Building an ecosystem of digital resources on the written heritage of Ancient Arabia

Irene Rossi

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2025, 36.1, 469-480; doi: 10.19282/ac.36.1.2025.26

Abstract

The Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI, https://dasi. cnr.it/) currently provides open access to the digital editions of nearly 8800 ancient epigraphic texts from the Arabian Peninsula. After presenting an outline of DASI ecosystem through its 25-year history, this paper focuses on the recent enrichment of its data model, carried out within a pilot project of the E-RIHS infrastructure under the H2IOSC programme. The aim was to optimise DASI as an up-to-date tool for the digital critical edition of a broad spectrum of epigraphic sources from ancient Arabia, including graffiti, instrumenta inscripta, coins, and inscribed sticks, alongside ‘monumental’ inscriptions. Most of the interventions targeted the description of the visual aspect of writing and related contextual information, enhancing the digital representation of the material dimension of written heritage, which is often overlooked in philological studies. Ongoing work is targeting the FAIRification of DASI data, which has so far resulted in the sharing of an extensive bibliography of 1800 records through Zotero.

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