Here you can explore some general information about the project. See also Beta maṣāḥəft institutional web page. Select About to meet the project team and our partners. Visit the Guidelines section to learn about our encoding principles. The section Data contains the Linked Open Data information, and API the Application Programming Interface documentation for those who want to exchange data with the Beta maṣāḥǝft project. The Permalinks section documents the versioning and referencing earlier versions of each record.
Click to get back to the home page. Here you can find out more about the project team, the cooperating projects, and the contact information. You can also visit our institutional page. Find out more about our Encoding Guidelines. In this section our Linked Open Data principles are explained. Developers can find our Application Programming Interface documentation here. The page documents the use of permalinks by the project.
Descriptions of (predominantly) Christian manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea are the core of the Beta maṣāḥǝft project. We (1) gradually encode descriptions from printed catalogues, beginning from the historical ones, (2) incorporate digital descriptions produced by other projects, adjusting them wherever possible, and (3) produce descriptions of previously unknown and/or uncatalogued manuscripts. The encoding follows the TEI XML standards (check our guidelines).
We identify each unit of content in every manuscript. We consider any text with an independent circulation a work, with its own identification number within the Clavis Aethiopica (CAe). Parts of texts (e.g. chapters) without independent circulation (univocally identifiable by IDs assigned within the records) or recurrent motifs as well as documentary additional texts (identified as Narrative Units) are not part of the CAe. You can also check the list of different types of text titles or various Indexes available from the top menu.
The clavis is a repertory of all known works relevant for the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition; the work being defined as any text with an independent circulation. Each work (as well as known recensions where applicable) receives a unique identifier in the Clavis Aethiopica (CAe). In the filter search offered here one can search for a work by its title, a keyword, a short quotation, but also directly by its CAe identifier - or, wherever known and provided, identifier used by other claves, including Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG), Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG), Clavis Coptica (CC), Clavis Apocryphorum Veteris Testamenti (CAVT), Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (CANT), etc. The project additionally identifies Narrative Units to refer to text types, where no clavis identification is possible or necessary. Recurring motifs or also frequently documentary additiones are assigned a Narrative Unit ID, or thematically clearly demarkated passages from various recensions of a larger work. This list view shows the documentary collections encoded by the project Ethiopian Manuscript Archives (EMA) and its successor EthioChrisProcess - Christianization and religious interactions in Ethiopia (6th-13th century) : comparative approaches with Nubia and Egypt, which aim to edit the corpus of administrative acts of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, for medieval and modern periods. See also the list of documents contained in the additiones in the manuscripts described by the Beta maṣāḥǝft project . Works of interest to Ethiopian and Eritrean studies.
While encoding manuscripts, the project Beta maṣāḥǝft aims at creating an exhaustive repertory of art themes and techniques present in Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian tradition. See our encoding guidelines for details. Two types of searches for aspects of manuscript decoration are possible, the decorations filtered search and the general keyword search.
The filtered search for decorations, originally designed with Jacopo Gnisci, looks at decorations and their features only. The filters on the left are relative only to the selected features, reading the legends will help you to figure out what you can filter. For example you can search for all encoded decorations of a specific art theme, or search the encoded legends. If the decorations are present, but not encoded, you will not get them in the results. If an image is available, you will also find a thumbnail linking to the image viewer. [NB: The Index of Decorations currently often times out, we are sorry for the inconvenience.] You can search for particular motifs or aspects, including style, also through the keyword search. Just click on "Art keywords" and "Art themes" on the left to browse through the options. This is a short cut to a search for all those manuscripts which have miniatures of which we have images.
We create metadata for all places associated with the manuscript production and circulation as well as those mentioned in the texts used by the project. The encoding of places in Beta maṣāḥǝft will thus result in a Gazetteer of the Ethiopian tradition. We follow the principles established by Pleiades and lined out in the Syriaca.org TEI Manual and Schema for Historical Geography which allow us to distinguish between places, locations, and names of places. See also Help page fore more guidance.
This tab offers a filtrable list of all available places. Geographical references of the type "land inhabited by people XXX" is encoded with the reference to the corresponding Ethnic unit (see below); ethnonyms, even those used in geographical contexts, do not appear in this list. Repositories are those locations where manuscripts encoded by the project are or used to be preserved. While they are encoded in the same way as all places are, the view offered is different, showing a list of manuscripts associated with the repository.
We create metadata for all persons (and groups of persons) associated with the manuscript production and circulation (rulers, religious authorities, scribes, donors, and commissioners) as well as those mentioned in the texts used by the project. The result will be a comprehensive Prosopography of the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition. See also Help page for more guidance.
We encode persons according to our Encoding Guidelines. The initial list was inherited from the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and there are still many inconsistencies that we are trying to gradually fix. We consider ethnonyms as a subcategory of personal names, even when many are often used in literary works in the context of the "land inhabited by **". The present list of records has been mostly inherited from the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and there are still many inconsistencies that we are trying to gradually fix.
This section collects some additional resources offered by the project. Select Bibliography to explore the references cited in the project records. The Indexes list different types of project records (persons, places, titles, keywords, etc). Visit Projects for information on partners that have input data directly in the Beta maṣāḥǝft database. Special ways of exploring the data are offered under Visualizations. Two applications were developed in cooperation with the project TraCES, the Gǝʿǝz Morphological Parser and the Online Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae.
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Vocabulary

There are 37 resources that contain the exact keyword: Vocabulary
id title type
BNFet156 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 156 mss
BNFet154 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 154 mss
BNFet155 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 155 mss
IVEf67 Saint Petersburg, Institut Vostočnyh Rukopisej Rossijskoj Akademii Nauk, IV Ef. 67 mss
BNFet151 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 151 mss
BNFet150 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 150 mss
BNFet152 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 152 mss
IVEf70 Saint Petersburg, Institut Vostočnyh Rukopisej Rossijskoj Akademii Nauk, IV Ef. 70 mss
RNBefns11 Saint Petersburg, Rossijskaja Nacionalnaja Biblioteka, RNB Ef. n.s. 11 mss
BNFet147 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 147 mss
BNFet153 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 153 mss
BNFet149 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 149 mss
BDLor219 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodleian Orient 219 mss
BNFet148 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 148 mss
BLadd16211 London, British Library, BL Additional 16211 mss
BLadd16239 London, British Library, BL Additional 16239 mss
BDLbruce94 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodleian Bruce 94 mss
BNFet158 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien 158 mss
BDLbruce81 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodleian Bruce 81 mss
BAVet109 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Aeth.109 mss
BLadd19337 London, British Library, BL Additional 19337 mss
BDLaeth34 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodleian Aeth. 34 mss
IVEf79 Saint Petersburg, Institut Vostočnyh Rukopisej Rossijskoj Akademii Nauk, IV Ef. 79 mss
LIT6511Sawasew Sawāsǝw-lexicon of verbs and poetic formulas work
LIT3975FekkareF Fǝkkāre fidal work
BDLpoc6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodleian Poc. 6 mss
BLorient570 London, British Library, BL Oriental 570 mss
BLorient743 London, British Library, BL Oriental 743 mss
LIT4096AmharicE Amharic Explanation of words and grammatical forms (general record) work
LIT4121SawasewaT Sawāsǝwa ṭǝbab work
LIT4628Vocabulary Vocabulary of the Pauline Epistles work
NAR0184ForeignWords List of foreign words nar
LIT6780NagaraA Nagara ʿāmat work
BAVet192 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Aeth. 192 mss
LIT6838MeasuresWeightHebrew Explanations of Hebrew weight measurements work
LIT6839CommentaryIsaiah Commentary on Isaiah work
STU0008Lex Gǝʿǝz-Latin Lexicon studies