Demotic papyrus contract for the Chicago Demotic Dictionary

Chicago Demotic Dictionary

Project Type Research Project
Status Active
Field Domain Lexicography
Time Period Antiquity
Regions Egypt

Overview

The Chicago Demotic Dictionary opens access to one of ancient Egypt’s richest written traditions. Demotic, a highly cursive Egyptian script used from the seventh century BCE into the Roman period, preserves an extraordinary record of daily life, law, economy, religion, literature, medicine, astronomy, and scholarship. Developed at ISAC, the CDD gives scholars and students the tools to read this difficult but essential body of evidence. Each entry documents meanings, spellings, variant forms, and examples of usage drawn directly from Demotic texts, helping users move from individual words to broader histories of language, society, and culture. As both a scholarly reference work and a gateway into Egypt’s later written record, the CDD makes an essential corpus available for new research and discovery.

Demotic papyrus contract for the Chicago Demotic Dictionary

Papyrus inscribed in Demotic with an endowment contract (ISACM E17481).

Staff of the Chicago Demotic Dictionary in 1979

Staff of the Chicago Demotic Dictionary in 1979 (L to R: Hughes, Smith, Johnson, FitzPatrick, Ritner, Jasnow, Nims).

Brian Muhs and Janet Johnson hold a Demotic ostracon.

Brian Muhs and Janet Johnson hold a Demotic ostracon.

Participants in the Fourth International Congress for Demotic Studies 1990

Participants in the Fourth International Congress for Demotic Studies 1990.

Janet Johnson and Robert Ritner reading Demotic texts

Janet Johnson and Robert Ritner reading Demotic texts.

By the numbers

Five decades of scholarship, distilled into a 4500-page reference that more than doubled the known vocabulary of Demotic Egyptian—the everyday script of the people who lived along the Nile for a thousand years.

4.5K+

Pages

60K+

Demotic Scans

50+

Years of Scholarship

1000+

Years of Demotic

Support the Chicago Demotic Dictionary

Behind every entry are words checked, spellings compared, scans prepared, references traced, and ancient documents brought into clearer view.

The Chicago Demotic Dictionary Team

The Chicago Demotic Dictionary has always been a collective achievement. Today's CDD team carries forward a pioneering tradition of Egyptological collaboration, editorial rigor, and digital innovation, opening the everyday language of ancient Egypt to new generations of readers, researchers, and students.

Support the Chicago Demotic Dictionary

Help sustain one of the world’s leading resources for the study of Demotic Egyptian. Your support advances ongoing research, digital access, and the continued development of this essential tool for understanding the language and written culture of ancient Egypt.

Support the CDD

ISAC Publications

What the Chicago Demotic Dictionary does is what the Oxford English Dictionary does. I could not have done what I did without the dictionary.

James P. Allen Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor Emeritus of Egyptology, Brown University

ISAC Publications

Select Publications

Articles

  • Richard Spiegelberg. Wilhelm Spiegelberg: A Life in Egyptology. 2015.
  • Janet H. Johnson. "The Chicago Demotic Dictionary Project." In Texcorpus und Wörterbuch: Aspekte zur ägyptischen Lexikographie, edited by Stefan Grunert and Ingelore Hafemann, pp. 243–57. Probleme der Ägyptologie 14. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
  • Janet H. Johnson. "Computers, Graphics, and Papyrology." In Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists, pp. 618–20. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1993.
  • Robert K. Ritner. "The Chicago Demotic Dictionary Project: A Status Report." In Aspects of Demotic Lexicography: Acts of the Second International Congress for Demotic Studies, Leiden, 19–21 September 1984, edited by Sven P. Vleeming, 145–49. Studia Demotica 1. Leuven: Peeters, 1987.
  • Janet H. Johnson. "The Chicago Demotic Dictionary Project." Enchoria 8, Sonderband (1978): 11–14.

Cleopatra's Language Dictionary Published | Interview with Janet Johnson