Bernabé Pajares, Alberto and Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal. Instructions for the netherworld: the Orphic gold tablets. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, v. 162. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008. xii, 379 p. $188.00. ISBN 9789004163713.

Kruschwitz, Peter (ed.). Die metrische Inschriften der roemischen Republik. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007. x, 397 p. $145.00. ISBN 9783110184839.

*Petrovic, Andrej. Kommentar zu den simonideischen Versinschriften. Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum, 282. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007. xv, 345 p. $134.00. ISBN 9789004151536.

Tsagalis, Christos C. Inscribing sorrow: fourth-century Attic funerary epigrams. Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes v. 1. Berlin; New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2008. xiv, 368 p. $118.00. ISBN 9783110201321.

6 June (NG16): Elaine Matthews and Sebastian Rahtz (Oxford), The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names and classical web services

13 June (NG16) Brent Seales (University of Kentucky), EDUCE: Non-invasive scanning for classical materials

20 June (STB3) Dot Porter (University of Kentucky), The Son of Suda On Line: a next generation collaborative editing tool

18 July (STB3) Ryan Bauman (University of Kentucky), Towards the Digital Squeeze: 3-D imaging of inscriptions and curse tablets

25 July (NG16) Charlotte Tupman (KCL), Markup of the epigraphy and archaeology of Roman Libya

8 Aug (NG16) Charlotte Roueché (KCL), From Stone to Byte

BMCR 2008.04.36: Review of: Sergio Daris, Dizionario dei nomi geografici e topografici dell’ Egitto greco-romano. Supplemento 4 (2002-2005). Biblioteca degli “Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia” - 5. Pisa-Roma: Fabrizio Serra, 2007. Pp. 147. ISBN 978-88-6227-004-5. EUR 165.00 (pb).
[The reviewer, J.A. Straus, makes several useful suggestions and bibliographic additions.]

BMCR 2008.04.32: Review of: G. Cruz Andreotti, P. Le Roux, P. Moret, La invención de una geografía de la Península Ibérica. I. La época republicana. (Actas del Coloquio Internacional celebrado en la Casa de Velázquez de Madrid entre el 3 y el 4 de marzo de 2005). Málaga-Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación de Málaga (CEDMA)-Casa de Velázquez, 2006. Pp. 250. ISBN 84-95555-91-3. ISBN 84-7785-744-X. €13.00.
And: G. Cruz Andreotti, P. Le Roux, P. Moret, La invención de una geografía de la Península Ibérica. II. La época imperial. (Actas del Coloquio Internacional celebrado en la Casa de Velázquez de Madrid entre el 3 y el 4 de abril de 2006). Málaga-Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación de Málaga (CEDMA)-Casa de Velázquez, 2006. Pp. 377. ISBN 978-84-7785-122-6. ISBN 978-84-96820-06-7. €18.00.
[Volume 2 includes a paper by Joaquín Gómez-Pantoja, “Una visión ‘epigráfica’ de la geografía de Hispania central,” (no pp. refs.).]

BMCR 2008.04.20: Review of: Sinclair Bell, Glenys Davies, Games and Festivals in Classical Antiquity. Proceedings of the Conference held in Edinburgh 10-12 July 2000. BAR International Series, 1220. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004. Pp. vi, 153; figs. 37, tables 7. ISBN 1-84171-580-8. $27.95 (pb).
[Some of the contributions appear to make use of epigraphical sources, e.g. Geoffrey Sumi, “Civic Self-Representation in the Hellenistic World: The Festival of Artemis Leukophryene,” 79-92.]

Starting in mid to late May, about every two weeks throughout the summer Iversen and Laing will upload a preliminary text of an unpublished Greek or Latin inscription along with a photo. They will then invite comments and suggestions for restorations, context, date, etc. The ideas that result from this virtual seminar will then be incorporated into the final print article for Hesperia, with proper attribution to those who proposed any particular idea or reading. Elliott and Bodard will also work up an EpiDoc version of the resulting texts.

The idea behind the seminar is to promote a new model of collaboration and publication of epigraphical texts with the following benefits: a preliminary text will be made available very quickly; scholars or those interested will be able to “attend” the seminar at their leisure from anywhere in the world with an internet connection; students will see how epigraphers work and it may raise more interest in the discipline; the project will introduce epigraphers to the advantages of EpiDoc; there should be more interest in the final print version, which will include comments on this experiment.

Those who monitor CurEp via a feed reader will receive automatic notification whenever a new inscription is posted. The editors of CurEp will also post a corresponding notice to the Inscriptiones-l discussion list.

Several of the papers in this interdisciplinary two-day seminar appear to be of interest for epigraphers.
Here is the full programme:

‘Sikelia: Multilingualism and cultural interaction in ancient Sicily’

There is evidence for a rich diversity of languages spoken in Sicily in the first millennium BC. The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together historians, archaeologists and linguists to examine issues of language and identity, multilingualism and language shift, colonization and cultural interaction in Sicily from the advent of writing to the first
century BC.

The seminar will be held in Room G21, The Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, England.
Contact: Olga Tribulato, ormt2@cam.ac.uk

Saturday 31st May

Languages and peoples of Sicily 1: Sicel and Elymian (9.30-10.50)
Paolo Poccetti (Rome “Tor Vergata”) Evidence for and Problems of the Sicel Language: A Survey
Simona Marchesini (Verona) Elymians between Greeks and Italians

Languages and peoples of Sicily 2: Punic (11.15 - 12.30)
Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo (Rome “La Sapienza”) Punic in Sicily
Irad Malkin (Jerusalem) Translating Gods and Heroes: Greeks and Phoenicians in Sicily

Greek in Sicily 1 (2.15-3.30)
Susana Mimbrera (Madrid/Cambridge) Sicilian Greek
Giovanna Rocca (Milan “IULM”) Cults and Rites from Greece to Sicily (new inscriptions from Selinus)

Greek in Sicily 2 (4.00 - 5.15)
Albio Cesare Cassio (Rome “La Sapienza”) Intimations of Koine in Epicharmus’ Sicilian Doric
Andreas Willi (Oxford) “We talk Peloponnesian” - Tradition and Linguistic Identity in Postclassical Sicilian Literature

Sunday 1st June

Historical and archaeological background: new perspectives (9.30-10.50)
Matthew Fitzjohn (Liverpool) Building Identities in Sikelia
Franco De Angelis (British Columbia) The Language of Conquest and the Dialect of Complexity: Rethinking Land and Labour in Early Greek Sicily

Bilingualism and language contact (11.15-12.30)
Gerhard Meiser (Halle) Traces of language contact in Sicilian onomastics
Olga Tribulato (Cambridge) Siculi bilingues? A glimpse into Early Roman Sicily

Monday, April 28: Angelos Chaniotis, “Automoloi in Hellenistic Crete: A (not that) new (but still unpublished) inscription from Chersonesos”

Monday, May 5: Peter Thonemann, ‘’A New Ptolemaic Inscription from Cyprus”

Monday, May 12: Getzel Cohen, “The Expression ‘Polis Hellenis’ ” [not strictly an epigraphic talk, but conveniently placed here]

A programme for the second half of term will be circulated in due course, and will contain at least one talk on Latin epigraphy, in accord with last term’s democratic decision to drop ‘Greek’ from the name of the workshop.

While this article is light-hearted and only skims the surface of issues such as space saving, the ability of a fluent community to understand abbreviated jargon, and the potential ambiguity of messages sent in this way, there may be a serious point in all this. Is there value in the comparison with other cultures of condensed writing (including but not restricted to text messaging and 1337-speak) as a tool in the teaching and the study of epigraphic and palaeographic abbreviation?

Why do ancient scribes abbreviate? Is there any evidence that abbreviation ever led to ambiguity and misunderstanding of important documents? Is epigraphic abbreviation a completely different phenomenon from digital shorthand, or is there something to be learned from comparisons of this kind–or contrasts?

(Thanks to JLavagnino for pointing out this web log.)

A second copy of the letter of Licinius on military privileges, previously known from the Brigetio Tablet (dated 10 June 311), has been identified on a bronze tablet in a Bulgarian private collection.

He provides a link to the Volterra Projet’s page with transcription and further details (including information about a forthcoming full publication from Luca Fezzi):

• Simon J. Corcoran, “The New Copy of the Licinius Letter,” Projet Volterra, 24 April 2008.

You can learn more about EpiDoc from the EpiDoc home page and the Introduction for Epigraphers; you wil find a recent and user-friendly article on the subject in the Digital Medievalist. (If you want to go further, you can learn about XML and about the principles of the TEI: Text Encoding Initiative.) The Summer School will not expect any technical expertise, and training in basic XML will be provided.
Attendees (who should be familiar with Greek/Latin and the Leiden Conventions) will need to bring a laptop on which has been installed the Oxygen XML editor (available at a reduced academic price, or for a free 30-day demo).

The EpiDoc Summer School is free to participants; we can try to help you find cheap (student) accommodation in London. If any students participating would like to stay on afterwards and acquire some hands-on experience marking up some texts for the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica project, they would be most welcome!

All interested please contact both charlotte.roueche@kcl.ac.uk and gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk as soon as possible. Please pass on this message to anyone who you think might benefit.