US Epigraphy Project

The goal of the US Epigraphy project is to create an XML publication of all Greek, Roman and Etruscan epigraphic texts in American collections.

Initially, the project focused on collecting metadata and images. It is now also entering the text for each inscription and will eventually add translation and notess. John Bodel has been the director of the US Epigraphy Project since 1995. US Epigraphy is a member of the group developing the Epidoc DTD, a TEI conformant DTD for encoding classical inscriptions. In the future, the project will also develop some basic pedagogical tools to exploit the instructional potential of the photographic archive (e.g., to illustrate styles of writing, ligatures, stonecutters’ marks, erased, corrected, or supplemented text, etc.).

STG provided technical advice and assistance in developing an XML/TEI template in accordance with Epidoc guidelines, to convert the 2,300 published inscriptions mounted at the project website into XML, and implement a system that searches and displays them. We are also performing an update and redesign of the website.

STG and CDS are providing support to US Epigraphy on an ongoing bases, working with John Bodel, his project manager and student encoders. In 2009/2010 we completed the conversion of all US Epigraphy files into Epidoc P5 format. As part of our work on US Epigrapy, STG and CDS have provided input to the group developing the Epidoc P5 schema.

In 2010 CDS converted the current US Epigraphy delivery system, which uses perl and an XSLT transform engine as well as premade HTML files for efficiency, to use SOLR, and redesigned the website.

US Epigraphy Project is a project of Classics department.

Contributors to this project include Andrew Ashton (CDS), John Bodel (Faculty lead), Elli Mylonas (CDS), Carole Mah (STG)