D-scribes Project and Beyond: Building a Virtual Research Environment for the Digital Palaeography of Ancient Greek and Coptic Papyri

Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello

Abstract: Thanks to the dryness of the climate, texts written on papyrus leaves were preserved in Egypt and tens of thousands have reached us by chance today. The papyri are therefore a key source for philologists and ancient historians who have to face the challenge of handling a scattered body of sources. The digital turn has started to improve the situation. Yet, on the specific topic of palaeography, proper tools that adopt the advantages from the recent advances in computational analysis are still lacking. The D-scribes project aims to fill this gap by making a first step toward a Virtual Research Environment that can be integrated into existing resources and that is devoted to the digital palaeography of Greek and Coptic papyri.