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).

This book provides an overview of the driving theories, methodologies and main topics that have been addressed to date regarding agrarian archaeology. The text is presented as an introduction for students, a critical reading guide for other scholars, and an informative instrument aimed at a wide audience.

In Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures, Sergey Minov analyses the role played by the pseudepigraphic work known as the Cave of Treasures in the formation of cultural memory and collective identity among Syriac Christians of Iran during Late Antiquity.

This volume brings together a set of contributions, many appearing in English for the first time, together with a new introduction, covering the history of the Ethiopian Christian civilization in its formative period (300-1500 AD). Rooted in the late antique kingdom of Aksum (present day Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea), and lying between Byzantium, Africa and the Near East, this civilization is presented in a series of case studies. At a time when philological and linguistic investigations are being challenged by new approaches in Ethiopian studies, this volume emphasizes the necessity of basic research, while avoiding the reduction of cultural questions to matters of fact and detail.

Composite and multiple-text manuscripts are traditionally studied for their individual texts, but recent trends in codicology have paved the way for a more comprehensive approach: Manuscripts are unique artefacts which reveal how they were produced and used as physical objects. While multiple-text manuscripts codicologically are to be considered as production units, i.e. they were originally planned and realized in order to carry more than one text, composites consist of formerly independent codicological units and were put together at a later stage with intentions that might be completely different from those of its original parts. Both sub-types of manuscripts are still sometimes called "miscellanies", a term relating to the texts only. The codicological difference is important for reconstructing why and how these manuscripts which in many cases resemble (or contain) a small library were produced and used. Contributions on the manuscript cultures of China, India, Africa, the Islamic world and European traditions lead not only to the conclusion that "one-volume libraries" have been produced in many manuscript cultures, but allow also for the identification of certain types of uses.

The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, in the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia as well as in the Christian East. As this work shows, their artwork is closely related to Syriac, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian gospel books and to the art of late antique (Coptic) Egypt, Nubia, and Himyar (Yemen). Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of the different versions of the same material in the gospels. Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames, portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are elucidated. The Garima texts and decoration demonstrate how a distinctive Christian culture developed in Aksumite Ethiopia, while also belonging to the mainstream late antique Mediterranean world. Lavishly illustrated in colour, this volume presents all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time and extensive comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated books.

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art bibliography documents the most recent research activity in the vibrant field of language, gender and sexuality. It provides experts in the field and students in tertiary education with access to language-centred resources on gender and sexuality and is, therefore, an ideal research companion. The main part of the bibliography lists 3,454 relevant publications (monographs, edited volumes, journal articles and contributions to edited volumes) that have been published within the period from 2000 to 2011. It unites work done in linguistics with that of neighbouring disciplines, covering studies dealing with a broad range of languages and cultures around the globe. Alphabetical listing and a keyword index facilitate finding relevant work by author and subject matter. The e-book version additionally enables users to search the entire document for specific terms. Sections on earlier bibliographies and general reference works on language, gender and sexuality complete the compilation.

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.

Renowned for his work within the fields of Numismatics, Archaeology, Egyptology and Coptic studies, Georg Zoëga was a figure of outstanding importance both in Rome and in Europe, at the end of the eighteenth century. Although highly valued by his contemporaries, Zoëga’s scientific legacy fell almost entirely into oblivion with the end of the Enlightenment. The Forgotten Scholar: Georg Zoëga (1755-1819): At the Dawn of Egyptology and Coptic Studies represents an exceptional occasion to rediscover the largely unknown scientific legacy of this Danish scholar consisting of hundreds of letters, drawings, sketches, notes, and other documents, mainly preserved in the Royal Library and in the Thorvaldsen Museum of Copenhagen.

Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main route of contact with the outside world, while Aksum was oriented towards the Red Sea and Arabia. In this way Aksum and Kush coexisted in peace for most of their history, and such contact as they maintained with each other was limited to small-scale commerce. Only in the fourth century CE did Aksum take up arms against Kush, and even then the conflict seems to have been related mainly to security issues on Aksum’s western frontier. Although Aksum never managed to hold onto Kush for long, much less dealt the final death-blow to the Nubian kingdom, as is often believed, claims to Kush continued to play a role in Aksumite royal ideology as late as the sixth century. Aksum and Nubia critically examines the extent to which relations between two ancient African states were influenced by warfare, commerce, and political fictions.