The Chicago Demotic Dictionary Project

"Demotic is a very cursive script and reflects extensive differences in handwriting; these differences, in turn, reflect different types of texts (private letters, economic and legal documents, administrative documents, religious, literary and scientific texts, etc.), different proveniences of texts (especially noticeable are differences between texts from the Fayum and area around Cairo and those from the Thebaid), and different dates of texts (Demotic was used for a thousand years from the 7th century B.C. until the 3rd century of our era [occasional graffiti occur even later]). Thus, the Dictionary must show actual orthography for words cited. Originally we had intended to make hand copies of every example of every word cited in the Dictionary (there are approximately 10-15 words per page and there will be about 1000 pages). These would then have had to be manually inserted on the printed copy of the manuscript. However, the use of an Apple Scanner has allowed us to replace hand copies with scans, which can be inserted directly into the Microsoft Word document. This new procedure allows the entire manuscript (both text and graphics) to be included in the same document (a document which can be circulated electronically as well as in printed fashion) and it avoids the time and possible errors involved in manually attaching all the hand copies to the printed document. The final version of the Dictionary will be printed on tabloid paper on the 1200dpi Laser printer in the Publications Office and it will be printed at approximately 90%, in order to produce a volume approximately the same size as Erichsen''s Demotisches Glossar, to which it is intended to be a supplement."