ETHIO-SPARE: Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia: Salvation, Preservation, Research
Ethiopia is one of the countries with the most ancient Christian
history, and the only country in Africa where Christianity became
official religion as early as in the 4th century A.D. It is also one of
the very few African regions where the history has been documented in
written sources: manuscripts in possession of ca. 600 monasteries and
20,000 churches, some of which date back to early Middle Ages, have been
estimated to number dozens of thousands.
Only a minor part of these archives have so far received scholarly
evaluation, only less than one tenth of manuscripts have been
microfilmed or digitalized, and only those that have come in possession
of European libraries have been duly catalogued and are well protected. A
great part of this unique heritage is on the verge of extinction, and
urgent action needs to be taken to save it from complete disappearance.
The Project Ethio-SPaRe (ERC Starting Grant 240720; Dec. 2009 - May
2015) was dedicated to the preservation and scientific analysis of
manuscripts located in Ethiopian churches and monasteries, with the
focus of the activities being in the region of Tegray in the north of
the country.
The main tasks of the project include:
- identify the most important monastic
libraries and archives
- create inventories and shelflists
- protect and create digital copies of
the most precious witnesses
- analyse and classify the types of
texts
- create searchable databases that
will allow quantitative and qualitative
research into Ethiopian literature
- create virtual manuscript libraries
- catalogue manuscripts according to
modern requirements
- critically edit the most
important texts
- publish and analyse a
number of witnesses
- perform research into the
literary history
- perform research into oral
traditions
- widely disseminate research results
This website offers the key data on the project, including field mission reports, public presentations and project publications, meetings and conferences, and the annotated data repository for archives, manuscripts and objects; please use the navigation panel on the left.
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