We are pleased to announce release 5.0.0 of Coptic Scriptorium! Our data now includes over 1,288,229 tokens of searchable, linguistically analyzed Coptic data from dozens of ancient Coptic works.

This release also marks the introduction of Bohairic Coptic data to our corpus holdings: the repository now contains Bohairic Bible materials, covering Mark 1-16 and 1 Cor. 1-16, with manually reviewed segmentation for the entire corpus, and manual tagging and treebanking for chapters 1-5 in each book. Segmentation and tagging were reviewed in collaboration with Nicholas Wagner, and treebanking was done in collaboration with Nina Speranskaja. As a result of this work, we are in the process of compiling new NLP tools and guidelines specifically for Bohairic.

In addition, the release includes corrections and updates to existing corpora as well as the addition of several new Sahidic works and documents:

A. Sections of five works by Shenoute of Atripe:

• My Heart is Crushed
• So Listen
• Who But God is the Witness
• This Great House
• If Everyone Errs

B. New documents were added to existing works:

• Acephalous Work 22
• Apophthegmata Patrum

C. Newly added translation spans for Pistis Sophia, aligned by Randy Komforty

These join the newly treebanked and tagged Bohairic data, which can be found here:

• Bohairic 1 Corinthians
• Bohairic Gospel of Mark

We are very grateful to all of our collaborators and contributors, without whom this project could not function. We welcome Nicholas Wagner to the team and warmly thank Randy Komforty for his work on Pistis Sophia, and Nina Sepranskaja for her treebanking work.

As with all our releases, raw machine readable data for all corpora can be found, including morphological and syntactic analysis, as well as named entity recognition and entity linking (currently only for Sahidic), in this GitHub repository, in a variety of popular formats: https://github.com/CopticScriptorium/corpora

You can also search for complex linguistic annotations in the data using our ANNIS server – please see our tutorial here to get started with some query tips and a helpful cheat sheet: https://copticscriptorium.org/ANNIS_tutorial

We are pleased to announce release 4.5.0 of Coptic Scriptorium! Our data now includes over 1,278,500 tokens of searchable, linguistically analyzed Coptic data from dozens of ancient Coptic works (an increase of over 11,500 tokens from the previous release). 

This release corrects a large number of consistency errors identified in our existing data, and also adds some new documents:

• Revisions to five works of Besa: 
  • On Vigilance 
  • Exhortations
  • To Aphthonia
  • On Lack of Food
  • To Thieving Nuns
• Sections of three works by Shenoute of Atripe:
  • My Heart is Crushed
  • God Who Alone is True
  • I Have Been Considering
• New documents were added to existing works:
  • Acephalous Work 22
  • Apophthegmata Patrum
• Newly treebanked data with syntactic gold standard annotations for 1 Corinthians 7

We are very grateful to all of our collaborators and contributors, without whom this project could not function. We welcome Christine Ayad, Lydia Bremer-McCollum, Adeline Harrington, and Nina Speranskaja.

As with all releases, raw machine readable data for all corpora can be found, including morphological and syntactic analysis, as well as named entity recognition and entity linking, on our GitHub repository, in a variety of popular formats:

https://github.com/copticscriptorium/corpora

You can also search for complex linguistic annotations in the data using our ANNIS server – please see our new tutorial here to get started with some query tips and a helpful cheat sheet:

https://copticscriptorium.org/ANNIS_tutorial

We hope this release will be useful and look forward to the next one as always!

Description: 

The online Coptic Scriptorium Reading Group consists of a series of short term reading units focused on a particular Coptic text or corpus. The group will focus on reading, analyzing, and translating a set of Coptic texts found in the digital corpus of the Coptic Scriptorium project. We will also practice reading out loud. In addition, the reading units will introduce and demonstrate a variety of Coptic focused digital humanities tools. These include especially the Coptic Online Dictionary and tools for linguistic and corpus analysis. Participants will leave with stronger Coptic reading facility, grammar review, and an introduction to a range of open-access digital humanities tools for studying Coptic. 

Audience:

This group is perfect for Coptologists, historians, linguists, heritage learners, and hobbyists alike. All are welcome! The reading group and text/corpus sequence are designed for introductory and lower-intermediate level reading ability (1-2 semesters of instruction or a roughly equivalent amount of self-directed learning). In other words, some previous grammar training and knowledge of the alphabet will be presumed.

Email organizer (lcbm@ou.edu) if you would like to join or if you have questions about your fit for the group! Zoom link will be shared with the email list.

Schedule: 

Meet via Zoom for 1 hour 3x per week. 

Time:  10:00am EST | 9:00am CST | 7:00am PST

           4:00pm CEST | 3:00pm BST | 5:00pm EEST | 11:00pm JST 

Note: Attendance at all sessions within a series is not required. Moreover, the series can be taken sequentially, but it is not assumed or required. Feel free to drop-in as your schedule and interest allow! 

Fall/Winter 2023 Dates: 

  Sequence A:

    October 23rd, 25th, 27th, 30th, 1st, 3rd (6 hours total)

      Reading Material: Apothegmata Patrum Selections

  Sequence B: 

    November 6th, 8th, 10th, 13th, 15th, 17th (6 hours total)

      Reading Material: Ruth Selections

  Sequence C: 

    December 4th, 6th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 18th, 20th (8 hours total)

      Reading Material: Apothegmata Patrum Selections

  2024 Schedule TBD 

Note: Time and weekly meeting frequency of sequence B and C are subject to change based on group feedback. 

Group Organizer: 

Dr. Lydia Bremer-McCollum (she/hers) holds ten+ years of experience reading and translating Coptic. She has taught introductory and intermediate courses at Harvard and Princeton Universities. As part of the NEH funded Coptic Scriptorium project, she aims to create an online Coptic reading community focused on reading and utilizing the rich set of open-access tools. Feel free to contact her with any questions at lcbm@ou.edu