The XVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies took place in Hamburg in July 2003. More than 400 scientists from over 25 countries participated. 130 contributions from the program were selected for this volume. They are mostly written in English and deal on the regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea and cover the span from the 4th Century to the present. The volume is divided into the following chapters: Anthropology (20 Articles), History (25), Arts (10), Literature and Philology (10), Religion (5), Languages and Linguistics (25), Law and Politics (10), Environmental, Economic and Educational Issues (10).

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology’s main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

Script and writing were among the most important inventions in human history, and until the invention of printing, the handwritten book was the primary medium of literary and cultural transmission. Although the study of manuscripts is already quite advanced for many regions of the world, no unified discipline of ‘manuscript studies’ has yet evolved which is capable of treating handwritten books from East Asia, India and the Islamic world equally alongside the European manuscript tradition. This book, which aims to begin the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to arrive at a truly systematic and comparative approach to manuscript cultures worldwide, brings together papers by leading researchers concerned with material, philological and cultural aspects of different manuscript traditions.

The strange, untold story of the Nazis and adventurers who fought for Ethiopia against Mussolini’s invaders.

This is the sixth volume of Babel und Bibel, an annual of ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic studies. The principal goal of the annual is to reveal the inherent relationship between Assyriology, Semitics, and biblical studies—a relationship that our predecessors comprehended and fruitfully explored but that is often neglected today. The title Babel und Bibel is intended to point to the possibility of fruitful collaboration among the three disciplines, in an effort to explore the various civilizations of the ancient Near East. The tripartite division of Babel und Bibel corresponds to its three principal spheres of interest: ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic studies. Contributions are further subdivided into articles, short notes, and reviews. Highlights of this volume include several studies on Akkadian language, Mesopotamian literature, and publication of inscriptions in some Russian museums (in the ancient Near Eastern section); studies on negative markers in Semitic and on Aramaic language (in the Semitics section); and some significant review essays on important new publications, especially in Hebrew language, Aramaic, Hurrian, Lycian, Egyptian, and Syriac.

The handbook The Semitic Languages offers a comprehensive reference tool for Semitic Linguistics in its broad sense. It is not restricted to comparative Grammar, although it covers also comparative aspects, including classification. By comprising a chapter on typology and sections with sociolinguistic focus and language contact, the conception of the book aims at a rather complete, unbiased description of the state of the art in Semitics. Articles on individual languages and dialects give basic facts as location, numbers of speakers, scripts, numbers of extant texts and their nature, attestation where appropriate, and salient features of the grammar and lexicon of the respective variety. The handbook is the most comprehensive treatment of the Semitic language family since many decades.