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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Digital Palaeography of Hieratic

subject

description

After a short history of research into hieratic palaeography, the first experiences with digital methods to conduct the study of handwritten documents, in Egyptology as well as in other fields, are presented. The needs and goals of a future digital palaeography are then explained in detail. Such a palaeography is expected to become a modern research tool for ancient Egyptian handwritings that allows the depiction, description, classification, and encoding of cursive signs and that includes information about the entire manuscripts and their materiality. In constructing such a tool, some questions are essential, for instance: How should the signs be represented—as image sections from a scan or as facsimiles? What kind of digital formats should be used—raster or vector graphics? How should the signs be encoded? And how should we prepare the data for digital analysis of hieratic in the future—using XML with new encodings according to TEI standard? The chapter provides a discussion of arguments and propositions in the light of these questions.