By Dr Richard Pankhurst:-
Addis Ababa – Almost thirty years ago, in what some people like to
call the Good Old Days, Dr Walter Harrelson, Dean of the Divinity School
of Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, visited Ethiopia in search of
manuscripts of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.
While in Addis Ababa, he met His Holiness Abuna Theophilus, the then
Acting Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, who suggested to his
American visitor that funds might be sought to microfilm all manuscripts
in Ethiopia, thus enabling scholars with varied interests to have
access to documentation
To this end, Abuna Theophilus appointed a committee, chaired by Dr
Harrelson, to explore the possibilities of microfilming the manuscripts,
and of securing the funds to do so. The First Joint Consultation
Meeting for Microfilming Ethiopian Church Manuscripts was accordingly
held in Addis Ababa, on April 22-23 1971.
It was in this way, and readers may note that I have been quoting
directly from an Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library brochure, that
the justly renowned EMML project was launched.
Highly Regarded
The project was so highly regarded that it received initial financial
support from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and by 30 June 1977 had received American
financial support, to a the tune of US$ 170,000.
Microfilming was, as far as possible systematic, and carried out
church (or other institution), by church, and the filming of manuscripts
was as far as possible complete. Only the most common items, such as
copies of Dawit, i.e. the Psalms of David, were excluded from filming.
The project published its first detailed catalogue, of the first 300
Ethiopian manuscripts, in 1975; and its last catalogue to date, Volume
X, with 999 entries – edited by Dr Getatchew Haile – six years ago, in
1993.
These catalogues, mainly, though not exclusively the work of Dr
Getatchew, now cover no less than five thousand items, and are works of
meticulous scholarship, on any showing.
There is in addition a back-log of many uncatalogued manuscript (how
many we do not know), as well as, we may suppose, a number of already
catalogued manuscripts awaiting publication.
Works Microfilmed
The EMML project, which won the admiration of virtually all scholars
in the field (Leslau, Ullendorff, Strelcyn, Hammerchmidt, Chojnacki,
Tubiana, et al.) and is widely quoted in works of scholarship, was based
on a partnership between three institutions: the Ethiopian Ministry of
Culture, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and St John’s Abbey and
University in Collegeville, Minnesota.
Cataloguing of manuscripts by the EMML revealed that the majority of
Ethiopia’s manuscripts consisted, as one would expect, of Bibles,
Biblical Commentaries, Service books, Lives of Saints, and other
religious works essential for the understanding of Ethiopian religion,
religious institutions, and history; but also covered many other
matters, including philosophy, secular and church history (such as
Ethiopian royal chronicles), law, mathematics, medicine, and other
subjects.
The Lives of Ethiopian Saints, though often full of unbelievable
miracles, are, it should be emphasised, also full of historical
information of crucial importance for the study of Ethiopian history.
Many such works contain moreover unavailable data on such varied
subjects as traditional church education, famines and epidemics.
Many Ethiopian manuscripts also contain “marginalia”, or otherwise
unwritten pages at the beginning, end, or elsewhere in the volume, which
have been used, sometimes over a period of centuries, to enter a wide
variety of historically important data. This may cover such questions as
royal land grants, land purchases and sales by both men and women,
using gold, Maria Theresa dollars, or “primitive money”; marriage
agreements and contracts; tax records (see for example the volume I
edited, with Girma-Sellassie Asfaw, on the tax records of Emperor
Tewodros); lists of books, usually specified by name; church
paraphernalia and other property, including guns, in various churches
and monasteries, etc., etc. – a rich store in effect of historical
material.
Illustrations
Not a few manuscripts also contain illustrations, likewise of immense
historical and cultural importance. Invaluable for the history of
Ethiopian art, they also provide unique documentation on almost all
aspects of Ethiopia’s historic past.
They depict such subjects as agriculture and handicrafts;
wood-cutting, and house-building; clothing and dress, both male and
female; crowns, and other royal decorations; crosses, and church
paraphernalia; cattle-slaughtering, preparation and serving of food and
drink; banquets, complete with dining tables, waiters, and slaves;
hair-styles and decorations; jewellery and tattooing; horse and mule
decorations; local weapons, such as spears and shields, and imported
ones, like rifles; furniture and household objects, including masob,
agagil, and gambo; sports and games, among them guks and gabata;
diseases and debilities, among them leprosy and other skin diseases, and
loss of limbs; and wild and domestic animals.
Not a few paintings consist portraits, albeit often highly stylized,
of Ethiopian personalities of the past both religious and lay, while
others depict class relations, with rulers, servants, and slaves. Such
material, you will appreciate, dear reader, is of crucial importance to
the Ethiopian political, military, medical and social historian, no less
than to the historian of art.
The EMML project microfilmed only in black-and-white, though it did
take some colour photographs of paintings: for the future the
possibility of working in colour, with digital cameras, needs serious
consideration.
Archival Material
The EMML did not confine itself only (as some may think) to
manuscripts on parchment, but also microfilmed a large amount of
archival material, for the most part on paper.
This is not the place to provide a catalogue of EMML microfilms
(spare us that!), but take for example a few of the items in Volume IX:
It contains biographical material on Ethiopia’s first foreign-educated
physician-cum diplomat, Hakim Warqnah, known abroad as Dr Martin; papers
on many subjects written by the assiduous, but unassuming Ethiopian
scholar, Blatta Mars’e Hazen; a life of the heroic, yet little-studied,
Ethiopian Patriot, Tashoma Shangut; entirely unpublished Ethiopian
documents belonging to Ethiopia’s pre-war Minister of Public Works,
Fitawrari Taffesa Habta Mikael; an Ethiopian Government report on the
movement of Somali pastoralists; reports (from the Ethiopian as well as
the British side) on the Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Commission defining
the frontier between Ethiopia and British Somaliland in the early 1930s;
documents on the Wal Wal incident of December 1934, which Mussolini was
to use shortly afterwards as a pretext for the Fascist invasion of
Ethiopia; and much much more!
EMML microfilming was also carried out at the Institute of Ethiopian
Studies Library, where manuscripts and archival material was filmed – a
valuable insurance against possible destruction by fire at that
institution.
Security
Microfilming, it should be emphasised, also has a significant
security aspect. Once items are microfilmed they can much more easily
identified if stolen; and EMML films, if need-be, can be made available
to the Ethiopian police, or Interpol.
Where to See Them
EMML, as a co-operative project conceived with vision made copies of
its microfilms widely available to the scholarly community, both in
Ethiopia and abroad. Microfilm copies can be viewed, in Addis Ababa, at
both the Ministry of Culture and the Institute of Ethiopian Studies,
and, in the United States, at St John’s University, at Collegeville,
Minnesota. And if, dear reader, you are not so privileged as to live in
either of these towns, you can consult the published EMML catalogues,
which are to be found in libraries in the main centres of learning, and
easily order microfilm copies from Collegeville, for a modest fee.
But What Now?
Praise for EMML brings us to the sad point that the project, for lack
of funds, or vision, has in recent years come to an end. Though
microfilming of manuscripts was carried on fairly exhaustively for
almost two decades in much of the country, manuscripts in many other
areas, including Tegray, let alone Eritrea, have still not been touched
by the project at all.
And yet the need for the systematic recording of Ethiopian manuscripts is as great, nay, far greater, than ever before!
The question with which we are now confronted is: will Ethiopia in
the twenty-first Century be able to live up to the achievements, and
expectations, of the Twentieth?
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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