01

whoami

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what is epigraphy

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what is digital epigraphy

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what is epidat

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re-use, dataformats and interoperability

01

Who am I

02

What is epigraphy

What is epigraphy

Epigraphy, the study of written matter recorded on hard or durable material. The term is derived from the Classical Greek epigraphein (“to write upon, incise”) and epigraphē (“inscription”).

Epigraphy in: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Epigraphy (Ancient Greek: ἐπιγραφή), inscription, is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the writing and the writers.

Epigraphy in wikipedia|en

A Cemetery is a spatial ensemble of timebound objects

Worms: Im heiligen Sand

Frankfurt, Battonstraße: Old Cemetery

Hamburg-Altona: Ashkenazic Cemetery

Bayreuth: Jewish Cemetery

headstone as a source for cultural and religious history

Mainz – Gedenkfriedhof: mz1-2203
foto: LDA Mainz

‎‏זה קבר של הרב ר׳ מאיר בר אברהם הכהן הזקן הנהרג על יחוד השם במ״א לפרט כ״ז בסיון ביום שנשרף בית הכנסת ונקרעו סיפרי תורה מנוחתו כבוד‏‎

place of burial

Mainz

date of death | date of event

1281-06-15 | 27. Sivan 5041

name

Meir b. Awraham HaCohen

event

destruction of the synagogue and the torascrolls:

ביום שנשרף בית הכנסת ונקרעו סיפרי תורה

religious concept

הנהרג על יחוד השם

dislocation of the object

headstone was found by workers on June 5, 1899 in the cellar of the inn Zur Stadt Mainz in the street Große Bleiche

headstone as a source for history of literature

‎‏גם חסידה בשמים‏‎

‎‏פה שוכבת הדרת הנשים‏‎

‎‏אף גם עדים וצבי תפארתם‏‎

‎‏גמלה חסד עם הרשים‏‎

‎‏לזמנה היתה כתר מכתם‏‎

‎‏בת פו״מ כהר״ר יוסף‏‎

‎‏פופרט אשת כ״ה משה‏‎

‎‏אפינהיי׳ הגובה באלטונא‏‎

‎‏נפטר׳ ונקבר׳ יום ב׳ ך״ז טבת‏‎

‎‏שנת כצפור נודדת מקנה‏‎

‎‏תנצב״ה ‏‎

Hamburg-Altona hha-1678

place of burial

Hamburg

name(s) | genealogy

Vogel (in acrostic)

father Josef Popert

husband Moshe Oppenheim

task

הגובה באלטונא‏‎ charity administrator

date_of_death

03.01.1791 | 27. Tewet 5551

symbol

bird

style

rhyme, meter, acrostic, chronostic, play on words




Spatial relations

looking for patterns – changing perspectives

03

What is Digital Epigraphy

very short history of Digital Epigraphy

Bodel 2012: Latin Epigraphy and the IT Revolution; Roueché 2015: Byzantine Epigraphy for the 21^th century; About EpiDoc

structure

metadata – images – text

<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xml:space="preserve" xml:lang="en">
   <teiHeader>
     <!-- metadata -->
   </teiHeader>

   <facsimile>
      <!-- information on digital images -->
   </facsimile>

   <text>
       <!-- text: edition, commentary, translation, etc. -->
   </text>
</TEI>
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EpiDoc offers a template file ex-epidoctemplate.xml
see EpiDoc Guidelines: Structure Of An EpiDoc Edition

Encoding according to Leiden conventions (Leiden 2.0)

Letters ambiguous outside of their context

<unclear>אβc</unclear>

letters corrected by the editor

<choice>
    <corr>εγ</corr>
    <sic>γε</sic>
</choice>ο

lacuna, approximate extend, omitted letters added by editor

ה<gap agent="damage" reason="lost"
unit="character" quantity="2"/>
<supplied reason="lost">פע</supplied>ר

cheatsheet

metadata: persons and dates

<person xml:id="ffb-80-1" sex="1">
 <persName ref="http://d-nb.info/gnd/11879132X">Meir Rothschild ben Anschel Rothschild</persName>
 <death when="1812-09-19" calendar="#Jewish">13. Tischri 5573<death>
</person>

metadata: Dating and localization

<history>
 <origin>
  <origDate>
   <date notBefore="1812-09-19">19. September 1812</date>
  </origDate>
  <origPlace>
   <country type="ISO_3166" key="XA-DE-HE">Germany
     <region>Hesse</region>
   </country>
   <settlement type="city" key="tgn:7005293" ref="http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/7005293">
     Frankfurt am Main, Battonnstraße
    <geogName ref="http://d-nb.info/gnd/4331943-9">Jüdischer Friedhof
     <geo decls="#WGS">50.1119 8.689675</geo>
    </geogName>
   </settlement>
  </origPlace>
 </origin>
</history>

04

What is epidat

What is epidat

epidat is a database

As a database for Jewish gravestone epigraphy, epidat is used to inventory, document, edit and present epigraphic holdings. Currently inscriptions of Jewish cemeteries from nine centuries and four countries are made available via chronological, spatial and thematic approaches.

epidat is a research platform

As a research platform for Jewish gravestone epigraphy, epidat offers open interfaces to the research data and is involved in interdisciplinary research projects and cooperations in the context of digital epigraphy and Jewish Studies.

epidat is a long-term epigraphic project

Epidat started in 2002 and has been continuously developed since then. The database and research platform was launched online in 2006. Since March 2019 epidat is jointly developed within the framework of a scientific cooperation between the Salomon-Ludwig-Steinheim-Institute, Essen and the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz.

what is epidat

demo

live

spatio-temporal access options

	epidat research data
fair principle	Findable Accesible Interoperable Re-usable
licence	are released online under an open Creative Commons Licence
standard format	are provided in EpiDoc: TEI XML for Epigraphic Documents for machine readable, system-independent, program-independent and structured access (and widely used by digital epigraphers)
interoperability	are mapped to authority files, controlled vocabularies and thesauri
interfaces	are provided via a machine readable interface

epidat research data: FAIR, open and reusable

05

re-use, dataformats and interoperability

cooperation and re-use

• based on several export and exchange formats
  • EpiDoc TEI XML
  • RDF-XML and/or SVG Graph via XTriples Webservice based on XTriples configuration file and EPIDOC TEIXML
  • RTF via TUSCRIPT based on EpiDoc TEIXML

export formats

XTriples

XTriples is a generic webservice to extract RDF statements from XML resources.With the XTriples webservice you can crawl XML repositories and extract RDF statements using a simple configuration based on XPATH/XQuery expressions.The webservice can be used with direct POST, form-style POST or GET requests.

XTriples

Re-Use – Hackathon

/TEI/teiHeader/fileDesc/titleStmt/title
/TEI/facsimile/graphic[1]
//*[@type='edition']
//*[@type='translation']

During the first German cultural hackathon, Coding da Vinci, where the Steinheim Institute acted as participating cultural institution and partner, the epidat dataset was presented and the website was developed from it in order to present the grave inscriptions in a new way.

http://www.poeticrelief.org/faq

Re-Use – Researchdata

DHd2016 Leipzig / Pre-Conference Workshop For the visualisations, data sets from the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim-Institut for Jewish-German History and the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz have been used.

Kollatz-Kuczera-Schrade 2016

<particDesc>
 <listPerson>
  <person xml:id="aha-13-1" sex="1">
   <persName>Elieser ben Josef Hakohen</persName>
   <death when="1879-12-08"/>
  </person>
  <person xml:id="aha-13-2" sex="1">
   <persName>Jehuda ben Josef Hakohen</persName>
   <death when="1879-12-09"/>
  </person>
  <listRelation>
   <relation name="parent" active="#aha-21-1 #aha-48-1" passive="#aha-13-1"/>
   <relation name="sibling" mutual="#aha-50-1 #aha-13-1"/>
   <relation name="sibling" mutual="#aha-13-1 #aha-13-2"/>
  </listRelation>
 </listPerson>
</particDesc>

hha-3361-teip5

RiR-project 2012-2015 | template: Howto make a dynamic map

shape and form: switching arches

Change in funeral tradition happens slowly. Change manifests itself not only in textual tradition. Cultural change is also reflected in the use of (new) forms. Text and form do not develop synchronously

cultural impact

HyperImage Lighting Table with cans from Hamburg displayed chronological

3D model of Jewish Cemetery Mainz

• School of Technology – Geoinformatics and Surveying Mainz had made with students a terrestrial laserscan
• Steinheim-Institut (epidat) has worked on edition of the cemeterey and has structured data
• Torsten Schrade, Academy of Science and Literature, Mainz, had developed a webservice to extract RDF statements from XML-Data
• joint workshop on linking scatter plot points (3D model) with epigraphic research Data (epidat/EpiDoc TEI XML) via the XTriples Webservice: RDF-Lifting from XML

Workshop: IBR/RiR

Sharing Data

	IIP Inscriptions of Israel | Palestine	epidat Research Platform for Jewish Epigraphy	DIO Deutsche Inschriften Online
online
time	500 BCE - 640 CE	midth 11th - 20th century	500-1650 CE
space	Israel Palestine	Germany Netherlands Czechia Lithuania	Germany Austria South Tyrol
Genre	Different	Funeral Inscriptions	Different
Format	EpiDoc: TEI XML for Epigraphic Documents
Example	QUAMR0001	ffb-80	34-561

PEACE Portal and DARIAH-DE

Genderdistribution

bar chart Legende

1	male
2	female
0	unknown
9	not defined

Configuration

Visualisierung http://app.rawgraphs.io

Max Grüntgens, Thomas Kollatz: Annotieren, analysieren, visualisieren. Repositorien mergen, analysieren und visualisieren, Darmstadt 2018

How to harvest epidat records?

epidat provides access to all collections and their resources of the epidat collection.
Each <resource> is part of a <collection> which is part of all epidat-<collections>.

• how to harvest epidat records
• http://www.steinheim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat?info=collections
• http://www.steinheim-institut.de:80/cgi-bin/epidat?info=resources-hha

Literature & Software

epidat

• Arera-Rütenik, Tobias; Kollatz. 2016. “Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven Auf Grabmale Und Visualisierung Räumlicher Strukturen. Ergebnisse Eines Projektes Zu Historischen Jüdischen Friedhöfen.” Objekt Und Schrift. Beiträge Zur Materiellen Kultur Des Jüdischen Jüdisches Kulturerbe (1): 25–29.
• Bender, Michael, Rapp, Andrea, and Thomas Kollatz. 2018. “Objekte Im Digitalen Diskurs – Epistemologische Zugänge Zu Objekten Durch Digitalisierung Und Diskursive Einbindung in Virtuelle Forschungsumgebungen Und -Infrastrukturen.” In Berlin Studies of the Ancient World. Objektepistemologien. Berlin.
• Kollatz, Thomas. 2015. “Epidat - Datenbank Zur Jüdischen Grabsteinepigraphik. Inventarisierung Und Dokumentation Historischer Jüdischer Friedhöfe.” In Wenn Das Erbe in Die Wolken Kommt. Digitalisierung Und Kulturelles Erbe, 161–68. Essen: Klartext.
• ———. 2018. “EPIDAT. Research Platform for Jewish Epigraphy.” In Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline. Digital Epigraphy, 231–239. Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter open. Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy: From Practice to Discipline.
• Kollatz, Thomas, and Max Grüntgens. 2018. “Korpusbasiertes Arbeiten und epigraphische Datenbanken. Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen am Beispiel von EPIDAT und DIO.” Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 92: 157–74.

RDF-Lifting with XTriples

• Max Grüntgens, Thomas Kollatz, XML2RDF – Extracting RDF Statements From XML Resources With XTriples. Workshop at the DH2019 Conference in Utrecht, 09.07.2019, https://dh2019.adho.org/workshops/.
• Julian Jarosch, Andreas Kuczera, Torsten Schrade and Tariq Youssef, Graphentechnologien in den Digital Humanities: Methoden und Instrumente zur Modellierung, Transformation, Annotation und Analyse. Workshop and conference paper for the 6th DHd conference, 26.03.2019, Mainz/Frankfurt, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.2596095, p.33-36.
• Max Grüntgens and Thomas Kollatz, Two become one. Lifting TEI EpiDoc encoded corpora to RDF. The case of DIO and EPIDAT. Poster presentation at the Linked Pasts IV conference, 12.12.2018, Mainz. (Poster)
• Max Grüntgens and Thomas Kollatz, Repositorien mergen, analysieren und visualisieren. Presentation at the DARIAH Grand Tour, 20.09.2018, Darmstadt. (Slides)
• Torsten Schrade, Semantische Technologien und Fragen des Raums. Presentation at the workshop on 'Digitale Raumdarstellungen. Barocke Kunst im Kontext aktueller Zugriffe der Spatial Humanities' at the Phillips-Universität Marburg, 04.04.2017. (Slides)
• Torsten Schrade, Grundlagen von Linked Open Data (LOD) für die Nachnutzung von Forschungsdaten. Workshop at the conference of the working group on eHumanities of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences, 11.11.2016, Düsseldorf. (Slides)
• Torsten Schrade, CIDOC-CRM Modellierung epigraphischer Fachdaten mit dem XTriples Webservice. Presentation at the DARIAH-DE workshop on 'Research infrastructures for the Humanities and CIDOC-CRM', 25.07.2016, Darmstadt. (Slides)
• Max Grüntgens and Torsten Schrade: Data Repositories in the Humanities and the Semantic Web. Modelling, Linking, Visualising. Conference paper and presentation at the 1st WHiSe Workshop / ESWC 2016, 29.05.2016, Anissaras - Crete, URN urn:nbn:de:0074-1608-8, p. 53-63. (Slides)
• Torsten Schrade, Geisteswissenschaftliche Fachdatenrepositorien im Semantic Web. Modellierung, Vernetzung, Visualisierung. Conference paper and presentation at the 3rd DHd conference in Leipzig, 07.-12.03.2016, ISBN 978-3-941379-05-3, p. 215-218. (Slides)
• Torsten Schrade, Digitale Briefeditionen im Semantic Web. Der XTriples Webservice – Semantische Aussagen aus XML. Presentation at the conference of the working group on eHumanities of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences, Heidelberg, 15.09.2015. (Slides)

EpiDoc and Digital Epigraphy

• Tom Elliott, Gabriel Bodard, Hugh Cayless et al. (2006-2017), EpiDoc: Epigraphic Documents in TEI XML. Online material, available: <http://epidoc.sf.net>
• EpiDoc on facebook
• Julia Flanders; Charlotte Roueché: Gentle Introduction To Mark-Up For Epigraphers
• Bodard G. & Stoyanova S. 2016. Epigraphers and Encoders: Strategies for Teaching and Learning Digital Epigraphy. In: Romanello M. & Bodard G, Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber. London: Ubiquity Press.
• H. Cayless; C.M. Roueché; Tom Elliott; Gabriel Bodard (2009): "Epigraphy in 2017." Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1. http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000030/000030.html

Recent Presentations

• Kollatz, Thomas. 2018a. “Jewish Calendar Dates in Epidat: Research Platform for Jewish Epigraphy.” presented at the Godot workshop: Non-Gregorian Calendar Dates in Digitial Humanities, Heidelberg, November 26. https://kollatzthomas.github.io/godot/.
• ———. 2018b. “Epigraphic Research Data as Source for Onomastics and Genealogy: The Case of ‘Epidat’, the Research Platform for Jewish Epigraphy.” presented at the GENEALOGY AND THE SCIENCES, The David Lopatie Conference Centre, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, December 17. https://kollatzthomas.github.io/genealogy.
• ———. 2018c. “Digitale Approaches to Cemeteries: Preservation and Education.” presented at the All that remains: Education and Conservation of Jewish Funerary Culture, Utrecht.
• ———. 2018d. “Epigraphische Datenbanken zu den Schum-Gedenkstätten: Status Quo und Desiderata.” presented at the Intensivworkshop Informationssysteme, Mainz Coworking Area im Dock 39.

topic related presentations

• Kollatz, Thomas. 2020. “ epidat – research platform for Jewish Epigraphy: Interface, Re-Use and cooperations (2002-today) ” presented at Epigraphy.info Workshop IV, Hamburg.
• ———. 2019a. “epidat – Forschungsplattform zur jüdischen Grabsteinepigraphik: Edition, Kommentierung, Annotation, Visualisierung und Analyse jüdischer Grabmale aus neun Jahrhundert.” presented at the Vortragsreihe des IZED im Sommersemester 2018: Annotation Kommentar Erläuterung, Wuppertal
• ———. 2019b. “Evolution of a DH-Project: Turns and Trends of a Digital Epigraphic Endeavour.” presented at the Technological Tools for Manuscript Research, Ramat Gan, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, February 13. https://kollatzthomas.github.io/Bar_Ilan_paper.
• Kollatz, Thomas, and Max Grüntgens. 2018. “Annotieren, analysieren, visualisieren. Repositorien mergen, analysieren und visualisieren.” presented at the DARIAH-DE Grand Tour, Darmstadt.
• ———. 2018. “Two Become One: Lifting TEI EpiDoc Encoded Corpora to RDF – The Case of DIO and EPIDAT.” Poster presented at the Linked Pasts IV: Views From Inside The LOD-cloud, Mainz, December 12. https://digicademy.github.io/Two_become_one/.
• Andreas Kuczera, Thomas Kollatz und Torsten Schrade: Methods and Tools for visualising Digital Humanities data sets, DHd 2016 Leipzig

Software used for presentation

• Impress.js (presentation)
• Magnific Popup (Lightbox)
• Unite Gallery (photo gallery)