16. Dezember 2014
Christian Prager
In 2014, the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste) in Düsseldorf, together with the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities (Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften) in Berlin, established the Interdisciplinary Dictionary of Classic Mayan (Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya) research center for the study of hieroglyphic writing and language of the ancient Maya at the University of Bonn’s Philosophy Faculty (press release [in German]). The project is directed by Prof. Dr. Nikolai Grube of the Department of Anthropology of the Americas (Abteilung für Altamerikanistik).
The goal of this long term, 5.4 million Euro project, is the analysis of all known hieroglyphic Mayan texts which will serve as the basis for the compilation and editing of a Classic Mayan language dictionary. Positioned in the Digital Humanities by its cooperation with the eHumanities research network TextGrid at the Göttingen State and University Library (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen) and the Bonn University Library (Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn), the project provides an innovative link between the humanities and information technology.