To the unschooled eye, they are mysterious ancient-looking texts: stained parchment neatly inscribed with unintelligible black and red markings. One has axe-hewn wood boards for covers; another has hand painted illustrations of haloed figures. All that was known was that they were from Ethiopia, acquired in the 1950's and 60’s and were properly referred to as codices. With some sleuthing by library staff and the help of Biblical studies scholars, TWU’s Ethiopian codices are no longer exotic curiosities-- they are now destined to make a contribution to scholarship once again.
While visiting TWU in September 2005 for the opening of the Septuagint Institute, Dr. Stephen Delamarter, of George Fox University viewed the manuscripts. He was pleased to discover the texts and able to identify them. The oldest is a fragment of a 17th century Psalter, while others are 20th century liturgical texts containing canonical and non-canonical material. In the past 9 months Delamarter has “discovered” nearly 120 manuscripts in Canada, England and the USA. These represent just a fraction of the thousands that have left Ethiopia as spoils of 19th century war or sold to tourists by people who may be desperate financially and ignorant of the value—both monetary and cultural—of the manuscripts. He pointed out how these unique, handmade documents represent the “national archives of a culture.”
Later this year Delamarter plans to photograph the collections using high-resolution digital imagery and add the images to the
Hill Monastic Manuscripts Library at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN where they will be catalogued and accessible to researchers around the world. In addition, the images will be deposited at the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa and at TWU's new Septuagint Institute.
Currently, two of the codices are on display on the main level of the library, while other items are kept in the
TWU Archives and Special Collections on the library’s upper level.