Brilliant Corruptions. Scribal Influence on Transmission Variation in the Coffin Texts.

This paper highlights some interesting sections of the ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts which arise from human error, and which are apparent in the variation between multiple samples of the same text. Three types of variation are explored: errors caught by scribes, errors arising from redaction, and variations due to homophony

The Thot Sign List. Recording paleographic diversity in diachrony

peer reviewedDuring the last International Congress of Egyptologists in Cairo (2019), we presented the Thot Sign List (TSL), the first digital repertoire of hieroglyphic signs (http://tsl.philo.ulg.ac.be). It quickly became an important tool for scholars and students alike, as well as for Unicode specialists who are working towards a standardized encoding of the ancient Egyptian texts (Polis et al. 2021). However, the TSL is virtually limited to the hieroglyphic signs that are attested in texts written during the classical period (c. 1900–1350 BCE) and barely covers the repertoire and paleographical variety of other periods. An extension of its scope towards earlier and later periods, as well as a geographically and palaeographically more balanced approach to the ancient Egyptian written material, is therefore a requirement if this digital repertoire is to become a proper standard and research tool for the Egyptological community. In this lecture, we discussed two evolutions of the TSL that address these issues. From a methodological point of view, we present a way to document more systematically the hieroglyphic signs that are attested in texts written both before and after the classical period (c. 3000–1900 BCE and c. 1350 BCE–150 CE), and we showcase the first results. From a technical point of view, we show how the capabilities of the tools can be extended in order to record more accurately the different types of paleographical variations across time and space.DiaTho

New Unicode control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text

peer reviewedDetailed presentation and discussion of the 29 additional control characters that have been adopted by Unicode in 2022 for rendering Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. They complement and enrich the list of 9 controls adopted in 2019

Encoding proposal for an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire

This document presents an encoding proposal for an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire. The previous version (N5215) contained additional characters that were subject to further review and have been for the most part removed from this document. As in the previous version, this is the result of a detailed analysis by a group of experts in Egyptology, using among other parameters, priority, but also attestation based on original material.WG2 N5240 L2/23-18

Digitizing Seth: Digital studies of Sethian Hieroglyphs in the Coffin Texts

peer reviewedIn order to illustrate the benefits digital research in Egyptology, this poster will present the results of a case study into the use of Seth and Sethian animals when used as a classifiers in the corpus of the Coffin Texts. This poster focuses on the occurrence rate of the classifier within the lemmas in which they occur, and additionally show the diatopic and diachronic tendency in occurrence or absence of Sethian classifiers. And other additional strategies in classification. The research is done using Grotenhuis project ‘Classifying the Middle Kingdom afterlife – a window into the Ancient Egyptian mind’, and the iClassifier digital research tool. On a second level, the poster will present the results of a study of the classifiers of the lemma sr ‘to foretell‘ in the cursive script of the Coffin Texts,. Its form in cursive scripts is often much more akin to a Sethian animal, rather than to the giraffe - commonly identified by scholars as the classifier. For this study, the forms of the animal hieroglyph will be collected and sorted digitally, to show the underlying issues with the interpretation, local traditions and scribal preferences in the cursive forms of the script

Regional variation in the Coffin Texts: A study of sentence structure, verbal structure and graphical forms

In the pursuit of regional variation in Ancient Egypt on a linguistic level, this thesis proposes to use the mortuary liturgy of the Coffin Texts as a base from which to extract signs of regionally conditioned variation in the language. In this thesis, three approaches were used in order to visualize the existence of regional variation in the Middle Egyptian language. In the first approach, the sentence structure was compared. Using the metaphor that spells could be treated as proteins, biomedical algorithms were used for cluster analysis of the structure. The second approach tackles the verbal structure of the sentences instead, applying the same method which was used for the sentence structure. Finally, the graphical form of the verbal lemmas was studied in order to show preferences for spelling and written structure. Additionally, the graphical form of morphological features of verbal constructions was studied. The approaches used in this thesis were able to visualize that regional conditioned patterns exist within the Coffin Texts

The Thot Sign-List (TSL) A referenced online hieroglyphic sign-list

Presentation of the history, data model and online implementation of the Thot Sign-list (TSL

Geographical verbal variation in Dendera : An exploratory study in verbal variation between east and west in offering texts from Graeco-Roman temples in Dendera1

This paper researches the interaction between inscriptions facing east and those facing west in offering texts of the Graeco-Roman period, specifically those found in the temple of Hathor and the temple of Isis in Dendera. Continuing research performed by Christian Leitz, this paper argues that a pattern shown by Leitz in which the east side is active where the west is reflecting a state, is not an anomaly, but should actually be considered part of the 'grammaire du temple'. Moreover, I show that this pattern is used during the reign of Cleopatra VII, and falls out of use during the reign of the emperor Augustus