Related sites

My other sites

• Qenherkhopeshef a (now empty) site on Late Egyptian...
• my computing blog. Various technical points about java, drupal, openoffice...
• tksesh my former hieroglyphic editing software. more database oriented than JSesh is currently (included a rather sophisticated dictionary editor). Probably difficult to install.
• HieroTeX a LaTeX extension for hieroglyphs. Really old software (1993)... I don't even want to compute how long ago it was. Still sort of runs.
• JavaScriptSesh an alpha version of a Javascript port of the Manuel de Codage ; it's actually used in this web site ; its support of the standard is partial, but will hopefully improve.
• my original home page visit the web from 1993 (actually the content of the page is more 1997).
• your name in hieroglyphs I did (along with a friend of mine who produced a concurrent product) the very first "name in hieroglyphs" page on the web. At that time (1994), the lab computer would slow down when people asked for their names. Now, this is a php version, much more optimised (the original one created a LaTeX file, ran LaTeX, then produced a postscript file which was finally transformed into a gif).

JSesh sources (github)

JSesh sources are now available on github

JSesh sign list

It might be important to be able to compare signs from a JSesh version to another. Starting with JSesh 7.5.5, I have decided to publish a pdf document to that purpose.

It's a plain list, without any comment ; the sole purpose is to display the way a certain code is used in a given version of JSesh.

Softwares using JSesh

• JSeshAndroidApp, a first version of a Android version of JSesh ; see this message
• PySesh, a library to use JSesh from the Python language, by Michele Moglia
• I do use JSesh to display glyphs in the Ramses project of Liege University. You can download slides presenting the project
• Jesus Angel Garcia Sanchez's Openglyph includes a lexicon and a number of easily accessible texts.
• JSesh web wrapper by Dmitry Nikolaev (Java server application which can deal with web queries)

Sites with information about JSesh

• hierogeek a site about computing and egyptology (inter alia).¹
• Egyptian hieroglyphs web site has a step by step english tutorial for JSesh

Sites using JSesh

• Gabor Toth 's Egyptian Grammar course at Rutgers University, with lots of texts and text studies
• JSesh used for making plastic signs

Sites about hieroglyphic typesetting and Manuel de codage

• A good entry point is Saqqarah Technology's site EGPZ
• it contains a list of related sites
• problems with word and Indesign

Alternatives to JSesh

There are a number of other hieroglyphic wordprocessors. Many of them are not distributed anymore, but when they still have a web site, I provide a link.

• Winglyph: successor to Glyph, written by Hans van den Berg for the CCER (Center for Computer-aided Egyptological Research); was used for many epoch-making publications, such as the Chapelles Osiriennes de Dendera;

• Macscribe: the first editor written for Mac, written by Éric Aubourg; was also distributed by the CCER ;

• Inscribe: developped by Bob Richmond (Saqqarah Technology) ; was very well integrated with early versions of Windows, through Object Linking and Embedding, a technology which allowed easy communication between software.

• Webglyph, an improved online port of the original Glyph software, by its authors, Ed J.P.M. de Moel and Jan Buurman ; you can either request a personnal code or (according to the mail in the EEF list use code guest both as login and password.

• VisualGlyph: a facsimile oriented editor, which allows one to mix hieroglyphs and drawing.

• IGlyph By Ivan Subotic and Günther Lapp, successor to VisualGlyph

• Got: developped Michel Guay et Charles Bédard, with very nice XVIIIth dynasty glyphs, along with a rich documentation;

• SignWriter, a recent and active system by Phil Robinson; couple a hieroglyphic editor with a dictionary.

Mark-Jan Nederhof's softwares

Mark-Jan is a professor of computer science, and a respected expert in Natural Language Processing.

He has a number of very interesting tools for egyptian and hieroglyphs. They probably lack a bit of user-friendly polish if you want to create data for them, but they are very powerful.

• RES, the Revised Encoding Scheme, is an alternative to the Manuel de Codage, with very powerful operators. He has a wonderful javascript implementation.
• PhilologEg is a text database in RES format, which is able to display parallel texts in a very nice way. Hidden in the code of PhilologEg, you will find an OCR for ancient egyptian.
• https://github.com/nederhof : his github projects, notably:
  • hocr, a more recent ocr
  • isut, a software to deal with hieratic texts.

Sites about hieroglyphs

• the Thot sign list project at the University of Liège
• The Polychrome Hieroglyph Research Project, by David Nunn ; lots of iconographical sources.

About Hieroglyphs and Unicode

Unicode contains a sizeable number of signs, enough at least to cover most needs for Hieratic texts; from Unicode 12 onward, a number of operators from the Manuel de Codage have been added.

• Andrew Glass's font tools project, which provides a SIL-licenced font which supports the advanced operators in Unicode. The font is called eot.ttf.
• Hieroglyphs Everywhere, from Bob Richmond, dedicated to Unicode and hieroglyphs.
• SINUHE the Hierotyper, a software developped by Marwan Kilani, So Miyagawa and David Chapman, to type hieroglyphic texts using Unicode
• Opentypehiero Hieroglyphic fonts for Unicode, with a software to adapt them to specific needs, with operator support.
• HieroJax by Mark-Jan Nederhof (see also his other softwares, above).

Useful Egyptological links

• the Modern version of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, one of the most ambitious projects about Ancient Egyptian Language, now with many more hieroglyphic spellings
• the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, the original software; it also gives access to the original files of the Wörterbuch; a treasure trove.
• the Ramses Project
• Simon Schweitzer's Ancient Egyptian Dictionary : a nice web site and mobile application which uses the data from the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae. It's open source, so you can also do some processing on the data itself.
• ORAEC : an ambitious project for Digital Humanities in Egyptology. Aggregates lots of ressources. Among which :
  • • A meta-search engine for sequences of signs in various projects (ORAEC, PNM, Prosopographia Aegypti, Ramsès, and TLA) ;
  • A meta-search engine for hieroglyphic word forms in various projects (ORAEC, PNM, Prosopographia Aegypti, Ramsès, and TLA) ;

For learners :

• Archives from the now closed Ancient Egyptian Mailing List.