News From the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions

DASI. Updates on digitization

In the last months DASI has digitized nearly 400 Ancient South Arabian inscriptions. The entire ASA epigraphic collection of the Louvre Museum is now accessible on DASI portal, as well as the corpora published in the volumes Problemi storici della regione di al-Ḥadāʾ nel periodo preislamico e nuove iscrizioni (A. Avanzini, 1985) and Les hautes-terres du Nord-Yémen avant l'Islam (Ch. Robin, 1982). After the study and complete online edition of the inscriptions published in the Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum. Pars IV. Inscriptiones Himyariticas et Sabaeas Continens (CIH), DASI is currently committed to the web publication of the inscriptions from other major epigraphic collections. The first groups of digitized texts from the Répertoire d'Epigraphie Sémitique, from the Corpus des inscriptions et antiquités sudarabiques and A. Jamme's Sabaean Inscriptions from Maḥram Bilqîs (Mârib) are being published online. The texts on the wooden sticks studied by P. Stein and the Sabaic inscriptions from Ethiopia will further enrich DASI archive.

DASI. Digital lexicon: a new tool

DASI is developing a new tool which will allow the creation of digital lexica of its linguistic corpora, one of the most urgent needs for a full comprehension of the South Arabian inscriptions. The aim is to produce dictionaries of the non-Sabaic languages, structured by root, through the morphological and semantic analysis of the words in the inscriptions digitized. The launch of the tool, which at first will be accessible only to the working team, is expected for the beginning of 2015.