Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV)

In 1988 the Heidelberg Academy of the Sciences awarded funding to a project called "Papyrus Editions." Under the leadership of Professor Dieter Hagedorn the Institut für Papyologie provided the space and working team (Dr. James M.S. Cowey and numerous others). From the outset all work centred upon the creation of a database of all published documentary papyri and ostraca in Greek and Latin from Egypt and neighbouring regions - the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV) einschließlich der Ostraka usw., der lateinischen Texte, sowie der entsprechenden Urkunden aus benachbarten Regionen. The Heidelberg Academy of the Sciences stopped funding the project at the end of 2002. Since then it has been supported for two years by the German Research Council (DFG) from July 2005 to June 2007 for the Enhancement project and then by the Scholarly Communications Division of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from August 2007 to July 2008 and from October 2008 to September 2009. Otherwise the project has depended upon voluntary support from Dieter Hagedorn and James M.S. Cowey. The software used is File Maker Pro.

The database was conceived as a repository for metadata concerning each and every published text. In the knowledge that the Greek and Latin texts of these selfsame documents were being entered into an electronic corpus at Duke University (DDBDP) it was clear that the entry of complementary metadata rather than metadata as well as the original text was a far more profitable approach. The original intention of this undertaking was to enable scholars to attain a quick impression of which papyri from any given period were available as source material.

Particular attention was thus paid to ensuring that the dating of the documents as well as dates mentioned in the documents had been performed correctly. Many improvements were made and continue to be made in this area. Information about the material upon which the texts were written and their provenance was included. Details about published photographs of the texts were made in as full a manner as possible. Later as digital images have been made available these have been included as well. The original title of the document was stated. Non systematic but relatively consistent keywords were used to offer a summary of the content of the document. References to various recent scholarly treatments or comments on aspects of the texts were and continue to be added. One may consult the list of abbreviations used within the database.

In 1993 the first chronological lists were made available online. In 1997 users throughout the world had direct access to the database itself. For the first time individual searches were possible with the fields individually and in combination (search help). All of this is still available and guarantees the most up-to-date information concerning any given document. Ever since it was possible to link to external papyrological tools such as the DDbDP or APIS as well as external images this has been done in order to make the database as useful as possbible to scholars using it.

In the summer of 2000 the database was completed. It contained all published documentary papyri (except those published in journals and not yet included in the latest Sammlebuch volume). Since then new publications have been added whenever they are published. Regular updates appear when new material is available. These new versions also contain corrections and any new information to documents which has been gleaned from journals. At present (September 2008) some 56,200 records exist from some 580 volumes. It is important to understand that this does not represent the total number of published texts, because where a document could be dated to one of two or three different dates we created two or three records for one and the same document as required. Thus the actual total of published documents included in our database is de facto less than the number of records. There is also a second database, called Erwähnte Daten, which contains all dates mentioned in documents, so that they may be searched in detail. It was impossible at the beginning of the project to make these dates searchable in the same way as the date of the document itself was searchable. The existence of the two databases has remained to this day. They may at some time in the future be merged with one another.