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Foreign Borrowings in the Lexis of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu
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Foreign Borrowings in the Lexis of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu
Annotation
PII
S086919080031358-0-1
DOI
10.31696/S086919080031358-0
Publication type
Article
Status
Published
Authors
Ekaterina Gusarova 
ORCID: 0000-0003-2170-0244
Occupation: Research Fellow; Librarian; Lecturer
Affiliation:
Saint Petersburg State University
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences
National Library of Russia
HSE University
Address: Saint Petersburg, Russia
Edition
Issue 4
Pages
147-154
Abstract

In the frame of the present research a universal history intitled the Chronicle of John of Nikiu is approached. The Chronicle was compiled in Egypt at the end of the 7th century AD by John, Bishop of the city of Nikiu, most probably in Greek. Later it was translated in Arabic and finally in the very beginning of the 17th century in Ge‘ez, the language of Christian Ethiopia. It reached our days exclusively in the Ethiopic revision. The text of the Chroniclein Geʻez bears a vast variety of textual features, unusual for this classical language of Ethiopian Church and historiography. Thus, it deserves a detailed consideration. The work was realized by two learned scribes, both Christians, one Ethiopian and one Egyptian Copt, whose names we know due to the colophone at the end of the compilation. The Ethiopic text has conserved traces of the history of its existence, external (the colophones, additions of the translators, chapter division etc.) and internal (on textual and content sides). In particular we are considering foreign in relation to Ethiopia loans in lexis of the Chronicle and some grammar constructions not intrinsic for traditional Ethiopian historiography. Such textual features of the translation are of great interest for the researchers of the Medieval Ethiopia historiography and Ethiopian literature in Geʻez in general. The loans shed light on the original Greek and then Arabic versions of the text of the Chronicle and the degree of familiarity of Medieval Ethiopian and Coptic scribes with foreign lexis.

Keywords
Mǝhǝrka Dǝngǝl, John of Nikiu, Universal history, Foreign borrowings in lexis, loanwords, Ethiopian scribes, Coptic scribes, Medieval Ethiopian Historiography, Ethiopian manuscripts
Acknowledgment
Research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 22-18-00493, carried out on the basis of the St. Petersburg State University.
Received
12.08.2024
Date of publication
25.08.2024
Number of purchasers
4
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73
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1 The text of the historical compilation, originally written in Greek and known as the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, nowadays is available only in the Ethiopic revision. It is preserved in seven manuscript copies. Five of them are written in Geʻez language.1 Two more were more recently translated into Amharic.2 Most of the MSS are preserved in the European libraries, in France, Great Britain and Italy3, the only one is preserved on the territory of Ethiopia, in the National Museum of Addis Ababa4.
1. The identification of the manuscripts, containing the text of the Chronicle of Juhn of Nikiu, was recently done realized by J.R. Brown and D. Elagina [Brown, Elagina, 2018].

2. The Amharic translation is not the subject of the present research and thus is not considered by the author.

3. These are the collocations of the manuscripts: Orient. 818 [Wright, 1877, p. 297–314] (fols. 48–104v) in the Brattish library, Eth. 146 [Zotenberg, 1877, p. 222–249] (fols. 62–138), Abb. 31 [d’Abbadie, 1859, p. 37–40] (fols. 104–164), both in the National Library of Parice, Conti Rossini 27 [Strelcyn, 1976, p. 100–102] (fols. 1–120) in the National Academy “Dei Lincei” in Rome.

4. The collocation is EMML 7919 (fols. 49-98). This manuscript is available in form of images made on the base of microfilms in: [Virtual Hill Museum…].
2 The editio princeps of the text was published in 1883 accompanied by the French translation by M.N. Zotenberg [Zotenberg, 1883]. It is based upon two MSS copies of the text (Eth. 146 and Orient. 818) known at that time. Subsequently, the text was translated into English by an Irish theologian R.H. Charles [Charles, 1913]. For the present article, I use the Zotenberg’s edition.
3 In 1601 the text of the Chronicle by John of Nikiu was translated from Arabic into Ge’ez language. It was commissioned in Ethiopia by the dowager queen Maryam Sena and the influential military leader Ras Athanasius. This work was assigned to two scribes, the Ethiopian cleric Mǝhǝrka Dǝngǝl [Toubkis, 2007] and the Egyptian Copt Kabriel5 (Gebriel). This information and the names of the scribes are included in the colophon of the manuscript [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 222]. Both translators received an ecclesiastical education and were fluent in Arabic and Ge‘ez. It is known, that Ethiopian clergy often studied the language of the Mother Coptic Church (by that time it was Arabic) and the Coptic clergy trained candidates for the post of Metropolitan of the Ethiopian Church. For this purpose, some of the clergy mastered Ge‘ez [Gusarova, 2017]. We can summarize here that the work was actually carried out by two native speakers, eventhough by the 8th–12th cent. Ge‘ez ceased to be colloquial, over the years of training and service became the language of everyday life and service of the Ethiopian clergy. It is reflected in the high quality of the translation and makes its textual features in the Chronicle valuable for a researcher of the Ethiopian manuscript tradition.
5. Information about the Egyptian Kabriel is found in Ethiopian historical compilations of the corresponding period. Later he took part in the uprising against King Susǝnyos (1604-1632), who converted to the Catholic faith [Чернецов, 1990, c. 148–150].
4 One has to mention that Ge‘ez as one of the Semitic languages is very close to Middle Arabic and South Arabic.6 This is evidenced by similar alphabetic and phonetic systems, the structure of the verbs and their conjugations, tenses and aspects. Nevertheless, as a general rule, Ge‘ez employs different roots in respect to the Arabic.7 In the process of translation of Holy Scriptures and dogmatic and Hagiographic compilations (chiefly from Greek and Arabic, as a consequence of Christianization in the 4th century) a significant number of new words and grammar forms entered the Ge‘ez (the then official language of the Aksumite kingdom). The process of development of Ge‘ez as colloquial language stopped between 8th and 12th centuries when it was superceded by the popular Amharic (Old Amharic). Gradually it became merely the language of the Scriptures, the Ethiopian Church services and the language of historiography, hagiography and dogmatics. Some foreign words, penetrated in Ge‘ez with translated texts, became a part of Classical Ethiopic, other, once appeared in the texts, were not in use (or were used extremely rarely) by the Ethiopian scribes in the later times compilations. From this point of view the analysis of the reappearance of such words and the presence of new loans in the text of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu is of a considerable importance for Ge‘ez studies and reconstruction of the language of Ethiopian Historiography.
6. See more about it in A. Dillmann’s Ethiopic Grammar [Dillmann, 1907, p. 1–14].

7. The classical Ethiopic vocabulary was examined in detail by S. Weninger [Weninger, 2005, p. 465–488].
5 Foreign words were normally transliterated using the Ethiopic syllabic script. Consonants that do not have correspondence in Ge‘ez were transcribed by a similar consonant in respect of the place of its articulation. Speaking about Arabic, as a demonstrative example, the words in this case were transcribed letter by letter, but using letters with similar pronunciation in absence of emphatic and uvular laryngeal. Thus emphatic consonants were transmitted in the following way: ص by glottalized , accordingly, ط by emphatic dental , ق by emphatic velar , ك by velar etc. The final ة normally was transcribed as long “a”. The gutturals indeed are present in Ge‘ez in the same number as in Arabic, e.g. ا – , ع – ; ه– , ح– , خ–.8] The letters and and the three “h” are irregularly interchangeable in the Ge‘ez texts. This means that the phonetic particularities of each sound were lost in the Ethiopic colloquial language by the time of compilation of the texts.
8. The way of phonetical adoption of foreign words in the Ethiopic is described in detail [Mohammed, Wetter, 2003, p. 1–6; Leslau, 1957
6 The Chronicle of John of Nikiu, being originally an early Byzantine historical text, describes well-known, events and characters of the so-called “Ancient history”. The narration commences with biblical events and ends up with the description of the Islamic conquest of Egypt (7th cent. AD). Due to its origin, the text is abundant with “alien” in respect to the Arabic and Ethiopian languages’ vocabulary. Most of them are “foreign” personal names and toponyms. In addition, this applies to the concepts, objects and ideas, which were ‘alien” to the language of translation. The use of such words in the original text made their appearance in translation inevitable.
7 Below I provide a list of such words, which in turn make the language of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu outstanding in comparison to the local Ethiopian historical works. The results (as it will be shown below) will allow a suggestion that the translation of the Chronicle was made from Arabic rather than Greek.
8 Most of the toponyms, which appear in the text of the Chronicle, are given in the transliteration of the corresponding Arabic or Greek words, as well as Greek ones in the form in which they were transcribed in Arabic.
9 Let us start with the country in which the Chronicle was created, i.e., Egypt, which for the most part in the text is called in the Arabic manner  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 240, 271, etc.] mǝsr (Arabic مصر) miṣr. At the same time the translators in some places call Egypt by the Ethiopic word [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 237, 243, etc.].
10 It is worth noting that foreign toponyms often had a long history of transmission before they entered Ethiopian literature. Many of them, brought to Ethiopia as a part of various texts translated from Arabic, Greek and other languages, were established in the Ethiopian language in the appropriate form, but not all of them. In addition, the orthography of toponyms depended on the professional training and personal views of the scribe (author or translator). For example, a mention of Constantinople is found in the Ethiopian translation of the Arabic Code of Laws9 (Coptic collection of church canons and imperial decrees) compiled by the Christian jurist Abu-l-Fadail ibn al-Assal al-Safi10 in the year 1238 in Egypt. This work is called in Ge‘ez “Fatha Nagast”11 or “The Judgement of the Kings”. The city of Constantinople is called there as  [“Fetha nagast”, 1897, p. 22; The Fatha nagast, 1968, p. 17] hagärä nǝguś, literally “The city of the King” (the Greek βασιλισσα πολις), that corresponds to Arabic مدينة الملك [al-Ṣafī Abī’l-Faḍā’il b. al-‘Assāl, 1908, p. 12]), as is customary also in the Russian Orthodox tradition. At the same time, there are works in which we find a transcription of the Arabic “Constantinople” القسطنطينية al-qusṭanṭīnīyya (Ethiopian qwǝsṭǝnṭǝnǝya). One of them is the Chronicle of John Nikiu [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 238, 240, 241, ets]. At the same time, some toponyms were fixed in Ge‘ez in the form in which they exist in Arabic, for example, Antioch as 12 [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 244, etc.] ʼanṣokiya (Arabic: انطاكية anṭākiyya) or Alexandria as [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 244, etc.] ʼǝskǝndǝrǝya (Arabic: الاسكندرية al-Iskandariyya). Anyway numerous personal names and toponyms of Greek origin were subject to significant distortion as a result of double translation (from Greek to Arabic, and from Arabic to Ge’ez) [Французов, 2017, с. 326–332].
9. Its edition was prepared and published in Egypt in 1908 [al-Ṣafī Abī’l-Faḍā’il b. al-‘Assāl, 1908].

10. Abu-l-Fada'il ibn al-Assal al-Safi was one of the three brothers, famous Coptic religious figures and scientists of the 13th century. He was an author of a number of works of theological character.

11. Its edition was prepared and published by I. Guidi in 1897 [“Fetha nagast”, 1897]. Consequently, it was translated in English in Ethiopia by P. Tzadua [The Fatha nagast, 1968].

12. This toponym is found, for example, in the life of St. Susǝnyos, which came to Ethiopia along with the Arabic text of the Coptic Synaxarion in the 14th–15th centuries. Its Ethiopian translation completely coincides with the Coptic Vitae [Colin, 1995, p. 578]. A close way of transliteration of the toponym is present in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 237].
11 Similarly are worth mentioning some toponyms and personal names related to the region of Lewant (Arabic شام). We found the loanword in the following phrases: or [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 237, 271]. Persons and objects related to Syria are nominated in Ge‘ez by the adjective ዊ soryawi (derived from sorya “Syria” [Dillmann, 1865, column 1412], which is also present in the Ethiopic text of the Chronicle [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 263]. Besides, there are no alphabetic symbols for the consonants š and ğ in Ge‘ez. It was later introduced in colloquial Amharic. Therefore šam (Arabic شام) (as also ḥǝğaz Hejaz [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 279] were merely copied by the translators from the Arabic text.
12 In general, lexical borrowings are not rare among different Semitic languages, since the Semites had active contact with their neighbours. Thus numerous Ethiopian loanwords, on along with Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac etc., are found in the Quran.13 The bound book itself is called in Arabic مصحف )the clearest example of its use is the following: المصحف الشريف e.g. “manuscript codex of the Quran”), derived from Ethiopic mäṣḥaf “book” or “codex”14. As for the actual foreign vocabulary in the Ethiopian text of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, the fact that the translator used a foreign word rather than the original word in Ge‘ez deserves special attention. Here are some illustrations.
13. More about loanwords in the Quran: [Jeffery, 1938; Neuwirth et al., 2011]. About loanwords from Arabic to Ethiopic and vice versa in: [Nöldeke, 1910, p. 31–66].

14. See for instance [Leslau, 1991, p. 552; Jeffery, 1938, 192-194].
13 The text of the Chronicle includes the word [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 238] wäzir (Arabic: زيرو wazīr) “vizier” to describe the appointed ruler of a region, although in Ge‘ez there is a word corresponding in meaning , which, by the way, also appears in the Chronicle [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 237]. Despite similar meaning of both terms, namely, an appointed position that governs a particular territory, ensuring the ruler's (monarch’s) power, the etymology of these words is different. The Ethiopian  is derived from the corresponding verb “to appoint”, and the Arabicوزير from the verb “to bear a burden upon one’s self”. One might assume that the translator could have left the original title in order not to move away from the realities of the events described, or to emphasize the “oriental” character of the plot, but this fragment of the Chronicle text describes the story of Emperor Theodosius, for which it would be more appropriate to translate this title into Ge‘ez . Similarly, the use of the word (ዊ) [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 244, 273] ḥanäfawuyan (ḥanäfawi) “heathen”15 comes instead of habitual Ge’ez . The word ጅ“stone” [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 258] hǝğǝr is used instead of etc.
15. This Arabic borrowing originally derives from Syriac [Leslau, 1991, p. 263; de Blois, 2002, p. 16-21].
14 The translators frequently use the vocabulary, which was incorporated in Ge‘ez long before the time of the translation of the Chronicle. This especially applies to the concepts or objects that were once absent in the Ethiopian reality, and then, with texts of foreign origin, entered Ge‘ez. For example, the word “apple”: Ethiopian [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 239–240] tǝfaḥ or  tǝfuḥ (Arabic: تفاح tufāḥ). Apples were not widespread in Ethiopia. The question of the origin of this word (Arabic or Hebrew) remains debatable. In the texts of the Scriptures they used to describe various kinds of fruits words “fruit” 16, 17, “pomegranate”  or “pomegranate fruits” or  18 (literally “Romean (Punic) fruits”). The actual word  is not widely used in Ge‘ez texts. As a rare example, we meet it in the Apostolic Constitutions19 where the word  may go back not to the Arabic تفاح, but to the Hebrew תפוח [Leslau, 1991, p. 571; Dillmann, 1958, column 1037]. Most likely, this foreign word in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu is a mechanical borrowing from Arabic, taken from the original text.
16. Genesis 3.6 (where mandrake apples are intended).

17. Genesis 30.14 (same meaning).

18. Exodus 39.24.

19. Book 1, chapter 39. The apostolic decrees were translated from Hebrew first into Arabic (probably in the 11th century), and subsequently, at the beginning of the 14th century, into Ge’ez.
15 The word “sailors” [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 266] notyat, used in the Chronicle, represents an example of the lexeme that was borrowed apparently from Greek, existing in Latin (nautae) and Arabic (نوتى) [Leslau, 1991, p. 408], that became a common word in Ge‘ez. The word ’ab “Father”is used referred to a clergyman ([Zotenberg, 1883, p. 282]instead of Ge‘ez ’abba “Pater” or ’abuna “our father”, also used in the Chronicle ( [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 283]) “Our Father Saint Cyrill”. The use of in the context is a result of mechanical copying from Arabic text.
16 Some loanwords in the text of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu have an analogue in Ge‘ez. For example, “palace” in the translation text is sometimes called [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 203, 239, 241 etc.] qǝṣǝr (Arabic: قصر qaṣr). The king's residence or palace is more often referred to in Ethiopian historical chronicles as .20 But this word also has the meaning of a room, a front hall, etc., that is, something smaller in scale than the Arabic قصر (actually “castle”, “palace”). Apparently, the translator decided to emphasize the significance and scale of the building mentioned in the text of the Chronicle, and used this word, which is not typical for Ethiopian historiography. This is confirmed by the fact that in the Chronicle the word  refers, for example, to the Babylon fortress in Egypt [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 203] and castles in the Historical region of Armenia in Byzantine empire [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 217]. In the sense of “dwelling”21 or “fortress”22 we sometimes find the word in earlier translated Christian literature of Ethiopia.
20. See, for example, the Chronicle of the Ethiopian King Takla Giyorgis (late 18th century) in the manuscript of the British Library Orient. 821, fol. 460v [Wright, 1877, p. 314–316].

21. See, in particular, Leviticus 25.29–31, etc.

22. See Numbers 13.20, etc.
17 Speaking about architectural structures, we find the word “bridge” in the form  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 18, 19, 201] qänṭära, which is undoubtedly a transliteration of the Arabic قنطرة qanṭara. Moreover, in Ge‘ez exist at least two words to indicate bridges, namely:  dǝldǝy and tänkätäm. The words  and its garbled form and  which are used to describe bridges, are also present in the text of the Chronicle [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 18, 83, 259, 201 etc.]. The author of the translation apparently understood that the transliterated Arabic word  would be incomprehensible to the Ethiopian audience and at the very beginning of the text explained it as follows:  …  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 18] “... kanater (bridges)…, that is, a bridge”. The translator’s choice in favour of a foreign word could likely be determined by the scale of the structure described in the text. There were hardly any “monumental” permanent bridges in Ethiopia. According to the texts of the Ethiopian chronicles, the royal troops used to build bridges on rafts, which probably did not correspond to the characteristics of the bridges in Egypt that the translator could see. The Ethiopic word dǝldǝy probably derives from Arabic دلدل daldala “hang up, suspend, dangle” with a common phonetic transition of “lam” into “ya” (the root “daldala” is present in most Ethio-Semitic languages). As far as tänkätäm is concerned, the root is present in modern Amharic. Thus the use of the word can be explained by the influence of Amharic language, certainly colloquial for the two translators. The most common example of the use of the Amharic word kätäma “town”, that derives from the root meaning “to cover something with”. In a sense means “to cover a river”. Here we have denominations of two different kinds of bridges: suspension bridges and pontoons.  qänṭära, indeed, also means an aqueduct and an arch in Arabic23. This type of bridge was not known in Ethiopia and did not have a special term in Ge‘ez.
23. Borrowed by the translator from Arabic, the word originally existed in Greek κεντρον.
18 Another example is the word for “heretic”, given in the Chronicle in the form   [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 239, 241, 263, etc.] ḥara ṭǝqa. At the same time, in Ge‘ez there are more common terms with a similar meaning, namely:  (literally “apostate”),  (“infidel”, “traitor”, “one who arranges dispute”) or  (“heretic” in the literal sense). The combination of words   is, of course, a calque from the Arabic هرطقي harṭaqiyy / ارطيقي ’arṭaqiyy, which, in turn, goes back to the ancient Greek αίρετικός. The absence of an ending with “s” confirms that the term was taken by the Ethiopian scribe not from Greek, but from Arabic. Surprisingly the translators divided this word into two parts, probably focusing on the homonymy with the familiar Ethiopian words  “warriors, army” and  “near, around”. Moreover, once we see the in the text of the Chronicle the following use of the term together with the cognate word:  “Heretics and the warriors that were with them” [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 263].
19 Let us also note such loanwords as “dinar”  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 239] dinar (Arabic: دينار), “pharaoh”  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 237] färʻon (Arabic: فرعون), [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 266] käbrit (Arabic: كبريت) “sulfur”, [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 266], kwǝḥǝl (Arabic: كحل) “antimony”, etc. The translator also uses the word [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 243] (and [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 266]) ʼaskar from the Arabic عشكر “warrior” in the text [Kazimirski, 1860, p. 254-255]. Moreover the word is present in the Amharic language, but in the sense “servant, domestic” [Leslau, 1976, p. 132].
20 The phrase   [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 239] wäzenäwu zenawuyana “and the chroniclers reported” is also unusual for Ethiopic literature. In historical texts compiled in Geʻez they used in the same meaning the combination of words  ()  or  () . Literally it means “one who writes history”, e.g “historian” or “chronicler”. In the text of the Chronicle indeed two words derived from the same root are used, i.e. a verb and an active participle in the plural form. Probably, in the original Arabic text the words derived from the root ارخ of the second stem “to write history, to arrange by dates, to keep a chronicle”). In this regard, it is worth noting the use by the translators of the word [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 174] näsaḥ “scribe” (Arabic: نساخ). The choice of the Arabic word in this case is due precisely to the absence of a corresponding term in Geʻez.
21 It is obvious that most of the non-Ethiopian words in the Chronicle can be traced back to Arabic or to Greek through Arabic transliteration. However, borrowings from other languages can also be found in the text. To describe the walls of Jerusalem, the translator uses a foreign word from the South Arabian epigraphic (Sabaean) 24[Zotenberg, 1883, p. 241] ʼaräfat )Sabaic ʼrft), which, however, is found in Biblical texts in the Geʻez language [Dillmann, 1865, column 746]. It is worth mentioning the title used for ecclesiastical dignitaries mar [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 239], derived from Syriac and Aramaic mārī [Leslau, 1991, 356] etc.
24. See the etymology of the word in: [Leslau, 1991, p. 37].
22 The fact that this is a translation from Arabic is also evident from some grammatical features of the Chronicle text. For example, compared to historical compilations in the Geʻez, the use of analytical verb forms is much more frequent: the verb  (Arabic كان) “to be” in the role of an auxiliary verb with mudari’, common in Arabic texts. In Arabic it has the meaning of iteration in the past tense. In the Ethiopian text of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, a similar construction is used, for example, in phrases:  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 238] “He loved him...”  [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 238] “He studied,” etc. In Geʻez to express a similar grammatical meaning perfect form of the verb is normally used.
23 In addition, in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu the following sentence model is often used: the verb “to be” plus the name plus “between them”, for example     [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 239] “And there was great pain (jealousy) and resentment between them” or   [Zotenberg, 1883, p. 273] “And there was between them love”. In Chronicles originally compiled in Geʻez, the scribes prefer to use passive-reflexive stem: 25“And fought the vigilantes of Gadlu among themselves,” and not “there was a fight between them”. And similarly, “He loved him...”, and not “there was love between them” etc. For comparison, it is worth saying that in the voluminous texts of the chronicles of Ethiopian Kings of late 18th century Takla Haymanot and Takla Giyorgis, a similar construction appears only once: 26 “There was a discord between the king and Kenfu”.
25. Orient. 821, fol. 454v.

26. Orient. 821, fol. 447v.
24 The textual features expressed in foreign words and grammatical structures adopted by translators when compiling the text in Geʻez constitute a special feature of the text of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, which distinguishes it from other historical texts of Ethiopia. In the framework of the present study, an attempt was made to explane the translator’s choice of certain foreign words to the detriment of Geʻez vocabulary. Unfortunately, it is not known in which way the work of the two scribes was organized. Whether they worked together, or have they divided the text (each one translating his own portion). It is also unclear whether the text was subject to general proof-reading, and which of the two translators edited the final opus. Do the Arabic inclusions belong to the Egyptian scribe, for whom Arabic was his native language, or was it the result of the deep knowledge of the Ethiopian Mǝhǝrka Dǝngǝl, who received church education in the well-known monastery of Dabra Libanos (famous for its experts in the Arabic language and translations from Arabic) remains a mystery.
25 As for foreign words from some other languages, they are partly represented by fairly common words, undoubtedly known to the educated elite both in Ethiopia and Egypt in the Middle Ages. The use of some words, not common for literature in Geʻez, can be in part explained by the influence of colloquial Amharic. From the analysis above it follows that the language of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu as a monument translated in the Geʻez goes beyond the traditional Ethiopian literature and Oriental Christian historiography in general and deserves a deeper study.

References

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