The catalogue lists 108 items (some with multiple parts) and covers the general range of Ethiopian literature from Biblical texts to magical and divinatory writings. Nine decades later, Stefan Strelcyn reviewed the manuscripts that had come to the British Library after 1877 and published a catalogue of them. A catalogue of the enlarged collection was prepared by William Wright and published in 1877. The British Museum collections grew in 1868 when 349 manuscripts came after the British Expedition to Abyssinia against emperor Tewodros II. This catalogue was prepared by August Dillmann and included 88 items. In 1847 the Trustees of the British Museum published a catalogue of the Ethiopian manuscripts that were then under their care. However, some of the collection has an earlier provenance, for example, Extracts from the Chronicle of Axum, written on paper in about 1810 with the book plate of George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris. The founding Ethiopic collections in the British Museum until 1973 and since then in the British Library-74 manuscripts-came from the Church Mission Society and the materials that had been assembled by Karl Wilhelm Isenberg and Johann Ludwig Krapf, missionaries and linguists who travelled to the country between 18. British Library, London įolio from an illustrated Bible, Annunciation to Zechariah, British Library Add MS 59874. The uncatalogued manuscripts were revisited in 2007 by Steve Delamarter and Damaqa Berhāna Tafarā. A notable addition in 2002 was an illustrated seventeenth-century manuscript of a Marian text, Arganona Weddase (‘Harp of Praise’) (MS. Since the mid-nineteenth century the collection has expanded to 130 items. The collection soon grew to 33 manuscripts and these were catalogued and published in 1848 by August Dillmann. The early collections in the Bodleian Library at Oxford came from James Bruce, and consisted of 25 Ethiopic manuscripts purchased by the library in 1843. The list of institutions below is a partial selection of the most prominent and best known collections, giving special attention to the individual researchers involving in forming the collections and those scholars who wrote the catalogues.īritish Collections of Ethiopian Manuscripts Bodleian Library, Oxford This " Inventory of Libraries and Catalogues of Ethiopian Manuscripts" was created in 2008 and is maintained since then by A. Since that time, an online inventory has been developed that documents items labelled as “Ethiopian manuscripts’’ in libraries all over the world. The majority of manuscripts are in Ge'ez, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia.Ĭatalogues of individual collections were written in the nineteenth century, with a key work for the disposition of Ethiopian MSS more widely prepared in 1995 and published by Robert Beylot and Maxime Rodinson. There are eighty eight languages in Ethiopia according to Ethnologue, but not all support manuscript cultures. Apart from Islamic manuscripts, paper only came into general use twentieth century. Parchment ( berānnā) was used for Ethiopian manuscripts from the time of the Four Gospels books of Abbā Garimā. Monasteries and modern institutions in Ethiopia have, meanwhile, maintained extensive collections and in some cases are still centres of manuscript production. The five largest collections in North America are at Catholic University, the Library of Congress, UCLA, Princeton, and Howard University. Oriental collections of nearly all significant European libraries also have Ethiopian material, with some still pursuing a policy of acquisition. These three organisations together hold about 2,700 manuscripts. In Europe, the three biggest collections of Ethiopian manuscripts are in Rome (Biblioteca Apostolica Vatican), in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France) and in London (British Library).
Subsequently, travellers, missionaries, military personnel and scholars contributed to the development of collections outside Ethiopia. Wellcome Library, London, number 62892.Įthiopian manuscripts are known to have reached Europe as early as the fifteenth century, perhaps even earlier, through Egypt, Ethiopian pilgrims to the Holy Land and through members of the Ethiopian monastery of St Stephen of the Abyssinians in Rome.
Written on vellum, tooled leather binding, 8 volumes. First page showing mirror inside front cover with an illustration of Saint George.
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