The idea to create a database of Nubian identity markers came as a part of the project IaM NUBIAN. Identity and Memory in Christian Nubia: A study on strategies of (self-)presentation and preservation of the past in medieval African society, financed by the Horizon 2020’s Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions programme and realised at Leiden University in 2019–2021. The basic rationale behind the project is that each utterance, spoken or written, is characterised by three key elements: its purpose, targeted audience, and applied medium. Thus, tracing this triad allows identifying linguistic strategies used to indicate, for instance, a person’s gender, social status, religious or ethnic affinity, it can reveal their – sometimes multiple – identities. While I acknowledge that the notion of ‘identity’ is not unproblematic and has generated serious criticism in scholarship (e.g. here), I have nevertheless used it for the IaM NUBIAN project and the database, viewed as a process of constructing the self through social interactions, with language playing a pivotal role. In this context, ‘identity marker’ is defined very broadly as any element of a text that can tell us who the persons occurring in it were or considered themselves to be. Thus, all elements of personal identification, such as names, designations of functions and occupations, titles of address, epithets, indications of family relations and place of origin, have all been included here and to them different types of identities have been ascribed: gender, religion, ethnicity, family, social status and function, and physical appearance. Naturally, any identity marker is not restricted to one concrete identity, and each of them can display any number of identities. There are also such to which no identity has been ascribed. This does not necessarily mean, however, that they did not encode any identity, but rather that we are unable to decode it. Such cases should constantly remind us that our conceptual grid and apparatus are completely different than those of any past society. This, together with our incomplete knowledge of the past and difficulties in understanding and interpreting ancient sources, makes it virtually impossible that we will ever be able to fully comprehend the mindset of ancient people. This does not mean, however, that it is not worth trying.
Currently there are 8,538 references of identity markers recorded in DBMNT, including 133 ghost attestations, which belong to eight basic categories of identity markers (IM_1: Name; IM_2: Function; IM_3: Title of address; IM_4: Epithet; IM_5: Family relation; IM_6: Origin; IM_7: Occupation; IM_8: Social status) occurring altogether in 325 variants. The variants are numbered according to the format IMVar_1.1, IMVar_1.2, IMVar_2.1, IMVar_2.2, etc., where the first digit refers to the basic category of identity markers, the second being the serial number within the category.
In order to establish the connection between DBMNT and TM People, the attestations of names in Nubian sources (IM_1) have a double numbering system, the internal IMRef number and the TM Ref number (for the time being, only those references that existed in TM People prior to creating DBMNT Names are linked; the remaining ones will be integrated at a later stage).
Please note that IM References lists only these identity markers that can be linked with a concrete person; those that describe anonymous people or people whose names have not survived in the text are for now excluded.
From the starting site of DBMNT IM References you can either go directly to a particular record (by entering its DBMNT number in the field ‘IM Reference no.’), launch a search, or simply browse the list of all records. Clicking on the item on the list will display the detailed card of the object beneath the list.
Attestations, names, and name variants the reading of which is uncertain are marked with an encircled question mark sign () to the right. Ghost attestations, names, name variants, and persons are marked with the icon of a ghost () to the right.
The ‘Illustration’ tab contains photos or drawings of identity markers the graphic form of which is important from the point of view of establishing the identity of a person (e.g. monograms).