Ancient Near East collections at Yale
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Yale Papyrus CollectionFounded in 1899; includes over 6000 items in Arabic, Greek, Coptic, ancient Egyptian, and other languages. Search the Yale Papyrus Collection Database to view details, including images, of items in the collection.
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Andover Newton Oyxrhynchus Papri Collection, 104-700Call Number: RG 305The collection consists of sixteen Oxyrhynchus Papyri items. The most notable item (Oxy. P. 1230) relates to the New Testament text of Revelations 5,6. Other items include poetical and prose fragments, orders, contracts, receipts, letters, and a prayer.
Websites of Yale projects on the ancient Near East
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Cuneiform Commentaries Project (Yale)Making available to the scholarly community and a more general audience the world’s oldest cohesive group of hermeneutic texts, the commentaries from first millennium B.C.E. Assyria and Babylonia.
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Tell Leilan ProjectProject website for the excavation of Tell Leilan, an ancient Mesopotamian city in the northeast Syrian desert.
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Yale Digital Dura-Europos Archive (YDEA)Harnessing the power of Linked Open Data (LOD) to reassemble and re-contextualize archaeological data from Dura-Europos.
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Yale Egyptological Institute in EgyptDedicated to the study and exploration of the civilizations, languages, and history of the Nile Valley and its desert hinterlands from prehistory to late antiquity.
Online resources for the Ancient Near East
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The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative(open access) The CDLI is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Oxford, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. In addition to various chronographic, bibliographic and philological resources, it aims to house a record for all cuneiform documents in the world.
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eHRAF Archaeology (Yale)eHRAF Archaeology focuses on in-depth descriptive documents of archaeological traditions from around the world. eHRAF is unique in having subject indexing at the paragraph level. This allows detailed and precise searching for concepts not easily found with keywords.
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The Electronic Publications Initiative of the Oriental Institute of the University of ChicagoThe Electronic Publications Initiative (EPI) includes more than 700 free electronic publications of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, including the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), the Demotic Dictionary (CDD) and much more.
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Electronic Tools and Ancient Near East Archives (ETANA)(open access) ETANA is a multi-institutional collaborative project initiated in August 2000, as an electronic publishing project designed to enhance the study of the history and culture of the ancient Near East.
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Keilschriftbibliographie (KeiBi) Online(open access) The International Keilschriftbibliographie (KeiBi) was first published by the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome in the journal Orientalia in 1940 (Orientalia N.S. 9). It became an essential tool for the study, research, and teaching of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. In the KeiBi online Database, all issues already published can be searched simultaneously.
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LaBaSi -- Late Babylonian Signs(open access) LaBaSi is an on-line cuneiform sign list that will elucidate the diachronic development of sign forms and will allow, through cumulative evidence, the identification of standard forms as well as of scribal idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, owing to the possibility of multiple cross-referencing, it will allow for the first time an investigation of the interrelation between the several developmental stages of different signs. In this way it will serve as a dynamic and flexible research tool for all on-going investigations in the field of Late Babylonian studies.
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Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA; Oxford U.)(open access) An AHRC-funded research project that was based at the Khalili Research Centre and was active from October 2013 to June 2017. Note that this website is no longer updated, but all of the project outputs are available at this link, and at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
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Online Egyptological BibliographyIncludes the volumes 1947 to 2001 of the previous Annual Egyptological Bibliography, some 46,000 titles in total. From early 2009, titles will be added as they become available, after review by the editor.
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Papyri.info(open access) Co-display of multiple digital papyrological resources in a scholarly web resource. Includes collections from Yale, Michigan, Berkeley, and other libraries; nearly 35,000 paypri in all, in Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Ancient Egyptian, and other languages.
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Sabaweb (Sabäisches Wörterbuch; Friedrich-Stiller-Universität, Jena)(open access) An online dictionary of Sabaean, an ancient Arabian language. Includes translations and extensive additional material such as older translations, etymological parallels within and outside South Arabia, a catalogue of forms plus a collection of quotations in context complete with German translation. Includes complete lexical material from nearly 4000 different inscriptions, a total of over 140,000 different lexemes.
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Theban Mapping Project (ARCE)(open access) The Theban Mapping Project (TMP) began work in 1979 with the goal of comprehensively mapping the Theban Necropolis, starting with the Valley of the Kings, and making detailed plans of its archaeological remains. It is the first project of its kind to work in Egypt.
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TrismegistosCollection of ancient texts concentrating on late period Egypt and the Nile valley around 800 BC-800 AD allowing for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research searchable by author, language, word, etc. Includes a database of personal names of non-royals appearing in ancient texts, including all languages and scripts and written on any surface.
Review essays
Listed below are articles published in Bibliotheca Orientalis 71/3-4 (2014), a jubilee issue celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East. They are also available in a free pdf download.
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"Les ressources numeriques pour l'egyptologie"By Wouter Claes and Ellen Van Keer (Library of the Musees royaux d'art et d'histoire, Brussels).
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"Electronic resources for Graeco-Roman and Christian Egypt"By Alain Delattre and Paul Heilporn (Universite libre de Bruxelles, Brussels).
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"Ressources assyriologiques sur internet"By Dominique Charpin (College de France).
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"Web resources for Hittitology"By Federico Giusfredi (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich).
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"A 'lean' approach to digital resources for ANE archaeology"By Stefano Anastasio (MiBACT, Florence) and Francesco Saliola (Studio Associato Metra, Florence).
Contact us for help!
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Robin DoughertyLibrarian for Middle East Studies
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Agnete LassenAssociate Curator, Yale Babylonian Collection
Helpful guides prepared by others
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Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (NYU)Includes the Ancient World Digital Library Book Viewer, the Ancient World Online (AWOL), the Ancient World Image Bank, and other useful resources.
Yale Initiative for the Study of Antiquity
and the Premodern World (YISAP)
YISAP is a collaborative forum that brings together one of the largest groups of scholars in the world working on early civilizations. Scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences join with those working in the Yale Divinity School, the Yale Law School, the collections and the university libraries. While admiring and encouraging traditional modes of work and traditional fields of scholarship, we build a new inter- and multi-disciplinary framework that redefines old disciplinary boundaries.
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Archaia website"Archaia" is a collaborative forum that brings together one of the largest groups of scholars in the world working on early civilizations. Scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences join with those working in the Yale Divinity School, the Yale Law School, the collections and the university libraries. While admiring and encouraging traditional modes of work and traditional fields of scholarship, we build a new inter- and multi-disciplinary framework that redefines old disciplinary boundaries.