The DDBDP allows quick searching of all these texts for words, bits of words, combinations of words, short phrases and strings of characters. It supports a variety of scholarly work on papyrus documents and is therefore an essential tool for more than one type of research. The DDBDP provides scholars with parallels to a particular text they are studying or with all the attestations of a particular subject or word they are interested in or with a set of possible readings for a difficult passage in an unpublished text they are in the process of deciphering. The limit of what can be done with the DDBDP is determined by the versatility of its users and the flexibility of the search programs.
A companion to the DDBDP is the Checklist of Editions of Greek and Latin Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets, a bibliographical guide to editions of documentary texts arranged according to the abbreviations used in the DDBDP. Most papyrologists are now using these abbreviations. The Checklist only lists editions of papyri, ostraca and tablets in Greek or Latin. Similar tools for Demotic, Coptic and Greek and Latin literary texts exist, but these are not geared to electronic databases yet. No such tool exists for Greek and Latin subliterary or Arabic texts. The Greek inscriptions from Greco-Roman Egypt entered at Cornell will be available on the same CD ROM as the DDBDP. Some literary papyri are included in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.
The DDBDP provides the texts with a sophicticated critical apparatus. This comes in the form of special brace pairs. A critical apparatus to a papyrus text normally records corrections of spelling as well as corrections made by the scribe. In the DDBDP these are entered with {4...}4 and {5...}5 respectively. Inside brace pair {4...}4 stands the word as actually written by the scribe, in front of it stands the standardized form. Inside brace pair {5...}5 stands the word as originally written by the scribe before correcting it, in front of it stands the corrected form. The brace pairs {6...}6 and {7...}7 are used for corrections of editorial errors. Inside brace pair {6...}6 stands the reading rejected by the editors themselves in the addenda or in another volume of the same series, in front of it stands the new reading. Inside brace pair {7...}7 stands the reading rejected in the Berichtigungsliste der griechischen Papyrusurkunden aus Ägypten or another source indicated in the header to the text, in front of it stands the new reading. So far 15,000 papyri published until 1921 have been critically revised.
Although the DDBDP will eventually contain a sophisticated critical apparatus for most texts, it is by no means finished yet. Also most spelling variants have been corrected, but exceptions have been made for personal and geographical names as well as month names. For such names it is unavoidable to use all possible spellings in searching. Some tricky spelling variants are not corrected. The adjective *anagkaios* also occurs as *anankaios* and in all such cases of non-assimilation both forms will have to be searched. The user should beware of the information on provenience contained in the lemma to each text. This information has been copied from the editions or retrieved from the texts themselves. In some cases it will say "Ars nome," in others "Karanis" for a text found or written at Karanis in the Fayyum. Removing insonsitencies will obviously take some time.
The DDBDP has introduced numerous silent "corrections" to the texts as they are presented in the editions. An effort has been made to make the texts more accessible by resolving abbreviations left unresolved by editors, by adding accents and punctuation as well as a number of other helps (corrections of spelling, case endings etc.), which often renders the version in the DDBDP the most useful version of a text in existence. A large number of older editions present mere diplomatic transcripts (e.g. P.Lond.).
The user of papyrus editions needs the following ten helps: (1) sequential numbering of the texts (with Arabic numerals), (2) titles indicating the character of each text (and no more), (3) clear headers with the provenience of the text, (4) clear headers with the date of the text, (5) full resolution of symbols and abbreviations, (6) accents, punctuation and other diacritics, (7) a critical apparatus, (8) translations (into a congress language), (9) indices of Greek and Latin words, and (10) a subject index. Many older editions provide only a few of these helps. The DDBDP effectively solves the absence of (1), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7) and (9). The DDBDP allows the convenient browsing of material arranged idiosyncratically in some of the older editions, because the order is no longer important in the electronic medium. Because the DDBDP resolves symbols and abbreviations and adds diacritics it allows the context of what one finds in a search to be read without distraction. The absence of (2), (8) and (10) will have to be solved in the context of the Advanced Papyrological Information System.
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Last updated by Peter van Minnen on 11/15/96