Long-term Availability and Integration of Linked Dictionaries of Ancient Egyptian (AWV 2.0)

Original project title:
Langzeitverfügbarkeit und Integration der Altägyptischen Wörterbücher im Verbund (AWV 2.0)

The project "Long-term Availability and Integration of Linked Dictionaries of Ancient Egyptian" (AWV 2.0) digitally modernizes the results of the completed project "Altägyptischen Wörterbücher im Verbund" (AWV, Linked Dictionaries of Ancient Egyptian), which ran from 2013–2015. The present AWV 2.0 project makes use of present technical standards in archiving the valuable material. By integrating it into the Text+ infrastructure in the framework of the "Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur" Assosication (NFDI), the results are made available to the academic community as important, interoperable research data.

From July 2013 to December 2015, the AWV subproject was carried out at Leipzig University as part of the joint project "Wissensrohstoff Text" funded by the European Social Fund. A database was designed in which the information contained in early publications on ancient Egyptian vocabulary was linked to the modern standard word list of the (old) Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (hereinafter: TLA) 1.0 (2004 version) and supplemented with extensive annotations. The focus lied on works from the pioneering phase of Egyptian lexicography (1822–1868).

By the end of the AWV project, seven dictionaries, word lists, and glossaries (in chronological order) that predate the Berlin Dictionary (Erman/Grapow) had been entered into the database:

• Birch, S., Sketch of a Hieroglyphical Dictionary, London 1838.
• Champollion, J.-F., Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique, Paris 1841.
• de Rougé, E., H. Brugsch, Stück eines ägyptischen Hymnus an die Sonne, 1850.
• Birch, S., Dictionary of Hieroglyphics, in: C.C.J. Baron Bunsen, Egypt’s Place in Universal History, Vol. 5, London 1867
• Brugsch, H. Hieroglyphisch-demotisches Wörterbuch, Bd. 1–6, Leipzig 1867–1880.
• Piehl, K. Dictionnaire du Papyrus Harris No 1, Wien 1882.
• Budge, E.A.T.W. First Steps in Egyptian, London 1895.

The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Text+ consortium of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI, flexible funding)

Project running time: January 1, 2026, to September 30, 2026

Data domain in Text+: Lexical resources