Inventorying Manuscripts WorkshopṬāqot Māryām (East Tigray, Ethiopia), 18 November 2023
18 November 2023
On 18 November 2023, Dr Denis Nosnitsin carried out a hands-on workshop on inventorying manuscripts at Ṭāqot Māryām (East Tigray).
It was a response to an interest expressed by a group of enthusiasts from the area of ʿAddigrāt, who were very concerned about the preservation of the local cultural heritage.
After the recent military conflict in Tigray it became clear that the task of recording the manuscript patrimony of Tigray should be accelerated. An inventory is a type of a brief manuscript catalogue, which contains the most essential information about manuscripts of a collection and serves for quick identification of any of them. Inventorying might be an instrument to achieve the goal of surveying all manuscripts available in ecclesiastic repositories of Tigray in particular, and the entire Ethiopia in general. As it is well known, inventorying can be applied in the situation when those responsible, not necessarily trained in manuscript studies, are confronted with large number of manuscripts which should be recorded in the shortest possible time, with prospects to introduce further preservation or research measures.
The workshop could take place thanks to the efforts of Mr Hagos Gebremariam (Adigrat University, Sociology Department). As a venue of the workshop, the church Ṭāqot Dabra Ṣəyon Māryām (near the town of ʾƎdaga Ḥamus) was selected, where the priests kindly offered manuscripts of the church collection as teaching and exercise material. Five people took part, two from Adigrat University, two from the local branch of the Tourism and Culture Agency, and one from the church administration. In the first part, Dr Nosnitsin explained the main reasons for creating an inventory of a manuscript collection. Dr Nosnitsin demonstrated possible descriptive schemes and explained the meaning of their elements, showing how manuscript collections can be quickly recorded, also by people with the minimum of manuscriptological skills and low level of the knowledge of Geez. In the second part, the trainees tried to apply theoretical knowledge and were engaged in practical inventorying of manuscripts. Each brief description was discussed, checked and corrected. The workshop was concluded with a general discussion.
Fig. 1. Denis Nosnitsin explaining the main properties of Ethiopic codex to the trainees
Fig. 2. Making an inventory of the manuscripts