Abstract
AbstractThis article presents a publication and translation (with linguistic and philological commentaries) of a recently discovered piece of Old Amharic poetry, possibly dating to the first half/middle of the seventeenth century. The published text bears the titleMärgämä kəbr(“Condemnation of glory”), but its content differs from that of several other Old Amharic poems (not entirely independent from each other) known under the same title. It is only the general idea and the main topics that are shared by allMärgämä kəbrpoems: transience of the earthly world, the inevitability of death and of God's judgement, and the necessity of leading a virtuous life. One can thus speak ofMärgämä kəbras a special genre of early Amharic literature, probably originally belonging to the domain of oral literature and used to address the Christian community with the aim of religious education and admonition of laymen.
Highlights
X previously unknown manuscripts with Amharic texts, a few of which are definitely older than the nineteenth century
3 Poetic compositions written in manuscripts constitute a distinct group of sources in Old Amharic
The text under study is a poem in Old Amharic entitled Märgämä kəbr, “Condemnation of glory” ( MärKL), an appellation that has become known thanks to two recent publications of Getatchew Haile
Summary
Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia – Salvation, Preservation, and Research, funded by the European Research Council under the 7th. The text to which the present study is devoted is contained in one of the most interesting items in the church library, the codex which has received the project signature MKL-008.7. Both the bifolio and the singleton could have been inserted at the end of the volume later, and put at their present place by chance, as the result of damage and improper handling of the manuscript. Content The manuscript contains a collection of texts used in the Mass of the Ethiopic Orthodox Church (Mäṣḥafä qəddase): I) Prefatory service (Śəratä qəddase “Order of the Mass”) Apart from the main texts, the manuscript contains a number of smaller texts added later in the blank spaces (additiones), mostly of liturgical content: 14 Cf. Mäṣḥafä qəddase 1962 AM. Excerpt from a liturgical text 6) f. 150va, lines 10–15 -vb (=leaf vi-verso): ʾƎllä mäṣakəmuəllä tägabakəmu wä-ʾəllä ṣälläykəmu wəstä zatti qəddəstəmmənä betä krəstiyan. . ., Prayer for those gathered in the church(?) 7) ff. 149ra, lines 1–7 (=leaf vii-recto): Täsahalkäəgzio mədräkä. . ., Short excerpt from a prayer or hymn18 8) ff. 149ra, lines 8–14 -rb (=leaf vii-recto), 149v (=leaf vii-verso), 145r (=leaf viii-recto): Mästäbqwəbä-ʾəntä mutan, “Supplication for the dead”,19 partly with musical notation signs; other supplications
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