Sunday, April 09, 2006

Must read Construction Begins on UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology

The Lexikon der Ägyptologie is a standard reference for scholars of ancient Egypt. Professor Willeke Wendrich of UCLA's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures owns all seven volumes. Her colleague, Jacco Dieleman, has the set of 6,000 articles in worn red binding lining his bookshelf.

The encyclopedia was published over the course of almost thirty years -- the final volume came out in 1992. But by 2008, Wendrich, Dieleman, and John Baines, a professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, plan to create a new Egyptology encyclopedia in a whole new medium. The online UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (UEE) will be easy to update, easy to search, and illustrated with images, 3-D views of ancient cities and sites, and interactive maps.


This should be great if it ever really comes to fruition. Unlike Wikipedia, the content is edited and controlled so there is some continuity in being able to cite something from it (how that will work remains to be seen). This would be great if integrated with some of the online ext resources such as ETANA. The article has a link to the (under construction) UEE site.

Well, never mind, I provided that link in the quote.