Suchergebnisse

A wooden altar tablet (ṭablītō) inscribed in Syriac, consecrated by an 'Athanasius bishop of Ethiopia' in 1295/1296 CE was recently documented from a church in the nearby of Asmara, in Eritrea. The note provides edition, translation, and commentary of the text, as well as a first assessment of its meaning in connection with the debated issue of the presence of Syrian prelates in Ethiopia and Eritrea at the end of the thirteenth century. The wooden tablet is the only ancient or medieval written object in Syriac script or language that has so far been found in Ethiopia or Eritrea.

The role assigned by the late antique poet Nonnus of Panopolis (mid-fifth century CE) to Modaios, king of the 'Indians', in a few passages of his huge poem Dionysiaca, suggests that the choice of the character may be attributable to a connection between the Greek name of the king (Μωδαῖος) and the somewhat enigmatic MḤDYS, a mid-fifth-century king of Aksum, known only from numismatic evidence. The hypothesis opens the way to further reflection on the role allusions to contemporary events play in Nonnus's poem as an evidence of a precise awareness about Aksum in Late Antique Egypt.

The section named Ystoria Ethyopie in the Cronica universalis written by Galvaneus de la Flamma (d. c.1345) depends, according to the writer's statements, on a Tractatus de mappa whose author is easily identifiable as Giovanni da Carignano (d. c.1330), who drew a famous planisphere of the Mediterranean area. The Tractatus de mappa, as quoted by Galvaneus, reports surprising pieces of news about the Ethiopia of the time and in particular on an event which has been known so far only by a later and generally disregarded source, namely the Supplementum cronicarum of Giacomo Filippo Foresti (first edition 1483): the supposed embassy sent by an imperator Ethiopie to Western Europe at the time of Pope Clement V, that would be the first diplomatic contact between these two areas in the Middle Ages.The Latin text of the Ystoria Ethyopie is edited with an annotated English translation that intends to provide a detailed critical assessment of the document. If no conclusivem evidence in favour of the existence of the embassy emerges and the depiction of Ethiopia in the Ystoria Ethyopie appears to be in several passages influenced by contemporary ideas and expectations, there is no doubt that reliable information on early-fourteenthcentury Ethiopia was directly or indirectly conveyed to Giovanni da Carignano, as we can read it resumed in Galvaneus's Cronica universalis.

Conference Report

Since early times Christians devised solutions for harmonizing and navigating the Four Gospels, coping with four only partly matching narratives of the Life of Christ. The most sophisticated device were the 'Canon Tables' attributed to Eusebius. Prefaced to the Gospels, the Tables appear since the earliest examples within finely decorated architectural frames, which became a most typical subject of late antique and medieval book art.

Selecting and excerpting, summarizing and canonizing, arranging texts and visual signs in manuscripts appear to be universal practices. This volume analyses the fascinating vicissitudes of birth and development, growth and decrease, of manuscripts consisting of more texts ('multiple-text manuscripts'), at the example of a vast array of manuscript cultures, from the Indian, African, Christian, Islamic, and European domains.

The series publishes monographs and collective volumes contributing to the emerging field of manuscript studies (manuscriptology), which includes disciplines such as philology, palaeography, codicology, art history, and material analysis. SMC encourages comparative approaches, without geographical or other limitations on the material studied; it contributes to a historical and systematic survey of manuscript cultures, and provides a new foundation for current discussions in Cultural Studies.

What do Mesoamerica, Greece, Byzantium, Island, Chad, Ethiopia, India, Tibet, China and Japan have in common? Like many other cultures of the world, they share a particular form of cultural heritage: ancient handwritten documents. This volume offers in 16 articles on philological, cultural, and material aspects of manuscripts a common ground across disciplines and cultures.

Dieses Buch ist ein Kompendium für Reisende, Studierende, Wirtschaftsvertreter, Afrikainteressierte und Entscheidungsträger in Politik und Stiftungswesen. 85 Fachleute aus 15 Ländern berichten über das Land der Urzeit-Dame `Lucy´, über seine Felsenkirchen und Nationalparks, über das Zusammenleben von Christen und Muslimen und über fremde Kulturen, aber auch über die aktuellen Entwicklungen und großen Herausforderungen in der Region. In zehn Kapiteln werden Land und Leute, Geschichte, Kultur, Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik, jüngste Entwicklungen und einmalige Reiseziele beschrieben und mit Übersichten, Karten, Literaturhinweisen und Fotos dokumentiert.

In the 2014 excavations at the Jesuit church of Gorgora Iyäsus on the northern shore of Lake Ṭana a remarkable relief in stone was unearthed. The relief was originally part of the church's façade. It represents the biblical heroine Judith over a dragon and it contains two inscriptions in Gǝʿǝz from the Book of Judith and Genesis. This piece represents one of the few recorded inscriptions on stone from the end of the Aksumite period to the present time. The article focuses on the historical context that witnessed the production of this relief and provides an interpretation of its iconography.