Abstract

This poster presents a new project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the Excellence Cluster ROOTS (Kiel University). It will publish, in print and digitally, the first comprehensive collection of inscriptions in the language(s) traditionally labelled “Thracian.”

Thrace is defined as the region bounded by the lower Danube (north), the Black Sea and the Bosphorus (east), the Thracian Sea (south), and the Struma or Nestos rivers (west). “Thracian” here covers language(s) attested in heterogeneous evidence: (a) ca. 400 inscriptions from Thrace in one or more languages other than Greek and Latin (Guijarro Ruano 2019); (b) glosses in ancient Greek authors, mainly lexicographers, that explicitly label a term “Thracian” (Velkova 1986); and (c), more cautiously, onomastic data from Thrace and northern Anatolia (Dana 2014).

While glosses and onomastic material have been widely published, the inscriptions still lack a comprehensive edition, and many have not yet appeared with an adequate photographic apparatus. The project aims to fill this gap by offering an Open Access tool aligned with current scholarly standards for studying this material and the Thracian world more broadly.

The poster will therefore address several key issues related to the compilation of the corpus and outline its overall structure, with particular attention to the challenges involved in developing its digital version. These include the implementation of the EpiDoc edition, the definition of the relevant metadata, strategies for cross-referencing existing publications and editions, and the vocabulary to be adopted across the different sections of the digital edition.

References Dana Dan, 2014. Onomasticon Thracicum. Répertoire des noms indigènes de Thrace, Macédoine orientale, Mésies, Dacie et Bithynie (Mélétèmata 70). Athens: de Boccard. Guijarro Ruano, Paloma, 2019. ‘The Northern Coast of the Aegean Sea: A Linguistic Overview’, in: Linguarum Varietas 8, 63–83. Velkova, Zivka, 1986. The Thracian Glosses: Contribution to the Study of the Thracian Vocabulary. Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert.

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