Preface
iiiof use to those who have not the time or opportunity forperusing the Ethiopic original.The
Këbra Nagast
is a great storehouse of legends andtraditions, some historical and some of a purely folk-lorecharacter, derived from the Old Testament and the laterRabbinic writings, and from Egyptian (both pagan andChristian), Arabian, and Ethiopian sources. Of the early historyof the compilation and its maker, and of its subsequent editorswe know nothing, but the principal groundwork of its earliestform was the traditions that were current in Syria, Palestine,Arabia, and Egypt during the first four centuries of theChristian era. Weighing carefully all that has been written byDillmann, Trump, Zotenberg, Wright, and Bezold, and takinginto account the probabilities of the matter, it seems to me thatwe shall not be far wrong if we assign the composition of theearliest form of the
Këbra Nagast
to the sixth century A.D. Itscompiler was probably a Coptic priest, for the books he usedwere writings that were accepted by the Coptic Church.Whether he lived in Egypt, or in Aksûm, or in some other partof Ethiopia matters little, but the colophons of the extantEthiopic MSS. of the
Këbra Nagast
suggest that he wrote inCoptic.In the succeeding centuries, probably as a result of thewidespread conquests of Mu˙ammad and his Khalîfahs, theCoptic text was in whole or part translated into Arabic, andduring the process of translation many additions were made toit, chiefly from Arabic sources. Last of all this Arabic versionwas translated into Ethiopic, and proper names underwentcurious transformations in the process. According to thecolophons of the MSS. in the British Museum, Oxford, andParis, the Arabic translation was made from the Coptic in the409th “year of mercy,” when Gabra Mas˚al, commonly knownas Lâlîbalâ, was reigning over Ethiopia, i.e. between A.D. 1314and 1344. And the same authorities say that the Ethiopic
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