Journal articles on the topic 'Lingua semitica'

Lo stanziarsi dei Greci in terra di Cirenaica nella seconda metà del VII secolo a.C. e la loro ininterrotta permanenza nella regione fino al tramonto della civiltà antica hanno dato luogo ad una mirabile fioritura di civiltà che noi conosciamo grazie alle testimonianze archeologiche, alla letteratura e alla cospicua messe dei documenti epigrafici: uno sviluppo civile tanto più sorprendente, per la sua ampiezza e ricchezza, ove si consideri l'isolamento in cui la popolazione greca è venuta a trovarsi — dal punto di vista geografico — rispetto alla restante nazione greca e ove si pensi alla forte e continua pressione cui la stessa fu sottoposta, d'altra parte, ad opera della popolazione indigena. Infatti i Greci non furono i soli ad abitare la regione: essi occuparono, arrivando, una terra già abitata da una popolazione libica, mentre successivamente — in età ellenistica — sopraggiunse una forte comunità ebraica; infine è da registrare una presenza romano-italica, pure abbastanza consistente, documentata per via epigrafica (vd. sotto) a partire dal I sec. a.C.La superiore civiltà greca esercitò un forte influsso sulla popolazione libica, o almeno su una parte di essa, e su quella ebraica, che furono più o meno profondamente ellenizzate: tanto che è possibile rintracciare — attraverso l'onomastica — una varia presenza di individui libici ed ebraici nell'epigrafia greca della Cirenaica (Masson 1976; Lüderitz 1983), che ne attesta anche l'avvicinarsi ad alcune istituzioni cittadine. Per contro non abbiamo, almeno finora, una autonoma produzione epigrafica Ubica o semitica dalla regione.

IL MAUSOLEO DI Q. APULEUS MAXSSIMUS A EL AMROUNIIl mausoleo di El Amrouni (Tunisia), nel mostrare associati elementi pertinenti ad ambiti culturali tra loro differenti, fornisce una testimonianza di grande interesse per la conoscenza della “civilizzazione del limes”. Il proprietario del sepolcro e la sua famiglia, di origine indigena, sono ricordati in due iscrizioni: una in latino, l'altra in neopunico. Il monumento, in forma di torre, presenta grandi bassorilievi con scene mitologiche di ispirazione greco-latina piuttosto che non semitica od orientale (Orfeo con animali selvaggi; Orfeo agli Inferi; Ercole ed Alcesti), insieme al ritratto dei defunti. Altre scene mitologiche ornavano l'epistilio (Licurgo nell'atto di tagliare le viti; figura di un genio e rami di acanto). Agli angoli della torre si trovano pilastri di stile corinzio. Gli elementi epigrafici e la decorazione architettonica permettono di collocare il mausoleo alia fine del I sec. d.C. o nel primo terzo del II sec. Il sepolcro di questa famiglia associa dunque elementi culturali tra loro contraddittori rivelando così la propria pertinenza ad una cultura punico-libica nella lingua e greco-romana nella iconografia.

Abstract The beginnings of the study of the Hebrew language in Wittenberg go back to the very first years of the university’s establishment and are associated with the initiatives of several scholars dealing with humanistic studies at the time. Through developing the study in three ancient languages, in keeping with the ideal of a complete humanistic erudition, Wittenberg perceived an opportunity to carve a niche of excellence for itself vis-à-vis the older universities. By introducing instruction in Hebrew along with Greek and Latin, the newly founded Leucorea sought to distinguish itself as a model for all other universities in Germany. The article traces the important steps of the history of the study of Hebrew language in Wittenberg among and outside of the theological faculty mentioning the curricula of its most famous teachers and professors.

AbstractThe complex and cross-linguistically uncommon phonological phenomenon of “emphasis” is best known from Central Semitic languages such as Arabic and Aramaic. It is, however, found to varying degrees in a number of non-Semitic languages in contact with Arabic. This paper describes how in Kumzari, an Indo-European language spoken around the Strait of Hormuz, uvular-pharyngeal emphasis has arisen through language contact and has proliferated through language-internal processes. Beginning with the retention of emphatic consonants in a direct, extensive lexification by Arabic dating back at least 1300 years, emphasis has progressively penetrated the language by means of lexical innovations and two types of sound changes in both borrowed and inherited vocabulary: (i) analogical spread of emphasis onto plain but potentially emphatic consonants; and (ii) a sound change in which z has been invariably recast as an emphatic ẓ with no plain counterpart. The role of the back consonants w, x, q and ḥ, which induce emphasis on potentially emphatic consonants in diachronic processes but not synchronically, highlights the unique way in which this complex phenomenon operates in one non-Semitic language in contact with Arabic.

En el marco de las investigaciones historiográficas llevadas a cabo por los autores de este estudio, han salido a la luz dos gramáticas de español para italianos de las que no se halla mención, ni entre las obras de ese tipo posteriores, ni en ningún catálogo o texto crítico. Se trata de dos ediciones únicas, de rarísima presencia en bibliotecas, aunadas por su finalidad y por el hecho de haber sido olvidadas inmediatamente después de su publicación, aunque presenten características gramaticográficas comunes de indudable interés. La primera en orden cronológico (Traduzione dal francese del nuovo metodo di Porto Reale. Con cui agevolmente s’insegna la lingua spagnola. Con l’aggiunzione di due dialoghi ed un copioso nomenclatore in fine fatta da D. Gennaro Sisti) es una obra que el semitista Gennaro Sisti publica en 1742 (Napoli: Serafino Porsile); la segunda (Grammatica della lingua spagnuola, ossia La vera scuola della lingua castigliana chiamata volgarmente lingua spagnuola) es un texto que el exjesuita Martínez de Valdepeñas publica hacia 1785 (Genova: Franchelli). Ambas obras, en un siglo como el XVIII, considerado hasta ahora como un siglo con escasa presencia de obras originales, constituyen dos jalones para la reconstrucción de la tradición gramatical de obras de español destinadas a italianos. El cometido de este estudio es el de presentar los mencionados textos a los historiadores de la lingüística y de la gramática mediante (i) una descripción estructural de la obra; (ii) un análisis de la misma a partir de sus fuentes (la Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre facilement et en peu de temps la langue espagnole de Claude Lancelot, cuya primera edición data de 1660, y la Gramática de la lengua castellana de la Real Academia Española, en su edición de 1771) y (iii) la interpretación del modo en que adecuaron sus textos a los destinatarios de lengua italiana, introduciéndose, en definitiva, en la tradición gramatical de español para italófonos.

In this essay I turn to Abraham Cahan’s The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), one of the most popular immigrant novels ever written. I argue that, like other immigrant writers of his generation, Cahan challenged the optimistic version of Americanization of the Progressive Era. First, I examine the context surrounding the publication of the novel, and argue that it stages Cahan’s response to nativism and anti-Semitism, pervasive in print culture at the turn of the century. Then I explore David Levinsky’s fashioning of his Americanized persona; Levinsky’s determination to Americanize leads to a series of unfulfilled, deferred dreams. By performing his desired new identity (to become a “true American”), and by repressing other forms of identification, Cahan’s character opens up a line of critique of Progressive Era constructions of race and ethnicity. I end with a discussion of the immigrant novel as a legitimate genre in 1917 and beyond.

Abstract In The Merchant of Venice, Portia seems relieved when the Prince of Morocco chooses the wrong casket—relieved at least in part because Morocco is black. Much textual evidence, however, suggests that Morocco is the worthiest of the three suitors who choose among the caskets in attempting to win Portia. For example, Morocco is the only one of the three who while deliberating on the caskets refers to Portia by name or by reference, and only he uses the word “love” while making his choice. Moreover, unlike Aragon and Bassanio, Morocco bases his choice on what he considers to be Portia’s merits, which he holds in so high an esteem that he mistakenly chooses the gold casket. And while Bassanio’s motives are largely mercenary, Morocco is clearly wealthy and so has no need of Portia’s money. Although Morocco exits in act two, his presence reverberates later via his association with Shylock and the Moorish woman whom Launce impregnates. Sometimes alleged to exhibit anti-Semitism, The Merchant of Venice, as the presentations of Morocco and Shylock demonstrate, actually constitutes one of Shakespeare’s most compelling endorsements of the vibrancy which diversity can impart to any society.

Abstract Gábor Takács. Lexica Afroasiatica VI. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. L IV (1)/2012. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-103-7, pp. 99-132. Comparative-historical Afro-Asiatic linguistics has undergone a significant development over the past half century, since the appearence Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique du chamitosémitique (1947) by Marcel Cohen. This revolutionary and fundamental synthesis concluded the second great period of the comparative research on Afro-Asiatic lexicon (the so-called “old school”, cf. E DE I 2-4). During the third period (second half of the 20th century), whose beginning was hallmarked by the names of J .H. Greenberg and I.M. Diakonoff, an enormous quantity of new lexical material (both descriptive and comparative) has been published, including a few most recent attempts (either unfinished or rather problematic) at compiling an Afro-Asiatic compartive dictionary (SISAJ a I-III, H CVA I-V, H SED, Ehret 1995). During my current work on the Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian (Leiden, since 1999-, E .J. Brill), Ihave collected a great number of new AA parallels, which - to the best of my knowledge - have not yet been proposed in the literature (I did my best to note it wherever Inoticed an overlapping with the existing Afro-Asiatic dictionaries). Along the E DE project (and the underlying “Egyptian etymological word catalogue”), Ihave started collecting AA roots (not attested in Egyptian) for a separate Afro- Asiatic root catalogue in late 1999.1 The series Lexica Afroasiatica started in 20022 in order to contribute to the existing and published materials of comparative Afro-Asiatic lexicon with new lexical correspondences observed recently during my work, which may later serve as basis of a new synthesis of the Afro-Asiatic comparative lexicon. The present part of this series is a collection of new Afro-Asiatic etymologies with the Proto-Afro- Asiatic initial bilabial nasal (*m-), which results directly from my research at Institut für Afrikanische Sprachwisenschaften of Frankfurt a/M (in 1999-2000 and 2002) guided by Prof. H . Jungraithmayr.3 The numeration of the etymological entries is continuous beginning from the first part of the series Lexica Afroasiatica. Each entry is headed by the proposed PAA root (as tentatively reconstructed by myself). Author names are placed after the quoted linguistic forms in square brackets [] mostly in an abbreviated form (a key can be found at the end of the paper). The lexical data in the individual lexicon entries have been arranged in the order of the current classification of the Afro-Asiatic daughter languages (originating from J.H. Greenberg 1955, 1963 and I.M. Diakonoff 1965) in 5 (or 6) equivalent branches: (1) Semitic, (2) Egyptian, (3) Berber, (4) Cushitic, (5) Omotic (cometimes conceived as West Cushitic), (6) Chadic. For a detailed list of all daughter languages cf. E DE I 9-34. The number of vertical strokes indicate the closeness of the language units from which data are quoted: ||| separate branches (the 6 largest units within the family), || groups (such as East vs. South Cushitic or West vs. East Chadic), while | divides data from diverse sub-groups (e.g., Angas-Sura vs. North Bauchi within West Chadic). Since we know little about the Proto-Afro-Asiatic vowel system, the proposed list of the reconstructed Proto-Afro-Asiatic forms is arranged according to consonantal roots (even the nominal roots). Sometimes, nevertheless, it was possible to establish the root vowel, which is given in the paper additionally in brackets. The lexical parallels suggested herein, are based on the preliminary results in reconstructing the consonant correspondences achieved by the Russian team of I.M. Diakonoff (available in a number of publications4) as well as on my own observations refining the Russian results (most importantly Takács 2001). The most important results can be summarized as follows. The labial triad *b - *p - *f remained unchanged in Egyptian, South Cushitic, and Chadic, while the dental series *d - *t - *s was kept as such by Semitic and South Cushitic (AA *s continued as *T in Berber, Cushitic and Chadic, and it was merged into t vs. d in Egyptian). The fine distinction of the diverse sibilant affricates and spirants (AA *c, *μ, *@, *s, *D, *¸, *E, *b, *ĉ, *H, *ŝ) was best preserved in Semitic, South Cushitic and West Chadic (while some of these phonemes suffered a merger in other branches and groups). The Russian scholars assumed a triad of postvelar (uvulear) stops with a voiceless spirant counterpart: *-, *", *q, and *¯, the distinction of which was retained in Cushitic and Chadic, but was merged into *¯ in Semitic and Egyptian. In a number of cases, however, it is still difficult to exactly reconstruct the root consonants on the basis of the available cognates (esp. when these are from the modern branches, e.g., Berber, Cushitic-Omotic, or Chadic). In such cases, the corresponding capitals are used (denoting only the place of articulation).

Given its centuries-old origins and the inimitable mix of Semitic and Latinized vocabulary, the Maltese language benefits from a massive repertoire of proverbs and idioms that interpret life realities from the perspective of the common folks. The scope of this paper is to decipher a number of Maltese proverbs and idioms that encompass elements of political power and control. Each selected expression is probed in terms of political theory and contextualized from a sociological and anthropological standpoint. Such an analysis provides a cornucopia of diachronic and synchronic insights on how the Maltese perceive power and manipulation, judge the elites and the privileged, assess the art of politics and treat patronage and clientelism. “The wit of one and the wisdom of many” has organically led them to affirm their conviction that power manipulation, greed and elite collegiality, distortion of political virtues and exploitation of power games to the leverage of both the disadvantaged and the privileged are universal realities. In other words, these phenomena involving power and politics exist independently of the locals’ perceptions or interpretations. Bħala lingwa millenarja b’influwenzi mill-ilsna semitiċi u Latini, il-Malti għandu repertorju għani ta’ proverbji u idjomi li jinterpretaw ir-realtajiet tal-ħajja minn għajnejn il-popolin. L-iskop ta’ din ir-riċerka huwa li janalizza għadd minn dawn il-proverbji u idjomi li jinkorporaw aspetti marbutin mal-politika, il-poter u l-kontroll tal-massa mill-elit. Kull proverbju magħżul huwa diskuss fil-qafas tat-teorija politika u kuntestwalizzat mil-lat soċjoloġiku u antropoloġiku. Din l-analiżi ssawwar riflessjonijiet dijakroniċi u sinkroniċi ta’ kif il-Maltin jaħsbuha dwar il-poter u l-manipulazzjoni tal-massa, kif jiġġudikaw l-elit u l-klassi pprivileġġjata, kif jassessjaw l-arti politika u kif jitrattaw il-patrunaġġ u l-klijentaliżmu. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0783/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

AbstractThe majority of Greek and Semitic words found in the Latin version of St John’s Gospel express specific biblical terms, closely connected with Jewish and Christian religion and culture, but almost entirely unknown to most of the English population until the evangelisation that took place in the 7th century. The comparison of the Old and Middle English translations of the Latin source text presented here attempts to identify the procedures and methods which both Old and Middle English translators used to make the Latin items understandable to their audience, as well as to explain the reasons for the differences between the translations, where possible.

In India, most of the Science and Technology resources available are in English. Developing an Automatic Language Translation Engine from English (source language) to Tamil (target language) is very essential for the people who need to get technical resources in their native language. The challenges in designing such engines using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools include Lexical, Structural, and Syntax level ambiguity. To solve these challenges, the development of a Part-Of-Speech (POS) tagger is essential. The Verb-Framed languages like Tamil, Japanese, and many languages in Romance, Semitic, and Mayan languages families have high morphological richness but lack either a large volume of annotated corpora or manually constructed linguistic resources for building POS tagger. Moreover, the Tamil Language has a low resource, high word sense ambiguity, and word-free order form giving rise to challenges in designing Tamil POS taggers. In this paper, we postulate a Hybrid POS tagger algorithm for Tamil Language using Cross-Lingual Transformation Learning Techniques. It is a novel Mining-based algorithm (MT), which finds equivalent words of Tamil in English on less volume of English-Tamil bilingual unannotated parallel corpus. To enhance the performance of MT, we developed Tamil language-specific auxiliary algorithms such as Keyword-based tagging algorithm (KT) and Verb pattern-based tagging algorithm (VT). We also developed a Unique pair occurrence-tagging algorithm (UT) to find the one-time occurrence of Tamil-English pair words. Our experiments show that by improving Context-based Bilingual Corpus to Bilingual parallel corpus and after leaving one-time occurrence words, the proposed Hybrid POS tagger can predict 81.15% words, with 73.51% accuracy and 90.50% precision. Evaluations prove our algorithms can generate language resources, which can improve the performance of NLP tasks in Tamil.

IntroductionThere are two types of Africa. The first is a place where people and cultures live. The second is the image of Africa that has been invented through colonial knowledge and power. The colonial image of Africa, as the Other of Europe, a land “enveloped in the dark mantle of night” was supported by western states as it justified their colonial practices (Hegel 91). Any evidence that challenged the myth of the Dark Continent was destroyed, removed or ignored. While the looting of African natural resources has been studied, the looting of African knowledges hasn’t received as much attention, partly based on the assumption that Africans did not produce knowledge that could be stolen. This article invalidates this myth by examining the legacy of Ethiopia’s indigenous Ge’ez literature, and its looting and abduction by powerful western agents. The article argues that this has resulted in epistemic violence, where students of the Ethiopian indigenous education system do not have access to their books, while European orientalists use them to interpret Ethiopian history and philosophy using a foreign lens. The analysis is based on interviews with teachers and students of ten Ge’ez schools in Ethiopia, and trips to the Ethiopian manuscript collections in The British Library, The Princeton Library, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and The National Archives in Addis Ababa.The Context of Ethiopian Indigenous KnowledgesGe’ez is one of the ancient languages of Africa. According to Professor Ephraim Isaac, “about 10,000 years ago, one single nation or community of a single linguistic group existed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn of Africa” (The Habesha). The language of this group is known as Proto-Afroasiatic or Afrasian languages. It is the ancestor of the Semitic, Cushitic, Nilotic, Omotic and other languages that are currently spoken in Ethiopia by its 80 ethnic groups, and the neighbouring countries (Diakonoff). Ethiopians developed the Ge’ez language as their lingua franca with its own writing system some 2000 years ago. Currently, Ge’ez is the language of academic scholarship, studied through the traditional education system (Isaac, The Ethiopian). Since the fourth century, an estimated 1 million Ge’ez manuscripts have been written, covering religious, historical, mathematical, medicinal, and philosophical texts.One of the most famous Ge’ez manuscripts is the Kebra Nagast, a foundational text that embodied the indigenous conception of nationhood in Ethiopia. The philosophical, political and religious themes in this book, which craft Ethiopia as God’s country and the home of the Ark of the Covenant, contributed to the country’s success in defending itself from European colonialism. The production of books like the Kebra Nagast went hand in hand with a robust indigenous education system that trained poets, scribes, judges, artists, administrators and priests. Achieving the highest stages of learning requires about 30 years after which the scholar would be given the rare title Arat-Ayina, which means “four eyed”, a person with the ability to see the past as well as the future. Today, there are around 50,000 Ge’ez schools across the country, most of which are in rural villages and churches.Ge’ez manuscripts are important textbooks and reference materials for students. They are carefully prepared from vellum “to make them last forever” (interview, 3 Oct. 2019). Some of the religious books are regarded as “holy persons who breathe wisdom that gives light and food to the human soul”. Other manuscripts, often prepared as scrolls are used for medicinal purposes. Each manuscript is uniquely prepared reflecting inherited wisdom on contemporary lives using the method called Tirguamme, the act of giving meaning to sacred texts. Preparation of books is costly. Smaller manuscript require the skins of 50-70 goats/sheep and large manuscript needed 100-120 goats/sheep (Tefera).The Loss of Ethiopian ManuscriptsSince the 18th century, a large quantity of these manuscripts have been stolen, looted, or smuggled out of the country by travellers who came to the country as explorers, diplomats and scientists. The total number of Ethiopian manuscripts taken is still unknown. Amsalu Tefera counted 6928 Ethiopian manuscripts currently held in foreign libraries and museums. This figure does not include privately held or unofficial collections (41).Looting and smuggling were sponsored by western governments, institutions, and notable individuals. For example, in 1868, The British Museum Acting Director Richard Holms joined the British army which was sent to ‘rescue’ British hostages at Maqdala, the capital of Emperor Tewodros. Holms’ mission was to bring treasures for the Museum. Before the battle, Tewodros had established the Medhanialem library with more than 1000 manuscripts as part of Ethiopia’s “industrial revolution”. When Tewodros lost the war and committed suicide, British soldiers looted the capital, including the treasury and the library. They needed 200 mules and 15 elephants to transport the loot and “set fire to all buildings so that no trace was left of the edifices which once housed the manuscripts” (Rita Pankhurst 224). Richard Holmes collected 356 manuscripts for the Museum. A wealthy British woman called Lady Meux acquired some of the most illuminated manuscripts. In her will, she bequeathed them to be returned to Ethiopia. However, her will was reversed by court due to a campaign from the British press (Richard Pankhurst). In 2018, the V&A Museum in London displayed some of the treasures by incorporating Maqdala into the imperial narrative of Britain (Woldeyes, Reflections).Britain is by no means the only country to seek Ethiopian manuscripts for their collections. Smuggling occurred in the name of science, an act of collecting manuscripts for study. Looting involved local collaborators and powerful foreign sponsors from places like France, Germany and the Vatican. Like Maqdala, this was often sponsored by governments or powerful financers. For example, the French government sponsored the Dakar-Djibouti Mission led by Marcel Griaule, which “brought back about 350 manuscripts and scrolls from Gondar” (Wion 2). It was often claimed that these manuscripts were purchased, rather than looted. Johannes Flemming of Germany was said to have purchased 70 manuscripts and ten scrolls for the Royal Library of Berlin in 1905. However, there was no local market for buying manuscripts. Ge’ez manuscripts were, and still are, written to serve spiritual and secular life in Ethiopia, not for buying and selling. There are countless other examples, but space limits how many can be provided in this article. What is important to note is that museums and libraries have accrued impressive collections without emphasising how those collections were first obtained. The loss of the intellectual heritage of Ethiopians to western collectors has had an enormous impact on the country.Knowledge Grabbing: The Denial of Access to KnowledgeWith so many manuscripts lost, European collectors became the narrators of Ethiopian knowledge and history. Edward Ullendorff, a known orientalist in Ethiopian studies, refers to James Bruce as “the explorer of Abyssinia” (114). Ullendorff commented on the significance of Bruce’s travel to Ethiopia asperhaps the most important aspect of Bruce’s travels was the collection of Ethiopic manuscripts… . They opened up entirely new vistas for the study of Ethiopian languages and placed this branch of Oriental scholarship on a much more secure basis. It is not known how many MSS. reached Europe through his endeavours, but the present writer is aware of at least twenty-seven, all of which are exquisite examples of Ethiopian manuscript art. (133)This quote encompasses three major ways in which epistemic violence occurs: denial of access to knowledge, Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts, and the handling of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts from the past. These will be discussed below.Western ‘travellers’, such as Bruce, did not fully disclose how many manuscripts they took or how they acquired them. The abundance of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions can be compared to the scarcity of such materials among traditional schools in Ethiopia. In this research, I have visited ten indigenous schools in Wollo (Lalibela, Neakutoleab, Asheten, Wadla), in Gondar (Bahita, Kuskwam, Menbere Mengist), and Gojam (Bahirdar, Selam Argiew Maryam, Giorgis). In all of the schools, there is lack of Ge’ez manuscripts. Students often come from rural villages and do not receive any government support. The scarcity of Ge’ez manuscripts, and the lack of funding which might allow for the purchasing of books, means the students depend mainly on memorising Ge’ez texts told to them from the mouth of their teacher. Although this method of learning is not new, it currently is the only way for passing indigenous knowledges across generations.The absence of manuscripts is most strongly felt in the advanced schools. For instance, in the school of Qene, poetic literature is created through an in-depth study of the vocabulary and grammar of Ge’ez. A Qene student is required to develop a deep knowledge of Ge’ez in order to understand ancient and medieval Ge’ez texts which are used to produce poetry with multiple meanings. Without Ge’ez manuscripts, students cannot draw their creative works from the broad intellectual tradition of their ancestors. When asked how students gain access to textbooks, one student commented:we don’t have access to Birana books (Ge’ez manuscripts written on vellum). We cannot learn the ancient wisdom of painting, writing, and computing developed by our ancestors. We simply buy paper books such as Dawit (Psalms), Sewasew (grammar) or Degwa (book of songs with notations) and depend on our teachers to teach us the rest. We also lend these books to each other as many students cannot afford to buy them. Without textbooks, we expect to spend double the amount of time it would take if we had textbooks. (Interview, 3 Sep. 2019)Many students interrupt their studies and work as labourers to save up and buy paper textbooks, but they still don’t have access to the finest works taken to Europe. Most Ge’ez manuscripts remaining in Ethiopia are locked away in monasteries, church stores or other places to prevent further looting. The manuscripts in Addis Ababa University and the National Archives are available for researchers but not to the students of the indigenous system, creating a condition of internal knowledge grabbing.While the absence of Ge’ez manuscripts denied, and continues to deny, Ethiopians the chance to enrich their indigenous education, it benefited western orientalists to garner intellectual authority on the field of Ethiopian studies. In 1981, British Museum Director John Wilson said, “our Abyssinian holdings are more important than our Indian collection” (Bell 231). In reaction, Richard Pankhurst, the Director of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, responded that the collection was acquired through plunder. Defending the retaining of Maqdala manuscripts in Europe, Ullendorff wrote:neither Dr. Pankhurst nor the Ethiopian and western scholars who have worked on this collection (and indeed on others in Europe) could have contributed so significantly to the elucidation of Ethiopian history without the rich resources available in this country. Had they remained insitu, none of this would have been possible. (Qtd. in Bell 234)The manuscripts are therefore valued based on their contribution to western scholarship only. This is a continuation of epistemic violence whereby local knowledges are used as raw materials to produce Eurocentric knowledge, which in turn is used to teach Africans as though they had no prior knowledge. Scholars are defined as those western educated persons who can speak European languages and can travel to modern institutions to access the manuscripts. Knowledge grabbing regards previous owners as inexistent or irrelevant for the use of the grabbed knowledges.Knowledge grabbing also means indigenous scholars are deprived of critical resources to produce new knowledge based on their intellectual heritage. A Qene teacher commented: our students could not devote their time and energy to produce new knowledges in the same way our ancestors did. We have the tradition of Madeladel, Kimera, Kuteta, Mielad, Qene and tirguamme where students develop their own system of remembering, reinterpreting, practicing, and rewriting previous manuscripts and current ones. Without access to older manuscripts, we increasingly depend on preserving what is being taught orally by elders. (Interview, 4 Sep. 2019)This point is important as it relates to the common myth that indigenous knowledges are artefacts belonging to the past, not the present. There are millions of people who still use these knowledges, but the conditions necessary for their reproduction and improvement is denied through knowledge grabbing. The view of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts dismisses the Ethiopian view that Birana manuscripts are living persons. As a scholar told me in Gondar, “they are creations of Egziabher (God), like all of us. Keeping them in institutions is like keeping living bodies in graveyards” (interview, 5 Oct. 2019).Recently, the collection of Ethiopian manuscripts by western institutions has also been conducted digitally. Thousands of manuscripts have been microfilmed or digitised. For example, the EU funded Ethio-SPaRe project resulted in the digital collection of 2000 Ethiopian manuscripts (Nosnitsin). While digitisation promises better access for people who may not be able to visit institutions to see physical copies, online manuscripts are not accessible to indigenous school students in Ethiopia. They simply do not have computer or internet access and the manuscripts are catalogued in European languages. Both physical and digital knowledge grabbing results in the robbing of Ethiopian intellectual heritage, and denies the possibility of such manuscripts being used to inform local scholarship. Epistemic Violence: The European as ExpertWhen considered in relation to stolen or appropriated manuscripts, epistemic violence is the way in which local knowledge is interpreted using a foreign epistemology and gained dominance over indigenous worldviews. European scholars have monopolised the field of Ethiopian Studies by producing books, encyclopaedias and digital archives based on Ethiopian manuscripts, almost exclusively in European languages. The contributions of their work for western scholarship is undeniable. However, Kebede argues that one of the detrimental effects of this orientalist literature is the thesis of Semiticisation, the designation of the origin of Ethiopian civilisation to the arrival of Middle Eastern colonisers rather than indigenous sources.The thesis is invented to make the history of Ethiopia consistent with the Hegelian western view that Africa is a Dark Continent devoid of a civilisation of its own. “In light of the dominant belief that black peoples are incapable of great achievements, the existence of an early and highly advanced civilization constitutes a serious anomaly in the Eurocentric construction of the world” (Kebede 4). To address this anomaly, orientalists like Ludolph attributed the origin of Ethiopia’s writing system, agriculture, literature, and civilisation to the arrival of South Arabian settlers. For example, in his translation of the Kebra Nagast, Budge wrote: “the SEMITES found them [indigenous Ethiopians] negro savages, and taught them civilization and culture and the whole scriptures on which their whole literature is based” (x).In line with the above thesis, Dillman wrote that “the Abyssinians borrowed their Numerical Signs from the Greeks” (33). The views of these orientalist scholars have been challenged. For instance, leading scholar of Semitic languages Professor Ephraim Isaac considers the thesis of the Arabian origin of Ethiopian civilization “a Hegelian Eurocentric philosophical perspective of history” (2). Isaac shows that there is historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that suggest Ethiopia to be more advanced than South Arabia from pre-historic times. Various Ethiopian sources including the Kebra Nagast, the works of historian Asres Yenesew, and Ethiopian linguist Girma Demeke provide evidence for the indigenous origin of Ethiopian civilisation and languages.The epistemic violence of the Semeticisation thesis lies in how this Eurocentric ideological construction is the dominant narrative in the field of Ethiopian history and the education system. Unlike the indigenous view, the orientalist view is backed by strong institutional power both in Ethiopia and abroad. The orientalists control the field of Ethiopian studies and have access to Ge’ez manuscripts. Their publications are the only references for Ethiopian students. Due to Native Colonialism, a system of power run by native elites through the use of colonial ideas and practices (Woldeyes), the education system is the imitation of western curricula, including English as a medium of instruction from high school onwards. Students study the west more than Ethiopia. Indigenous sources are generally excluded as unscientific. Only the Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts is regarded as scientific and objective.ConclusionEthiopia is the only African country never to be colonised. In its history it produced a large quantity of manuscripts in the Ge’ez language through an indigenous education system that involves the study of these manuscripts. Since the 19th century, there has been an ongoing loss of these manuscripts. European travellers who came to Ethiopia as discoverers, missionaries and scholars took a large number of manuscripts. The Battle of Maqdala involved the looting of the intellectual products of Ethiopia that were collected at the capital. With the introduction of western education and use of English as a medium of instruction, the state disregarded indigenous schools whose students have little access to the manuscripts. This article brings the issue of knowledge grapping, a situation whereby European institutions and scholars accumulate Ethiopia manuscripts without providing the students in Ethiopia to have access to those collections.Items such as manuscripts that are held in western institutions are not dead artefacts of the past to be preserved for prosperity. They are living sources of knowledge that should be put to use in their intended contexts. Local Ethiopian scholars cannot study ancient and medieval Ethiopia without travelling and gaining access to western institutions. This lack of access and resources has made European Ethiopianists almost the sole producers of knowledge about Ethiopian history and culture. For example, indigenous sources and critical research that challenge the Semeticisation thesis are rarely available to Ethiopian students. Here we see epistemic violence in action. Western control over knowledge production has the detrimental effect of inventing new identities, subjectivities and histories that translate into material effects in the lives of African people. In this way, Ethiopians and people all over Africa internalise western understandings of themselves and their history as primitive and in need of development or outside intervention. African’s intellectual and cultural heritage, these living bodies locked away in graveyards, must be put back into the hands of Africans.AcknowledgementThe author acknowledges the support of the Australian Academy of the Humanities' 2019 Humanities Travelling Fellowship Award in conducting this research.ReferencesBell, Stephen. “Cultural Treasures Looted from Maqdala: A Summary of Correspondence in British National Newspapers since 1981.” Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 231-246.Budge, Wallis. 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