Ethiopian Manuscripts Research Articles

Textual Value of an Ethiopic Woman Hagiography: Gädlä St. Fəqərtä Krəstos

The hagiography of St. FƏqƏrtä KrƏstos is a 17th c. manuscript and as a local Saint hagiography, it was written in the Ethiopian manuscript tradition by an Ethiopian scribe. The hagiography of saints in Ethiopia is a main literary genre that has invaluable evidences about the saints’ period in a unique form. It provides information about the major events that had taken place relating to the life, works, miracles and the various spiritual struggles of men and women saints. In addition to that it also describes about the bishops, the political situation, the Kings, the name of several places of that time,. . . and the events relating to the life of the saint. Therefore, hagiographies are important genre for the contemporary religious life and in general for the history of the country. It is rich in vital information used as a source material to social, historical, cultural, political, geographical, architectural, archeological, theological, linguistic, philological, and different fields of studies. The hagiography of St. FƏqƏrtä KƏrstos provides information for different study and as a hagiography of a local woman saint; it is a pivotal text for gender study. It shows how women were strong spirit in monastic life and struggling in defending their faith and country. This article is a part of the PhD dissertation work of the main author of this article at Addis Ababa University on a prominent Ethiopian woman saint with the title of “Gädlä St. FƏqƏrtä KrƏstos: Critical Edition with Annotated Translation.”

MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Parm. 3852

MS Parma (Italy), Biblioteca Palatina, Parm. 3852, is a twentieth century manuscript comprising a collection of texts related to Saint King Lālibalā, known as the Gadla Lālibalā collection. This manuscript was produced by a scribe named Walda Giyorgis, who was probably a member of the Catholic Church of the Ethiopian Rite. This paper focuses on a single page from that manuscript, f. 118v, which displays a set of elements consisting of ‘titles’—navigational elements that help to structure liturgical readings. The introductory part was developed from an earlier manuscript bearing the same content, produced at the end of the seventeenth century for the church of Golgotā in Roha-Lālibalā in Lasta, Ethiopia. That manuscript was part of a cultural project aimed at strengthening local identity, and which chose Lālibalā as a patron of the region despite the fact that he had been dubbed a usurper by the ruling dynasty. The manuscript contains navigational elements common in Ethiopic manuscripts, but it is unique because it was produced between 1939 and 1940, when Italy declared the Impero, the Africa Orientale Italiana.

I manoscritti etiopici della Biblioteca Statale di Montevergine a Mercogliano, Avellino

The Biblioteca Statale di Montevergine annexed to the Monumento nazionale di Montevergine, housed in the Palazzo abbaziale di Loreto, in Mercogliano, Avellino, also includes two Ethiopic manuscripts that once belonged to the ‘Johannowsky Library’. The manuscripts date to the nineteenth (non post 1895 CE, Cod. 24, Praise of Mary and Gate of Light) and to the beginning of the twentieth century (1907/1908 CE, Ms. 3, Image of the Twenty-Four Heavenly Priests and Ethiopian Psalter). The first manuscript was apparently taken from the field tent of Rās Mangašā after the Battle of Saganayti, on 15 January 1895, and eventually donated on 27 November 1900 by Daǧāzmāč Mikāʾel to the Italian colonial officer Ilario Capomazza.

The Gǝʿǝz Manuscripts Collection from the Monastery of Däbrä Ṣǝyon (Abunä Abrǝham, Tǝgray, Ethiopia)

The monastery of Däbrä Ṣǝyon (Abunä Abrǝham), situated on a peak of the eastern chains of the Gärʿalta mountains, is one of the well-known medieval Ethiopian monasteries. It is said to have been established in the fourteenth century by St Abrǝham of Tǝgray. According to his own gädl, Abunä Abrǝham was not only the founder of the monastery, but was also known to be an active participant and director of the architectural work of the rock-hewn church. It is known that Gärʿalta is endowed with reflections of Aksumite culture, and the monastery of Däbrä Ṣǝyon also seems to have had its own share in its continuation. Many places and monasteries (in Tǝgray) are linked to this monastery in terms of shared monastic culture and land granting. Däbrä Ṣǝyon is a rock-hewn church in which many Christian historical artefacts have been preserved. Among the non-codex written artefacts, it has preserved, in particular, a ṭawos manuscript. Seventy-two Gǝʿǝz manuscripts, most of which of hagiographical and liturgical genre, are kept in the church. All were digitized, foliated, with quire number and structure sorted out in 2018, via a project carried out by the St Yared Center for Ethiopian Philology and Manuscript Studies (SYCEPMS) of Mekelle University. Material, physical, and chemical analysis of the manuscripts was not applied due to a lack of equipment and skill. The manuscripts are now in the process of being catalogued and examined for dating, and the article provides a synthetic survey of the whole collection. The ṭawos manuscript, that is, a peacock-type manuscript from the fifteenth century, is part of the collection; its format calls for consideration regarding the definition and significance of a special style of Ethiopic manuscript culture. As a result, this article aims at introducing the monastery and its manuscript collection.

Особенности работы переписчиков эфиопских царских хроник Позднего Средневековья

A number of works by both Ethiopian researchers and clergymen, and scholars outside of Ethiopia are devoted to the process of making of Ethiopian manuscripts and of their copying. Most of these works describe the features of the process of writing on the base of the experience of contemporary Ethiopian scribes. Historical data on the scribes’ work are little known and, in this regard, did not become the object of a particular research. In addition, related scientific works were most often created on the base of manuscripts of religious nature. The present study examines the work of scribes of specific lists on the base of a comparison with each other of handwritten copies of the texts of the royal chronicles of the second half of the 18th century, namely, of the kings Takla Haymanot II and Takla Giorgis I from the manuscripts of Eth. 143 from the collection of the National Library of France and Orient. 821 from the British Library.

The Beginnings of Yemeni and Zaydi Studies in Europe: The Eugenio Griffini Archive, Milan

Abstract The arrival of large numbers of Yemeni manuscripts in European libraries towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century was a sensation that was enthusiastically received by the scholarly world. One of the principal reasons for this enthusiastic reception was the upsurge of South Arabian studies in Europe since the first half of the nineteenth century, together with the hope that the new material would fill some of the gaps in the literary sources on the history and geography of southern Arabia, especially during the pre-Islamic period. The most significant such lacuna was the missing volumes 1 through 7 and 9 of al-Hamdānī’s Iklīl. The two most important collections of Yemeni manuscripts that arrived in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been gathered by Eduard Glaser and Giuseppe Caprotti, respectively, and their collections were sold to Berlin, London, and Vienna (Glaser) and to Munich, Milan, and the Vatican (Caprotti). The collections included some new material on South Arabian history (including volumes 1, 2, and 6 of the Iklīl), but they also opened up entirely new vistas and laid the foundation for the new discipline of Zaydi studies. Unlike South Arabian studies, the study of Zaydism had a slow start, with initially only a few scholars being interested in this entirely new field. Moreover, the scholarly exploration of the respective subcollections depended on the availability of catalogues. The early history of the Caprotti collection is intimately linked to Eugenio Griffini. Caprotti had dispatched nearly his entire manuscript collection of some 1,600 codices to Griffini, who kept it in his apartment in Milan until 1909, when the collection was donated to the Ambrosiana Library. Griffini was also the first and, for a long time, the only scholar to study the collection and prepare studies as well as catalogues of it. The process of his engagement with the material can be reconstructed on the basis of the Griffini archive, the whereabouts of which were for decades uncertain. This study outlines the discovery of the Griffini archive in the Biblioteca Comunale Centrale Palazzo Sormani in Milan and provides an initial overview of its contents, including Griffini’s epistolary exchanges with some ninety-nine correspondents, his descriptions of some of the Ethiopic manuscripts of the Ambrosiana, and, most importantly, his schedario, containing his extensive notes on all manuscripts of series A of the Caprotti collection. The large corpus of so far unexplored material promises to provide new insights into the network of Islamicists and Arabists at the turn of the twentieth century and the nascent phase of Zaydi studies in Europe.

Giving Depth to TEI-Based Descriptions of Manuscripts: The Golden Gospel of Ham

The work on the Golden Gospel of Dabra Libānos za-Ham in Eritrea, one of the main archives of the medieval history of Ethiopia and Eritrea, was initiated within the frame of the Ethiopian Manuscript Archives project, ANR EthioChristProcess, and Beta maṣāḥǝft. The work aims to describe the codicological disposition of the archival notes (i.e. arrangement of texts within the codex and its by-side folia), to provide their transcription, translation, and indexation. This article will discuss the encoding method for this work in progress, supported by TEI.

Multiple-Text Manuscripts from the Gondarine Age: MSS London, BL Orient. 818 and Paris, BnF Éth. 146

It would be ungenerous to claim that the Ethiopian manuscript heritage preserved in major Western libraries, although having been identified and catalogued for decades, has no more surprises in store. Mss BL Or. 818 and BnF Éthiopien 146 are two skilfully executed multiple-text manuscripts which share the same combination of texts, although arranged in a different order. Independent philological surveys have recurrently evidenced a close genetic affinity between the two pieces. Nevertheless, an overall assessment of their history has never been made. A scrutiny of the textual and historical data reveals that the two manuscripts were produced and intended as gifts for the churches of Dabra Ḍaḥāy Qʷǝsqʷām in Gondar and Nārgā Śǝllāse, both established and patronized in the mid-eighteenth century by ʾƎtege Mǝntǝwwāb, mother of ʾAṣe ʾIyāsu II. The present study aims to demonstrate that the two manuscripts are not only outstanding examples of Gondarine bookmaking culture, but also witnesses to a deliberate initiative of production and dissemination of parchment artefacts in favour of ecclesiastical foundations in the area of Lake Ṭānā. Furthermore, independent pieces of evidence from several texts contained in the two codices suggest that MS BnF Éthiopien 146 was most likely copied from MS BL Or. 818.

Decolonising the environment through African epistemologies

This paper examines African epistemologies of the environment as a place-based perspective that regards nature as having its inherent value, personhood, and agency. It presents the African way of relating with or living in the environment as a way of becoming one with nature beyond the discourse of the Anthropocene and environmental change. In particular, we will take African epistemological perspectives from Southern and Eastern Africa, the notions of Ubuntu and Tabot, to reflect on how the environment is traditionally perceived as sacred and part of a living community. The paper also considers how African indigenous ways of knowing and becoming one with nature have been supplanted through epistemic violence, the imposition of western views of the environment over African worldviews through systems and institutions that exclude or exploit local knowledges. Using Ethiopia as a case study, the paper demonstrates how epistemic violence is enacted by excluding indigenous knowledges of the environment from education and disseminating Eurocentric views of the environment. It shall show how the collecting and hording of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions has contributed to this loss of indigenous environmental knowledge. Finally, we will examine the importance of African perspectives to decolonise our ways of knowing and relating with the environment, and offer critical insights on how African epistemologies could be used to build a future that is decolonised and sustainable.

A Rejoinder regarding Veronika Six’s Review Published in Aethiopica, 22 (2019), 271–276

The rejoinder responds to a review, penned by Dr Veronika Six, of a recent catalogue of Ethiopic manuscripts kept in Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, compiled by Dr Denis Nosnitsin. The rejoinder contains an exchange of arguments on the properties of the catalogue and responds to some critical remarks of V. Six. The dialog concerns individual characteristics of some specific manuscripts but also raises a number of issues and questions regarding some fundamental aspects of the cataloguing practice.

African Form of Indigenous Mass Communication in the Case of Ethiopia

The purpose of this article is to explore African form of indigenous mass communication with emphasis on Ethiopian indigenous form mass communication institutions, tools, manuscripts, and regulatory bodies. The method employed for this study is qualitative. First hand documents, tools and observation were considered as sources of primary data. Furthermore, pertinent literature was reviewed. The data was analyzed qualitatively where description of the responses on the bases of themes was given emphasis. The finding of this study argued that drum beating, horn blowing and town crying are a form of mass communications in the ancient time. In ancient time news in Africa was first made public from the tower in the center, squares of the city, palace main stairs, market and church. Town Criers, Azmari and shepherds were the journalists and the essential news presenters in ancient times. In the same manner, Afe Negus (mouth of the King) and Tsehafe Tezaze (Minister of Pen) were originally indigenous information regulatory bodies of the empire regime. This research discovered the oldest African newspaper in Ethiopia, a news sheet entitled Zenamewale (Daily News) and the first written newspaper and inscriptions of king Ezana are the first types of African form of news, which dates back to 320 A.D. Zena mewale is believed to be the first handmade press so far known in Africa for 700 years. This confirmed that Ethiopia has 3,000 years of indigenous forms of oral mass communication and handmade press history in Africa. Keywords: indigenous mass communication institutions, tools of traditional mass communication, manuscripts, regulatory bodies, Ethiopia

Beyond Words: New Research on Manuscripts in Boston Collections, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Lisa Fagin Davis, Anne-Marie Eze, Nancy Netzer, and William P. Stoneman. Text, Image, Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination, 8. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2021, 361 pp, 291 col. Ill.

This study stems from an exhibition/ conference of the same name, “Beyond Words,” presented in Boston in 2006; however, it goes well beyond the bounds of a conventional exhibition catalog, which was produced at the time to accompany the objects on display. The volume produced here expands these initial parameters to consider additional questions about the manuscripts held in these Boston collections, notably Houghton Library at Harvard University, McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston. The book is divided into four major sections, devoted respectively to monastic manuscripts (3 essays), courtly culture and patronage (5 essays), princes, patricians, prelates and pontiffs (4 essays), and illuminating history (3 essays) with a coda on manuscripts in the modern era provided by the final essay. As the editors remark in their introduction, the emphasis is Christian and central European; this is due in part to the collection parameters themselves (the above institutions have no Ethiopian or Hebrew manuscripts, for example) and in part by limitations of time and focus (there are a number of Islamic manuscripts in the Boston collections which have not been included here but would be well worth exploring in a separate study of their own). The richness and depth of the sixteen essays here offer insights into many aspects of the late medieval world. The chapter by Patricia Stirnemann on Gilbert de la Porrée traces book collection of the works of a single, theologically problematic author, and offers a valuable case study on the transmission of writings by a scholar charged (though exonerated) with heresy. Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak demonstrates how the charters of the abbey of Sawley preserved in the Houghton library allow us to consider the “medial role” of document writing, and how this practice assisted an English Cistercian monastery to shape its own representation with its neighbors by crafting records of land ownership disputes. Kathryn M. Rudy examines manuscript workshops among nuns in Delft in the fifteenth century, providing a vivid model of book production practices in these devotional contexts.

“Holding Living Bodies in Graveyards”: The Violence of Keeping Ethiopian Manuscripts in Western Institutions

“Holding Living Bodies in Graveyards”: The Violence of Keeping Ethiopian Manuscripts in Western Institutions

Beschreibung der zuletzt von der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München erworbenen äthiopischen Handschriften

A description of the collection of Ethiopian manuscripts in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, can be found in the volumes of the Union Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts in Germany (Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, VOHD). However, by 2016, the library’s holdings had been augmented by a further twenty Ethiopian manuscripts: some were donations, but most had been purchased atauctions. They are presented in this article according to the rules of the VOHD. Of the four Psalters, Cod. aethiop. 179, probably dating from the sixteenth century based on paleographic criteria, should be highlighted. Furthermore there are seven parchment scrolls and two leporello manuscripts. Also worth mentioning is a Senkessār for the second part of the year, as well as a Deggwā and several other manuscripts, all withillustrations that have been added at a later date to the original text but which have a characteristic style or use wellknown motifs. Cod. aethiop. 173 is also interesting since there are not many other such manuscripts, though at first sight the title ʿEnzira sebḥat simply suggests a common hymn.

A New Witness to the Chronicle of John of Nikiu: EMML 7919

This article introduces a new witness to the Chronicle of John of Nikiu (EMML 7919). It analyses the text of this witness alongside the four previously known Ethiopic manuscripts of this work. The article considers the current state of research on the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, including an examination of the textual witnesses, the language of the original composition, and the biographical and historical information of the chronicler. The textual analysis of EMML 7919 demonstrates a strong relation with the text attested in ANL Conti Rossini 27, which suggests that EMML 7919 is highly valuable for the reconstruction of the Ethiopic version of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu. Finally, there is a catalogue entry for EMML 7919, which details the textual and codicological features of the manuscript.

James Bruce's ‘Fourth’ Manuscript: Solving the Mystery of the Provenance of the Roman Enoch Manuscript (Vat. et. 71)

For four centuries the book of Enoch was lost to Western Christianity and Judaism. That was until 1773, when Scottish explorer James Bruce brought back from Ethiopia ‘three’ copies of it to France and England. Yet, by the end of the eighteenth century there was another copy of the book of Enoch in Rome, in the library of Cardinal Leonardo Antonelli. This was an Ethiopic manuscript that, around 1825, would be acquired by Angelo Mai for the Vatican Library, where it is currently preserved (Vat. et. 71). The provenance of the manuscript has remained until now unknown. Through the recovery of eighteenth-century neglected letters and documents, this article uncovers a forgotten chapter in James Bruce's biography, his adventurous journey to Rome immediately after his return from Ethiopia, his meeting with Pope Clement XIV, and the ‘fourth’ Enoch manuscript he donated to the Antonelli Library. Personal and political reasons led Bruce to suppress the memory of his precious gift.

Towards a Comparative Framework for Research on the Long Cycle in Ethiopic Gospels: Some Preliminary Observations

This article argues that it is possible to improve our understanding of Ethiopian manuscript illumination of the early Solomonic period by adopting a systematic comparative approach. It does so by presenting a case study which analyses and compares the iconography of two examples of the long cycle dating to the second half of the fourteenth century. This comparison shows how technical skills and artistic choices contributed to the shaping of Ethiopian manuscript illumination, and in doing so it sheds some light on the artistic practices of early Solomonic illuminators.

Meley Mulugetta,Ethiopian Church Archives Collection, I: Ethiopian Manuscripts Digital Library, Codices 1–213

Review

An Early Ethiopic Manuscript Fragment (Twelfth–Thirteenth Century) from the Monastery of St Antony (Egypt)

This article presents a single fragmentary folio that was recently uncovered in excavations at the Monastery of St Antony (Egypt). This folio was discovered in a secondary deposit below the foundations of a church which was in all likelihood constructed in the 1230s. A radiocarbon dating of the folio has returned a date of 1160–1265. Together, these two data make this fragmentary folio the earliest securely datable specimen of an Ethiopic manuscript. This find, thus, provides a new foundation for the analysis of the paleography of the earliest Ethiopic manuscripts, including the gospel manuscripts from Ǝnda Abba Gärima, which contain paleographic features that seem to predate this fragmentary folio. In addition, this find has implications for the regnant periodization of Ethiopic literature and more specifically the history of Ethiopic monastic literature, especially the Zena Abäw. Finally, this folio is among the earliest surviving Aethiopica for the entirety of Egypt and thus provides new information on the relationship between Ethiopic and Coptic Christianity.

The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman by Galawdewos

Reviewed by: The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman by Galawdewos Andrew Crislip (bio) Galawdewos. The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman. Translated and edited by Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner, Princeton UP, 2015. xxxii + 500 pp. ISBN 978-0691164212, $39.95. Ethiopia is home to one of the most ancient forms of Christianity, the history of which can be traced to the fourth century. The classical language of Ethiopia, Ge'ez, preserves a large body of indigenous literature of religious and secular importance, as well as many early Jewish and Christian texts translated from Egyptian Copto-Arabic exemplars. Original composition in the classical language continued into the early modern period in a range of genres, among the most popular of which were saints' lives, developed in the distinctive Ethiopian genre of gädl, as reflected in the text translated here as The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros. The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros is an important witness to conflicts between Ethiopian Christians and proto-colonial Portuguese missions. In the 1520s and 1530s, the Habäša people became increasingly concerned with the advance of Islamic armies in Africa and, consequently, appealed to the Portuguese for help. After the Portuguese intervened, Jesuit missionaries set about attempting to convert the Habäša to Catholicism, hoping to rid them not only of their miaphysite (single nature) theology about the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ (which they share with Egyptian, Armenian, and Syrian churches), but also of their traditional customs that set them apart even from other miaphysite Christians, such as refusing pork and rabbit, keeping the Sabbath on Saturday and Sunday, and not baptizing children until the fortieth day. A new king, Susenyos, converted to Catholicism (he was from a non-Habäša people) and, with the Jesuits, tried to enforce conversion. The mission was culturally insensitive and met with widespread resistance from "among Habäša military ranks" (7) and among numerous Habäša noblewomen (7–10), foremost among whom was Walatta Petros (1592–1642 ce). The Catholic mission failed catastrophically, and no colonial attempt was made for another 250 years. Published by Princeton University Press, this deluxe edition of The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros is illustrated with 60 color images [End Page 366] from four Ethiopic manuscripts. It is also a technically demanding one (not least due to the complicated transliteration system and the Ethiopian Fidäl script), and the editors and press have produced it beautifully. Wendy Laura Belcher's introduction to the text covers the historical context and the distinctive features of the genre of gädl, which Belcher and Kleiner translate as "Life-Struggles" or, alternatively, "Life and Struggles." Belcher also discusses the manuscripts used for the translation based on painstaking collations of some dozen manuscripts (49–60). Belcher's description of the great efforts needed to produce this edition will be valuable to the many readers who do not come to this text familiar with the methods and complexities of manuscript editing and text criticism. The main audience for this thorough edition will likely be historians and students of ancient and medieval hagiography, as well as historians of early colonialism in Africa. For such readers, this edition offers rich resources for the study of Christian biography in Africa. On the other hand, the claim that this hagiography (which strikes me as typical in most ways of the genre) will aid "those seeking to problematize ideas of authorship, both supporting and challenging Saussurean ideas about language, not authors, speaking and Barthesian ideas about authors as facilitators not originators" seems rather unlikely (41). The edition itself is of a very high quality, although, since I do not read Ge'ez, I was unable to check or verify the translations. I will say, however, that the translation is exceptionally fluid throughout and heavily annotated. The translators identify biblical quotations, gloss names, traditions, and other matters that would not be clear to those unfamiliar with Ethiopia, and they note when they are translating more idiomatically, giving a...