The Zodiac Glossary Dataset provides a curated, structured collection of lemmata related to astral science across the ancient world. It includes entries from multiple languages and scripts—such as Akkadian, Greek, Egyptian, Latin, and others—together with their transliterations, translations, semantic classifications, and contextual metadata. Each lemma is represented with its primary meaning, attested variants, and links to relevant quotations, publications, and cross-references within the glossary.

The dataset is designed to support research in ancient astronomy, lexicography, the history of science, and digital philology. It reflects ongoing work within the ZODIAC Project (Freie Universität Berlin), and accompanies the public-facing glossary available at: https://zodiacglossary.github.io/

All data are (as of December 2025) exported weekly from the project’s editorial environment to ensure that the published dataset reflects the most recent stable state of the glossary. Earlier versions remain available for reproducibility and citation.

Contents

The dataset includes:

• Lemmata with identifiers, languages, original spellings, transliterations, primary and secondary meanings.

• Semantic categories linked to meanings.

• Quotations with provenance and source information.

• Cross-links connecting related lemmata.

• Editorial metadata, including editors, modification dates, and publication status.

• Machine-readable JSON-LD metadata to support interoperability and FAIR reuse.

The data are provided as a single data.json file formatted for long-term archival and structured processing.

Intended Use

This dataset supports:

• lexical, philological, and historical research

• semantic analysis and categorization of astral terminology

• linguistic comparison across traditions

• digital humanities workflows, including corpus enrichment and linked open data

• reproducible computational analysis

Researchers may cite a specific version via its DOI, ensuring stable references in scholarly communication.