Johannes Potken (Latin: Potkenius; c. 1470 – c. 1525) was a German scholar, papal secretary and printer from Cologne, active at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Potken had learned Ge'ez from the Ethiopian Abba Thomas Walda Samuel,[3] a pilgrim to Jerusalem and guest of Pope Leo X.
This was the beginning of European publishing of Ethiopian literature (although misidentified by Potken as "Chaldean").
The work included a syllabary, Alphabetum, seu potius Syllabarium literarum Chaldaearum.
He was in Rome as a long term papal protonotary; he became provost of the church of St. Georg in Cologne.