The Construction of a Digital Image Database of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Akkadian Cuneiform

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02503
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo (2016-2017); University of Tsukuba (2015)
• Principal Investigator: Nagai Masakatsu 東京大学, 附属図書館, 特任研究員 (70578369)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 和氣 愛仁 筑波大学, 人文社会系, 准教授 (70361293) ; 高橋 洋成 筑波大学, 人文社会系, 研究員 (90647702)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 記述言語学 / 対訳データベース / 画像データベース / オープンデータ / 聖刻文字 / ヒエログリフ / 楔形文字 / アッカド語

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we focused on a “Peace Treaty Inscription” written in both ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Akkadian cuneiform script (dating from the era of Ramesses II: around 1269 BCE), providing (1) image data of the inscription in both languages; (2) implementation of linguistic descriptions of the grammar in both languages; and (3) integration of the image data from both languages and the results of the linguistic descriptions in order to create a bilingual-text database. As a result, we were able to create the first sign trace in the world, especially for the Egyptian version of the inscription, which contributed to the development of an “open data” platform. In addition, by analyzing the entire inscription, a deeper understanding of the grammars of both languages was gained than before.

Free Research Field

言語学