About
The aim of this database system is to build a gazetteer of calendar days in different calendar systems used in the Greek and Roman antiquity all across the mediterranean sea. Like geographical gazetteers this can be used to provide unique identifiers for each day in any of the calendar systems that has been used to refer to an astronomical day in any ancient source, be it papyri, ostraca or inscriptions. As a result ancient sources referring to the same day can be linked together, queries for dates and date ranges against the graph will return a set of ancient objects and texts. Where a clear system of conversions between different calendar systems has been established, dates will be converted to Julian etc. dates. As more and more dates from antiquity are linked to the system, a complex graph of ancient dated objects and texts evolves.
Data model
For the sake of flexibility a graph database/data model is used. The main axis will be a timeline tree which for all calendar systems leads down to a single day:
For some calendar systems this can be equated to a specific date in Julian calendar. Both graphs will be linked together via an edge (here colored in green) from one day (24 of the egyptian calendar) to the other (day 24 of Julian calendar):
For each day, month and year in a given calendar system nodes (as stable URIs provided by online resources like Epigraphic Database Heidelberg, trismegistos.org or papyri.info) will be added to the day that link to the ancient sources mentioning dates, e.g. (example for ancient texts that can be dated to a single day):
In addition to this, each reign, day, month and year of each calendar system (not neccessariliy single astronomical day!) will hold a unique identifier. This ID is bound to a pool of IDs so that queries for IDs will simple:
Calendars Systems
An arbitrary number of calendar systems from antiquity can be integrated into the GOOT system, e.g.:
- Julian
- egyptian
- late period pharaohs
- ptolemaic kings
- roman emperors
- roman consular dating system
- actian era
- roman ab urbe condita
- ...
Workflow
From perspective of potential users/content providers: If you find a date in an ancient text, you will need to find out/create the GODOT identifier for this combination of calendar system, reign, year, month & day. The project's website will provide this including URI to the data source. The system will create a new graph if needed, or will return an existing identifier. This identifier can then be added to the data source (e.g. as reference in TEI tag); another way would be to make an additional annotation file (pelagios style).
Webservice
Anonymous users can query the graph of dated objects and texts; as a result a string describing in English and other languages the date and calendar system will be returned. All dates in other calendar systems associated with this ID/this day will be returned as well as a list of URIs of external data sources describing ancient dates.
To create a new identifier/graph for a specific date users will need authentication to use the webservice. New paths are only created in the graph if the user provides a valid URI (that should resolve on the web) for the external data source. The user can choose in the web based user interface a calendar system, reign, year, month & day, link a URI for the ancient source to this day and receive/create a (new) path in the graph.
Query Examples
Typical queries against the GODOT graph will i.a. include:
- for a given ID return all information (calendar system, links to ancient resources in form of URIs, Julian date equivalent, … )
- for a given day in Julian calendar system return URIs of ancient resources that are linked to the same day (for embedding in other websites like egypt.online-resourcen.de)
- build a graph for any combinations of calendar system and year/month/day plus creating a unique identifier that users can add to their sources/annotations
- to build statistics count nodes for each day in the complete graph