Ancient Wisdom online: towards a Digital Library of Ancient Greek and Roman inscriptions Dr. Sorin Hermon, the Cyprus Institute pdf file of the presentation at the EVA/Minerva Jerusalem International Conference on Digitisation of Culture, Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Van Leer Institute, 12-13 November 2013 http://www.digital-heritage.org.il Presentations available at: http://2013.minervaisrael.org.il

1. Add text ––front page
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FRONT COVER page
Ancient Wisdom Online: Towards a digital
library of Ancient Greek and Roman
Inscriptions in Cyprus
The Cyprus Institute – STARC

2. Topic overview and research aim
What are the inscriptions?
• A direct evidence of past activities, ideas, events as narrated
for posterity by past people.
• A valuable link between history and archaeology, archaeology
and social sciences, history and geology, gender studies and
sociology, philosophy of religion or history of sciences.
• Can be investigated by complementary disciplines:
Geology
Conservation
Archaeology
Philology
Musealization

3. Topic overview and research aim
History of research on inscriptions in digital era
• Enhancement of the access to information and development
in creating online accessible repositories regarding ancient
inscriptions
• Several projects on digital epigraphy
• TEI for Epigraphy (EpiDoc) has been the major starting point towards
the standardization of electronic publication of Greek and Latin
inscriptions (applied by various digital epigraphy projects).
• Development of various tools to advance the study and research of
inscriptions online: terminologies, vocabulary and thesauri, ontologies

4. Topic overview and research aim
The research aim
• An on-going research on the development of a crossdisciplinary metadata for Ancient Inscriptions integrating
information regarding the objects themselves and their digital
“representations” (3D models, photographic documentation,
digital texts, transliterations, etc.)
• Development of the research within the framework of EAGLE

5. Archaeia Kypriaki Gramateia
The Ancient Cypriot Secretariat Corpus Initiative
Epigram from Salamina,
Museum of Famagusta,
Cyprus
Epigram from Kition,
Museum Pieridi,
Larnaka, Cyprus
Epigram from Palaipafos,
Kouklia, Cyprus
Epigram from Marion, Museum of Polis
Chrysochous, Paphos, Cyprus

6. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
State of the art and assessment
• A first assessment of what is available in the field of digital
epigraphy and in the community of Digital Humanities
• Survey and analysis of the formal descriptions of inscriptions
used in various digital epigraphy repositories:
• Few digital archives use standardized domain related metadata
schema (e.g. TEI EpiDoc)
• Some describe their data using simplified and generic cross-domain
standardized metadata (e.g. Dublin Core)
• Very few use CIDOC-CRM (or any other reference model)
• The majority publish their data online through proprietary schemas
that are only constituted of limited fields

7. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
State of the art and assessment
• Comparisons of the different schemas or structures used by
different institutions
• A first mapping of the metadata fields to identify the common
ones within the various digital inscription initiatives
As a general rule, in all examined cases the description of
the corresponding digital surrogates (of the original
inscriptions) is missing.

8. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions
• Based on previous research in STARC, our metadata takes into
consideration LIDO and CARARE metadata schemas and have at its base
CIDOC-CRM as a reference model (it keeps into consideration EpiDoc since
it is the most used by the epigraphy community)
• The metadata schema for ancient Cypriot Inscriptions has various goals
and aims:
• to describe in detail the “digital surrogate”, its provenance and its relations
with the original
• to provide related information about the context (ancient and modern) of
the inscription
• to enable a harvesting to larger initiatives, such as Europeana, or future
research infrastructures (e.g. ARIADNE, DARIAH)

9. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions
• The Metadata schema derives its concepts from a
multidisciplinary environment and reflects related research
in each.
• It is organized in:
• groups corresponding to various research domains tangent to the
topic
• wrappers
• sub-wrappers
• flags

10. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions
Funerary inscription from
Politiko. AKG, vol. 2, E21
Metadata sub-set describing the
support of the inscription

11. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions
Metadata sub-set about the text
of the inscription
Funerary inscription from
Politiko. AKG, vol. 2, E21

12. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions
IMAGE
Epigram from Salamina,
Museum of Famagusta, Cyprus
3D
Epigraph by Decius Marius Venantius Basilius,
Colosseum, Rome

13. A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions
The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions

14. Implications for research infrastructures
• A multi-disciplinary metadata descriptive content, coupled
with data organised according to a conceptual reference
model (e.g. CIDOC-CRM) has several benefits:
• it better and more accurately reflects the nature of past artefacts and
better represents their multi-layered nature
• it helps gaining new insights embedded in such objects and enhances the
transparency of their interpretation
• It enhances the integration of the repository into a wider perspective and
enables its incorporation in global research infrastructures to be
developed in the future (for example ARIADNE, a new EU funded project
aimed at developing a digital infrastructure for archaeological research)

15. Implications for Europeana
• Implications for Europeana:
• CyI, providing Europeana with the metadata of the Cypriot Inscription
corpus, will enable a wider visibility and awareness to the AKGDC
Project.
• The publication into Europeana will present to the general public a
type of subject usually addressed to small communities.
• Europeana will be enriched with a critical mass of quality-oriented
content.

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Thank you for your attention!
v.vassallo@cyi.ac.cy
e.christophorou@cyi.ac.cy
s.hermon@cyi.ac.cy
f.niccolucci@cyi.ac.cy
raffaella.santucci@uniroma1.it