Ethiopian manuscript collections
Catalogues 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.
The Gunda Gunde Monastery is located in the Misraqawi (Eastern) Zone of the northern Tigray Region in Ethiopia.
[8] However a team led by Alessandro Gori undertook a listing exercise with regard to the Arabic materials and published the results in 2014.
In Europe, the three biggest collections of Ethiopian manuscripts are in Rome (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France) and in London (British Library).
[11] The Accademia dei Lincei in Rome holds the collection of 138 manuscripts formed by Carlo Conti Rossini.
The collections in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, held primarily in the Département des Manuscrits, have been subject to several cataloguing campaigns.
[13] The Ethiopic holdings were subsequently enlarged by the three collections, those of d'Abbadie, Casimir Mondon-Vidailhet,[14] and Marcel Griaule which increased the number at BnF to more than 970 manuscripts.
[17] The Bibliothèque nationale de France has now digitized and provided freely online its collection at Gallica (e.g., the Chronicle of the Kings of Ethiopia).
A notable addition in 2002 was an illustrated seventeenth-century manuscript of a Marian text, Arganona Weddase (‘Harp of Praise’) (MS.
[21] 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.
[26] 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.
Cowley spent 15 years in Ethiopia as an Anglican missionary and teacher, during which time he assembled a collection of Biblical commentaries in Amharic.
The Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham has an extensive collection of about 3000 manuscripts, assembled in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana.
The Ethiopic collections at the Cambridge University Library, just under seventy items in total, were catalogued by Edward Ullendorff.
[31] The Chester Beatty collection of 58 Ethiopian manuscripts includes illustrated gospel books, psalters and devotional works.
[20] The library at Leiden University has a collection of about 250 manuscripts in Ge’ez and Amharic mostly dating to the twentieth century.
Subsequent acquisitions are listed in Catalogus van de Ethiopische handschriften, an inventory prepared by Rachel Struyk in 1995.
[38] The Vatican Library has the largest collection of Ethiopian manuscripts outside of Ethiopia, many donated in the early modern period.
"[42] The scrolls are dated to the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries based on Strelcyn's assessment of the palaeography.
Garrett acquired most his Ethiopic manuscripts from Enno Littmann who led expeditions to Tigray Region and Axum in 1905 and 1906.
[47] [48] Also included in the collection are Psalters, Prayer books, Homilies of Michael, Synaxaria, Anaphora of Addai and Mari, Missals and Gospels.
The Charles E. Young Research Library at the University of California, Los Angeles had a core collection 64 Ethiopian manuscripts in Ge'ez, Agaw and Amharic.
Subsequently, the library has acquired the extensive collection of Gerald and Barbara Weiner; this consists of 139 manuscripts and 110 scrolls.
The collection at the Institute for the Study of Eastern Christianity, Catholic University of America, contains 375 codices, of which 177 are Islamic, plus three codex quires and 374 scrolls.
[55] EMML is also the largest and most important repository for scholarly access to texts in Geʻez, and it records the ecclesiastical owners of individual manuscripts.
[56] André Tweed (1914 – 1993) was an alumnus of Howard University’s Medical School who became interested in Ethiopian manuscripts and bought many codices, healing scrolls, crosses and other artifacts.
Books from the 18th century are as follows: a life of St. Cyrus with 53 illuminated portraits, a life of St. Graba, a liturgical text with two illuminated portraits, a treatise on the Trinity, eight Psalters, some with illuminated pages, a Malka Sellasse Trinity, two Mashafa Genzats (burial liturgies), an 18th or 19th century Deggwa (hymnbook) and a second fragment of a Deggwa, a Prayer of Peter along with other religion-magical prayers, another fragment of prayers from a religio-magical text, and a Dersana Michael – four readings for the festival of the Archangel including two 20th century paintings.
In addition to the manuscripts, there are a variety of religious artifacts: silver pectoral crosses, processional crosses made of various materials (silver, brass, copper, iron, wood) – some on wooden shafts, silver hand crosses, silver star of David pendants, other necklaces – some made of silver or wooden beads, bracelets, rings, a pocket watch, seals, hair ornaments, coins, artwork of various sorts including a late 15th or early 16th century painted diptych and many other diptychs and triptychs of religious subjects, musical instruments including a lyre, a bronze and wood sistrum (a kind of rattle), a one-string violin, a kalimba or hand piano, eating and drinking vessels such as bowls, vases, water jugs, baskets, a horse-hair wooden wisk, masks, headrests, stools, and a leather bridle.
[58] The J. Paul Getty Museum acquired a single manuscript of the Gospels dating to the early sixteenth century in 2008.
