The Porphyrogenitus Project

Introduction

The Porphyrogenitus Project, conceived by the late Miss Julian Chrysostomides and Dr Charalambos Dendrinos, involves the compilation of a Lexicon of Abbreviations & Ligatures in Greek Minuscule Hands (ca. 8th century A.D. to ca. 1600).

Greek Palæography has never had its Cappelli (Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane), making it difficult and often impossible for classicists and mediævalists to have access to the content of manuscripts. The aim of this project is to make good this deficiency by incorporating as full a number of abbreviations and ligatures as possible, so that it becomes a useful aid to students and scholars.

The material comes from manuscripts housed in major libraries in Europe and the United States, and covers a variety of subjects from literature, music, law and notarial documents to mathematics, physics & alchemy, astronomy & astrology, weights & measures, and medicine among others, as well as tachygraphy, cryptography, monocondyliae and abbreviations and ligatures in early printed books.

Funding

The project, begun in May 1992, is now complete and is being prepared for publication. The initial stage became possible thanks to the support of the History Department of Royal Holloway, which provided us with the necessary equipment in order to proceed with the research and computerised compilation of the Lexicon. A Leverhulme Emeritus Readership Award and a British Academy Research Grant towards its progress were granted for the academic years 1995–96 and 1997–1998 respectively. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board between 2001–2004.

Methodology

An important aspect of this dictionary is the method adopted for reproducing the letters and signs. While in the past these were reproduced by hand—either by the scholar himself, or (one assumes) by a craftsman—with varying degrees of success, we are now able to reproduce them directly from facsimiles of Mss. by the use of an electronic scanner. The reproduction of these abbreviations, ligatures and symbols, therefore, not only gives an exact representation, but it also highlights the stylistic idiosyncrasies of scribes and scriptoria.

Each image from the selected material was scanned as a monochrome bitmap image file at 1200 dpi resolution by means of a computer scanner from a facsimile of a Ms. or incunabulum. It was then electronically edited using PaintShop Pro with the help of a lightpen, to isolate the image where it was combined with other unwanted elements, or to reduce or eliminate defects resulting from the quality of the facsimile. The final image was then saved in Adobe Portable Document format (PDF). Information on the image—including its filename, transliteration, transcription, date and reference data—was stored in a separate Microsoft Excel file using TEX markup, with Greek letters following Silvio Levy's (later : Claudio Beccari's) encoding scheme. The edited image was then incorporated in the Lexicon as a graphic element in an otherwise TEX document. Sorting of the data, which was technically the most demanding part of the process, required in some cases a sequential comparison of 19 separate keys and was carried out using two TEX programs followed by a PERL script, based on a suggestion by Professor Pierre MacKay of the University of Washington.

The results will be published as a handbook similar to Cappelli's Dizionario, and plans are in hand to produce a CD-ROM in a fully-searchable and cross-referenced format. The Lexicon will commence with a brief Introduction which discusses the various methods and forms of abbreviations in Greek minuscule hands, with examples. This is followed by a list of conventional abbreviations, ligatures. symbols, incunabula, cryptographic and tachygraphic alphabets, and monokondyliae. The material is displayed in three columns, and is presented, as far as possible, in alphabetical order (based on the transcription or explanation) or (for purely symbolic notation) in increasing order of complexity. Where alphabetical ordering alone is insufficient to ensure a unique collating sequence, the entries are further ordered by affinity, date and provenance. In comparing dates, all material from Thebes has assigned the same nominal date, but because of the uncertainty surrounding the dating of Theban Mss., the date is actually printed as (Thebes).

Research team

The Porphyrogenitus project is a work born out of co-operation, each of the participants contributing their own speciality and enthusiasm. This co-operation not only created a spirit of fellowship, but opened new ways that might not have been envisaged before by any one of us separately. Dr P. E. Easterling, Regius Professor at Cambridge University, is preparing the Introduction; the late Miss Julian Chrysostomides and Dr Charalambos Dendrinos were involved with the research; Mr John Chrysostomides dealt with computer applications; Mr Philip Taylor, formerly of Royal Holloway Computer Centre and now an Honorary Research Associate, devised the Computer program which enabled us to put into practice this project, and advises us on varied technical matters such as TeX programming, computer networking and preparation of printed and electronic documents.

We should be grateful to scholars for contributions that might enable us to achieve our aim, and to enable us to revise the list periodically with additional material.

For further information, please contact Dr Charalambos Dendrinos, Director, The Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 1784 443 086;
Fax: +44 1784 433 032.

Introduction The Porphyrogenitus Project, conceived by the late Miss Julian Chrysostomides and Dr Charalambos Dendrinos, involves the compilation of a Lexicon of Abbreviations & Ligatures in Greek Minuscule Hands (ca. 8th century A.D. to ca. 1600). Greek Palæography has never had its Cappelli (Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane), making it difficult and often impossible for classicists and mediævalists to have access to the content of manuscripts. The aim of this project is to make good this deficiency by incorporating as full a number of abbreviations and ligatures as possible, so that it becomes a useful aid to students and scholars. The material comes from manuscripts housed in major libraries in Europe and the United States, and covers a variety of subjects from literature, music, law and notarial documents to mathematics, physics & alchemy, astronomy & astrology, weights & measures, and medicine among others, as well as tachygraphy, cryptography, monocondyliae and abbreviations and ligatures in early printed books.		Funding The project, begun in May 1992, is now complete and is being prepared for publication. The initial stage became possible thanks to the support of the History Department of Royal Holloway, which provided us with the necessary equipment in order to proceed with the research and computerised compilation of the Lexicon. A Leverhulme Emeritus Readership Award and a British Academy Research Grant towards its progress were granted for the academic years 1995–96 and 1997–1998 respectively. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board between 2001–2004.
Methodology An important aspect of this dictionary is the method adopted for reproducing the letters and signs. While in the past these were reproduced by hand—either by the scholar himself, or (one assumes) by a craftsman—with varying degrees of success, we are now able to reproduce them directly from facsimiles of Mss. by the use of an electronic scanner. The reproduction of these abbreviations, ligatures and symbols, therefore, not only gives an exact representation, but it also highlights the stylistic idiosyncrasies of scribes and scriptoria. Each image from the selected material was scanned as a monochrome bitmap image file at 1200 dpi resolution by means of a computer scanner from a facsimile of a Ms. or incunabulum. It was then electronically edited using PaintShop Pro with the help of a lightpen, to isolate the image where it was combined with other unwanted elements, or to reduce or eliminate defects resulting from the quality of the facsimile. The final image was then saved in Adobe Portable Document format (PDF). Information on the image—including its filename, transliteration, transcription, date and reference data—was stored in a separate Microsoft Excel file using TEX markup, with Greek letters following Silvio Levy's (later : Claudio Beccari's) encoding scheme. The edited image was then incorporated in the Lexicon as a graphic element in an otherwise TEX document. Sorting of the data, which was technically the most demanding part of the process, required in some cases a sequential comparison of 19 separate keys and was carried out using two TEX programs followed by a PERL script, based on a suggestion by Professor Pierre MacKay of the University of Washington. The results will be published as a handbook similar to Cappelli's Dizionario, and plans are in hand to produce a CD-ROM in a fully-searchable and cross-referenced format. The Lexicon will commence with a brief Introduction which discusses the various methods and forms of abbreviations in Greek minuscule hands, with examples. This is followed by a list of conventional abbreviations, ligatures. symbols, incunabula, cryptographic and tachygraphic alphabets, and monokondyliae. The material is displayed in three columns, and is presented, as far as possible, in alphabetical order (based on the transcription or explanation) or (for purely symbolic notation) in increasing order of complexity. Where alphabetical ordering alone is insufficient to ensure a unique collating sequence, the entries are further ordered by affinity, date and provenance. In comparing dates, all material from Thebes has assigned the same nominal date, but because of the uncertainty surrounding the dating of Theban Mss., the date is actually printed as (Thebes).		Research team The Porphyrogenitus project is a work born out of co-operation, each of the participants contributing their own speciality and enthusiasm. This co-operation not only created a spirit of fellowship, but opened new ways that might not have been envisaged before by any one of us separately. Dr P. E. Easterling, Regius Professor at Cambridge University, is preparing the Introduction; the late Miss Julian Chrysostomides and Dr Charalambos Dendrinos were involved with the research; Mr John Chrysostomides dealt with computer applications; Mr Philip Taylor, formerly of Royal Holloway Computer Centre and now an Honorary Research Associate, devised the Computer program which enabled us to put into practice this project, and advises us on varied technical matters such as TeX programming, computer networking and preparation of printed and electronic documents. We should be grateful to scholars for contributions that might enable us to achieve our aim, and to enable us to revise the list periodically with additional material. For further information, please contact Dr Charalambos Dendrinos, Director, The Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1784 443 086; Fax: +44 1784 433 032.

The Porphyrogenitus Project Greek Palæography

Introduction

Funding

Methodology

Research team