About TifinaghDB

An open, read-only corpus of ancient Libyc / Libyco-Berber inscriptions, published as a rebuildable SQLite database with a public interface.

Scope

Ancient Libyc only — not modern Tuareg Tifinagh, not Neo-Tifinagh/IRCAM. Saharan transitional inscriptions are in scope and flagged. Region: North Africa, the Canary Islands, and the Saharan transitional zone.

Why a sign registry

The ancient script is not encoded in Unicode (only Neo-Tifinagh is). We therefore store inscriptions as sequences of sign references, not as Neo-Tifinagh stand-in text, and keep one artwork file per shape.

Readings are claims

Readings are contested, and Chabot (1941) is a century old. Every phonetic value and every reading carries its editor and its source. Where values compete, they are shown side by side; nothing is silently corrected.

Editorial authority

The project maintainer is the sole editor for now. Corrections arrive by issue or pull request and are recorded; the About page states this plainly so the corpus can be cited and disputed honestly.

Links

• Sign registry
• Data downloads
• JSON API

Design, schema and policy: PLAN.md in the repository.