ISTITUTO PER L’ORIENTE “C.A.

NALLINO” (ROMA)
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI “L’ORIENTALE”

RASSEGNA
DI STUDI ETIOPICI
FONDATA
DA
† CARLO CONTI ROSSINI

Vol. IV
(Nuova Serie)

ROMA-NAPOLI
2012
 Scientific Committee:
GIORGIO BANTI, ALESSANDRO BAUSI, ANTONELLA BRITA, RODOLFO FATTOVICH,
ALESSANDRO GORI, GIANFRANCESCO LUSINI, ANDREA MANZO, PAOLO
MARRASSINI, SILVANA PALMA, GRAZIANO SAVÀ, LUISA SERNICOLA, MAURO
TOSCO, ALESSANDRO TRIULZI, YAQOB BEYENE

Advisory Board:
ALEMSEGED BELDADOS ALEHO, BAHRU ZEWDE, BAYE YIMAM, ALBERTO
CAMPLANI, DONALD CRUMMEY, ELOI FICQUET, GETATCHEW HAILE, GIDEON
GOLDENBERG, MARILYN HELDMAN, CHRISTIAN ROBIN, SHIFERAW BEKELE,
TADDESE T AMRAT, TEMESGEN BURKA BORTIE, SIEGBERT UHLIG

Editorial Board:
ANDREA MANZO, PAOLO MARRASSINI, YAQOB BEYENE in collaboration with
ANTONELLA BRITA, ALESSANDRO GORI, GRAZIANO SAVÀ and LUISA SERNICOLA

The present issue is the volume IV of the “New Series” (the volume II was pub-
lished in 2003) and it represents the 47th volume since the establishment of the
journal.

– The Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” participates in the publica-

tion of the «Rassegna di Studi Etiopici» by entrusting its care to its Dipartimento
Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo.

– All correspondence should be addressed to:

Redazione Rassegna di Studi Etiopici
Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo
Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore 12 – 80134 Napoli, Italy
e-mail: redazionerse@unior.it

Direttore Responsabile: PAOLO MARRASSINI

Iscrizione presso il Tribunale civile di Roma, Sezione Stampa, al numero 446/2010 del 23/11/2010
ISSN 0390-0096
Tipografia: Tipolito; Istituto Salesiano Pio XI – Via Umbertide 11 – 00181 Roma
 CONTENTS

ARCHAEOLOGY
RODOLFO FATTOVICH, The northern Horn of Africa in the first millennium BCE:
local traditions and external connections………………………………………p. 1

LUISA SERNICOLA, New archaeological evidence in the area of ʻAddigrat (Eastern

Tǝgray)....................................................………….…………………………..p. 61

ETHNOGRAPHY
SUSANNE EPPLE, Harmful practice or ritualised guidance? Reflections on physical
punishment as part of socialisation among the Bashada of southern
Ethiopia…………………………………………………………………………………p. 69

HISTORY

PAOLO MARRASSINI, “Lord of Heaven”………………………………………….p. 103

CHRISTIAN ROBIN, Nouvelles observations sur le calendrier de Ḥimyar…….p. 119

LINGUISTICS
GRAZIANO SAVÀ, A few notes on the documentation of Bayso (Cushitic) and Haro
(Omotic): fieldwork organisation and data collection………………………….p. 153

VILLA MASSIMO, Observations on some "broken" plurals of Geʻez………….p. 171

PHILOLOGY

GIANFRANCESCO LUSINI - MOHAMMED-ALI IBRAHIM MOHAMMED, The Räb‘at

Dǝllalät by Mohammed-Ali. A presentation of the Tigre text…………………..p. 205

REVIEW ARTICLES

ALBERTO CAMPLANI, From Persia to Egypt, from Egypt to Ethiopia: the transmis-
sion of knowledge in some recent conferences (2010-2012)…………………...p. 215

ROMOLO LORETO, Recent studies in pre-Islamic Yemen. An Overview………p. 239

BULLETIN FOR 2012-2013……………………………………………...…..p. 267

 BOOK REVIEWS

Ancient Churches of Ethiopia, by David W. Phillipson, Yale University Press, New

Haven and London, 2009 (Andrea Manzo)……………………………………… p. 275

OBITUARIES

Taddese Tamrat. Personal memories (Bahru Zewde)………………………..p. 285

 From Persia to Egypt, from Egypt to Ethiopia:
the transmission of knowledge in some recent conferences
(2010-2012)

ALBERTO CAMPLANI

1. Le vie del sapere nell’area siro-mesopotamica dal III al IX secolo, Pontificio

Istituto Orientale – Università di Roma Tre, May 12–13, 2011.
2. Third International Congress on Eastern Christianity: Knowledge Transfer in
the Mediterranean World, Cordoba University, December 2–4, 2010.
3. L’historiographie tardo-antique et la transmission des savoirs, Université
d’Angers, May 31–June 1, 2012.
4. Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, Sapienza Università di Roma,
Istituto Patristico Augustinianum, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, September 17-
22, 2012.

What I intend to report in this review is the outline of what appears to

me as a new trend in the studies on the Christian East and the broader
Christian culture of the late antique Mediterranean world, including the
West: the historico-critical research is trying in recent times to emphasize
not only the inter-church relations, the theological and ecclesiological
debate, the exchange of texts, but also the transmission of knowledge and
the transfer of complexes of documentation between one place and another
of the Christian universe - or rather “multiverse”, given the variability in
the evolution of the Christian culture in the different regions of the
Mediterranean area. The focus is therefore shifting from church relations
to transmission of knowledge in its broadest meaning.

THREE CONFERENCES ON MEDITERRANEAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE

ISSUE OF THE TRANSMISSION OF KNOWLEDGE

Let us start with Le vie del sapere nell’area siro-mesopotamica dal III
al IX secolo, May 12–13, 2011 (“The ways of knowledge in the Syro-

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 ALBERTO CAMPLANI

Mesopotamian area from the third to the ninth century”), organized by the
Pontifical Oriental Institute and the University of Roma Tre1. The central
theme of the conference is the intercultural exchange in Late Antiquity,
with particular attention to the schools as privileged centres of the
exchange of knowledge:
“Schools of the Middle East, ancient and medieval, represented
really, beyond the religious divisions and denominations, a place of
exchange and circulation of ideas”.
This is especially true for the two churches of Syriac linguistic area, the
West Syrian and the East Syrian, where the schools were a powerful
channel of communication and dialogue, despite the political and
ecclesiastical differences between the regions. A number of papers
centered on the issue of cultural transmission, exploring Jewish academies,
philosophical schools, and Christian centres of learning, leaving on the
background the question of the dogmatic definition or of the exegetical
traditions2. In particular, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to four
essays dealing with the Christian transmission of culture: Paolo Bettiolo

1
The organizing committee was composed by Claudia Tavolieri, Susan Elm, Emidio
Vergani, Carla Noce, Massimo Pampaloni, Marco Demichelis. The proceedings have been
published recently: Noce, Pampaloni and Tavolieri (ed.), 2013.
2
Susan Elm, Storia di Roma - Storia di Antiochia. La storiografia tardoantica come via
del sapere e la prospettiva orientale, Elisabetta Abate, Circoli, scuole o accademie? Luoghi
e modi dell’educazione rabbinica in Palestina e Babilonia (III-VII sec. E.V.), Ariel Kofky,
Hermeneutics and Theology among Greek and Syriac Christianity and Contemporaneous
Judaism (4th-5th centuries). Paradigms of interactions, René Roux, Sapere teologico e
sapere profano all’inizio del VI secolo: l’esperienza di Severo di Antiochia a Beirut,
Edward Watts, Libanius and the Art of Seeing Syria through Rhetoric, Emidio Vergani,
Poesia e conoscenza nei madrashe di Efrem: tra Nisibi e dintorni, Massimo Pampaloni,
Narsai e i suoi uditori a Edessa: un’ipotesi, Bartolomeo Pirone, Al-Mu’taman Ibn al Assì’l
in cerca di libri e biblioteche della Grande Siria, Samir Khalil Samir, La funzione di
Guntishapur nella tradizione del sapere verso gli Arabi, Marco Demichelis, Basra. The
cradle of Islamic culture, Sabine Schmidtke, Biblical testimonies to the prophethood of
Muhammad, David Thomas, Explanation of the Person of Christ in the early Muslim
milieu, Carmela Baffioni, Il computo delle proposizioni nel MS Esad Effendi 3638 e la
tradizione siro-araba, Alexandre Roberts, Foreign wisdom in Arabic texts, Shirine
Dakouri, Teaching the hearts. Rabi’a al-Adawiyya’s role in the spiritual formation fo an
intellectual elite in al-Basra, II sec. heg., Carla Noce – Claudia Tavolieri, Figure e ruoli
femminili nella formazione del sapere in ambito antiocheno e edesseno.

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La trasmissione del sapere negli ambienti cristiani di Siria e

Mesopotamia: una introduzione3 (“The transmission of knowledge
amongst Christians of Syria and Mesopotamia: an introduction”), Gerrit
Jan Reinink, The School of Seleucia and the Heritage of Nisibis, the
“Mother of Sciences”, Sabino Chialà, Cultura e vita monastica:
l’importanza dello studio in ambito siro-orientale (“Culture and monastic
life: the importance of the study in the East Syrian area”); Vittorio Berti,
L’anima, il suo destino, la sua libertà: un teologo risponde a un medico.
Lettera di Timoteo I all’archiatra (“The soul, its destiny, its freedom: a
theologian answers to a doctor. Letter by Timothy I to the archiatre”). Here
is explored the question of the evolving relationship between three centres
of religious activity typical of the Persian area, such as the academies, the
monasteries, and the institutional church4.
The premises to such an enquiry were clearly illustrated by Paolo
Bettiolo, who highlighted how deep are the theological foundations of the
East Syrian academy. According to the sources analyzed by the scholar,
the school appears first of all as the best worldly image of the celestial life,
a place where pity and art of the speech grow supporting one another;
second, it appears as a place of growth of a “positive theology founded on
the humanities”, which means proposing the “logical” Aristotele as a basis,
whose Organon, according to a well-established model, is extended to
include rhetoric and poetics. This school grows in a political situation
which is hostile towards the Church. However, precisely this distance
between the Church and the State allows a free deployment of Christian
culture.
Four points are at the centre of this study, according to P. Bettiolo: 1)
the different kinds of schools, given that the term covers different
experiences; 2) the link between the theological schools and the secular
culture of the élites; 3) the link between the exegetical-theological schools
and the monastic “schools”; 4) the centrality of the Theodorean exegesis in
the schools of the Church of Persia. Interesting from our point of view is

3
It has been published with the title: Le scuole nella chiesa siro-orientale: status
quaestionis e prospettive della ricerca (“The Schools in the East-Syrian Church: Status
quaestionis and perspectives of research”).
4
About this issue s. for example Camplani, 2007 and Bettiolo, 2007.

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 ALBERTO CAMPLANI

Bettiolo’s attempt at determining the differences in education between the

western and eastern élites. He remarks that in the context of the Roman-
barbarian kingdoms of the West the ecclesiastical schools of sixth and
seventh centuries had inherited the remains of those studies, mainly
rhetorical and literary, but also legal, medical, or more broadly erudite,
which had been the hallmark of the Roman élite at the time of its
conversion to Christianity. These studies, in the following centuries,
neither found support from independent civic or imperial educational
structures nor could be cultivated privately, so that the schools in the West
were attended by both clergy and laity. In Byzantine Syria, on the other
hand, the separation of the two kinds of schools - the sacred and the
profane – remained at least until the sixth century. However it should be
taken into consideration the existence in Nisibis of a school of medical
studies, based on the Greek paideia and Aristotle’s writings, attended by
the secular élite, along with the more famous theological Academy, which
was encreasingly interested in the translation of the corpus aristotelicum.
In a sense, the sharp distinction between the two schools was gradually
dissolving.
If the focus of the Roman conference were the schools and the
academies of the Mesopotamian world, the different ways and the different
languages of the cultural transmission during and especially after the
transition to the Arabic rule were the main topic of the second event here
discussed, the Third International Congress on Eastern Christianity, held
in Cordoba, December 2-4, 2010 with the title: Knowledge Transfer in the
Mediterranean World5. The variety of explored subjects was impressive,
although the unity of the whole was less visible than in the Roman
conference. In the long list of titles6, we can identify some points of

5
The academic directors of the conference were Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (University
of Cordoba), Sofia Torallas Tovar (CSIC, Madrid), Manuel Marcos Aldon (University of
Cordoba). The proceedings have been published recently: Torallas Tovar - Monferrer-Sala
(ed.), 2013.
6
December 1. First session: Samir Khalil Samir, Un modele de mediateur culturel: Elie
de Nisibe (975-1046); Adel Sidarus, Les sources multiples d’une oeuvre astronomique et
historique copto-arabe (Kitāb al-Tawārīkh de Nushū’ al-Khilāfa Abū Shākir Ibn al-Rāhib,
1257); Mayte Penelas, A new Arabic version of the dialogue between the patriarch Timothy
I and the caliph al-Mahdī?; Giuseppe Mandalà, L’image de Rome dans la littérature arabo-

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convergence of different, well established, scholarly interests: the cultural

mediation of bilingual intellectuals, the transmission of technical,
alchemical, magical notions, the Arabic Christian literatures as collectors
of different cultural traditions, the formation of grammatical traditions in
the Coptic world as well as in the modern Syriac one, the Trinitarian
debate in Arabic, the interconfessional transfer of notions and texts, to the
extreme of Alfonso de’ Liguori’s writings translated in Syriac in modern
Syrian uniate circles.
I would like to stress two points, which will serve as introduction to the
other two Congresses here presented. The first point to be mentioned is the
noteworthy attention paid to historiography, in particular the Egyptian one.

chrétienne (16e-19e siècles); Herman Teule, Transmission of spiritual knowledge in Syriac

Uniate Circles. The study of akhbār Marta Maryam in a 19th century Karshūnī manuscript;
Francisco del Rio, Studying Syriac language in an Arabicited community: lexicographical
and grammatical codices in the Maronite Library of Aleppo”; Federico Corriente, The
Syriac contribution to the study of ‘stone books’ and other medieval scientific works.
Second session: Christian Hogel, The influence of the knowledge of the Qur’ānic text on
Byzantine theology; David Thomas, The problem of the Trinity for Arab Christians; Uriel I.
Simonsohn, Motifs of a South-Melkite Affiliation in the Annales of Sa‘īd b. Baṭrīq; Juan
Pedro Monferrer-Sala, “Cast out Hagar and Ismael her son from me”. Text and intertext in
Eutychius of Alexandria’s Annals; Johannes den Heijer - Perrine Pilette, Rewriting and
diffusing Coptic Church History: new remarks on the Vulgate edition of the History of the
Patriarchs of Alexandria; Maria del Mar Marcos Sanchez, Looking at Heresy in Late
Antiquity: Orosius’ Travels. December 3. First session: Alberto Camplani, Fourth-Century
Synods in Latin and Syriac Canonical Literature: the Antiochene Connection; Raquel
Martin Hernandez, Prayers for Justice in Early Christian Magic, Frank Feder, The Legend
of the Sun’s Eye: the translation of an Egyptian novel into Greek; Sofia Torallas, The
imaginary of Afterlife in Coptic Texts; Ronny Vollandt, The Enigma of MS BNF Paris
Arabic 1; Jean Louis Fort, Coptic Grammatical Knowledge at School: between Egyptian
and Greek Traditions; Alberto Nodar, Pagan Texts in Christian Classrooms. Second
session: Maria Jesus Albarrán, Authority to teach in Egyptian female monasteries; Malcolm
Choat, Monastic letter collections in Late Antique Egypt: Structure, Purpose, and
Transmission; Susana Torres Prieto, The Apocryphal Gospels in Slavia Orthodoxa: Greek
sources for a Slavic tradition. December 4. First session: Angel Urbán Fernandez, Pneuma
and other Neuters in the Biblical Mss.; Nader Al Jallad, Linguistic register in a text of Abū
l-Fatḥ ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Faḍl, with a focus on the theological terms; Gregor Schwarb, A
Maimonidean Trinitarianism: The Christology of Al-Rashīd Abū ’l-Khayr Ibn al-Ṭayyib (d.
after 1270); Michel Garel, Quand le mythe fait l’Histoire: guerre des echecs ou echec à la
guerre?; Manuel Marcos Aldon, New approaches in analysing parchments and inks in
Ethiopic manuscripts; Jose Vergara, «Yes we can»: recovery and preservation for diffusion.

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 ALBERTO CAMPLANI

The melchite Eutichius of Alexandria and the miaphysite History of

Patriarchs were the subject of some papers devoted both to some features
of their contents and to some peculiarities of their transmission7. In
particular, the latter writing is one of three or four most important works of
the Coptic Church, in which its religious and institutional identity over a
millennium has been expressed. This expression has not been
accomplished once and for all, but was revived several times. As den
Heijer and Pilette have shown, HP has not been written and finished by a
single author, but has suffered over time changes and additions, also of
great importance. The modern researcher, according to his ability in
philological analysis in the first place, and, when this is not enough, even
according to his linguistic and literary analysis skills, can try to perceive
the changes undergone by this work over time, in order to understand how
they respond to changes in the identity of the church itself. But this is not
enough: it is important also to recover the status of the Coptic sources
acting in the prehistory of HP, which in turn refer to Greek sources, some
known, some lost. The two scholars, after discussing the modern
identification of two main recensions of the HP (the Vulgate and the
Hamburgensis), have shown that new manuscripts of the HP can contribute
to make the critical frame more complex.
Other contributions centered on the dissemination of cultic texts and
canonical literature, exploring the question of what is knowledge transfer
when dealing with the circulation of ecclesiastical documents, since the
standard notion of transmission of knowledge includes a great variety of
acts of communication concerning a wide range of technical or intellectual
content. In this peculiar form of knowledge transfer not only are new and
old documents made known between one bishopric or region and another,
but also the religious and cultural identities of the sender and the recipient
are better defined. That is why it is so important to study not only the
contents of canonical writings, but also the specific historical

7
The paper by Uril Simonsohn is concerned with issues of the transmission of Saʻīd
Baṭriq’s Annales. The paper by Johannes den Heijer and Perrine Pilette, Rewriting and
diffusing Coptic Church History: new remarks on the Vulgate edition of the History of the
Patriarchs of Alexandria is part of a larger project of edition and commentary of this capital
source; s. also den Heijer and Pilette, 2011 and Camplani, 2011a.

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circumstances of their circulation, from which we can deduce the identity

markers, the outline of the culture, the ecclesiological orientation, and the
geopolitics of a church milieu8.
More specific for what concerns the topic, but broader for what
concerns the geographical extension, was the conference titled:
L’historiographie tardo-antique et la transmission des savoirs (“The Late-
Antique Historiography and the Transmission of Knowledge”), Université
d’Angers, 31 mai-1 juin 2012, organized by Philippe Blaudeau and Peter
Van Nuffelen. It centered on late-antique historiography, and in particular
to its function in the selection, processing and transmission of knowledge.
Blaudeau, opening the conference, illustrated the context of the debate and
the state of research in which this scientific event intended to be placed9.
The question was not so much to address the problem of the accurate
reconstruction of historiographical texts, or to treat their relationship with
the events of their account, but to look into both the variety of genres that
we qualify today as historiography and their function in the overall process
of the transmission of knowledge in late antiquity. This cultural
transmission is to be understood in its broadest meaning as the
transmission of sets of documents (civil and ecclesiastical, authentic and
apocryphal) and historical, anthropological, ethnographic, astronomic,
medical notions, interwoven with cultural and religious traditions. The list
of the sections shows this assumption:
“I. Gathering the information with the purpose of transmitting: the
question of sources. II. Identifying oneself with the purpose of
transmitting: ideological engagement and historiographical project.
III. Composing with the purpose of transmitting: about the nature of
historiographic genres. IV. Giving an intellectual shape to the
legacy to be transmitted: the statute of knowledge deriving from
ancient cultures. V. Modeling with the purpose of transmitting:
ancient figures and counter-figures of authority in the
historiographical narratives. VI. Facing the duration with the
purpose of transmitting: the posterity of late-antique
historiography”.

8
Camplani, 2006.
9
On late antique historiography and its relationship with the history of the Christian East
s. the beautiful book by Blaudeau, 2006.

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 ALBERTO CAMPLANI

The main topic of the congress had already been presented by the
organizing committee in advance:
“Without doubt, as D. Meyer has recently written, historiography is
one of the most characteristic genres, most innovative perhaps, of
Late Antiquity (considered here as extending from the fourth to
seventh century). Through the diversity of its forms (Res gestae,
Ecclesiastical Histories, Chronicles or Lives of the Saints), through
the nature of its demonstrative aims (profane history / engaged
history), through the variety of languages of composition and / or
conservation (Greek, Latin or Syriac), the historiographical work
aims at providing the specific culture of its readers with the
experience of the past, collected and interpreted. In this regard, one
of his challenges is to identify, select and publicize the knowledge,
reworked in the most ancient ages, with the purpose that its utility,
real or imagined, can be updated according to the new requirements
assigned to contemporary time. Such a design also focuses on the
need to introduce changes of meaning motivated by the
transformation of the relationship with the framework of thought
itself. In considering the main subject, which encompasses the
various fields of knowledge (from natural sciences to theology
through policy) we can distinguish four main modi procedendi that
characterize the works transmitted to us in their entirety or partially:
1. Preservation of the previous documentation (logic of the insertion
of documents). 2. Preservation of passages belonging to previous
works (logic of compilation). 3. Confrontation with statements
deemed false or lame (logic of refutation, correction or addition). 4.
Highlighting new forms of knowledge judged able to silence
alternative forms of knowledge considered too tied to old patterns of
explanation of the world (logic of exclusion)”.
As can be easily seen from the titles of the sections and the above
mentioned declaration, the conference paid particular attention to the
contextualization of historiography in the history of the late antique
culture, focusing in particular certain aspects, such as: 1) the vexed
relationship between historiography and rhetoric; 2) the relationship of the
historical works produced in different languages (not only in Greek or
Latin) by the new emerging ethnic groups with this same rhetorical
culture; 3) the circulation of information, traditions and documents in the
whole area of the Roman Empire and frontier areas, beyond the cultural
and linguistic borders, particularly permeable at this time; 4) the role of
intellectual groups (clerical and lay) who organized the linguistic

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mediation and the decoding of texts and traditions; 5) the social and
cultural variety of audiences, as well as the variety of religious
commitments; 6) the different literary genres in which late antique
historiography expressed itself, from the histories to the chronicles, from
the lives of saints to the astronomical predictions, from the canonical
collections to the library catalogs.
At this point it seems useful to give an account of a selection of papers
read in the above mentioned sections, with particular attention to those
concerning Eastern Christianity, but not only. As we said, the first section
has been dedicated to the documentation and sources historians have
selected and used in the construction of their discourse, to transmit it to
their readers. For example, they selected highly traditional memories, as
proposed by an original paper by Andy Hilkens, Les traditions du Livre
des Jubilés et la Chronographie syriaque (VIe-XIIIe s.) (“The traditions of
the Book of Jubilees and the Syriac chronography (VI-XIII cent.)”), who
pointed out the presence of traditions coming from the Book of Jubilees in
the Chronograph “until the year 1234”. However, the most important
documentation consisted in official documents preserved in the archives.
In particular, Dominique Moreau (University of Strasbourg), Les actes
pontificaux en tant que sources des historiens et des chroniqueurs de
l’Antiquité tardive, highlighted how the post-Eusebian historiography, in
the West and the East, has cited the Church documents and the imperial
constitutions and what relevance have these quotations, especially when
the documents quoted are absent from the canonical collections or are
preserved in a different form. The purpose of this technique of quotation is
to support the historical account with the argument from authority.
The section about the history and the partisan identity of the writer and
the readers was made up of two papers. Alberto Camplani, La question de
l’identité religieuse dans l’historiographie ecclésiastique égyptienne entre
IVème et VIème siècles (“The question of religious identity in the Egyptian
ecclesiastical historiography between the IVth and the VIth centuries”),
showed that the historiography developed in the context of the episcopate
of Alexandria saw a change in the process of documentation, in relation to
the new needs of the religious debate. The paper took into account some
historiographical works and compilations produced in the milieu of the

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 ALBERTO CAMPLANI

Bishopric of Alexandria or in secular and monastic circles close to this

institution. It aimed at giving, through the analysis of the diverse treatment
of a number of historical characters and events, an outline of the various
and evolving conceptions regarding the role of the Alexandrian see within
the Egyptian Church and, more generally, within the ecclesiastical system
of the Eastern Roman Empire. The first work was the official history of the
Alexandrian see (Historia episcopatus Alexandriae) between the third and
the fourth century, preserved in Latin and Ethiopic, in which a selection of
civil and ecclesiastical documents was mingled with short narrations and
polemical sections, according to a style already exemplified by Athanasius
in his Apologia secunda contra arianos and Historia arianorum. This
model was followed by Timothy Aelurus in his Liber historiarum, lost in
great part, in which the history of the fourth century and its documentation
probably served the function of illuminating the crucial events after the
Council of Chalcedon (451). The History of the Church preserved in
Coptic, notwithstanding its fragmentary status, gives good indications
about the evolving identity of the Egyptian Church both in its internal
structure and in its relationship with Jerusalem, Antioch, and
Constantinople, as well as about the hagiographical traditions created or
borrowed by the see of Alexandria. This history was subsequently
reworked, with other sources, by the author of the History of Patriarchs,
written in Arabic, which stands at the end of the series. The redactor
integrated in it other histories written in Coptic, as well as hagiographical
and homiletic works in the same language: so that in the History of
Patriarchs the scholar can recover not only an example of medieval
ecclesiology, but also the different views about the Egyptian Church
contained in the sources before and under the Arab domination. While in
the first works the way of citing documents was intended to highlight the
apostolic nature, the orthodoxy, and the political centrality of the church of
Alexandria, in the Histories of Timothy Ailuros these documents were
placed in the context of a partisan history; later, in the Coptic
Ecclesiastical History, and in the History of the Patriarchs the quotation of
documents was eliminated to leave the floor to the commemoration of
hagiographic and cultic traditions (foundations of shrines and churches).

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Geoffrey Greatrex, Théodore le Lecteur et l’histoire profane dans

l’historiographie ecclésiastique au VIème siècle (“Theodore Lector and the
secular history in the ecclesiastical historiography of the VIth century”),
after discussing the complex issue of reconstruction of the fragments of the
historian, focused on the type of information that the author intends to
communicate to the reader, wondering if the interest in the civil and
military history, as well as in the events beyond the borders of the Empire,
which distinguishes him from Zachariah of Mytilene or Theodoret of
Cyrrhus, comes from his sectarian pro-Chalcedonian and pro-imperial
position.
The section on literary genres opened with a lively paper by R. Teja, La
Vita di Porfirio di Marco il Diacono: storia o invenzione letteraria? (“The
Life of Porphyrios by Mark the Deacon: history or literary invention?”)
dedicated to a hagiographic text whose connection with the
historiographical production is undeniable. Despite past and recent
positions about its late date, the scholar, who in 2008 proposed a Spanish
translation of the text with thorough introduction, strongly reiterates its
dating at the beginning of the fifth century. Giusto Traina, Tradition et
innovation dans la première historiographie arménienne (“Tradition and
innovation in the early Armenian historiography”), noted the importance
of the link between different literary genres in the historiographical
production, particularly when it occurs for the first time in literary
languages created by the Christian elites. In the case of Armenia, we can
see how, after a period of translations from Greek and Syriac, an original
literary production took place, with historiography playing an important
role. The translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle provided the chronological
framework of universal history, but there was a lack of written local
history, which was transmitted through oral tradition and in epic or
hagiographic form.
The section devoted to the position of knowledge in ancient
historiography began with a reflection of D. Meyer, Débat cosmologique
et discours historique chez Philostorge (“Cosmological debate and
historical discourse in Philostorgius”), which centered on the relationship
between the history of Philostorgius, fragmentarily preserved, and the
astronomical, cosmological, philosophical debate of late antiquity. U.

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Roberto, Cronaca universale cristiana e sapienza pagana: Giovanni

Malala e Giovanni di Antiochia (“Christian universal Chronicle and pagan
wisdom: John Malalas and John of Antioch”), emphasized the importance
of the technique of synchronization, through which human history is
articulated, for the important ideological theme of the symphonia between
Christian truth and pagan culture, since the universal chronicle by Julius
Africanus. The space of symphonia also extends to the interpretation of
pagan oracles and prophecies that anticipate the events of Christianity: this
is reflected in the universal Christian chronicles of the sixth century.

THE TENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF COPTIC STUDIES: THE

CULTURAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA

The Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies/Decimo congresso

internazionale di studi copti was held in Rome, 17-22 September 201210. It
was organized by the International Association of Coptic Studies, as one of
its statutory tasks, under the direction of the Congress Secretary, Alberto
Camplani (Sapienza University of Rome), in collaboration with Paola Buzi
and Tito Orlandi (Sapienza University of Rome), assisted by Alessandro
Conti and Federico Contardi. The Congress was hosted by the Sapienza
University of Rome (17 and 22 September), the Institutum Patristicum
Augustinianum (18-20 September) and the Pio X Conference Hall of the
Apostolic Vatican Library (21 September). It attracted about 350
participants and was sponsored by some public and private institutions.
The inaugural session (Aula Magna of the Sapienza University of Rome)
was opened by Alberto Camplani, who inter alia illustrated reminiscences
of the Second International Congress of Coptic Studies, held in Rome in
1980, and the welcoming speeches of the Dean of the University (prof.
Luigi Frati), of the Head of the Department of History, Cultures and
Religions (prof. Mariano Pavanello) and of the Italian Ambassador to
Egypt (dr. Claudio Pacifico). An address about the situation of Coptic
studies and the Coptic community in Egypt was delivered by Anne
Boud’hors, President of the IACS. The remaining part of the inaugural

10
On the previous congresses s. the information given in «Adamantius» by Buzi and
Camplani, 2001, 2005, 2009.

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session was dedicated to some of the plenary reports (five out of the eleven
read during the whole Congress by invited scholars) and the illustration of
some ongoing projects.
From September 18 the Congress continued in five parallel sessions.
The last day an exhibition of Coptic, Copto-Arabic, and Ethiopic
manuscripts was offered to the participants. These manuscripts have been
introduced and described in a catalogue that was published some days
before the opening of the Congress, edited by Paola Buzi and Delio Vania
Proverbio11.
The structure of the Coptic Congress is worth noting. About 230 papers
were delivered, many of which were arranged according to thematic
sections, others in pre-organized panels. So, a portion of the papers was
distributed in the following sections: Coptic Archaeology, Coptic Art,
Bible in Coptic and Arabic translations, Coptic Codicology and
Palaeography, Coptic Language and Culture in Medieval and Modern
Times, Coptic Documentary Papyrology, Gnosticism and Manichaeism,
Hagiography in Coptic and Arabic Language, History and Historiography
in Coptic and Arabic Languages, Coptic Linguistics, Literature in Coptic
and Arabic language, Coptic Liturgy. The remaining papers were inserted
in panels freely organized in advance by groups of scholars, a new features
of the last IACS Congresses. Here I will give the list of panels, together
with the short introductory descriptions provided by the convenors:
– Archaeological approaches to museum collections, convened by
Caecilia Fluck and Elisabeth O’Connell:
“Moving away from an art historical approach to individual
museum objects, this panel will highlight several current projects
that seek to recontextualize archaeological collections from Late
Antique Egypt. Presentations will either focus on fieldwork which
helps contextualize objects in museum collections, or objects or
groups of objects that are best studied with reference to specific
sites. Since reported provenance is not always accurate,
presentations will scrutinize the modern history of collections as
appropriate. Interrogation of ‘findspot’ is especially important in
cases where objects were acquired from dealers seeking to raise
their value in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century; but, even

11
Buzi and Proverbio, 2012.

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objects given as part of excavation divisions sometimes prove to

have been acquired by archaeologists on site, rather than discovered
in situ”.
– Aspects of Early Islamic Egypt, convened by Jennifer Cromwell and
Arietta Papaconstantinou:
“This panel is made up of a number of contributions on early
Islamic Egypt, from the earliest years after the conquest to the
Abbasid period, by scholars working in different areas and taking a
variety of approaches. The importance of combining textual sources
in Greek, Coptic and Arabic in order to shed a proper and more
illuminating light on Egyptian society at that time is now widely
recognised. At the same time, new advances are made in the study
of material and archaeological evidence. However, the two
movements are still insufficiently integrated, largely because of the
high level of specialisation each of those fields requires. It is thus
essential to bring together scholars who normally work in those
separate domains and to foster collaboration between them in order
to open new perspectives in the study of the period. This is what this
panel aims to do by presenting and discussing the results of some
exciting recent research on early Islamic Egypt”.
– Bawit – A Monastic Community, Its Structure and Its Texts, convened
by Gesa Schenke:
“Discoveries made at the site of the monastery of Apa Apollo at Bawit
over a whole century have yielded an enormous amount of material,
archaeological, epigraphical, and papyrological. The aim of the panel is to
bring together all aspects of study concerning life in and around this
monastic community, particularly in the face of new challenges under
early Islamic rule”.
– Coptic Religious and Political Life in Contemporary Egypt: Recent
Scholarly Developments, convened by Febe Armanios:
“The recent history and contemporary life of Coptic Christians in
Egypt have been little studied in the scholarly literature. In the past
five years or so, however, a new generation of scholars has focused
on examining Coptic political, religious, and cultural life,
investigating everything from political mobilization, the centrality
of taratil (songs or hymns), inter-Christian relations, and
charismatic worship, among others. This research is, of course,
more timely than ever in light of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, new
outbreaks of sectarian conflict, and the ongoing reevaluation of the

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Copts’ political future. This panel will present new approaches to

Coptic studies, focusing on Coptic religious and political life in the
last four decades and up till the present. While showcasing original
archival and ethnographic research, participants will highlight their
use of new sources (including music, literature, and film), and they
will discuss how their research orientations have helped advance
new conceptual frameworks for the study of Copts”.
– Late Antique Thebes, convened by Malcolm Choat and Jennifer
Cromwell:
“Thebes continues to be one of the most exciting sites for Coptic
archaeology and papyrology, with important new discoveries in
both areas over the past decade. This panel brings together scholars
involved in on-going excavations and those undertaking research on
material both old and new. The contributions highlight the scope,
diversity and importance of this current work for the history of the
region in late Antique and early Islamic Egypt”.
– Monastic Material Cultures: Image, Site, Text, convened by Elizabeth
Bolman and S.J. Davis:
“Over the past decade, archaeological and conservation work at the
White and Red Monasteries (the Shenoutian Federation) near Sohag
and the Monastery of John the Little in Wadi al-Natrun has
generated fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration. The American
Research Center in Egypt (with funding from the United States
Agency for International Development) and the Yale Monastic
Archaeology Project (with support from the Yale Egyptological
Institute in Egypt) have supported the majority of the work at these
late ancient and early medieval monastic sites. These projects are
still ongoing, but they have already begun to yield a wealth of art
historical and archaeological data. In these three sessions, invited
speakers will address the contributions that this work makes to our
understanding of monastic material culture from late antiquity
through the tenth century, examining and problematizing the
categories of image, site, and text”.
– The reconstruction and edition of Coptic Biblical Manuscripts,
convened by Frank Feder:
“The panel envisages all aspects of studies dealing with the
reconstruction of the Coptic Version of the Old and New
Testaments including palaeography, codicology, text critics, and
exegetical questions. The predilection for Gnosticism especially in
the field of Coptic manuscript studies has somehow absorbed its

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manpower in the past decades. However, the Coptic Biblical texts

form a major part of the written record that has been transmitted
from Egyptian Christianity. There is no need to underline the
importance of the Coptic Bible and its transmission. But obviously
we are still far from a systematic exploration of the textual sources
which are known to us today and particularly as for the Coptic Old
Testament. On the one hand, new manuscripts keep on appearing in
Egypt and on the international market. On the other, every thorough
investigation in the collections and museums worldwide brings new
material to light which has been stored for sometimes more than a
hundred years without identification. The panel, therefore, aims at
promoting more efforts in the field of Coptic Biblical texts and will
present a couple of encouraging projects and studies. Further
proposals for contributions are very welcome which will be
reviewed and included if they fit the theme”.
– Writing and Communication in Egyptian Monasticism, convened by
Malcolm Choat and Mariachiara Giorda:
“Late Antique Egypt witness the rise of a new locus of textual
activity: beyond the use of writing by Roman administrators,
Hellenic intellectuals, and Christian clerics, writing in monastic
circles, within and outside the scriptorium, becomes one of the chief
focuses of engagement with text. This panel will discuss the
presence and practice of writing within a monastic context,
addressing three broad themes: 1. monks as authors, scribes and
owners of written text; 2. the presence of writing in the monastic
environment; 3. the symbolic and spiritual value of the written
word. Within this framework, we especially encourage contributions
that cover a broad base of evidence, from monastic literature to
papyri, epigraphy, and archaeology”.
General reports about the recent studies on a specific field of Coptology
had been assigned to eminent scholars four years before, as you can learn
from the following list:
Karel C. Innemée, Coptic Archaeology (2008-2012);
Gertrud J.M. van Loon, Coptic Art (2008-2012);
Heike Behlmer, Coptic Literature (2008-2012);
Sofía Torallas Tovar, Coptic Codicology and Palaeography (2004-
2012);
Gregor Wurst, Gnosticism and Manichaeism (2008-2012);
Andrew Crislip, Shenoutean studies;
James E. Goehring, Egyptian Monasticism (2008-2012);
Heinzgerd Brakmann, Coptic Liturgy (2004-2012);

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Alain Delattre, Documentary papyrology (2008-2012);

Tonio Sebastian Richter, Coptic Linguistics (2008-2012);
Alessandro Bausi, Ethiopic literary production related to the
Egyptian culture.
I would like to draw the scholarly attention to the last item. For the first
time in a Coptic congress a key report was devoted to Ethiopian studies in
their relation to Egyptian Christian culture, with particular attention to the
topic announced in the title of this contribution, that of cultural
transmission. We hope that this first report will be followed in the coming
congresses by more collaborative enterprises, such as more structured
panels or workshops. For that reason, I conclude this excursus about recent
conferences on cultural transmission by emphasizing the importance of
some of Bausi’s considerations, which are of capital importance for the
development of our studies.
A first point he has underlined is the existence of a close institutional
relationship between the Ethiopian and Christian Egyptian cultures. This
relationship is that of dependence of Ethiopian Christianity from the
Egyptian church since the early conversion of king ‘Ēzānā, the first
Christian ruler of the kingdom of Aksum (IV century CE). The
metropolitan bishops of Ethiopia have, for sixteen centuries, been chosen
from Egyptian monks. For this reason, all aspects of the cultural
production of Ethiopian Christianity was deeply influenced by Egyptian
Christian culture. The obvious way in which this influence expressed itself
was in a number of translations of texts. Two stages can be detected in this
process: translations carried out directly from the Greek, dating to the
Aksumite period from the fourth to the seventh century CE, limited to the
Bible and a few other texts, and a second stage of massive translations
from the Arabic, starting from the post-Aksumite period. There are no
clear traces of Ethiopic versions directly from the Coptic. So, the
“Aksumite” label, i.e. the first phase of the translation process, has in fact
been applied to very few titles (the Bible, some major apocryphal writings,
the patristic collection of the Qērellos, and a few other monastic and
hagiographic texts12), which constituted the rather limited and special

12
In the paper Bausi has proposed the following: “Excluding the epigraphical texts and
besides the (1) “Bible” (“Old” and “New Testament”), the following texts can be ranged

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canon of the early Ethiopic, Aksumite literature. Several centuries after the
decline and fall of the kingdom of Aksum in the seventh century, in the so-
called post-Aksumite age and in a completely different political situation,
in the twelfth and thirteenth century, another process took place, that of the
translations of Christian Arabic texts, due to the re-established and
strengthened relationship with the Patriarchate of Alexandria.
The importance of Ethiopic versions for recovering Medieval (Copto-)
Arabic Egyptian traditions has been acknowledged for long time. It was
Ignazio Guidi, however, who stressed the enduring paradigm of an almost
exclusively Arabic-based Ethiopic literature. In this perspective, the
Ethiopian literary heritage was considered almost exclusively to depend
upon (Copto-)Arabic texts. Alessandro Bausi added that «the general
theory was completed with a postulate – once again, mainly based upon
historical and institutional reasons – for which no substantial
counterevidence has emerged so far, yet with some unsolved case-studies:
there never were direct translations from Coptic into Ethiopic, because
when Coptic literature was flourishing the relationships between Egypt and
Ethiopia were at their minimum, and when they were actively resumed

among the Aksumite works at present: (2) works of the inter-testamental and apocryphal
literature: “Book of Enoch”, “Book of Jubilees”, “Rest of the words of Baruch” or “4
Baruch”, “Third” and “Fourth Book of Ezra”, “Ascension of Isaiah” and “Pastor of
Hermas”, and maybe the “Lives of the Prophets”; (3) the “Qērellos”; (4) at least two
recensions of the monastic “Rules of Pachomius”, as well as other scattered pieces of
monastic literature; (5) the “Physiologus”; (6) the “Treatise on the Antichrist” by
Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235); (7) a recension of the “Ancoratus” by Epiphanius of Salamis
(d. 403), a recent, but important acquisition; (8) a number of hagiographical works, among
which the “Life of Paul the first hermit” (the previously numbered “Life of Anthony” has
been questioned) and “Acts” of Christian martyrs: St. Mark, Arsenofis, Euphemia,
Tēwoflos with Pāṭroqyā and Damālis, Emrāyes, maybe Cyprian and Justa, and Peter
patriarch of Alexandria, certainly Phileas bishop of Thmuis, and probably some others;
(9) at least some of the texts which are witnessed by archaic homiliaries, such as mss.
EMML 1763, EMML 8509 and London, Brit. Libr. Or. 8192 (the presence in an ancient
Old Testament ms. of a fragmentary homily attributed to John Chrysostom [d. 407] can be
a clue to this hypothesis): among these, some texts devoted to celebrate indigenous saints
could be the only original Aksumite texts preserved up to now; (10) probably also the
apocryphal “Infancy Gospel” and the “Testament of Our Lord”, of which the “Doctrine of
the mysteries” is a part; (11) more exegetical works attributed to Philo of Carpasia (for
example, the commentary on the Song of Songs) ”.

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Arabic was already the main language of Christian Egypt, and translations
and revisions of Ethiopic texts were then made on the basis of Arabic».
This is the situation correctly presented in the best syntheses on the matter,
for example that by Steven Kaplan13.
According to Bausi, this general scheme might be better reworked
adding some observations on the double process of translation and
acquisition of the Egyptian literary heritage in Ethiopic culture: (1) due to
asynchronous historical developments, as well as institutional and
consequent linguistic updating in Egypt, one would reasonably expect that
not all that is attested in Ethiopic is redundant and superfluous to a better
understanding of the history of Egyptian Christianity; (2) whereas the
older layer of Christian tradition may have been lost in the more advanced
and culturally rich Egyptian area, exposed to continuous updating, revising
and selecting, it could have been retained in the more backward and
provincial Ethiopia. It is in this regard that, for example, the Latin versions
parallel to Ethiopic texts of the Aksumite collection should also be
considered14. The twofold survival of the same texts in marginal areas is a
strong clue to archaic character. Genuine character, however, is also to be
attributed to survivals in one single area that is more conservative and
exhibits less sociocultural dynamism, as happens, again, for Ethiopia.
(3) Concerning the translations from Arabic, the process also affected texts
already translated in the preceding Aksumite period – predominately the
Bible, but also “corpora” of other genres (patristic, liturgical,
hagiographical and canonical texts), which were in the course of time
revised and organized according to new criteria and emerging needs15.
(4) The obvious expectation that the Ethiopian tradition – where Ancient
Ethiopic (or Ge‘ez) has remained the only institutional language of written
culture for about fifteen centuries – might preserve archaic remnants of
early Egyptian Christianity has been obscured by several factors, three of
which merit especial mention here: the large preponderance of translations
from Arabic; the scanty survival of ancient Ethiopic manuscripts which

13
Kaplan, 2008.
14
Bausi, 2006; Camplani, 2006.
15
Bausi, 2012.

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predate the fifteenth century; the process of graphic and linguistic

updating, as well as that of the reworking and rearrangement of the ancient
Aksumite translations from Greek into Ethiopic.
Moreover, recently researched case-studies, seem to point to a non-
Coptic based Arabic stream, rather connected to Sinai than to Egypt: to
stress that Arabic Vorlage for Ethiopic texts is not always synonymous of
a Copto-Arabic Vorlage is highly meaningful for the history of Ethiopian
culture. For Bausi, not unrelated to this conclusion is also the increasing
awareness that not so much differently from Christian Arabic tradition,
also the Ethiopian one is characterized by a number of translated texts with
multiple recensions, not as a consequence of the internal development of
the Ethiopian textual tradition, that as far as it has been investigated results
to be extremely stable and conservative, but as the outcome of a plurality
of source texts.
Bausi’s report has not only pointed out the main line of interaction
between Coptic and Ethiopian studies, but also stressed the cultural
significance of such a collaboration. In fact, new trends in Ethiopian
studies tend to insist on the autonomous character of Ethiopic Christian
culture: “It will be easy to realize that the space allotted to Ethiopian
Studies as study of the Ethiopian Christian culture within the broader
frame of Christian Orient, taking into account especially the Christian
Egyptian connections, has been dramatically reduced in the course of
time”, so that Ethiopian Christian culture tends to be more and more
considered exclusively or chiefly as an autonomous phenomenon in its
cultural and literary manifestations. The fact that the Tenth International
Congress of Coptic Studies has decided to include a plenary report on
Ethiopian studies in its program is the premise to promote a corresponding
attitude and openness from within the International Conferences of
Ethiopian Studies.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
Bausi, Alessandro, 2006, La collezione aksumita canonico-liturgica, in
«Adamantius», 12, 43-70.
Bausi, Alessandro, 2006b, The Aksumite background of the Ethiopic
‘Corpus canonum’, in Siegbert, Uhlig (ed.), Proceedings of the XVth
International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Hamburg July 20-25,
2003 (Aethiopistische Forschungen, 65), Wiesbaden, 532-541.
Bausi, Alessandro, 2011, La “nuova” versione etiopica della Traditio
apostolica: edizione e traduzione preliminare, in Buzi, Paola,
Camplani, Alberto (eds.), Christianity in Egypt: literary production and
intellectual trends (Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum, 125), Roma,
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Bausi, Alessandro (ed.), 2012, Languages and Cultures of Eastern
Christianity: Ethiopian (Variorum, The Worlds of Eastern Christianity
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Bettiolo, Paolo, 2007, Contrasting styles of Ecclesiastical Authority and
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Vatican Library: A Selection of Coptic, Copto-Arabic and Ethiopic
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Camplani, Alberto, 2006, Lettere episcopali, storiografia patriarcale e

letteratura canonica: a proposito del Codex veronensis LX (58), in
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Camplani, Alberto, 2011a, A Syriac fragment from the Liber historiarum
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trends in late antiquity, Roma, 205- 226.
Camplani, Alberto, 2011b, Un’antica teoria della successione patriarcale
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Den Heijer, Johannes, Perrine Pilette, 2011, Murqus Simaika (1864 –
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Kaplan, Steven, 2008, Found in Translation: The Egyptian Impact on
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Noce, Carla, Pampaloni, Massimo, Tavolieri, Claudia (ed.), 2013, Le vie
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Torallas Tovar, Sofía, Monferrer-Sala, Juan Pedro (ed.), 2013, Cultures in

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