Open Access

Maxim Kupreyev, Gunnar Sperveslage

• The Berlin Text System (BTS) Version 3.1 manual introduces a Java-based software designed for editing and annotating Ancient Egyptian texts. BTS integrates a CouchDB database and an Elastic search engine to support its main components: Text Editor, Lemma List, Thesaurus, and Abstract Text. The Text Editor facilitates transliteration, translation, lemmatization, and annotations, allowing for detailed lexical and grammatical analysis. Hieroglyphic transcriptions can be entered via a specialized Hieroglyph Type Writer based on JSesh. The Lemma List ist ready to contain pre-Coptic lemmata, divided into Hieroglyphic/Hieratic and Demotic scripts, providing comprehensive entries with passport data, transliterations, and translations. The Thesaurus allows for metadata enrichment of texts with controlled vocabulary for consistent data management, supporting contextual analysis through structured metadata. The manual covers BTS's user interface, including menu bar, toolbar, status bar, and workspace, divided into views for each main component. Features like Revision History for tracking and restoring versions, indexing, and search capabilities enhance user efficiency. BTS is a powerful tool for the study and preservation of Ancient Egyptian texts, integrating advanced database and search technologies with specialized textual analysis tools.