Coptic Non-literary Texts from the Theban Region

Basic data for this project

Description

In this project, which has been funded by the DFG since 2008, Coptic documentary texts from the area of Upper Egypt around Luxor and Karnak on the eastern side of the Nile and from the hilly terrain on the western side are being edited and interpreted. The texts, surviving on ostraca (broken pieces of pottery and limestone), offer a lively impression of everyday life in the secular world, but above all in the monastic life. At present, more than 2500 texts are being processed from Deir el-Bachit, the ruins of a monastery at the northernmost point of Western Thebes, which might have been the largest monastic center in this area, according to the results of excavations that have been underway since 2001 (Egyptological Institut of the University of Munich, and the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo). For the publication, the database "Koptische Ostraka online (Koptoo)" has been developed in cooperation with the University of Munich's digital humanities group. This database provides, in addition to digital publication of the texts, detailed grammatical and semantic analyses, as well as a wide variety of search possibilities. The database will be made publicly accessible in 2016.