News and activities

News and upcoming events

What are we doing now?

Special Exhibitions in 2022 in London and Leipzig

Currently, we are involved in two exhibition projects featuring the Rosetta Stone: The special exhibition at the British Museum London (13 October 2022 to 29 January 2023) and the special exhibition at the Egyptian Museum Leipzig in cooperation with the Museum of the Printing Arts Leipzig (ca. April-October 2022). Both will mark the 200th anniversary of the decipherment by Champollion, and focus on different topic. While the exhibition in Leipzig will feature the history of printing hieroglyphs and early Egyptology, the British Museum aims at telling the story of the provenance and aquisition of the stone, as well as contextualizing it in Ancient Egyptian culture.

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Digital exhibition

We created a digital exhibition about the Rosetta Stone and our projekt. You can check out both here:

English version: https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/rosetta-stone/

German version: https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/stein-von-rosette/

Report: https://www.saw-leipzig.de/de/aktuelles/virtuelle-ausstellung-zur-geschichte-des-steins-von-rosette-vom-kompetenzwerkd

Making of: https://kompetenzwerkd.github.io/infoportal/blog/ddbstudio/

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Thanks to a generous grant from the BMBF and Leipzig University, we are able to finish the final steps in the Treebanking of the Egyptian. Josephine is doing the milestone work of this - since it has never been done before - supported by our colleagues from the Treebannking application "Arethusa" and by Dr. Guiseppe Celano from Leipzig University.

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Miriam added the final touches to the visualization and the links to our finished Alignment in Ugarit iAligner. You can check out the alignment of the Hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek versions with a German and English translation here: http://ugarit.ialigner.com/userProfile.php?userid=74 There are a couple of alignment options to chose from.

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In 2020, we will report on our project in two conference volumes:

in the proceedings of the Papyology Congress from July 2019 in Lecce, edited by Paola Davoli and Mario Capasso:

in the proceedings of the Conference in: Rita Lucarelli / Joshua Aaron Roberson / Stephen Vinson (eds.), Digital Egyptology, Harvard Egyptological Studies (HES), Leiden / Boston: Brill open access.

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In June 2018, we did a fantastic thing: we were allowed to scan the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum London in 3D with the "shape-from-shading" technology, together with Prof. Eleni Bozia and Prof. Angelos Barmpoutis from Florida University. You can watch out lecture at the University of London, Digital Classicsts Seminar, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm_705Zwf9Y.

We will never forget this wonderful trip to London! Thanks to everyone involved in the British Museum, the Institute for Classics and the University of London, Florida University and to everyone else who supported us, including the Research Academy Leipzig, StiL and the Leibniz Mobility program for covering our expenses.

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In November 2019, the Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk reported exclusively on the outcomes of the project. Please see out press section and the main article here: https://www.mdr.de/wissen/stein-von-rosette-digital-leipzig-100.html

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One of the outcomes is a new depth map of the Rosetta Stone. It is published here:
research.dwi.ufl.edu/angelos/download/Depthmap_of_Rosetta_Stone.pdf

Please cite this as: M. Amin, A. Barmpoutis, M. Berti, E. Bozia, J. Hensel, F. Naether, 2018. "Depth map of the Rosetta Stone", rosetta-stone.dh.uni-leipzig.de under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence

Details: Algorithm: Barmpoutis et al. MVA 21 (6), 2010, pp. 989-998
Iterations: 50
Lighting Directions: 4
Resolution: 81.41 µm (12 DPI equivalent)
Digitization Date: June 28, 2018
Composed by merging 8 depth map segments.

Past events

October 2, 2015, Franziska Naether at "Linked Ancient World Data Initiative – Digital Antiquity Coffee House (LAWDI)", ISAW, New York

November 4, 2015 group presentation at "DHEgypt15"; link to the presentation at QUCOSA:

Monica Berti, Giuseppe Celano, Julia Jushaninowa, Franziska Naether, Polina Yordanowa, The Digital Rosetta Stone. In: Berti, Monica; Naether, Franziska (Hrsg.): Altertumswissenschaften in a Digital Age – Egyptology, Papyrology and Beyond. Proceedings of a Conference and Workshop in Leipzig, November 4-6, 2015, Leipzig 2016 (open access), http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-201500

December 12, 2016, Franziska Naether at the Synoikisis Planning Session, Washington/Leipzig

March 7, 2017, Franziska Naether at Stellenbosch University, Department for Ancient Studies, Postgraduates colloquium

October 5, 2017, group presentations at the LaborUNI kick-off (Pecha Kucha) and at the official project inauguration

March 24, 2018, Stellenbosch University, lecturer: Franziska Naether, presentation at the autumn meeting of the Classical Association of South Africa (CASA)

May 18, 2018, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Digital Humanities Day Leipzig, poster presentation and Q&A with Franziska Naether

May 24, 2018, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, lecturers: Miriam Amin, Monica Berti, Josephine Hensel, Franziska Naether, poster and hands-on presentation at "50th Neue Forschungen zur ägyptischen Sprache und Kultur"

June 22, 2018, Ägyptisches Museum Leipzig

lecturers: Miriam Amin, Monica Berti, Josephine Hensel, Franziska Naether

presentation and poster at "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaft" Leipzig

Official annoncement: Digital total? – Lehr-Lern-Projekte der LaborUniversität geben bei der Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften eine Antwort darauf
22. Juni 2018 | 18.00 – 24.00 Uhr | Ägyptisches Museum Georg Steindorff

Zusammen mit dem Ägyptologischen Institut dem Career Service der Universität Leipzig und der KOWA Leipzig gestaltet die LaborUniversität im Rahmen der Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften ein vielschichtiges Abendprogramm zum Thema „Digital total? – Die Universität Leipzig und die Vorbereitung auf die digitale Arbeitswelt von morgen“.
Mitten im Ambiente altägyptischer Kunst und Kultur soll es um die Frage gehen, wie die Universität Leipzig auf die digitale Arbeitswelt vorbereitet. Diskutiert wird dies zu Beginn von Vertreterinnen und Vertretern aus Wissenschaft und Arbeitswelt. Anschließend können die Besucherinnen und Besucher Studiengänge und Lehr-Lern-Projekten der Universität Leipzig kennenlernen, die aufzeigen, wie die digitalen Arbeitsweisen das Lernen und Lehren verändern und neue Kompetenzen erworben werden. Wir freuen uns, dass folgende Lehr-Lern-Projekte dabei sein werden:

June 26, 2018, Rektorat, Universität Leipzig

lecturers: Miriam Amin, Monica Berti, Josephine Hensel, Franziska Naether

final presentation for "LaborUNI"

June 29, 2018, University College London, Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House, Digital Classicist Lecture Series, 16:30 and live on Youtube

lecturers: Miriam Amin, Monica Berti, Josephine Hensel, Franziska Naether

project presentation and thoughts on standardisation and customisation

July 13-15, 2018, Universität Münster, Schloss, Ständige Ägyptologenkonferenz (SÄK)

poster presentation and Q&A with Franziska Naether

October 29-30, 2018, Universität Heidelberg, Herausforderungen bei der Analyse von alten Schriften im digitalen Zeitalter

poster presentation and Q&A with Josephine Hensel

November 6, 2018: "51st Neue Forschungen zur ägyptischen Kultur und Geschichte", Berlin

lecturers: Josephine Hensel and Franziska Naether

More here: http://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/aegyptologie/termine/51_-Neue-Forschungen-2018.html

November 7, 2018: "Tag der Lehre", Universität Leipzig

poster session and Q & A with Josephine Hensel and Franziska Naether

More here: https://www.uni-leipzig.de/studium/tag-der-lehre/tag-der-lehre-2018.html

December 3, 2018: Dies academicus & Digital Humanties Day Leipzig, Universität Leipzig

lecture and poster session with Monica Berti and Franziska Naether

More here: https://www.ub.uni-leipzig.de/aktuelles/aktuelles-einzelansicht/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=1814&cHash=f72196e99632667f5570588be2144b07

January 9, 2019: Seminar on Multilingualism in Old Testament (Prof. Angelika Berlejung), Leipzig

guest lecture by Franziska Naether

March 29-30, 2019, Bloomington, IN: Ancient Egypt and New Technology: The Present and Future of Computer Visualization, Virtual Reality and other Digital Humanities in Egyptology

lecture with Franziska Naether

More here: https://www.indiana.edu/~iucweb/egyptology/call-for-papers/

July 28-August 3, Lecce, Italy: 29th International Congress of Papyrology

poster presentation with Franziska Naether

More: https://www.papycongress2019.org/

Due to overlapping dates, we unfortunately had to cancel our participation at the International Congress of Egyptology (ICE) in early November 2019.