From Inscriptions to Lexicon and Back: A Platform for Editing and Linking the Languages of Ancient Italy

Available language technology is hardly applicable to scarcely attested ancient languages, yet their digital semantic representa-tion, though challenging, is an asset for the purpose of sharing and preserving existing cultural knowledge. In the context of aproject on the languages and cultures of ancient Italy, we took up this challenge. This paper thus describes the development ofa user friendly web platform, EpiLexO, for the creation and editing of an integrated system of language resources for ancientfragmentary languages centered on the lexicon, in compliance with current digital humanities and Linked Open Data principles.EpiLexo allows for the editing of lexica with all relevant cross-references: for their linking to their testimonies, as well as tobibliographic information and other (external) resources and common vocabularies. The focus of the current implementationis on the languages of ancient Italy, in particular Oscan, Faliscan, Celtic and Venetic; however, the technological solutions aredesigned to be general enough to be potentially applicable to different contexts and scenarios.