How a date search works
Dates for ancient texts are often uncertain. Users are often interested in imprecise date ranges. This combination makes date searches complex. What results does someone who is searching for texts dated to the third century BC hope to get?
-
Only texts whose range entirely falls in the third century? = Strict
-
Also texts whose range includes the third century, although perhaps not completely? = Not Strict
-
Or just texts whose range is precisely the third century, not the more exactly dated? = Exact
The difference between these searches is explained in more detail below, but please also take the following caveats into account:
-
The Trismegistos date may currently not fully reflect the information of the text, e.g. for regnal years: it is quite possible that a text explicitly dated to Galba has been entered with the date '68 - 69 AD'. This imprecision may cause problems, especially with strict searches.
-
Currently the date searches offered here only lead to period searches, not to the explicit dating information in the text. A text may be dated to 123 AD on the basis of a consular date, without mentioning Hadrian. Yet this text will be shown in searches starting from the entry for Hadrianus in the list of rulers.
-
There are over 500,000 texts in Trismegistos, and for many of these our information comes from outside partners. Some of these do not care as much about dates as others, and the quality of information will currently be very uneven. Especially many of the Latin inscriptions will have a more precise date than that currently offered in Trismegistos.
Strict
A 'strict' date search in Trismegistos finds all dates associated with documents that fall entirely within the search range. If someone clicks on 'strict' for the entry on Galba in the list of rulers, for example, only texts with ranges falling entirely between 9 June 68 AD and 15 January 69 AD will be searched for. This implies that texts dated between 6 June 68 AD and 10 June 68 AD will not be found. Neither will texts dated to the range '68 - 69 AD' be included, because this date implies a range from 1 January 68 AD to 31 December 69 AD.
Not strict
A 'not strict' date search in Trismegistos will also include records of which the range only partially falls within the search range. Users interested in texts dating to the range 333 BC to 329 BC, however, normally do not want to see the thousands of imprecisely dated 'Ptolemaic' texts with range '332 BC - AD 30' appear. To avoid people from being bombarded with this type of undesired information, we have built in a system to take the precision of the search range into account. In this type of search, the criterion for including records partially falling within the search range is that the number of years falling outside the search range is not higher than the search range itself. An example: a 'not strict' search from the entry 'late 4th to early third century BC' will find records with ranges between 325 to 275 BC, but also records with ranges 375 to 325 BC and 275 to 225 BC, or even 325 to 225 BC. It will not find records precisely dated to 270 BC, nor will it find records with ranges 375 to 225 BC overlapping the search range completely, or records dated 300 to 200 BC in which 75 years of the range fall outside the search range (more than the 50 years of the search range).
Exact
An 'exact' search in Trismegistos will only find records whose range is identical to the search range. In this type of search, clicking from the entry 'mid 8th century BC - mid 4th century AD' will give only the texts which have been assigned this very imprecise date, not those dated more precisely. This could be useful to find texts assigned to rulers in general, e.g. all texts for Amasis for which we do not have a more precise date for the time being. Beware of the caveats, however!