EpiDoc is an international community that produces guidelines and tools for encoding in TEI

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

scholarly and educational editions of ancient documents, especially inscriptions and

papyri Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can ...

. The EpiDoc Guidelines were originally proposed as a recommendation for Greek and Latin epigraphy in 2000 by scholars at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

: Tom Elliott, the former director of the Ancient World Mapping Center, with Hugh Cayless and Amy Hawkins. The guidelines have since matured considerably through extensive discussion on the community mailing list (Markup) and other discussion fora, at several conferences, and through the experience of various pilot projects. The first major epigraphic projects to adopt and pilot the EpiDoc recommendations were the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias and Vindolanda Tablets Online in 2002–4, and the guidelines reached a degree of stability for the first time in that period. EpiDoc has since been adopted as the native format for the Greek Papyrology site, Papyri.info. The EpiDoc

schema Schema may refer to: Science and technology * SCHEMA (bioinformatics), an algorithm used in protein engineering * Schema (genetic algorithms), a set of programs or bit strings that have some genotypic similarity * Schema.org, a web markup vocab ...

and guidelines may also be applied, perhaps with some local modification to related palaeographical fields including

Sigillography Sigillography, also known by its Greek-derived name, sphragistics, is the scholarly discipline that studies the wax, lead, clay, and other seals used to authenticate archival documents. It investigates not only aspects of the artistic design ...

, and

Numismatics Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inclu ...

. The EpiDoc community maintains the Guidelines and other tools, offers support through the mailing list and other fora, and runs several training events per year.

Guidelines and Schema

The EpiDoc Guidelines are available in two forms: # the stable guidelines, released periodically # the source code, available in its most up-to-date form in the EpiDoc SourceForge repository. The Guidelines source files are a series of XML documents, plus XSLT to transform them to the web version. The EpiDoc Schema is also available in two forms: # the latest stable version of the schema, which may be linked to directly by XML documents. # the source code (a TEI ODD), available in its most up-to-date form in the EpiDoc SourceForge repository.

Tools

Other tools developed by and for the EpiDoc community include: * The EpiDoc Reference Stylesheets (XSLT), available from the EpiDoc GitHub repository. These stylesheets are also used to deliver the online Guidelines. * EFES (EpiDoc Front-End Services): an "out of the box" software package for the publication of EpiDoc collections. * Transcoder: a Java tool for converting between Beta Code, Unicode NF C, Unicode NF D, and GreekKeys encoding for Greek script on the fly.Transcoder
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Projects

Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

Concordia

and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Inscriptions of Aphrodisias

, UK
Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica
,

, UK
Integrating Digital Papyrology
(

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, Heidelberg University,

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical ...

)
US Epigraphy Project

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, Providence RI, USA
Vindolanda Tablets Online

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

, UK
Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua XI

, UK
Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campā
École française d'Extrême-Orient
Epigraphic Database Heidelberg
Fuller list of projects maintained at: * https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/EpiDoc

Bibliography

* Fernando-Luis Álvarez, Elena García-Barriocanal and Joaquín-L. Gómez-Pantoja, 'Sharing Epigraphic Information as Linked Data', in (eds. Sanchez-Alonso & Athanasiadis), ''Metadata and semantic research'' (Springer 2010), pp. 222–234. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-642-16552-8_21 (PAYWALL) (accessed 2011-01-06) * Lisa Anderson and Heidi Wendt, 'Ancient Relationships, Modern Intellectual Horizons: The practical challenges and possibilities of encoding Greek and Latin inscriptions.' In ed. M.T. Rutz & M.M. Kersel, ''Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics.'' Oxbow Books, 2014 (Joukowsky Institute Publication 6). Pp. 164–175. * Alison Babeu, 'Epigraphy', ''"Rome Wasn’t Digitized in a Day": Building a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classicists Draft Version 1.3—11/18/10'', pp. 73–89. CLIR, 2010. Online at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub150 * Roger S. Bagnall, 'Integrating Digital Papyrology', presented at ''Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come'', University of Virginia, March 26–28, 2010. Available: http://archive.nyu.edu/handle/2451/29592 (accessed 2011-01-06) * Monica Berti (2015). "The Linked Fragment: TEI and the Encoding of Text Reuses of Lost Authors." _Journal of the TEI_ 8 (2014–15). Available: http://doi.org/10.4000/jtei.1218 * Gabriel Bodard, 'The Inscriptions of Aphrodisias as electronic publication: A user's perspective and a proposed paradigm' in ''Digital Medievalist'' 4 (2008), available http://doi.org/10.16995/dm.19 (accessed 2011-01-06) * Gabriel Bodard, 'EpiDoc: Epigraphic Documents in XML for Publication and Interchange', in (ed. F. Feraudi-Gruénais) ''Latin On Stone: epigraphic research and electronic archives'' (Lexington Books, 2010), pp. 101–118. * Gabriel Bodard, 'Digital Epigraphy and Lexicographical and Onomastic Markup'. Pre-press available: http://www.stoa.org/archives/1226 (accessed 2011-01-06) * Bodard, G and Stoyanova, S. 2016. "Epigraphers and Encoders: Strategies for Teaching and Learning Digital Epigraphy." In: Bodard, G & Romanello, M (eds.) ''Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange & Public Engagement'', Pp. 51–68. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bat.d. * Gabriel Bodard and Polina Yordanova. 2020. "Publication, Testing and Visualization with EFES: A tool for all stages of the EpiDoc editing process." ''Studia Digitalia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai'' 65.1 (2020), pp. 17–35. Available: https://doi.org/10.24193/subbdigitalia.2020.1.02 (accessed 2021-03-25) * Hugh Cayless, Charlotte Roueché, Tom Elliott & Gabriel Bodard, 'Epigraphy in 2017', '' Digital Humanities Quarterly'' 3.1 (2009), available: http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000030/000030.html (accessed 2011-01-06) * Annamaria De Santis and Irene Rossi, 2018. 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Sosin, 'Digital Papyrology', Congress of the International Association of Papyrologists, 19 August 2010, Geneva. Available: http://www.stoa.org/archives/1263 (accessed 2011-01-06) * Charlotte Tupman, 'Contextual epigraphy and XML: digital publication and its application to the study of inscribed funerary monuments', in (eds. Bodard & Mahony) ''Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity'' (Ashgate, 2010), pp. 73–86. * Irene Vagionakis, “Cretan Institutional Inscriptions: A New EpiDoc Database”, ''Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative'', 21 September 2021. Available: https://doi.org/10.4000/jtei.3570 * Daniel A. Werning (2016), 'Towards guidelines for TEI encoding of text artefacts in Egyptology'. In Monica Berti (ed.), ''Epigraphy Edit-a-thon. Editing chronological and geographic data in ancient inscriptions''. Leipzig, April 20–22, 2016.

References

External links