This collaboration between the University of Heidelberg and New York University would create a Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri (DCLP), building an infrastructure that initially focuses on Greek and Latin texts but that can accommodate other ancient literatures as well. The University of Heidelberg is requesting 123,880€ from DFG.
This project proposes to create a database of texts and cataloging data for the ancient papyrus manuscripts of Greek and Latin literature and texts of a quasi-literary nature. It will use and modify existing technology developed for documentary texts on papyrus. The first phase will carry out the needed technical work and use a series of existing bodies of data to stress-test the technology. The system will be capable in later phases of incorporating texts in other ancient languages that were written on papyrus. In this way, a crucial body of evidence for the early history of ancient literature as well as for ancient reading habits and education will be made much more widely available and be readily searchable in the original languages and in translation, opening its use up to a wider group of researchers and students.