Digital Heritage and Linguistics: The Case of the Online Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian VÉgA

This chapter examines how digital technologies can transform the preservation and dissemination of ancient linguistic knowledge, focusing on the development of VÉgA, a multilingual online dictionary of Ancient Egyptian. Traditional lexicographic ap-proaches, constrained by static formats and long production cycles, often hinder both scholarly work and public access. In response, the VÉgA project brings together Egyptologists, computer scientists, and digital designers to create a tool that integrates research, communication, and knowledge transfer. Using a participatory co-design method, the team developed a knowledge-based system grounded in a comprehensive linguistic ontology and implemented through a document graph database. This structure allows for real-time updates, complex semantic modeling, and user-adapted interfaces. The platform is also designed to support interoperability with other schol-arly databases. It further extends into educational and museum contexts, offering in-teractive applications that bridge expert and public engagement. The findings suggest that collaborative digital infrastructures like VÉgA can effectively meet the dual chal-lenges of scholarly rigor and broad accessibility. The project contributes to a broader rethinking of digital heritage practices and illustrates how cultural knowledge can be dynamically preserved, analyzed, and shared in the digital age.