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The Curious Case of Ethiopic Chaldean: Fraud, Philology, and Cultural (Mis)Understanding in European Conceptions of Ethiopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Samantha Kelly
Samantha Kelly*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Abstract

An intriguing mystery in early modern intellectual history is how and why European scholars came to designate Ethiopic, the sacred language of Ethiopia, as Chaldean. This article locates the designation’s origins in a deduction made by Vatican library personnel, partially inspired by a hoax perpetrated a quarter-century earlier. It then traces the influence of this designation on the progress of historical linguistics, where theories defending the appellation of Ethiopic as Chaldean, although often erroneous, nevertheless contributed to the accurate categorization of Ethiopic as a Semitic language, and on attitudes to Ethiopian Christianity that played a role in Catholic-Protestant polemic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 1227 - 1264
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2015

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