Ortal-Paz Saar & Berit Janssen - PEACE: The Portal on Jewish Funerary Culture
Channel: Digital Classicist London Seminars
Date: 2022-03-18

Digital Classicist London Seminar (Full programme: https://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2021.html)
Friday March 18, 2022, 17:00 (UK time/UTC)

The word “Peace”—Shalom—is frequently found on funerary inscriptions marking the last resting place of Jewish people in antiquity. Often, it is the only word inscribed in Hebrew letters, inserted into an otherwise Greek or Latin epitaph. Our paper will present a new digital project titled PEACE, which stands for Portal of Epigraphy, Archaeology, Conservation and Education on Jewish Funerary Culture (https://peace.sites.uu.nl/). The portal is currently found in its pilot stage, and focuses on epigraphic data. It encompasses four epigraphical databases with different geographical scopes (primarily ancient Palestine, Italy, Germany, and Spain), ranging from the 5th century BCE to the 20th century, comprising inscriptions painted on catacomb walls as well as moulded on modern concrete. Bridging over these differences is the fact that all the partner databases use EpiDoc to encode their inscriptions. The PEACE portal allows to search all databases simultaneously, and subsequently detect patterns of historical importance within Jewish funerary culture.

PEACE employs the Elasticsearch engine for searching through the different databases and visualizing the results. Search results can also be filtered, for instance according to sex of the persons mentioned on the inscription, their age, location, and language. This allows for a richer analysis of the data. The portal pilot is not without its challenges, which range from a lack of uniformity in the data to the languages employed by the inscriptions. The latter include Hebrew and Aramaic (RTL languages with no vocalization), Greek and Latin, alongside modern European languages, and some inscriptions comprise more than one language, or transliterations of one language into the alphabet of another.

Despite the challenges, the epigraphy pilot of the PEACE portal shows interesting results. Queries of its 40,000 inscriptions outline fascinating patterns across time and space, from onomastic preferences to the use of specific dating formats. As more databases join the portal, such patterns will become increasingly accurate and a better picture of Jewish funerary culture and its relation with non-Jewish traditions will emerge.