The Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) collect and edit all Europe’s ancient Greek inscriptions.
Ancient inscriptions are among the most important sources for all areas of research into the ancient world. There is an unceasing flow of new finds, some of outstanding importance. The discipline of epigraphy has the task of recording and explaining the content of this very extensive material.
The Corpus is an exhaustive collection of the inscriptions of a given ancient region. In compiling it, the principle of autopsy is crucial. Field trips are made to the region, all accessible inscriptions are recorded, noting their archaeological context, and they are documented in paper squeezes and photographs. The scholarly edition in the Corpus must meet especially high standards of reliability and completeness, a task that can only be achieved with extensive experience of deciphering, reading, restoring and interpreting inscriptions.
More than 50 IG volumes and fascicles have appeared, together containing around 150,000 inscriptions. The IG Archive documents and preserves the epigraphic records, including a unique collection of over 70,000 squeezes made in the course of two centuries.
The Inscriptiones Graecae are the Academy’s oldest project, being the successor of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (CIG), founded in 1815. In the project’s publication series, the Greek inscriptions of Europe are edited on the following plan: IG I–III Athens and Attica; IG IV–VI the Peloponnese; IG VII–IX Central Greece; IG X Northern Greece, Thrace, Skythia; IG XI–XII Aegean Islands; IG XIII Crete; IG XIV Italy and Sicily; IG XV Cyprus.
This long-term Academy Project is part of the Research Centre for Primary Sources of the Ancient World at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
The Academy research project “Inscriptiones Graecae” is part of the Academies' Programme , a research funding programme co-financed by the German federal government and individual federal states. Coordinated by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities , the Programme intends to retrieve and explore our cultural heritage, to make it accessible and highlight its relevance to the present, as well as to preserve it for the future.