This reminds me of my favourite task for new digital ontologists:

'Model the Holy Trinity in OWL.' ;-)

Cheers

L.

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Pascal Lemaire <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I'd even add to your philosophical question the issue of the assimilated
> deities, like those we see in gallo-roman contexts, where we know that the
> name given in an inscription might be the "classical" divinity name but is,
> in truth, a celtic deity. How do we discriminate such cases from
> "legitimates" uses of the classical gods' names ? do we need to have
> attributes on the god's names that indicate it is a "celtic" or "greek" or
> other variant of the name's usage, meaning we then have to point toward
> "god@flavor" instead of just "god" ?
>
>
> 2013/5/10 Ethan Gruber <[log in to unmask]>
>>
>> In theory, such a system could encompass divine figures of all periods,
>> but I'm mainly concerned with ancient entities, including those that aren't
>> deities, like nymphs and personifications.  There are a lot of gaps to be
>> filled with respect to coinage.
>>
>> On a philosophical level, there will be some issues to wrestle with--are
>> Zeus and Jupiter two separate identities, but similar?  Are Herakles,
>> Hercules, and Hercle definitively the same entity, but with different names?
>> How to deal with epithets?
>>
>> Ethan
>>
>> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:52 AM, Roueche, Charlotte
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Do we really only mean >ancient< and >deities<? What about saints and
>>> angels?
>>>
>>> Charlotte
>>>
>>> On 9 May 2013, at 23:32, Neven Jovanović wrote:
>>>
>>> Ethan, Max,
>>>
>>> thanks for sharing this. I just want to point out that for textual
>>> scholars such "divine VIAF" would be immensely valuable too -- if we have
>>> a lot of classical and classicizing texts and a resource like the one
>>> you're discussing we can e. g. start analysing "deity impact" in our
>>> texts
>>> (which gods are hot and which are not). So, thumbs up!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Neven
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Neven Jovanovic
>>> Department of Classical Philology
>>> Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
>>> University of Zagreb
>>> Hrvatska / Croatia
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Ethan
>>>
>>> Certainly not perfect, but maybe worth a try:
>>>
>>> http://www.iconclass.org/help/lod
>>>
>>> I'd also assume the instances of
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gods_by_culture
>>>
>>> should be present in dbpedia, Freebase, etc.
>>>
>>> In addition to the LIMC, it would be great if there was a structured
>>>
>>> version of
>>>
>>>
>>> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausf%C3%BChrliches_Lexikon_der_griechischen_und_r%C3%B6mischen_Mythologie
>>>
>>> For scans see http://archive.org/details/Roscher
>>>
>>> Best, Max
>>>
>>> On 2013-05-09 12:25 , Ethan Gruber wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I am in the process of improving our coin data for Online Coins of the
>>>
>>> Roman Empire to insert more links to persons depicted on coins.  We
>>> include in our records deities depicted on the obverse or reverse of
>>> coins, but they are merely text strings.  Since the new version of OCRE
>>> is going to launch in a month or two in about 10 different languages
>>> (powered by RDF from nomisma.org <http://nomisma.org>), the deities
>>> will still be English strings.  Has anyone endeavored to define deities
>>> in a LOD sort of way?  I think that the establishment of such a
>>> resource would be the cornerstone for iconographic studies, allowing
>>> scholars to aggregate wall paintings, relief sculpture, pottery, coins,
>>> etc. of Dionysus or other deities.  I'm under the impression that LIMC
>>> is being digitized, but I have no idea if they are moving in this
>>> direction technically.
>>>
>>> Sebastian Heath just clued me into the Library of Congress Subject
>>>
>>> Headings for Greek deities
>>>
>>>
>>> (http://id.loc.gov/search/?q=greek+deity&q=cs%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fid.loc.gov%2Fauthorities%2Fsubjects),
>>>
>>> and I know that the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek has created GND numbers
>>> for divinities which have therefore crept into VIAF.
>>>
>>> I'm all for tapping into resources that already exist.  If they don't
>>>
>>> exist, I would be interested in discussing a project.
>>>
>>> Ethan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------
>>> Professor Charlotte Roueché
>>> Centre for Hellenic Studies
>>> King's College
>>> London WC2R 2LS
>>> fax             + 44 20.7848 2545
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> http://www.kcl.ac.uk/chs
>>>
>>
>