Beginnings of Modern Scholarship of The Book
It was not until the close of the eighteenth century when James Bruce of Kinnaird, the famous Scottish explorer, published an account of his travels in search of the sources of the Nile, that some information as to the contents of the Kebra Nagast came to be generally known amongst European scholars and theologians.
When Bruce was leaving Gondar, Ras Mikael Sehul, the powerful Inderase (regent) of Emperor Tekle Haymanot II, gave him several of the most valuable Ethiopic manuscripts and among them was a copy of the Kebra Nagast. When the third edition of his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile was published in 1813, a description of the contents of the original manuscript was included. In due course these documents were given to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
Although August Dillmann prepared a summary of the contents of the Kebra Nagast, and published its colophon, no substantial portion of the narrative in the original language was available until F. Praetorius published chapters 19 through 32 with a Latin translation. However 35 years passed before the entire text was published by Carl Bezold, with commentary, in 1905. The first English translation was prepared by E. A. Wallis Budge, which was published in two editions in 1922 and 1932.
Read more about this topic: Kebra Nagast
Famous quotes containing the words beginnings of, beginnings, modern, scholarship and/or book:
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)
“I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo- scholarship which actually destroys its object.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.”
—Alan Bennett (b. 1934)