Enhancement of the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis (HGV)
through bibliographic references to existing translations
and the translation of the Greek texts contained in BGU I-IV

1. Aim

The aim of the project is to provide the users of HGV (Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens) with a guide to existing translations of the Greek papyrus documents from ancient Egypt as well as translating numerous documents into English and German for the first time. The new translations will be presented electronically and bibliographic references to other translations will be integrated into HGV. The main target group consists of scholars and students of Classical Studies, whose ability in Ancient Greek (or rather the specific technical terminology of the papyri) is such that when they are faced with a text on papyrus, they are either unable to read it in the original language independently or the effort expended is scarcely justifiable within the scope of their circumstances. Furthermore any interested lay people, who have acquainted themselves with this type of text on the basis of the relatively numerous collections of representative texts in translation, should have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge.

2. Procedure

a. Integration of existing translations into HGV

The translation of the text into a modern language became standard practice in the presentation of editions of papyrus documents at an early stage in the discipline of Papyrology. In the very early years of the discipline, however, many originals were published in very austere editions, which simply consisted of the transcription of the text and dispensed with any of the comforts offered to the user, such as a description of the papyrus, commentary, translation and photographic reproduction of the original. Reference can be made in this respect to BGU I-IV, but there are also other older edition volumes, in which translations are either totally absent or only seldom included, such as P. Lond. I-III, P. Grenf. I-II or the PSI volumes. A number of these texts were in fact translated in the early days of Papyrology and were published in special collections, source books or in scholarly treatises. It is, however, not always particularly easy to trace such translations, because they have not always been included in bibliographies and are seldom mentioned in many of the standard reference books.

One of the first tasks of the project is to add bibliographic references to existing translations into the established scholarly languages of the field (English, French, German and Italian) and thus enhance HGV. We hope at a later stage to make those translations, which are no longer affected by copyright, available in digital form through HGV.

b. Translation of the documents in BGU I-IV

A particularly blatant example of the early form of publication described above are the first four volumes of the Ägyptische Urkunden aus den königlichen Museen zu Berlin. Griechische Urkunden (BGU) which were published in the years 1895-1912. To save costs the bare Greek texts were lithographed from the handwritten transcriptions. Further details and commentaries were absent in the first two volumes and kept to a very bare minimum in the latter two volumes. Translations were not included. The reception and discussion of these sources are particularly difficult for the users of today, who have not had decent experience in working with papyri. Despite their somewhat deterent presentation these 1209 texts are of such eminent importance that the great American Papyrologist, Herbert C. Youtie, once called them the "backbone of modern papyrology".

The major task of the project - and it is by far the most time consuming part - is to prepare for and produce translations of these papyri into English and German which will be made available through HGV. The first step is to sort the papyri into groups of similar types, in order to make the translation more efficient not only in terms of time but also in terms of consistency. The next step is to produce a text, which should be as up-to-date as possible. The corrections which are to be found in the Berichtigungsliste (BL) are systematically incorporated. In the case of the texts in BGU I-IV we are in the fortunate position to be able to profit greatly from the work that has already been done on these texts by the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (DDBDP), because many corrections are already present in the texts made available by DDBDP online. Further corrections and suggestions for the improvement of these texts have been added. These "modern" Greek (and Latin) texts will not be included online. We would, however, be very happy to make the results of our work available on request to any interested scholars or institutions. It is these texts which form the basis for our translations. The last stage of the process is to make these translations available on the web through HGV.

Judging from the experience of the first few months, the work on the project gives rise to a number of corrections to the texts being worked upon. The very act of translation often forces one to search for a satisfactory form for the text, where without translation the problem involved may have been so small as to be relatively insigificant. The corrections we make in this respect range from those which were simply missed by the BL or not included because it was judged that the effort involved for the gain achieved did not stand in a justifiable relation to one another, to the preference for older readings as well as completely new readings or suggestions for the understanding of the text. These corrections are often of the minor variety, but there are also corrections of distinctly more significance as well as certain ones which lead to a new edition of a given text. These results will be published at regular intervals in the normal manner as printed articles.

Alongside the translation itself comments of a limited nature on various terms used in the translation will be required. Of central importance are the explanations of technical terms or of official titles, which will be translated if possible, but often enough will have to be translitterated and explained, because it is not possible to translate without misleading. Keywords will be linked to existent databases where possible (place names, for example, will be linked to the database of the Fayum Villages Project in Leuven). Sometimes it will be necessary not only to translate certain difficult passages of text, but also make comments on them in order to enhance the understanding of the text by explaining what their purpose is.

3. Project details

The project, which is funded by the German Research council (Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) started in July 2005 and is due to finish in June 2007. The work is being carried out by two project team members Dr. James M. S. Cowey and Daniel Kah, as well as a student assistant - presently Alexander Puk.

4. Co-operation with external international institutions

Since early in the year 2005 close co-operation has taken place between Duke (DDBDP) and Heidelberg (HGV). One to one matching of the records of each other's databases is the aim. This will in due course facilitate immensely the coordination of links between the two databases and with other databases. A very similar undertaking is the cooperation between the various papyrological databases in the University of Leuven (LDAB - Leuven Database of Ancient Books, Prosopographia Ptolemaica, Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Graeco-Roman Egypt). There each of the papyri is allotted a random number. The mapping of the texts in Leuven to those in Heidelberg (HGV) has been completed. These unique random numbers (tex_id = text identification number) should greatly facilitate the establishment of links between the databases of Duke (DDBDP), Heidelberg (HGV), Leuven and APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System), which is focussed on the holdings of the various worldwide papyrological collections and making them available online by producing digital images of the papyri as well as metadata on them.