Egyptological Bibliography

Helpsheet for the Egyptological Bibliography

The Egyptological Bibliography, a guide to 60,000 books and articles on ancient Egypt and Egyptology, is the electronic version of the Annual Egyptological Bibliography (AEB). It covers from 1822-1997. The most recent volumes are available from the AEB Web site.

Location: The Egyptological Bibliography is located in the Classics Reading Room on the 4th floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library (RR4Cla) on the first Windows computer.

I. Starting the Egyptological Bibliography: Double-click the "Egyptological Biblio" Desktop shortcut to launch the search program.

II. Simple Search: Type your keywords in the "Find" text box and click the "Go!" button to execute a search. The search engine looks for bibliographic entries related to the keyword(s) entered. The database will also list relevant results containing predefined synonyms and spelling variants to your keyword(s).

You may use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, NEAR) and parentheses ( ) to further customize your search. For example: entering (Saqquara AND Horemheb) NOT Tutankhamun will search for all entries about Horemheb and Saqquara, but will exclude entries which deal with Tutankhamun. The NEAR operator searches for entries containing the specified keywords up to five words apart. For example: Amarna NEAR letters will find entries containing "Amarna letters", "letters from Amarna", "Amarna depot of letters", etc. An asterisk (*) may be used as a wildcard to truncate the ending of a word (e.g. Horemh* will find "Horemheb" and "Horemhab").

The Egyptological Bibliography has a number of built-in keyword synonyms. Search results will contain not only the search criteria, but also relevant entries with the keyword synonym (e.g. a search for Amenhotep will also locate entries containing Amenophis and Amenhetep). The database also has a limited language cross-reference ability (e.g. a search for stone will also find Stein and pierre). To see what synonyms the database locates in addition to the typed keyword, execute a search and click the blue "i" button above the search results. Additional synonyms can be defined by the user by selecting the "Advanced" button beside the "Find" text field and then clicking the "User-defined synonyms" button.

II. Advanced Search: Click the "Advanced" button beside the "Find" text field to access the advanced search features. The "search range" options allow you to customize the scope of your search (which bibliographies and years to include in your search). The use of synonyms in a search can be disabled by selecting the "Advanced" button and unchecking the "enable synonyms" checkbox. This can be useful if wanting to limit results to a specific language or if the predefined synonyms are inappropriate.

The "Reset" button to the right of the "Advanced/Basic" button will restore all search options to their defaults and clear the keyword search field.

III. Search Results: By default, search results are listed by year in descending order. You can modify the way in which the search results are sorted by going to the Advanced options and choosing a different option from the "Sort by" pop-up menu. When viewing the search results, click the red and blue "more" button beneath an entry to view the summary of that entry in a separate window. Clicking the icon of two sheets of paper will copy the entry to the computer's Clipboard for pasting in another program. Clicking the printer icon will print the entry on the default printer.

IV. Indexes: Access the indexes by clicking the "Indexes" button on the left side of the window. All indexes are arranged alphabetically, but note that the "Periodicals" and "Collected Essays, Festschriften, etc." are arranged alphabetically by abbreviation or short title. To browse a periodical, click on its abbreviation. The egyptological articles of each periodical are arranged by volume number.

V. Exiting the Egyptological Bibliography: Click the X button in the upper right corner of the program window.