Daejeon, July 27–31
Ancient Egyptian portable written artefacts—papyri, ostraca, linen shrouds, and wooden boards—have traditionally been examined primarily for textual content and palaeography, with their graphic and material dimensions receiving limited attention. Yet many such objects deliberately borrow graphic conventions from monumental media (temple reliefs, tomb paintings, architectural decoration) and employ skeuomorphic strategies to imitate prestigious materials such as stone or cedar, thereby enhancing ritual efficacy or social prestige (Buccellati et al. 2019). Intermediality—the cross-media referencing of forms and aesthetics (Rajewsky 2002; Rippl 2015)—is evident in polychrome inscriptions on papyri echoing tomb palaeography (e.g., Davis & Naville 1908, Glanville 1927) or ostraca written in precious Egyptian blue pigment resembling monumental stelae despite being written in cursive hieratic (McDowell 1995). Skeuomorphism (Knappett 2002; Conneller 2013) manifests in textured surfaces mimicking precious stones or wood (Angenot 2017; Arbuckle MacLeod 2024). While these concepts have been explored sporadically in archaeology and art history, their systematic, computationally assisted application to Egyptian portable manuscripts remains absent, leaving unanswered questions about how visual emulation negotiated cultural memory, hierarchy, and innovation across three millennia. The three-year Independent Research Project “Intermedial Echoes: Visual Borrowings and Skeuomorphic Design in Manuscript Cultures” (2026–2028), based at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (University of Hamburg), addresses this gap by developing an open, reproducible digital humanities workflow. This paper presents an initial pilot implementation of the workflow. Building on established practices in digital epigraphy (e.g., IIIF-based publications) and visual computing for manuscripts, the project innovates through integrated use of structured databases, multidimensional scaling, and pattern recognition to quantify and visualise intermedial and skeuomorphic phenomena at scale.
A curated pilot dataset of c. 10-12 high-resolution objects from the British Museum, Louvre, Neues Museum Berlin, Museo Egizio Turin, and Rijksmuseum van Oudheden Leiden is assembled in an International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) environment. This allows side-by-side, zoomable comparison of details (e.g., simulated stone-grain texture on New Kingdom ostraca, polychrome hieroglyphs on linen mimicking temple relief) impossible with traditional plates or printed facsimiles.
A lightweight structured database (CSV + SQLite) records key visual attributes per artefact: support material, pigment palette (monochrome, bichrome, polychrome), graphic register (hieratic, cursive hieroglyphs, monumental hieroglyphs), presence of decorative borders, simulated textures, layout conventions, paratextual devices, and skeuomorphic intent. Provenance, dating, and textual genre are linked to enable diachronic and socio-cultural filtering.
Custom Python pipelines scripts using scikit-learn and Plotly generate interactive 3D MDS plots that position pilot artefacts in multidimensional space according to visual similarity features. Users can rotate clusters to explore, for instance, the convergence of Book of the Dead papyri towards New Kingdom tomb-painting aesthetics, or the emergence of blue hieratic ostraca imitating stelae inlays in the Ramesside period.
In collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) Visual Computing Lab, the project tests and adapts existing deep-learning tools (convolutional neural networks trained on hieroglyphic and paratextual motifs) to automatically detect shared graphic conventions across media. Network graphs (Gephi) then map intermedial influence pathways between monumental templates and portable realisations.
A fully open, queryable database and IIIF collection (in progress)
Interactive 3D MDS explorer and pattern-recognition dashboard (in progress)
A narrative digital exhibition built in Quire (in progress) combining zoomable images, animated visual comparisons, and annotated skeuomorphic “case studies”
The workflow’s scalability extends to other manuscript cultures (e.g., Mesoamerican codices, medieval illuminated texts), offering a model for studying graphic emulation in underrepresented non-Latin traditions, including those from the Global South. By treating portable manuscripts as active visual agents rather than mere text carriers, the project broadens digital humanities approaches to material and intermedial analysis. The poster will facilitate interactive exchange through demonstrations of the IIIF viewer for motif overlays, 3D MDS visualization, and Quire exhibition sketches. This contribution presents early results from the first phase of the project and seeks feedback on the prototype methodology and potential extensions.