Introducing the beta version of PHRC

Dear readers,

We are happy to announce the release of the beta version of the PHRC website (PHRC 0.1).

The project

The Practicalities of Hellenistic Ruler Cults is a project focusing on the ritual and social aspects of cultic honours for human beings (rulers and benefactors) in the Hellenistic Greek world (discover more about the objectives and method of the project).

The website

The PHRC website aims at offering a rich and inspiringly interdisciplinary introduction to the relevant epigraphic and archaeological documentation. Its goal is to provide scholars, students and cultural heritage operators with a variety of tools to investigate the practical and social dynamics activated by persons and communities paying ritual honours to human beings, as well as to explore the long-term impact of these activities on the archaeological landscape of the Mediterranean. A concise introduction to the use of this website is available here.

About the beta version

The version of PHRC released today is a beta version: this means that various functions still need to be fully developed and implemented and that you might still stumble upon typos or broken links. We sincerely apologize for that and we invite you to share your criticisms, suggestions, and remarks concerning things that might, or should, be done better by writing to ste.caneva@gmail.com

Sharing is caring

If we have decided to launch the website at a stage when its development is not yet fully completed, it is because we embrace a moral and methodological imperative of contemporary Digital Humanities: sharing the results of research as soon as possible, to promote a virtuous circle of discussion and mutual learning and to encourage reuse within and (as much as possible) even outside the research community.

Contents

This first release contains 16 texts concerning the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasty and coming from various places in the Aegean islands (Crete, Thera), Asia Minor (Kaunos, Sardis, Ephesos, Soloi and Arsinoe in Kilikia), and Cyprus (Kourion, Paphos, Chytroi). A new set of texts will be published at the beginning of 2019.

The team (and more)

PHRC was born at the end of 2015 as a personal research project of Stefano Caneva, but its digital development is the result of the effort of the #Mappiamo team; since 2018, the project has been enriched by the scientific collaboration of Luca Lorenzon, student of Classics at the Université de Liège. This is the right place to thank them for their presence and help and for sharing many hours of work, physically or virtually, across libraries, offices, cafés. 

Finally, this growing project is dedicated to my family, Ute and Arianna: we are each other's major work in progress and it feels like we are doing a good job.