Shelfmark

SGI 253

Owning institution

Società Geografica Italiana, Rome

Typology

Notebook

Copying date

1854 (see the colophon)

Title

‘Dizionario etiopico-amarico-italiano’

Subject

Aethiopica, Lexicon

Language

Gǝʿǝz, Amharic, Italian.

Short description of the content

Ff. 1v–54v: Dizionario etiopico-amarico-italiano (“Gǝʿǝz-Amharic-Italian vocabulary”)

Incipit, in Italian: ‘Sauasau, ossia Vocabolario delle radici, o nomi della lingua Gheez ግዕዝ o etiopica. Questo dizionario è secondo il metodo degli Etiopi.’

The text is arranged on three columns: the first accommodates Gǝʿǝz entries, the second accommodates the corresponding Amharic word, the third accommodates the Italian meaning. Gǝʿǝz entries are arranged in alphabetical order according to the first consonant of their roots. The alphabetical order is repeated several times over the manuscript; it is often violated, probably because the vocabulary was expanded continuously over time. Additional wordlists related to particular subjects have been inserted in the main hand, e.g. “Nomi degli spiriti celesti” (“Names of the heavenly spirits”, f. 10r), names of the apostles and prophets (f. 14v).

Writing material

Paper

Outer size (included the binding)

344 x 248 x 13 mm

Outer size of the textblock

344 x 246 x 10 mm

Number of folia

56

Blank folia

1v, 2v, 28v, 55r–56r.

Binding

Two burlap sheets.

Sewing

Two S-twisted threads of vegetal origin.

Sewing pattern

–

Quires

5

Quire marks

–

Layout

1 column (ff. 3r–v, 5r, 14v and some sections on ff. 12r, 19r, 25v, 28r are written on two columns)

Number of lines per column

ca. 20–70

Ruling

Blind ruling. Some folia are also ruled in pencil.

Ruling pattern

–

Scribe

Padre Giovanni Stella.

Colophon

F. 1v: 1854.

Additional notes

1). F. 2r: The name አቡነ፡ ዮሐንስ፨, i.e. abunä Yoḥannǝs, is indicated in the upper margin of the leaf. The name is written in red ink an Ethiopian hand.

2) F. 54r: በስመ[፡ ]አብ፡ ወወልድ፡ በስመ[፡ ]አብ፡. Invocation written in black ink in an uncertain hand, perhaps by an aged scribe.

State of preservation of the binding

Mediocre.

State of preservation of the textblock

Poor.

Provenance and history

The manuscript was written by Padre Giovanni Stella (1822–1869) in 1854. The vocabulary was expanded by P. Stella over the following years.

The manuscript came into possession of the Società Geografica Italiana at some time between 1869, when P. Stella died, and 1930, when the existence of this material was first reported in Giuseppe Gabrieli’s Manoscritti e carte orientali nelle biblioteche e negli archivi d'Italia: dati statistici e bibliografici delle collezioni, loro storia e catalogazione, 1930. The manuscript is also mentioned in Silvio Zanutto’s Bibliografia etiopica (1932).