

Byzantine manuscripts are described and illustrated in Greek Manuscripts at Princeton: A Descriptive Catalogue by Sofia Kotzabassi and Nancy Sevcenko, with the assistance of Don C. Skemer (Department of Art and Archeology and the Program in Hellenic Studies, in association with Princeton University Press, 2010). This catalog covers the holdings of the Manuscripts Division, The Scheide Library, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Princeton Theological Seminary.

For descriptions of Armenian manuscripts at Princeton, see Avedis K. Sanjian, A Catalog of Medieval Armenian Manuscripts in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 392-432.

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections maintains the Checklist of Western Medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library. The checklist is intended to serve as a guide to available cataloging, textual and codicological descriptions, and digital images for western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts in the Princeton University Library, including the Scheide Library, whose bequest to Princeton was announced in February 2015. Manuscripts are listed by holding unit, collection, and manuscript number or shelfmark. Links are given for more than well over 2,000 digital images of miniatures, illustrations, and selected diagrams and decoration in the manuscripts, about a third of which are illuminated.

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Numismatic Collection & Collection Database, Princeton University Library

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Last updated: 7/28/20

The Princeton University Numismatic Collection is one of only a handful of academic coin collections in the United States. In addition to serving the needs of students, faculty and researchers in a number of departments, it is available to the general public through exhibitions, the online database, and by appointment with the curator.

The Numismatic Collection is strong in Byzantine coinage. The core collection contains over 700 coins in gold, silver, bronze. Some of these have been described, together with examples in the Princeton University Art Museum, in S. Curcic and A. St. Clair, eds., Byzantium at Princeton (Princeton, 1986). These holdings are being expanded, with the support of the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund, with a concentration on coins issued and circulating in the Greek lands.

The collection contains over 25,000 Greek and Roman coins excavated between 1932 and 1939 at Antioch-on-the-Orontes by a consortium of institutions led by Princeton University. These are catalogued in D.B. Waagé, Antioch-on-the-Orontes IV.2: Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Crusaders’ Coins (Princeton, 1952). Most of these are low-denomination coins minted in the area and provide an unparalleled view of circulation of petty coinage at a site that was a major city and mint in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The subsequent history of the site is well illustrated by the thousands of coins of the Arab-Byzantine and Ummayad period (638-969), the middle-Byzantine period (969-1084), the Seljuk period (1084-1088), the Crusader period (1088-1268), the Mamluk period (1268-1516), and the Ottoman period (1516-1918). The Islamic coinage from the Antioch excavations is partially catalogued in G.C. Miles in Antioch-on-the Orontes IV.1: Ceramics and Islamic Coins, ed. F.O. Waagé (Princeton, 1948). All of the coins from the Antioch excavations are accompanied by detailed information on their find context, which is being included in the records as the coins are catalogued into the online database.

In May 2017, the Numismatic Collection announced the acquisition of Peter Donald’s collection of rare Byzantine coins. Comprising 5,280 coins, the London-based numismatic scholar’s collection is one of the most comprehensive private collections in the world. The Peter Donald Collection of Byzantine Coins provides an in-depth representation of virtually all known varieties of Byzantine bronze and silver issues from all eras and mints. It includes 179 gold coins, 324 silver coins, and 4,777 bronze coins ranging from 500 to 1450 C.E.

The Princeton Numismatic Collection Database is the catalog of the coins, medals and tokens, paper money, casts, exonumia in Princeton's Numismatic Collection. It was initiated in 2005 to provide web-based access to the entire collection through a searchable database with photographs of all objects. As most of the records are being written by Princeton University students, the order of cataloguing has depended on the scholarly interests and research skills of the students. Only a small fraction of the more than 110,000 pieces in the collection are currently online. As each piece is entered into the database, records of its obverse and reverse are made in both JPEG and TIFF formats.

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Ancient World Digital Library

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Last updated: 7/31/18

The Ancient World Digital Library (AWDL) is an initiative of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University. AWDL will identify, collect, curate, and provide access to a broad range of scholarly materials relevant to the study of the ancient world.

With NYU's Digital Library Technology Services (DLTS), AWDL is developing mechanisms to digitize, preserve, and host digitized print and born-digital scholarly content. Titles in AWDL can be read online in full resolution or downloaded in either high- or low-resolution PDF format.

Particular strengths of the AWDL collection include Ancient Judaism, Assyriology, Central Asia, Classical Antiquity, Early Christianity, Egyptology, Histology, Iranian Studies, and Papyrology.

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The Arabic Papyrology Database

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Last updated: 8/9/23

The Arabic Papyrology Database is a tool that gives access to editions of and research on pre-modern Arabic documents written on papyrus, parchment, paper, etc., an often untapped treasure for almost every aspect of the Islamicate World from the 7th up to the 16th century CE. The APD comprises a total of 13377 documents. It is continuously enlarged.

The Arabic Papyrology Database is the first digital compilation of Arabic documents on papyrus, parchment, paper, etc. It is a non-commercial project running under the patronage of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology (ISAP) and a partner of the Trismegistos metadata project of Greek, Demotic, Coptic, Arabic, etc. documents. Access is free via the Internet.

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Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA)

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Last updated: 8/7/23

Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) was established in January 2015 to respond to the increasing threats to archaeological sites in the Middle East and North Africa. The project uses satellite imagery to rapidly record and make available information about archaeological sites and landscapes which are under threat. EAMENA is supported by the Arcadia Fund and the British Council Cultural Protection Fund and based at the Universities of Oxford, Leicester, and Durham.

The public EAMENA database, available in English and Arabic, brings together data from satellite imagery and published reports. It contains over 150,000 records.

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Levantine Ceramics Project

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Last updated: 8/11/23

The Levantine Ceramics Project (LCP) is a collaborative venture of archaeologists working throughout the region of the Levant to make the evidence of ceramic wares, shapes, and laboratory analyses readily available. The project has two components: periodic workshops and a public, interactive website. The focus is on ceramics of all eras—from the Neolithic era (c. 5500 B.C.E.) through the Ottoman period (c. 1920 C.E.)—produced anywhere in the Levant, which includes the modern nations of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt. The goal is to build a digital resource that makes it simple to submit, share, search for, refine, and use ceramic evidence.

The LCP is open access. Anybody can search the site or sign up and submit information, whether long published or newly discovered. For those submitting information, three levels of privacy are available. Submitted data can be made fully public, meaning anybody searching the site will see it; submitted data can be made visible only to other site contributors; or submitted data can be made private, meaning that only the person who submitted it is able to view it. In this way the LCP can function simultaneously as an archival resource for published, publicly available information as well as a place for scholars to post and communicate with each other about work in progress.

The LCP is a project of the American Society of Overseas Research.

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Digital Papyri at Houghton Library, Harvard University

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Last updated: 7/28/20

Houghton Library’s collection of papyri consists of 84 manuscripts dating from the 3rd century BC to the 6th century AD. Most of the papyri come from Oxyrhynchus, but there are also papyri from Hibeh and from the Fayûm. The collection comprises both literary and documentary texts. They are all written in Greek except for one (P. Oxy. 6.987), which is a bookplate written in Coptic. These papyri were given to the Semitic Museum at Harvard by the Egypt Exploration Fund, London, between 1901 and 1909. The Semitic Museum received this “gift” in return for the purchase of a life membership in the Egypt Exploration Fund for $125 by Jacob H. Schiff, the museum’s principal benefactor. In 1960 the papyri were transferred to Houghton Library.

The collection includes papyri from Oxyrhynchus, Fayûm, and Hibeh. Among the literary texts are papyri of Isocrates, Homer, Plato, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Menander, and the Gospels. The documentary texts include contracts, petitions, lists, tax receipts, letters and other types of documents.

The Digital Papyri at Houghton Library website, which compiled links to digital images and bibliographies for the collection, is dead (though still accessible through Wayback Machine and is linked to the Learn & Explore button).

Digital access to images is now through Harvard Library's HOLLIS. Perform an advanced search: everything > form/genre > exact phrase > manuscripts, ancient.

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Sinai Palimpsests Project

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Last updated: 8/1/18

The Sinai Palimpsests Project is a collaboration of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai and the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, generously funded by Arcadia over a five-year period. Its primary goals are to make erased ancient texts in St. Catherine’s palimpsests legible using spectral imaging; identify the erased texts and describe their paleography; and publish an online digital library of Sinai palimpsests featuring high-quality digital images that are searchable through an electronic catalog.

Built between 548 and 565 CE, St. Catherine’s Monastery is the world’s oldest continually operating monastery, and its library holds an exceptional collection of manuscripts from the first millennium CE. Among these are more than 160 known palimpsests, the erased layers of which preserve unstudied texts from as early as the 4th century.

An international team of 23 world-renowned scholars, led by Claudia Rapp, are working with the project to identify and describe the undertexts of Sinai palimpsests, after they are rendered legible via spectral imaging.

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World Digital Library, Library of Congress

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Last updated: 5/9/23

This collection contains cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections. The original World Digital Library site and all descriptive metadata were translated from English and made available in six additional languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese. All item records include narrative descriptions submitted by the contributing partners and enhanced by WDL researchers to contextualize the item and its cultural and historical importance. Books, manuscripts, maps, and other primary materials in the WDL collection are presented in their original languages; more than 100 languages are represented, including many lesser known and endangered languages.

Launched in 2009, the World Digital Library was a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, with the support of UNESCO, and contributions from libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations around the world. The WDL sought to preserve and share some of the world’s most important cultural objects, increasing access to cultural treasures and significant historical documents to enable discovery, scholarship, and use.

WDL partner institutions selected content in accordance with guidelines set by the WDL Content Selection Committee. They chose content for its cultural and historical importance, with due regard to recognition of the achievements of all countries and cultures over a wide range of time periods. The materials collected by the WDL include cultural treasures and significant historical documents including books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints, photographs, sound recordings, and films.

A team at the Library of Congress developed the public, online version of the WDL, which was launched at UNESCO in April 2009. Twenty-six institutions contributed content to the launch version of the site. Launch partners included national libraries and cultural organizations in Brazil, China, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, France, Sweden, Uganda, the United States and other locations worldwide.

Following the launch, the WDL continued to add content to the site and to enlist new partners from all parts of the world. In April 2010, institutions and organizations contributing to the WDL adopted the WDL Charter, which established a permanent governance structure.

In 2020, the WDL Charter concluded. In 2021, after more than 10 years of operation, the Library transitioned WDL’s world-wide collection of cross-cultural treasures into a sustainable home for perpetual access on the Library of Congress’s main website. The original World Digital Library site is preserved by the Library of Congress Web Archive, which captures the look and feel of the site. Now available on the Library’s main website, the collection is a rich and valuable resource showing the diversity of the world’s cultures through the contributions of hundreds of organizations.

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Digitized Greek Manuscripts, Princeton University Library

Digitized Greek Manuscripts, Princeton University Library image

Last updated: 7/25/18

The Digitized Greek Manuscripts Database is maintained by David Jenkins, Librarian for Classics, Hellenic Studies and Linguistics at Princeton University. Search for digitized Greek manuscripts using keywords or browse manuscripts using defined terms from pull-down menus. Individual entries link to Pinakes records and available digital images.

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Modern Language Translations of Byzantine Sources, Princeton University Library

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Last updated: 7/28/20

The Modern Language Translations of Byzantine Sources Database is maintained by David Jenkins, Librarian for Classics, Hellenic Studies and Linguistics at Princeton University. Users can search for translations of Byzantine sources in modern languages using keywords or browse translations using defined terms from pull-down menus. Individual entries link to online editions.

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Propylaeum–eBOOKS

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Last updated: 8/6/20

Propylaeum–eBOOKS is the Open Access publication platform by Propylaeum (the DFG-funded Specialised Information Service of Classical Studies maintained by Heidelberg University Library) for scientific ebooks on Classical Studies.

Propylaeum–eBOOKS supports the Open Access publishing model for distributing research results and publish therefore primary publications (“gold”) as well as secondary publications (“green”). The service is free of charge and aimed at academics from all over the world.

Propylaeum–eBOOKS publishes monographs as well as series from all research fields.

Propylaeum–eBOOKS publishes the series Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident. Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident serves as the publication organ of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Mainz research programme dedicated to Byzantium, focused on Byzantium‘s role in bridging east and west, and in facilitating cultural transfer and how it was perceived by other cultures, from antiquity until the modern era. The methods and objects of investigation of the disciplines concerned with Byzantium are combined across the boundaries of traditional individual subjects to provide novel perspectives and approaches to research into Byzantium and its material and immaterial culture.

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Textile Terminologies

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Last updated: 7/29/21

Salvatore Gaspa, Cécile Michel, and Marie-Louise Nosch, eds. Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD. Zea E-Books 56. Zeta Books, 2017.

The papers in this volume derive from the conference on textile terminology held in June 2014 at the University of Copenhagen. Around 50 experts from the fields of Ancient History, Indo-European Studies, Semitic Philology, Assyriology, Classical Archaeology, and Terminology from twelve different countries came together at the Centre for Textile Research, to discuss textile terminology, semantic fields of clothing and technology, loan words, and developments of textile terms in Antiquity. They exchanged ideas, research results, and presented various views and methods.

This volume contains 35 chapters, divided into five sections: • Textile terminologies across the ancient Near East and the Southern Levant • Textile terminologies in Europe and Egypt • Textile terminologies in metaphorical language and poetry • Textile terminologies: examples from China and Japan • Technical terms of textiles and textile tools and methodologies of classifications

The 42 contributors include Salvatore Gaspa, Cécile Michel, Marie-Louise Nosch, Elena Soriga, Louise Quillien, Luigi Malatacca, Nahum Ben-Yehuda, Christina Katsikadeli, Orit Shamir, Agnes Korn, Georg Warning, Birgit Anette Olsen, Stella Spantidaki, Peder Flemestad, Peter Herz, Ines Bogensperger, Herbert Graßl, Mary Harlow, Berit Hildebrandt, Magdalena Öhrman, Roland Schuhmann, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, John Peter Wild, Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert, Julia Galliker, Anne Regourd, Fiona J. L. Handley, Götz König, Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo, Stefan Niederreiter, Oswald Panagl, Giovanni Fanfani, Le Wang, Feng Zhao, Mari Omura, Naoko Kizawa, Maciej Szymaszek, Francesco Meo, Felicitas Maeder, Kalliope Sarri, Susanne Lervad, and Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen.

Download full text or individual chapters.

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David Rumsey Map Collection Database

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Last updated: 8/7/23

The David Rumsey Map Collection contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.

The physical map collection is housed in the David Rumsey Map Center at the Stanford University Library. Over 123,00 items in the collection are online, with new material added regularly. The collection website provides a number of tools, including Luna Viewer, the collection database, Georeferencer v4, which allows users to overlay historic maps on modern maps or other historic maps, and MapRank search, which enables geographical searching of the collection by map location and coverage, in a Google Map window. 

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The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database image

Last updated: 8/7/23

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database: A Visual Resource of Historical Sites c. 1100 - c. 1450 was created to collect, host and display images made by travelers, mapmakers, historians, architects and artists of medieval and early modern monuments and cities of Southern Italy. It includes prints, drawings, ground plans and elevations, paintings, photographs, and any other type of image of sites from roughly 1100 to 1450. 

Historic views of southern Italian buildings are important historical documents because this geographical area has been deeply affected by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and World War II bombardment. In addition, urban renewal projects (such as the Risanamento in Naples) and nineteenth- and twentieth-century restorations have often been driven by polemical or ideological interests, sometimes removing entire monuments or destroying features of interior decoration, such as pulpits, tombs, and other church furniture. Above all, rapid and often uncontrolled urban expansion and industrialization in the post-World War II period has transformed the profiles of southern cities, often submerging significant monuments within a sea of modern buildings and development, a process that obscures the original importance of these sites as markers of political, social, and religious authority.

The database aims to enhance knowledge of Southern Italy, the historic Kingdom of Sicily, and to serve as an aid in study and research, as well as understanding the many changes to buildings and cities over time. The database is as inclusive as possible within the chronological parameters of c.1000-c.1450. It includes images of cities and monuments, and of interior furnishings, such as tombs, altars, mosaics, ceilings, pavements and frescoes. It is not intended to provide comprehensive historical information on sites, artists, or images. It is designed simply as a repository of visual materials and conduit to further research.

The image sources include public and private collections, museums, libraries and archives, print books, and online resources. This project expands as new images are found and cataloged. These images range in date from the late Middle Ages through the mid-twentieth century. 

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database: A Visual Resource of Historical Sites c. 1100 - c. 1450 is hosted by Trinity Technology Services (TTS) at Duke University. The current project directors are Caroline Bruzelius (Duke University) and Paola Vitolo (University of Catania). This content is licensed to you under a CC-BY-NC license.

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Greek, Roman & Byzantine Objects from the Archbishop Iakovos Collection

Greek, Roman & Byzantine Objects from the Archbishop Iakovos Collection image

Last updated: 3/20/24

A catalogue of the classical and Byzantine objects in the Archbishop Iakovos Collection. The objects are on view as part of the permanent Archbishop Iakovos Collection found on the top floor of the library.

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