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Collaborative Annotation and Computational Analysis of Hieratic

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Document Analysis and Recognition – ICDAR 2023 Workshops (ICDAR 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14193))

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Abstract

We introduce a new open-source web application for the collaborative annotation and study of hieratic texts, in the form of facsimiles and/or photographs. Functionality includes the automatic classification of occurrences of hieratic signs in Unicode, aided by image processing and optical character recognition techniques. Relying on various forms of dimensionality reduction, the tool also allows visualization of differences in sign shapes between texts, periods, genres, and geographical areas. This is motivated by recent work that demonstrated the value of dimensionality reduction for such purposes as identifying scribal hands. The interactive user interface can also be used for teaching students to read hieratic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.demotischdemotisch.de/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.digipal.eu/.

  3. 3.

    https://www.hebrewpalaeography.com/.

  4. 4.

    https://lme.tf.fau.de/competitions/2023-competition-on-detection-and-recognition-of-greek-letters-on-papyri/.

  5. 5.

    https://aku-pal.uni-mainz.de/.

  6. 6.

    From , sš (n) jswt, ‘writings of the ancient ancestors’.

  7. 7.

    Unicode 15, introduced in September 2022, brings the total number of control characters for Ancient Egyptian to 17, in combination with a number of modifying and other special characters [5].

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/nederhof/hierojax.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/nederhof/isut.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Julius Tabin

  2. School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9SX, UK

    Mark-Jan Nederhof

  3. Department of History and Cultural Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Christian Casey

Authors
  1. Julius Tabin
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  2. Mark-Jan Nederhof
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  3. Christian Casey
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Correspondence to Mark-Jan Nederhof .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France

    Mickael Coustaty

  2. Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

    Alicia Fornés

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Tabin, J., Nederhof, MJ., Casey, C. (2023). Collaborative Annotation and Computational Analysis of Hieratic. In: Coustaty, M., Fornés, A. (eds) Document Analysis and Recognition – ICDAR 2023 Workshops. ICDAR 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14193. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41498-5_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41498-5_19

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