Beta maṣāḥǝft: Manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea

✖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.

Home About Guidelines Data API Permalinks

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).

Shelf marks (full list)Manuscripts (search)List of Digitized Manuscripts Catalogues Encoded Inscriptions

Here you can browse a full list of manuscripts available on the platform, arranged by repositories and shelf marks (clicking on the "show list" button will expand the list for each location). This menu takes you to the search form listing all manuscripts encoded by the project. On the left side you get filters based on the indexes for that type of resources in the database, on the right side you will see your search results in a multi-page table (20 per page). You can refine the results by applying the filters. Here you can view a list of manuscripts that have digitized images available online elsewhere. The list of manuscript catalogues that were used as sources for our records. Clicking on one of the titles will open a list view with all the manuscripts in that catalogue that have been encoded. Inscriptions are an inseparable part of the manuscript tradition and its direct precursors, therefore we also offer the encoding of the known inscriptions from Ethiopia and Eritrea wherever possible. Part of the encoding is carried out in Hamburg, part is the result of cooperation with other projects, such as DASI: Digital Archive for the Study of pre-islamic Arabian Inscriptions.

✖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.

Clavis Aethiopica (Works)Narrative Units Studies

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.

Index of decorations Art Keywords Illuminations

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.

✖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.

Bibliography Indexes Projects Visualizations Gǝʿǝz Morphological Parser Online Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae

Here you can view all references (extracted from Zotero) that have been cited in project records. The Indexes list different types of project records (persons, places, titles, keywords, etc). These associated projects have fed their data directly in the Beta maṣāḥǝft database. Check some special ways of exploring our data, including comparing manuscripts containing the same work, mapping manuscripts with a given content, collating passages, searching for gender aspects, and many more. The experimental morphological parser was developed in cooperation with the project TraCES: From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. This application uses basic techniques to display data from the digitization process of the Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae by August Dillmann, with additions by the team of the project TraCES: From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

Compare manuscripts which contain مقالة شهاب الدين الداني