The Digital Editions of Aramaic and Phoenician Sources (DEAPS) has now made available editions of 329 Phoenician and Punic textual objects. The new material is the first substantial body of Phoenician sources freely and digitally available for researchers and the public. Each text in DEAPS can be analyzed word-by-word. Bringing these texts to an open, searchable form makes them available not only to specialists but to students and scholars working across the broader field of Northwest Semitic studies.
Overview of DEAPS
DEAPS is a subproject of the Digital Lab for Ancient Textual Objects (DLATO) in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures (NESA) at The Ohio State University. Its content derives from the research database of Professor James D. Moore, which now holds nearly 7,000 textual objects, and continues to expand through partnerships with scholars and graduate students. DLATO operates as an international and collaborative project. Interested scholars are invited to contact Professor Moore (moore.5089@osu.edu) about future projects and collaborations.
How the Database Works
Each record in the DEAPS database, corresponds to a single physical object, regardless of how many texts it bears, and brings together that object's metadata, bibliography, photographs and/or links to photographs when available, along with its editions and translations. Up to four scholarly editions of these can be opened side-by-side. Clicking a word in an edition opens its entry in the apparatus with the lexical form and parsing. Where available, commentaries and notes, as well as word-level analyses are provided. These are supported by the DEAPS lexicon, which records each word's part of speech, basic meaning, and relevant notes. All data in DEAPS is curated in a PostgreSQL relational database according to the DLATO Core Database Structure. Because every word is tagged in the same way, a single search can run across all entered material together. This makes it possible to compare how a word is used across languages, sites, and periods without moving between separate editions.
The Corpus in Context
Herbert Donner and Wolfgang Röllig's Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften (KAI) remains the standard catalogue of Northwest Semitic inscriptions, and its numbering is the conventional means of citation in the field. John C. L. Gibson's Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, whose third volume is devoted to Phoenician, provides an annotated edition of the major texts. The DEAPS editions are prepared in dialogue with these works. What the database contributes is not a replacement for these references, but a different mode of access. Because all inscriptions are analyzed according to a single structure, their lexical items, grammatical forms, and onomastic elements, can be examined across the corpus, alongside the existing Aramaic material already in DEAPS.
DEAPS goes well beyond KAI and Gibson and includes more than 100 additional Phoenician or Punic textual objects not found in those editions. The corpus is growing quickly with thousands more in the queue to be pushed to the DEAPS website.
Searching the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions
Individual inscriptions can be located through the Search Database page by Object name.
The corpus as a whole is accessed through Advanced Search. Selecting “Phoenician/Punic” in the Language menu returns all 329 inscriptions.
The results can then be further refined. The Keywords menu limits a search by type, such as dedicatory, votive, grave, or royal inscriptions. The Text string field searches the inscriptions in Unicode Hebrew characters, with an on-screen keyboard provided, and returns every inscription in which a word, name, or formula appears. The Translation string field searches the English, French, and German translations. Results can be viewed as a list, a grid, or a map of find-spots and present collections and can be limited to a single collection or to objects with photographs. The Lexicon and Bibliography can also be searched on their own.
Graduate Student Editions
This release features editions prepared by NESA graduate students. The Ohio State University is currently the only Ancient Near Eastern PhD program that requires students to leave with a competency in the computational language of relational databases (SQL) and the ability to build and manage digital editions, making working in the DEAPS project a component in this training. Students work to compose these translations by preparing line-by-line editions and translations, reviewing them collectively against standard published translations, and discussing differences in readings. The texts are subsequently tagged word-by-word for lexical and grammatical features. Because every reading and parsing must be recorded explicitly in the database, the method requires students to articulate editorial judgements that a conventional translation exercise may leave implicit.
To view all Phoenician and Punic texts available visit here.
Mary Kate Lichty (lichty.13@osu.edu) is a graduate student in the department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at The Ohio State University.
