Professional Documents
Culture Documents
From Persia To Egypt From Egypt To Ethio PDF
From Persia To Egypt From Egypt To Ethio PDF
NALLINO” (ROMA)
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI “L’ORIENTALE”
RASSEGNA
DI STUDI ETIOPICI
FONDATA
DA
† CARLO CONTI ROSSINI
Vol. IV
(Nuova Serie)
ROMA-NAPOLI
2012
Scientific Committee:
GIORGIO BANTI, ALESSANDRO BAUSI, ANTONELLA BRITA, RODOLFO FATTOVICH,
ALESSANDRO GORI, GIANFRANCESCO LUSINI, ANDREA MANZO, PAOLO
MARRASSINI, SILVANA PALMA, GRAZIANO SAVÀ, LUISA SERNICOLA, MAURO
TOSCO, ALESSANDRO TRIULZI, YAQOB BEYENE
Advisory Board:
ALEMSEGED BELDADOS ALEHO, BAHRU ZEWDE, BAYE YIMAM, ALBERTO
CAMPLANI, DONALD CRUMMEY, ELOI FICQUET, GETATCHEW HAILE, GIDEON
GOLDENBERG, MARILYN HELDMAN, CHRISTIAN ROBIN, SHIFERAW BEKELE,
TADDESE T AMRAT, TEMESGEN BURKA BORTIE, SIEGBERT UHLIG
Editorial Board:
ANDREA MANZO, PAOLO MARRASSINI, YAQOB BEYENE in collaboration with
ANTONELLA BRITA, ALESSANDRO GORI, GRAZIANO SAVÀ and LUISA SERNICOLA
The present issue is the volume IV of the “New Series” (the volume II was pub-
lished in 2003) and it represents the 47th volume since the establishment of the
journal.
Iscrizione presso il Tribunale civile di Roma, Sezione Stampa, al numero 446/2010 del 23/11/2010
ISSN 0390-0096
Tipografia: Tipolito; Istituto Salesiano Pio XI – Via Umbertide 11 – 00181 Roma
CONTENTS
ARCHAEOLOGY
RODOLFO FATTOVICH, The northern Horn of Africa in the first millennium BCE:
local traditions and external connections………………………………………p. 1
ETHNOGRAPHY
SUSANNE EPPLE, Harmful practice or ritualised guidance? Reflections on physical
punishment as part of socialisation among the Bashada of southern
Ethiopia…………………………………………………………………………………p. 69
HISTORY
LINGUISTICS
GRAZIANO SAVÀ, A few notes on the documentation of Bayso (Cushitic) and Haro
(Omotic): fieldwork organisation and data collection………………………….p. 153
PHILOLOGY
REVIEW ARTICLES
ALBERTO CAMPLANI, From Persia to Egypt, from Egypt to Ethiopia: the transmis-
sion of knowledge in some recent conferences (2010-2012)…………………...p. 215
OBITUARIES
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
Let us start with Le vie del sapere nell’area siro-mesopotamica dal III
al IX secolo, May 12–13, 2011 (“The ways of knowledge in the Syro-
215
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
Mesopotamian area from the third to the ninth century”), organized by the
Pontifical Oriental Institute and the University of Roma Tre1. The central
theme of the conference is the intercultural exchange in Late Antiquity,
with particular attention to the schools as privileged centres of the
exchange of knowledge:
“Schools of the Middle East, ancient and medieval, represented
really, beyond the religious divisions and denominations, a place of
exchange and circulation of ideas”.
This is especially true for the two churches of Syriac linguistic area, the
West Syrian and the East Syrian, where the schools were a powerful
channel of communication and dialogue, despite the political and
ecclesiastical differences between the regions. A number of papers
centered on the issue of cultural transmission, exploring Jewish academies,
philosophical schools, and Christian centres of learning, leaving on the
background the question of the dogmatic definition or of the exegetical
traditions2. In particular, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to four
essays dealing with the Christian transmission of culture: Paolo Bettiolo
1
The organizing committee was composed by Claudia Tavolieri, Susan Elm, Emidio
Vergani, Carla Noce, Massimo Pampaloni, Marco Demichelis. The proceedings have been
published recently: Noce, Pampaloni and Tavolieri (ed.), 2013.
2
Susan Elm, Storia di Roma - Storia di Antiochia. La storiografia tardoantica come via
del sapere e la prospettiva orientale, Elisabetta Abate, Circoli, scuole o accademie? Luoghi
e modi dell’educazione rabbinica in Palestina e Babilonia (III-VII sec. E.V.), Ariel Kofky,
Hermeneutics and Theology among Greek and Syriac Christianity and Contemporaneous
Judaism (4th-5th centuries). Paradigms of interactions, René Roux, Sapere teologico e
sapere profano all’inizio del VI secolo: l’esperienza di Severo di Antiochia a Beirut,
Edward Watts, Libanius and the Art of Seeing Syria through Rhetoric, Emidio Vergani,
Poesia e conoscenza nei madrashe di Efrem: tra Nisibi e dintorni, Massimo Pampaloni,
Narsai e i suoi uditori a Edessa: un’ipotesi, Bartolomeo Pirone, Al-Mu’taman Ibn al Assì’l
in cerca di libri e biblioteche della Grande Siria, Samir Khalil Samir, La funzione di
Guntishapur nella tradizione del sapere verso gli Arabi, Marco Demichelis, Basra. The
cradle of Islamic culture, Sabine Schmidtke, Biblical testimonies to the prophethood of
Muhammad, David Thomas, Explanation of the Person of Christ in the early Muslim
milieu, Carmela Baffioni, Il computo delle proposizioni nel MS Esad Effendi 3638 e la
tradizione siro-araba, Alexandre Roberts, Foreign wisdom in Arabic texts, Shirine
Dakouri, Teaching the hearts. Rabi’a al-Adawiyya’s role in the spiritual formation fo an
intellectual elite in al-Basra, II sec. heg., Carla Noce – Claudia Tavolieri, Figure e ruoli
femminili nella formazione del sapere in ambito antiocheno e edesseno.
216
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
3
It has been published with the title: Le scuole nella chiesa siro-orientale: status
quaestionis e prospettive della ricerca (“The Schools in the East-Syrian Church: Status
quaestionis and perspectives of research”).
4
About this issue s. for example Camplani, 2007 and Bettiolo, 2007.
217
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
5
The academic directors of the conference were Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (University
of Cordoba), Sofia Torallas Tovar (CSIC, Madrid), Manuel Marcos Aldon (University of
Cordoba). The proceedings have been published recently: Torallas Tovar - Monferrer-Sala
(ed.), 2013.
6
December 1. First session: Samir Khalil Samir, Un modele de mediateur culturel: Elie
de Nisibe (975-1046); Adel Sidarus, Les sources multiples d’une oeuvre astronomique et
historique copto-arabe (Kitāb al-Tawārīkh de Nushū’ al-Khilāfa Abū Shākir Ibn al-Rāhib,
1257); Mayte Penelas, A new Arabic version of the dialogue between the patriarch Timothy
I and the caliph al-Mahdī?; Giuseppe Mandalà, L’image de Rome dans la littérature arabo-
218
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
219
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
7
The paper by Uril Simonsohn is concerned with issues of the transmission of Saʻīd
Baṭriq’s Annales. The paper by Johannes den Heijer and Perrine Pilette, Rewriting and
diffusing Coptic Church History: new remarks on the Vulgate edition of the History of the
Patriarchs of Alexandria is part of a larger project of edition and commentary of this capital
source; s. also den Heijer and Pilette, 2011 and Camplani, 2011a.
220
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
8
Camplani, 2006.
9
On late antique historiography and its relationship with the history of the Christian East
s. the beautiful book by Blaudeau, 2006.
221
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
The main topic of the congress had already been presented by the
organizing committee in advance:
“Without doubt, as D. Meyer has recently written, historiography is
one of the most characteristic genres, most innovative perhaps, of
Late Antiquity (considered here as extending from the fourth to
seventh century). Through the diversity of its forms (Res gestae,
Ecclesiastical Histories, Chronicles or Lives of the Saints), through
the nature of its demonstrative aims (profane history / engaged
history), through the variety of languages of composition and / or
conservation (Greek, Latin or Syriac), the historiographical work
aims at providing the specific culture of its readers with the
experience of the past, collected and interpreted. In this regard, one
of his challenges is to identify, select and publicize the knowledge,
reworked in the most ancient ages, with the purpose that its utility,
real or imagined, can be updated according to the new requirements
assigned to contemporary time. Such a design also focuses on the
need to introduce changes of meaning motivated by the
transformation of the relationship with the framework of thought
itself. In considering the main subject, which encompasses the
various fields of knowledge (from natural sciences to theology
through policy) we can distinguish four main modi procedendi that
characterize the works transmitted to us in their entirety or partially:
1. Preservation of the previous documentation (logic of the insertion
of documents). 2. Preservation of passages belonging to previous
works (logic of compilation). 3. Confrontation with statements
deemed false or lame (logic of refutation, correction or addition). 4.
Highlighting new forms of knowledge judged able to silence
alternative forms of knowledge considered too tied to old patterns of
explanation of the world (logic of exclusion)”.
As can be easily seen from the titles of the sections and the above
mentioned declaration, the conference paid particular attention to the
contextualization of historiography in the history of the late antique
culture, focusing in particular certain aspects, such as: 1) the vexed
relationship between historiography and rhetoric; 2) the relationship of the
historical works produced in different languages (not only in Greek or
Latin) by the new emerging ethnic groups with this same rhetorical
culture; 3) the circulation of information, traditions and documents in the
whole area of the Roman Empire and frontier areas, beyond the cultural
and linguistic borders, particularly permeable at this time; 4) the role of
intellectual groups (clerical and lay) who organized the linguistic
222
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
mediation and the decoding of texts and traditions; 5) the social and
cultural variety of audiences, as well as the variety of religious
commitments; 6) the different literary genres in which late antique
historiography expressed itself, from the histories to the chronicles, from
the lives of saints to the astronomical predictions, from the canonical
collections to the library catalogs.
At this point it seems useful to give an account of a selection of papers
read in the above mentioned sections, with particular attention to those
concerning Eastern Christianity, but not only. As we said, the first section
has been dedicated to the documentation and sources historians have
selected and used in the construction of their discourse, to transmit it to
their readers. For example, they selected highly traditional memories, as
proposed by an original paper by Andy Hilkens, Les traditions du Livre
des Jubilés et la Chronographie syriaque (VIe-XIIIe s.) (“The traditions of
the Book of Jubilees and the Syriac chronography (VI-XIII cent.)”), who
pointed out the presence of traditions coming from the Book of Jubilees in
the Chronograph “until the year 1234”. However, the most important
documentation consisted in official documents preserved in the archives.
In particular, Dominique Moreau (University of Strasbourg), Les actes
pontificaux en tant que sources des historiens et des chroniqueurs de
l’Antiquité tardive, highlighted how the post-Eusebian historiography, in
the West and the East, has cited the Church documents and the imperial
constitutions and what relevance have these quotations, especially when
the documents quoted are absent from the canonical collections or are
preserved in a different form. The purpose of this technique of quotation is
to support the historical account with the argument from authority.
The section about the history and the partisan identity of the writer and
the readers was made up of two papers. Alberto Camplani, La question de
l’identité religieuse dans l’historiographie ecclésiastique égyptienne entre
IVème et VIème siècles (“The question of religious identity in the Egyptian
ecclesiastical historiography between the IVth and the VIth centuries”),
showed that the historiography developed in the context of the episcopate
of Alexandria saw a change in the process of documentation, in relation to
the new needs of the religious debate. The paper took into account some
historiographical works and compilations produced in the milieu of the
223
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
224
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
225
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
10
On the previous congresses s. the information given in «Adamantius» by Buzi and
Camplani, 2001, 2005, 2009.
226
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
session was dedicated to some of the plenary reports (five out of the eleven
read during the whole Congress by invited scholars) and the illustration of
some ongoing projects.
From September 18 the Congress continued in five parallel sessions.
The last day an exhibition of Coptic, Copto-Arabic, and Ethiopic
manuscripts was offered to the participants. These manuscripts have been
introduced and described in a catalogue that was published some days
before the opening of the Congress, edited by Paola Buzi and Delio Vania
Proverbio11.
The structure of the Coptic Congress is worth noting. About 230 papers
were delivered, many of which were arranged according to thematic
sections, others in pre-organized panels. So, a portion of the papers was
distributed in the following sections: Coptic Archaeology, Coptic Art,
Bible in Coptic and Arabic translations, Coptic Codicology and
Palaeography, Coptic Language and Culture in Medieval and Modern
Times, Coptic Documentary Papyrology, Gnosticism and Manichaeism,
Hagiography in Coptic and Arabic Language, History and Historiography
in Coptic and Arabic Languages, Coptic Linguistics, Literature in Coptic
and Arabic language, Coptic Liturgy. The remaining papers were inserted
in panels freely organized in advance by groups of scholars, a new features
of the last IACS Congresses. Here I will give the list of panels, together
with the short introductory descriptions provided by the convenors:
– Archaeological approaches to museum collections, convened by
Caecilia Fluck and Elisabeth O’Connell:
“Moving away from an art historical approach to individual
museum objects, this panel will highlight several current projects
that seek to recontextualize archaeological collections from Late
Antique Egypt. Presentations will either focus on fieldwork which
helps contextualize objects in museum collections, or objects or
groups of objects that are best studied with reference to specific
sites. Since reported provenance is not always accurate,
presentations will scrutinize the modern history of collections as
appropriate. Interrogation of ‘findspot’ is especially important in
cases where objects were acquired from dealers seeking to raise
their value in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century; but, even
11
Buzi and Proverbio, 2012.
227
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
228
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
229
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
230
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
12
In the paper Bausi has proposed the following: “Excluding the epigraphical texts and
besides the (1) “Bible” (“Old” and “New Testament”), the following texts can be ranged
231
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
canon of the early Ethiopic, Aksumite literature. Several centuries after the
decline and fall of the kingdom of Aksum in the seventh century, in the so-
called post-Aksumite age and in a completely different political situation,
in the twelfth and thirteenth century, another process took place, that of the
translations of Christian Arabic texts, due to the re-established and
strengthened relationship with the Patriarchate of Alexandria.
The importance of Ethiopic versions for recovering Medieval (Copto-)
Arabic Egyptian traditions has been acknowledged for long time. It was
Ignazio Guidi, however, who stressed the enduring paradigm of an almost
exclusively Arabic-based Ethiopic literature. In this perspective, the
Ethiopian literary heritage was considered almost exclusively to depend
upon (Copto-)Arabic texts. Alessandro Bausi added that «the general
theory was completed with a postulate – once again, mainly based upon
historical and institutional reasons – for which no substantial
counterevidence has emerged so far, yet with some unsolved case-studies:
there never were direct translations from Coptic into Ethiopic, because
when Coptic literature was flourishing the relationships between Egypt and
Ethiopia were at their minimum, and when they were actively resumed
among the Aksumite works at present: (2) works of the inter-testamental and apocryphal
literature: “Book of Enoch”, “Book of Jubilees”, “Rest of the words of Baruch” or “4
Baruch”, “Third” and “Fourth Book of Ezra”, “Ascension of Isaiah” and “Pastor of
Hermas”, and maybe the “Lives of the Prophets”; (3) the “Qērellos”; (4) at least two
recensions of the monastic “Rules of Pachomius”, as well as other scattered pieces of
monastic literature; (5) the “Physiologus”; (6) the “Treatise on the Antichrist” by
Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235); (7) a recension of the “Ancoratus” by Epiphanius of Salamis
(d. 403), a recent, but important acquisition; (8) a number of hagiographical works, among
which the “Life of Paul the first hermit” (the previously numbered “Life of Anthony” has
been questioned) and “Acts” of Christian martyrs: St. Mark, Arsenofis, Euphemia,
Tēwoflos with Pāṭroqyā and Damālis, Emrāyes, maybe Cyprian and Justa, and Peter
patriarch of Alexandria, certainly Phileas bishop of Thmuis, and probably some others;
(9) at least some of the texts which are witnessed by archaic homiliaries, such as mss.
EMML 1763, EMML 8509 and London, Brit. Libr. Or. 8192 (the presence in an ancient
Old Testament ms. of a fragmentary homily attributed to John Chrysostom [d. 407] can be
a clue to this hypothesis): among these, some texts devoted to celebrate indigenous saints
could be the only original Aksumite texts preserved up to now; (10) probably also the
apocryphal “Infancy Gospel” and the “Testament of Our Lord”, of which the “Doctrine of
the mysteries” is a part; (11) more exegetical works attributed to Philo of Carpasia (for
example, the commentary on the Song of Songs) ”.
232
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
Arabic was already the main language of Christian Egypt, and translations
and revisions of Ethiopic texts were then made on the basis of Arabic».
This is the situation correctly presented in the best syntheses on the matter,
for example that by Steven Kaplan13.
According to Bausi, this general scheme might be better reworked
adding some observations on the double process of translation and
acquisition of the Egyptian literary heritage in Ethiopic culture: (1) due to
asynchronous historical developments, as well as institutional and
consequent linguistic updating in Egypt, one would reasonably expect that
not all that is attested in Ethiopic is redundant and superfluous to a better
understanding of the history of Egyptian Christianity; (2) whereas the
older layer of Christian tradition may have been lost in the more advanced
and culturally rich Egyptian area, exposed to continuous updating, revising
and selecting, it could have been retained in the more backward and
provincial Ethiopia. It is in this regard that, for example, the Latin versions
parallel to Ethiopic texts of the Aksumite collection should also be
considered14. The twofold survival of the same texts in marginal areas is a
strong clue to archaic character. Genuine character, however, is also to be
attributed to survivals in one single area that is more conservative and
exhibits less sociocultural dynamism, as happens, again, for Ethiopia.
(3) Concerning the translations from Arabic, the process also affected texts
already translated in the preceding Aksumite period – predominately the
Bible, but also “corpora” of other genres (patristic, liturgical,
hagiographical and canonical texts), which were in the course of time
revised and organized according to new criteria and emerging needs15.
(4) The obvious expectation that the Ethiopian tradition – where Ancient
Ethiopic (or Ge‘ez) has remained the only institutional language of written
culture for about fifteen centuries – might preserve archaic remnants of
early Egyptian Christianity has been obscured by several factors, three of
which merit especial mention here: the large preponderance of translations
from Arabic; the scanty survival of ancient Ethiopic manuscripts which
13
Kaplan, 2008.
14
Bausi, 2006; Camplani, 2006.
15
Bausi, 2012.
233
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
234
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
Bausi, Alessandro, 2006, La collezione aksumita canonico-liturgica, in
«Adamantius», 12, 43-70.
Bausi, Alessandro, 2006b, The Aksumite background of the Ethiopic
‘Corpus canonum’, in Siegbert, Uhlig (ed.), Proceedings of the XVth
International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Hamburg July 20-25,
2003 (Aethiopistische Forschungen, 65), Wiesbaden, 532-541.
Bausi, Alessandro, 2011, La “nuova” versione etiopica della Traditio
apostolica: edizione e traduzione preliminare, in Buzi, Paola,
Camplani, Alberto (eds.), Christianity in Egypt: literary production and
intellectual trends (Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum, 125), Roma,
19-69.
Bausi, Alessandro (ed.), 2012, Languages and Cultures of Eastern
Christianity: Ethiopian (Variorum, The Worlds of Eastern Christianity
(300-1500), 4), Farnham.
Bettiolo, Paolo, 2007, Contrasting styles of Ecclesiastical Authority and
Monastic Life in the Church of the East at the Beginning of the Seventh
Century, in Camplani, Alberto, Filoramo, Giovanni (eds.), Foundations
of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism.
Proceedings of the International Seminar Turin, December 2-4, 2004
(Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 157), Leuven, 297-331.
Blaudeau, Philippe, 2006, Alexandrie et Constantinople (451-491). De
l’histoire à la géo-ecclésiologie (Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises
d’Athène et de Rome, 327), Roma.
Buzi, Paola, Camplani, Alberto, 2001, VII Congresso internazionale di
Studi Copti, in «Adamantius», 7, 394- 396.
Buzi, Paola, Camplani, Alberto, 2005, VIII Congresso internazionale di
Studi Copti, in «Adamantius», 11, 394- 396.
Buzi, Paola, Camplani, Alberto, 2009, IX Congresso internazionale di
Studi Copti, in «Adamantius», 15, 608-609.
Buzi, Paola, Proverbio, Delio Vania (ed.) 2012, Coptic Treasures from the
Vatican Library: A Selection of Coptic, Copto-Arabic and Ethiopic
Manuscripts, Papers collected on the occasion of the Tenth
International Congress of Coptic Studies (Studi e Testi, 472), Città del
Vaticano.
235
ALBERTO CAMPLANI
236
FROM PERSYA TO EGYPT, FROM EGYPT TO PERSIA
237