„Altägyptische Kursivschriften“ in a digital age

The hieratic script has never been studied systematically regarding its peculiarities in abbreviations, orthography, functions or historical development, nor in comparison with cursive and monumental hieroglyphs as well as Demotic signs. After Möller’s Hieratic Palaeography volumes I to III, being based on merely 32 sources, Egyptologists compiled several more or less complete palaeographies on single texts, groups of texts or time spans. However, the comparability of signs is often hindered or impossible due to the heterogeneity of writing surfaces, the quality of facsimiles and photos or the choice of examples and the degree of detail. Furthermore, the word or sign context is often lacking. Since April 2015 a long-term project for a possible maximum of 23 years is located at the universities of Mainz and Darmstadt, being financed by the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. The lecture presents the aims and methods of this project and discusses the state of affairs with regard to the development and structuring 1) of a digital palaeography of the cursive scripts, including all stages of hieratic, abnormal hieratic and cursive hieroglyphic scripts from the Early Dynastic period through to Roman times, and 2) of a database with extensive metadata that allows the study of various topics among which the emergence, development, regional use, context and economy of scripts as well as the identification of individual scribes’ hands. The project shall be understood as being decisively open for any cooperation among international experts