Ancient Egypt online
BY MEG SULLIVAN
UCLA Today
For the past 30 years, the seven-volume “Lexikon der Ägyptologie” — published in Germany by a group of five main editors and hundreds of contributing scholars — has reigned as the bible of Egyptology.
Over the next decade, however, researchers at UCLA will work on a project of far greater scope: the world’s first comprehensive online encyclopedia dedicated to all aspects of ancient Egypt and its legacy. Hundreds of international scholars are expected to contribute to the constantly evolving, peer-reviewed UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (UEE), which ultimately will contain approximately 4,000 entries and weigh in at 6 million words.
“We want to set the gold standard for reference materials about ancient Egypt, and we hope our standard won’t be carved in stone,” said Egyptologist Willemina Wendrich, associate professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) and UEE editor-in-chief. “We want to be as nimble as our field is fast-paced.”
While many Web sites currently provide information on ancient Egypt, most are hosted by nonprofessional enthusiasts and the quality of the content varies widely. Nearly all are either for tourists, children or some specialized segment of the scholarly or archaeological community that is involved in Egyptology.
In contrast, “the UEE will
be the first reliable and comprehensive scholarly interactive Web resource on ancient Egypt,” said Jacco Dieleman, assistant professor of NELC and co-editor of the encyclopedia with Oxford University Egyptologist John Baines.
The UEE will have two versions: a no-frills Open Version that will be easy to use and available to anybody with Internet access via the UC’s online publication series, eScholarship; and a more sophisticated
Full Version that will target users familiar with such information-retrieval systems as map and
weighted keyword searches. The Full Version will include 3-D computer reconstructions of ancient temples, tombs, settlements and landscapes. The entire reference work will be available in Arabic and English.
The project’s first phase will
be launched in 2008 with a $325,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. If you’d like to learn more about the UEE, log on to www.uee.ucla.edu.
|
