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15 Feb, 7 tweets, 3 min read
Alongside the humanitarian disaster, a cultural catastrophe is unfolding in northern Ethiopia, largely ignored by the outside world.

"... troops from neighbouring Eritrea ransacked manuscripts from the remote sixth-century Debre Damo monastery."

thetimes.co.uk/article/monast…
"Tigray’s stolen gems could be spirited out of the country and sold to collectors. Alessandro Bausi, an expert in Ethiopic manuscripts at Hamburg Uni., said he had heard from multiple sources that key sites were being targeted and “irreplaceable” artefacts destroyed or pillaged." ImageImage
The Debre Damo Monastery in Tigray can only be reached by scaling 80ft cliffs. Image
"They are warning of vandalism and "cultural cleansing". There are reports of Christian manuscripts being stolen from churches and monasteries, and burned - with some manuscripts as old as the 13th century - and of historic Muslim sites being looted."
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/1…
"It has been hidden from view for thousands of years, and its whereabouts never proved. But if the Ark of the Covenant indeed rests in a chapel in northern Ethiopia, this extraordinary religious treasure could be at grave risk from fighting in the area."
theguardian.com/world/2021/jan…
"One of Africa’s oldest mosques and touted as a potential Unesco World Heritage site, al-Nejashi has been mourned as one of the casualties of the chaos of war - while belated government vows to repair it have been treated with suspicion."
middleeasteye.net/news/ethiopia-…

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Incunabula Profile picture
15 Feb
The greatest treasure looted from the Ethiopian people at Maqdala in 1868 isn't in the BL or V&A. The Kwer'ata Re'esu, the most sacred icon of the Ethiopian people, was stolen by a representative of the Queen, later sold by his heirs & remains hidden in a bank vault today. 1/10
The original painting, by an unknown Renaissance master, was brought to Ethiopia in the 16th century and became the talismanic icon of the Ethiopian people, a symbol of Imperial authority. Oaths were sworn on it & it was carried into battle at the head of the Emperor’s army. 2/10
Copes of the Kwer'ata Re'esu icon are ubiquitous in early Ethiopian art - here is one painted in the so-called Second Gondarene style in a late 17th century manuscript. 3/10
Read 12 tweets
Incunabula Profile picture
7 Feb
The extraordinary Cameroon polymath Ibrahim Njoya not only invented a unique indigenous script, but also gave rise to an independent uniquely African illuminated manuscript tradition. This is a portrait of King Mbouombouo, plate 33 from the original folio "Histoire des Bamoun". ImageImage
This is the translation (into French) of the Shü-mom script above, by the Bamoun Manuscripts and Archives Project team at the Bamoun Royal Palace in Foumban, co-directed by Professor Konrad Tuchscherer and Oumarou Nchare (Director of Cultural Affairs at Palais Bamum). ImageImage
A 1932 Bamoun illuminated manuscript of the traditional tale "Le bouc et la panthere" (The Goat and the Panther), text again in Shü-mom script. This manuscript leaf was reproduced in the magazine Togo Cameroun of January 1932.
See: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt… ImageImage
Read 7 tweets
Incunabula Profile picture
31 Jan
Schwyzerdütsch is the most successful dialect family in Europe, used universally across all social strata of German-speaking Switzerland. Bärndütsch, the variety spoken on the Swiss plateau around Bern, has seen increased publishing activity recently - here are some examples. 1/6 Image
The variety of texts available in dialect can be surprising: late last year. the Lokwort publishing house released this elegant edition of "vo wäge DO", Balts Nill's translation of the 6th century Chinese Tao Te Ching into Bärndütsch. 2/6 ImageImage
Published in May 1990, "Ds Alte Teschtamänt Bärndütsch: En Uswahl" is a substantial part of the Old Testament, translated into the Bernese dialect by Hans and Ruth Bietenhard and Benedikt Bietenhard. 3/6 ImageImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Incunabula Profile picture
19 Jan
Imagine there was a script INVENTED FROM SCRATCH BY ONE MAN in the 20th century, now used by hundreds of thousands of people and becoming the defacto standard for a language spoken by 7 million people - and you'd never heard of it.

It's called Ol Chiki - ᱚᱞ ᱪᱤᱠᱤ. 1/6
The Ol Chiki (ᱚᱞ ᱪᱤᱠᱤ) script is the official writing system for Santali, an Austroasiatic language recognized as a regional language in India. It has 30 letters, the forms of which are intended to evoke natural shapes. Ol Chiki script is written from left to right. 2/6
Ol Chiki was created in 1925 by Raghunath Murmu for the Santali language, and publicized first in 1939 at a Mayurbhanj State exhibition. Previously, Santali had been written with the Latin script. However, Santali is not an Indo-Aryan language... 3/6
Read 9 tweets
Incunabula Profile picture
18 Jan
On of the most impressive works of bibliography published in the last decade, these three massive volumes celebrate the work of Samuel Bogusław Chyliński(1631–1668), translator and publisher of the first translation of the Bible into Lithuanian. 1/6
Three copies of the printed version of Chyliński's Old Testament survived into the 20th century: They are known as the Stettin (Berlin), London and Vilnius copies respectively, after the places were they were discovered. 2/6
The Berlin copy was lost in World War II. The Vilnius copy was taken to St Petersburg & was destroyed by fire there. The only extant copy today is the one held by the British Museum in London (shelfmark C 51b.13). This is Vol I, a facsimile of the BL copy, published in 2008. 3/6
Read 7 tweets
Incunabula Profile picture
16 Jan
Remember when Rio Tinto, after blasting the 46 000 year-old sacred Aboriginal site in Juukan Gorge, promised that the company would "never again" destroy sites of "exceptional archaeological and cultural significance" during mining operations?
theguardian.com/environment/20…
"Thousands of feet beneath Oak Flat is a copper deposit estimated to be one of the largest in the world and worth more than $1bn. If the mine goes forward as planned, it will consume 11 square miles, including Apache burial grounds, sacred sites, petroglyphs & medicinal plants."
"For the project to proceed, Rio requires control of more than 10 sq km of national forest used by 11 tribes, where mining was previously prohibited. This would mark the first time the US government has given a sacred site to a foreign mining company."
ft.com/content/496324…
Read 11 tweets

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