From Stone to Standards: A Digital Heritage Interoperability Model for Armenian Epigraphy within the Leiden and EpiDoc Frameworks

This study investigates Armenian editorial conventions for inscriptions and evaluates their compatibility and the possibility of their further integration with international standards of epigraphic editing for open access and equal use. It focuses on the Divan Hay Vimagrutʿyan (Corpus of Armenian Epigraphy), launched in the 1960s, which introduced a systematic apparatus for distinguishing diplomatic transcriptions from interpretative reconstructions. Later Armenian publications often simplified these conventions, replacing specialized signs with typographic substitutes. While these changes improved accessibility, they also reduced palaeographic precision and created inconsistencies across editions. Through comparative analysis with the Leiden Conventions and the EpiDoc TEI framework, the research identifies both areas of alignment and points of divergence. Armenian conventions handle missing letters, restorations, redundancies, and abbreviations in distinctive ways, sometimes reassigning the meaning of symbols across different publications. This variation, if not explicitly documented, complicates digital encoding and risks loss of information. Methodologically, this study develops a digital heritage interoperability model that translates local Armenian editorial practices into machine-actionable standards, enabling their integration into international infrastructures such as EpiDoc and FAIR-based cultural heritage systems. The principal contribution of this work is the proposal of a dual-track encoding strategy. One track applies a granular mapping of Armenian signs to the full set of Leiden and EpiDoc categories, ensuring maximum interoperability. The other track preserves a simplified schema faithful to Armenian usage, reflecting local scholarly traditions. Together, these approaches provide both international comparability and cultural specificity. The conclusion is that Armenian inscriptions can be effectively integrated into global digital infrastructures by means of transparent documentation, crosswalk tables, and encoding policies that follow FAIR principles. This ensures long-term preservation, machine-actionability, and the broader reuse of Armenian epigraphic data in comparative cultural heritage research.