Congratulations to HCMH’s member, Dr. Moshe Blidstein, co-author of a new article entitled “Tiresias: A Novel Approach for Mining Book Indices” published in Digital Humanities Quarterly (OPEN ACCESS)!

Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database provides access to references to ancient texts according to topic, mostly on religion, from about 800 BCE to 800 CE in the Mediterranean area. In many cases, direct access to full text and/or translation is also available. Topic tagging is based on existing subject indices from scholarly books, allowing highly detailed topic resolution. The database currently includes about 20 million references keyed to 160,000 subjects, taken from 550 book indices, and provides search and browse capabilities for texts and subject tags, as well as network and heatmap visualizations for subjects. 

In the article we explained how the database was built, its advantages vis-a-vis other databases, and potential use cases for students and teachers of ancient history.