“Behold, I have written it on parchment…” Two Early Amharic Poems from Ms. Ef. 10 (Koriander 2), St. Petersburg

Abstract

The article deals with two short poems in Amharic from Ms. Ef. 10 kept in the Library of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Amharic, a Semitic language of Ethiopia, came to function as the second written language of Ethiopian Empire in the course of the 19th century. Samples of Amharic texts prior to this period are scanty and worthy of special study. The poems in question can be dated to the period end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th century. The article provides the texts of the poems with translation and linguistic and philological commentary, accompanied by a short description of Ms. Ef. 10.

Keywords

• Amharic
• Ethiopian literature
• Christian poetry
• manuscript studies