The EthiCodex Database: Codicological and Provenance Data about Early Codices

"The Early History of the Codex: A New methodology and Ethics for Manuscript Studies" (Ethicodex) is a five-year project (2021-2026) funded by the Research Council of Norway. The project is reexamining the physical features and provenance histories of the earliest surviving Greek and Latin codices and codex fragments (up to the early sixth century). As part of this undertaking, we are building a database that attempts to include material aspects, textual features, ownership histories, and legal status of the manuscripts. This paper will introduce the database and provide an overview of the selection of objects and the types of information that will be included. I have, in cooperation with the other project members, been responsible for designing the data model and developing the web interface for the database. I will describe the process of reducing real life objects into a standardized set of searchable data fields. I will discuss some of the challenges we have encountered and the choices we have made to try to overcome them.