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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
In the summer of 1994 I received two communications from Mr Brad Sabin Hill, head of the Hebrew Section of the British Library. The first letter enclosed a copy of a Carmen Aethiopicum sive ‘әṭanä mogär whose most remarkable feature is that it is printed in Hebrew characters (“ob defectum Typorum, Literis Hebraicis expressum”). This composition of eleven lines forms part of a volume entitled Carmina Funebria & Triutnphalia Mis Serenissimam ac Desideratissimam Reginam Annam Deflet, Cantabrigiae MDCCXIV.
1 I am much obliged to Mr Brad Sabin Hill for sending me this material which had, as far as I know, not hitherto been subjected to scholarly scrutiny. My gratitude is also extended to Mr E. F. Mills of Jesus College, Cambridge (see below), and very particularly to Dr Veronika Six who has drawn my attention to a number of possible leads; her work of cataloguing Ethiopic MSS has been on a massive scale and has been carried out with a combination of genuine erudition and self-effacement. My friend, Professor Getatchew Haile, F.B.A., has generously subjected my Gә'әz version to careful scrutiny and to a measure of amendments and improvements for which I am profoundly grateful to him. There could have been no more competent counsellor anywhere. For any remaining mistakes I alone am responsible.
2 The first edition of Ludolf's Ethiopic lexicon (1661) was also printed in England (London), though later editions of this and subsequent works by this signal scholar were transferred to Frankfurt (Main).
3 Simply stating: “A la fin du volume se trouve un poëme, intitulé ‘әṭanä mogär, dont le sujet est la Nativitä de Jäsus-Christ” — p. 141.
4 It is, however, very doubtful whether either of these sources would have been accessible in G໙‘әz at that time.
5 William of Orange, 1650–1702.
6 About whom nothing further is known to me; he appears neither in the DNB nor in the extensive lists of Christian Hebraists in the Jewish Encyclopedia or the Encyclopaedia Judaica.
7
7 The italicized words - or rather the last one — are a
conjectural emendation (cf. note (k) to the Ethiopic
text). The “surgery” here is quite limited,
involving merely the easily occurring shift
nu to 
and
ň to n in the
Ethiopic script.
8 Cf. Dillmann, Lexicon, col. 392: säyl “vae”.
9 “Beauty” construed as plural.
10 Singular form with plural demonstrative and meaning.
11
Cf. Is. 6:3; Synax., 24th
Ta
sas. One
might also translate this (with Budge, loc.
cit.) “the earth is filled with your
glory” (in that case one would have to read mәdr and
sәbḥatäki)
12 Cf. the Ethiopic text of Habakkuk 3:3.
13 King George I who succeeded Queen Anne in 1714.