---
language:
- egy  # Egyptian (Ancient)
- en   # English
- de   # German
license: cc-by-sa-4.0
task_categories:
- translation
- text-generation
tags:
- ancient-egyptian
- hieroglyphics
- egyptology
- middle-egyptian
- demotic
- late-egyptian
- historical-linguistics
- multilingual
- dictionary
pretty_name: Ancient Egyptian Multilingual Corpus
size_categories:
- 100K<n<1M
formats:
- arrow
- json
- csv
---

# 🏛️ Ancient Egyptian Multilingual Corpus

## Dataset Description

A comprehensive multilingual corpus of Ancient Egyptian texts combining multiple authoritative sources, including dictionaries and translated texts from German to English. Available in multiple formats for maximum accessibility.

### 📊 Dataset Summary

This dataset combines:
1. **Dictionary Sources** (3 sources, ~15,000 entries):
   - Vygus Egyptian Dictionary 2015 (Mark Vygus)
   - Dickson Dictionary of Middle Egyptian  
   - Ancient Egypt Dictionary (10,000+ words from Gardiner, Faulkner, etc.)

2. **Translated Corpora** (4 sources, ~65,000 entries):
   - BBAW Egyptian Corpus (35,503 entries)
   - TLA Demotic (13,383 entries)
   - TLA Earlier Egyptian (12,773 entries)
   - TLA Late Egyptian (3,606 entries)

**Total: ~80,000+ entries** covering 4,000 years of Egyptian language history.


## 📦 Available Formats

This dataset is available in multiple formats for maximum compatibility:

| Format | Description | Best For | Size |
|--------|-------------|----------|------|
| **Arrow** | Native HuggingFace format | Fast loading, memory-efficient processing | Smallest |
| **JSON** | Human-readable, structured | Data exploration, custom processing | Medium |
| **CSV** | Tabular format | Spreadsheet software, basic analysis | Medium |
| **ZIP** | All formats compressed | Offline use, complete download | Compressed |

### Loading Examples

#### Arrow Format (Recommended)
```python
from datasets import load_dataset
dataset = load_dataset("AhmedElTaher/ancient-egyptian-multilingual")
```

#### JSON Format
```python
import json
with open('ancient-egyptian-multilingual_full.json', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    data = json.load(f)
```

#### CSV Format
```python
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('ancient-egyptian-multilingual_full.csv')
```


### 🎯 Supported Tasks

- Ancient Egyptian to English translation
- Hieroglyphic text analysis
- Historical linguistics research
- Egyptological studies
- Language model training for ancient languages
- Comparative linguistics
- Digital humanities research

### 🌍 Languages

- **egy**: Ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic scripts)
- **en**: English (translations)
- **de**: German (original translations in TLA/BBAW datasets)

## Dataset Structure

### 📝 Data Fields

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| `id` | string | Unique identifier for each entry |
| `transliteration_unicode` | string | Unicode transliteration (ꜣ, ꜥ, ḥ, ḫ, ẖ, š, ṯ, ḏ, ỉ) |
| `transliteration_mdc` | string | MDC ASCII-compatible transliteration |
| `translation_en` | string | English translation |
| `translation_de` | string | German translation (where available) |
| `hieroglyphs` | string | Hieroglyphic representation (Unicode/Gardiner codes) |
| `source` | string | Original dataset source |
| `pos` | string | Part of speech (where available) |
| `lemmatization` | string | Lemma information (where available) |
| `grammatical_info` | string | Additional grammatical information |

### 📈 Data Splits

| Split | Entries | Percentage |
|-------|---------|------------|
| Train | ~72,000 | 90% |
| Validation | ~8,000 | 10% |

## Dataset Creation

### 🔨 Processing Pipeline

1. **PDF Parsing**: Custom parsers for dictionary formats
2. **Transliteration**: Bidirectional Unicode ↔ MDC conversion
3. **Translation**: NLLB-200 neural translation (DE→EN)
4. **Standardization**: Unified column names and formats
5. **Validation**: Manual checking of sample entries
6. **Multi-format Export**: Arrow, JSON, CSV formats

### 📚 Source Data

#### Dictionary Sources
- **Vygus Dictionary 2018** - R.H. Barnhart
- **Dickson Dictionary** - Paul Dickson (2006)
- **Ancient Egypt Dictionary** - ancient-egypt.co.uk

#### Corpus Sources
- **BBAW** - Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
- **TLA** - Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae

## Usage Guidelines

### 🚀 Quick Start

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
dataset = load_dataset("AhmedElTaher/ancient-egyptian-multilingual")

# Access a sample
sample = dataset['train'][0]
print(f"Egyptian (Unicode): {sample['transliteration_unicode']}")
print(f"Egyptian (MDC): {sample['transliteration_mdc']}")
print(f"English: {sample['translation_en']}")
print(f"Hieroglyphs: {sample['hieroglyphs']}")
```

### 🔍 Filtering Examples

```python
# Find all entries with pharaoh
pharaoh_entries = dataset.filter(lambda x: 'pharaoh' in x['translation_en'].lower())

# Get only Demotic texts
demotic = dataset.filter(lambda x: 'demotic' in x['source'])

# Get entries with hieroglyphs
with_hieroglyphs = dataset.filter(lambda x: x['hieroglyphs'] != '')
```

## License & Attribution

### 📜 License

**CC BY-SA 4.0** (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International)

This requires:
- ✅ Attribution to original sources
- ✅ Indication of changes
- ✅ ShareAlike distribution

### 📚 Required Citations

```bibtex
@dataset{egyptian_multilingual_corpus_2025,
  author = {El Taher, Ahmed},
  title = {Ancient Egyptian Multilingual Corpus},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/AhmedElTaher/ancient-egyptian-multilingual},
  email = {ahmed.g.eltaher@gmail.com}
}
```

[Additional citations for BBAW, TLA, etc...]

## Additional Information

### 👤 Dataset Curator

**Ahmed El Taher**  
📧 ahmed.g.eltaher@gmail.com  
🤗 [AhmedElTaher](https://huggingface.co/AhmedElTaher)

### 🤝 Contributions

Contributions welcome! Please submit issues or pull requests.

### ⚠️ Limitations

- Machine translations may contain inaccuracies
- Some hieroglyphic representations incomplete
- Chronological periods mixed in combined dataset
- Reflects historical biases in sources

### 🙏 Acknowledgments

Special thanks to all contributing institutions and researchers.

---
*Dataset Version: 1.0.0 | Last Updated: 2025-08-14*