Royal Holloway, Department of History

The Porphyrogenitus Project (Greek Palæography)

Introduction

The Porphyrogenitus Project involves the compilation of a Lexicon of Abbreviations & Ligatures in Greek Minuscule Hands (8th century to ca. 1600). Greek Palæography has never had its Cappelli (Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane), making it difficult and often impossible for classicists and mediævalists to have access to the content of manuscripts. The aim of this project is to make good this deficiency by incorporating as full a number of abbreviations and ligatures as possible, so that it becomes a useful aid to students and scholars.

The material comes from manuscripts housed in major libraries in Europe and the United States, and covers a variety of subjects from literature, music and law to mathematics, physics, alchemy, astronomy/astrology, and medicine among others, as well as tachygraphy, cryptography and abbreviations and ligatures in early printed books.

The abbreviations and ligatures have been reproduced directly from facsimiles of manuscripts. They were scanned on a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIC, edited, and converted to outline Postscript form. They were then incorporated as graphic elements into an otherwise TeX document on a Viglen IV/33 running Eberhard Mattes' emTeX, converted to Postscript using ArborText's DVILASER/PS, and finally printed on Royal Holloway College, Department of History's HP Postscript printer.

The material will be displayed in four columns, and will follow a strict alphabetical order, based on the first column which will contain the reproduction of the abbreviated word; the second column will give the transcription of the letters contained in the abbreviated word; the third will contain the complete word, while the fourth column will give the manuscript date or provenance in the case of rare or unique abbreviations.

The Project, begun in May 1992, is now well advanced. The initial stage became possible thanks to the generosity of the Department of History of Royal Holloway College, which provided us with the necessary equipment to proceed with the research and computerized compilation of the Lexicon. The success of the Porphyrogenitus project lies in the fact that it is a work born out of co-operation, each of the participants contributing their own speciality and enthusiasm. This co-operation not only created a spirit of fellowship, but opened new ways that might not have been envisaged before by each one of us separately. Dr P.E. Easterling, Regius Professor at Cambridge University, is preparing the Introduction; Miss J. Chrysostomides and Mr Charalambos Dendrinos deal with the research; Mr John Chrysostomides deals with computer applications; Mr Philip Taylor of Royal Holloway Computer Centre, devised the Computer program which enabled us to put into practice this project we have contemplated for some time, and advises us on varied technical matters such as TeX programming, computer networking and preparation of printed and electronic documents.

A Leverhulme Grant towards its completion was awarded for the year 1995--96. So far approximately 2,600 abbreviations and ligatures have been collected, of which about 1,400 have been reproduced. The results will be published as a Handbook similar to Cappelli, Dizionario. We are presently investigating the possibilities of producing a CD-ROM. We should be grateful to scholars for contributions that might enable us to achieve our aim, and to enable us to revise the list periodically with additional material.

All correspondence should be addressed to J. Chrysostomides, Royal Holloway, University of London, Department of History, Egham, Egham Hill, Surrey, United Kingdom TW20 0EX. Tel: +44 1784 443748; Fax: +44 1784 433032.