Throughout history, ancient Greek texts have been crucial to the Western world's self-perception as the birthplace of culture and democracy. Researchers at Aarhus University are now bringing these texts into the digital age. The project, "Computing Antiquity," aims to do more than simply digitize and make these texts accessible—it seeks to make them readable by computers and algorithms.

"Ancient Greek texts have long been available in digital format on the Internet through resources like Perseus or Loeb's digital libraries, and in smaller snippets on platforms such as "Thesaurus Linguae Graecae." Now, we are taking this digitization a step further by making Greek texts readable by computers and algorithms. This process requires different formatting and processing methods than previous approaches," says Jacob Mortensen.

The researchers in this project, which is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, were faced with a need to analyze New Testament texts using computational algorithms. Now that much of the fundamental digital infrastructure has been established, it's time to make this work available to the public rather than keeping it solely for academic use.

Not just texts – also data about the texts
The database provides Greek texts not only in computer-readable formats but also as annotations. These annotations are structured data where elements such as nouns, verbs, and proper nouns are marked within the text, allowing them to be extracted individually. This also applies to parts of speech (POS-tagging). The annotations are available in machine-readable formats (CSV files) and enable entirely new types of analysis, where algorithms can identify linguistic and structural patterns more extensively and rapidly than humans can.

"The database being curated means we have cleaned up the texts, ensured consistency, and added layers of information for algorithms to work with," explains Jacob Mortensen, who has personally curated much of the material. "It's comparable to a museum object that isn't merely displayed but is also preserved and contextualized by a curator."

Freely available to everyone – and under development
Although the database was initially created to meet the needs of New Testament scholars, it has now been made available to all interested parties. Classical philologists, ancient historians, and other researchers now have the opportunity to work with both the texts and their annotations. The project is firmly rooted in open access principles, particularly advocated at Aarhus University by the Centre for Humanities Computing (CHC). And the extensive work invested in this project is now beginning to yield significant results.

"Several European researchers have already reached out to us seeking collaboration or to learn from our experiences," says Jacob Mortensen. "We hope that the database will evolve into a central tool used worldwide by all those working computationally with ancient Greek texts. And we particularly hope that others will contribute to its ongoing development."

In the long term, the vision is for the platform to do more than just collect texts and annotations. It should also provide resources and guides on using computational methods, including code examples, articles, networks, and project ideas. Mads R. Thomsen from Aarhus University's Department of Comparative Literature has demonstrated the ressources approach excellently with the website litdh.au.dk. The ambition for the "Computing Antiquity" database is to establish Aarhus University as an international hub for computational and algorithmic analysis of antiquity's literary heritage.

Fact box:

• Computing Antiquity is a research project funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, where New Testament and other early Christian texts are analyzed computationally.
• The project is led by Associate Professor, Jacob P.B. Mortensen, Department of Theology, Aarhus University.
• The database contains digital versions of ancient Greek texts as well as annotations of these texts.
• The material is available on the website: www.computing-antiquity.au.dk
• The project is being developed in collaboration with the Centre for Humanities Computing  (CHC) at Aarhus University.

Contact

Jacob P.B. Mortensen
Associate Professor of New Testament
Department of Theology
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Mail: teojmo@cas.au.dk