Paolo Nicelli, ed., L’Africa, l’Oriente mediterraneo e l’Europa. Tradizioni e culture a confronto

Revie

In memoriam Sevir B. Chernetsov (1943–2005)

Obituary  

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

Revie

Mäṣḥafä fǝlsätu lä-abunä Täklä Haymanot: a Short Study

The account of the translation of the relics of abunä Täklä Haymanot, usually attached to his Acts, is one of the less-studied elements of the Saint’s hagiographic tradition. The article starts with a typology of translation reports in Ethiopian literature and deals in detail with the analysis of the textual tradition of the so-called Mäṣḥafä fǝlsätu lä-abunä Täklä Haymanot (‘Book of [the History] of the Translation [of the Body] of our father Täklä Haymanot’, BHT) and the problem of its sources. At least two stages can be distinguished in the development of the text (BHT1, BHT2), a long period of about two centuries separating them. The narrative of the first translation of the body of the Saint, which is said to have taken place in 1370, only becomes central in the later version of the work (BHT2). Among the literary relations around the BHT revealed in this study, the connection with the so-called Death of Moses, mostly known as a text affiliated to the literary tradition of the Betä Ǝsraʾel, is the most interesting one

The Two Yoḥannǝses of Santo Stefano degli Abissini, Rome: Reconstructing Biography and Cross-Cultural Encounter through Manuscript Evidence

The Ethiopian Orthodox monastery of Santo Stefano degli Abissini in Rome was one of four diasporic Ethiopian communities around the Mediterranean and played a central role in disseminating knowledge about Ethiopian language, culture, and religion in sixteenth-century Europe. Yet apart from its most famous member, Täsfa Ṣǝyon, very little is known about the identities and careers of its monks. This article draws on the surviving Geez manuscripts of Santo Stefano’s own library, as well as European correspondence and archival documents, to reconstruct the biographies of two influential denizens of Santo Stefano. Hitherto believed to be a single person, Yoḥannǝs of Qänṭorare and Giovanni Battista “the Indian” (whom we identify instead as Yoḥannǝs of Cyprus) in fact followed quite different career trajectories, and illustrate the variety of ways in which Ethiopian Orthodox identity could be negotiated in a Catholic European setting

On the History of the Library of Mäqdäla: New Findings

It has been known that only a part of the parchment manuscripts of Mäqdäla library seized by British expeditionary force in 1868 entered European collections. Many of those manuscripts stayed in Ethiopia but not much was known about them. New information on these manuscripts has been recently gathered by the team of the project “Ethio-SPaRe: Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia – Salvation, Preservation and Research”. Among manuscripts registered in monasteries and churches of East Tǝgray, some could have been identified as manuscripts previously coming from Mäqdäla library. The article presents these manuscripts and some of their features

“Behold, I have written it on parchment…” Two Early Amharic Poems from Ms. Ef. 10 (Koriander 2), St. Petersburg

The article deals with two short poems in Amharic from Ms. Ef. 10 kept in the Library of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Amharic, a Semitic language of Ethiopia, came to function as the second written language of Ethiopian Empire in the course of the 19th century. Samples of Amharic texts prior to this period are scanty and worthy of special study. The poems in question can be dated to the period end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th century. The article provides the texts of the poems with translation and linguistic and philological commentary, accompanied by a short description of Ms. Ef. 10

Lesser-known Features of the Ethiopian Codex

Despite the recent increase of attention to the Ethiopian manuscript culture, our knowledge of the historical features of the Ethiopian codex remains limited. It is confined to the information gathered in a few publications that treat the topic in a concise way, or it excludes features that appear non-typical or uncommon, or it sticks to the description of the manuscript culture as it appears today without attempts to obtain a historical picture. The items preserved in the manuscript collecti..

Proceedings of the ‘18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies: Movements in Ethiopia/Ethiopia in Movement’ Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, October 29–November 2, 2012. Panel on Manuscript Studies

Conference Repor

Index to Studia Aethiopica

Index to Verena Böll, Denis Nosnitsin, Thomas Rave, Wolbert Smidt and Evgenia Sokolinskaia (eds.), Studia Aethiopica. In Honour of Siegbert Uhlig on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Harrassowitz Verlag: Wiesbaden 2004, 459 pp