Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project

We are getting ready to go to Ankober, birthplace to Emperor Menelik II, in order to return the Psalter. We are hoping to digitize some manuscripts while we are there.

Here's a photo from our press conference yesterday: http://www.fotoglif.com/f/njk7yy6j8bps

Fotoglif - f - ETHIOPIA-US-RELIGION-HISTORY - One source, thousands of new photos a day, the worlds. A photo taken on June 02, 2010 shows Professor Steve Delamarter explaining the writings contained in an ancient Ethiopian prayer book handed back to the Horn of Africa nation by an American collector. The century-old Ethiopian prayer book stolen decades ago was returned to the African nation late Ju...

Engineer Terrefe Ras Work and Dr. Haile Gabriel Dagne shared their
vision for the museum in Ankober. Ato Demeke Berhane discussed the value
of manuscript studies and Ato Fikre-Maryam Yifru shared the gratitude
of the Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies for this
gracious gift. It was a great time and we are excited for the Psalter
to have been returned to its home.

Today we also held a press conference for the return of the Emperor Menelik II Psalter from Gerald Weiner back to the people of Ethiopia and a museum in Ankober, one of Menelik II's capitals. Dr. Elsabet Giyorgis offered a kind welcome and directed the press conference. Professor Richard Pankhurst discussed the need for treasures to be returned to Ethiopia.

Today we surpassed 4,100 items digitized for the
British Library project and have taken over 365,000 images since December. The end of
the project is in sight.

The first month of the British Library project has been a tremendous success with 549 manuscripts digitized and 76,989 photos taken!! Also, the team that we hired has progressed very well and are digitizing at a great pace.

Official notification from the British Library: we've been funded to finish the digitization of the collection at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. Steve and Jeremy will head to Addis the day after Christmas.

Jeremy has worked through 54 of the oldest Ethiopic manuscripts over the last two days, while searching for scribal corrections. Highlights have included two 16th century manuscripts with over 250 corrections in a 20th century hand & a 14th century manuscript with 124 corrections in a 14th century hand.

Jeremy is on his way to the HMML to work through 100 of the oldest Ethiopic manuscripts known. He's studying the way in which scribes made corrections to errors. I (Steve) will let him tell more about it.

Steve is preparing to work with Alan D. Crown by reading his (amazing) Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 80 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) and his Catalogue of the Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Library (London: British Library, 1998).

has been trying to find the right tool to help us digitally foliate the sets of pictures we take of codices. Each image has to be successively numbered in the upper right corner. Manually, takes about one hour and 15 minutes for each manuscript. InDesign to the rescue. We got it down to 15 minutes. Jeremy is a happy camper!