The design and implementation of AIDA

Abstract

This paper describes the development of AIDA, the Ancient Inscription Database and Analytics system. The AIDA system currently stores three types of ancient Minoan inscriptions: Linear A, Cretan Hieroglyph and Phaistos Disk inscriptions. In addition, AIDA provides candidate syllabic values and translations of Minoan words and inscriptions into English. The AIDA system allows the users to change these candidate phonetic assignments to the Linear A, Cretan Hieroglyph and Phaistos symbols. Hence the AIDA system provides for various scholars not only a convenient online resource to browse Minoan inscriptions but also provides an analysis tool to explore various options of phonetic assignments and their implications. Such explorations can aid in the decipherment of Minoan inscriptions.

A Systematic Review of Computational Approaches to Deciphering Bronze Age Aegean and Cypriot Scripts

“…Many of the digital corpora related to the Bronze Age Minoan civilization is based on the CHIC or GORILA corpora. Most well-known available digital corpora on ancient Bronze Age Aegean and Cypriot scripts include (Aurora 2015a;Revesz, Rashid, and Tuyishime 2019b;Rashid 2019;Salgarella and Castellan 2021a;Ferrara et al 2023a;Lastilla, Ravanelli, and Ferrara 2019;Younger 2023;Petrolito et al 2015;Papavasileiou, Owens, and Kosmopoulos 2020;Greco, Flouda, and Notti 2023;Hogan 2022Hogan , 2023, and are discussed below in more detail. Aurora (2015a) presented D ĀMOS (Database of Mycenaean at Oslo), an electronic corpus of Mycenaean texts written in Linear B script.…”

“…D ĀMOS database is currently available at (Aurora 2015b). Revesz, Rashid, and Tuyishime (2019b) and Rashid (2019) presented AIDA (Ancient Inscription Database and Analytics) system that currently stores inscriptions written on the Phaistos Disk and the ones written in Linear A and Cretan hieroglyphic scripts. The authors plan on expanding the AIDA database with inscriptions written in Sumerian, Elamite and the Indus Valley script.…”

“…The authors plan on expanding the AIDA database with inscriptions written in Sumerian, Elamite and the Indus Valley script. AIDA is currently available at (Revesz, Rashid, and Tuyishime 2019a) where it provides possible syllabic values, translations, cognates and related languages of Linear A symbols and sequences. Salgarella and Castellan (2021a) presented SigLA (Signs of Linear A) online database of Linear A symbols and sequences that includes their graphical representations (drawings), phonetic transcriptions, places of origin, time period, types of artefacts on which the inscriptions are found, etc.…”