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WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE OF THE DATABASE OF BYZANTINE BOOK EPIGRAMS

The DBBE is an ongoing project hosted at Ghent University, which brings together young and established scholars with the aim of mapping the presence, development and function of metrical paratexts in Byzantine manuscripts.

The DBBE team has been collecting Byzantine book epigrams since 2010. Almost 12.000 unique epigrams have been made available to the scholarly community in our Database. Beside the texts, the project has also focussed on providing contextual information that situates book epigrams within a broad cultural-historical framework.

Our project has a pronounced interdisciplinary character. A number of philologists, linguists and computer scientists have joined forces to reveal the connections between linguistic patterns and text-historical developments in book epigrams.

Under the DBBE flag several researchers have successfully prepared their doctoral dissertations, using various methodological approaches to the study of book epigrams. We value the enriching collaboration with several scientific partners, as well as the remarkable input of the many scholars who have presented their research at our online lectures.

The results of our research are regularly presented and published as widely as possible. The inclusive spirit of our research has led us to organise several outreach activities as well, directed at secondary schools and non-specialists.

We welcome your feedback: do get in touch!