✖Here you can explore some general information about the project. See also Beta maṣāḥəft institutional web page. Select About to meet the project team and our partners. Visit the Guidelines section to learn about our encoding principles. The section Data contains the Linked Open Data information, and API the Application Programming Interface documentation for those who want to exchange data with the Beta maṣāḥǝft project. The Permalinks section documents the versioning and referencing earlier versions of each record.
Click to get back to the home page. Here you can find out more about the project team, the cooperating projects, and the contact information. You can also visit our institutional page. Find out more about our Encoding Guidelines. In this section our Linked Open Data principles are explained. Developers can find our Application Programming Interface documentation here. The page documents the use of permalinks by the project.
✖Descriptions of (predominantly) Christian manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea are the core of the Beta maṣāḥǝft project. We (1) gradually encode descriptions from printed catalogues, beginning from the historical ones, (2) incorporate digital descriptions produced by other projects, adjusting them wherever possible, and (3) produce descriptions of previously unknown and/or uncatalogued manuscripts. The encoding follows the TEI XML standards (check our guidelines).
Shelf marks (full list)Manuscripts (search)List of Digitized ManuscriptsCatalogues EncodedInscriptions
✖We identify each unit of content in every manuscript. We consider any text with an independent circulation a work, with its own identification number within the Clavis Aethiopica (CAe). Parts of texts (e.g. chapters) without independent circulation (univocally identifiable by IDs assigned within the records) or recurrent motifs as well as documentary additional texts (identified as Narrative Units) are not part of the CAe. You can also check the list of different types of text titles or various Indexes available from the top menu.
Clavis Aethiopica (Works)Narrative UnitsStudies
The clavis is a repertory of all known works relevant for the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition; the work being defined as any text with an independent circulation. Each work (as well as known recensions where applicable) receives a unique identifier in the Clavis Aethiopica (CAe). In the filter search offered here one can search for a work by its title, a keyword, a short quotation, but also directly by its CAe identifier - or, wherever known and provided, identifier used by other claves, including Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG), Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG), Clavis Coptica (CC), Clavis Apocryphorum Veteris Testamenti (CAVT), Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (CANT), etc. The project additionally identifies Narrative Units to refer to text types, where no clavis identification is possible or necessary. Recurring motifs or also frequently documentary additiones are assigned a Narrative Unit ID, or thematically clearly demarkated passages from various recensions of a larger work. This list view shows the documentary collections encoded by the project Ethiopian Manuscript Archives (EMA) and its successor EthioChrisProcess - Christianization and religious interactions in Ethiopia (6th-13th century) : comparative approaches with Nubia and Egypt, which aim to edit the corpus of administrative acts of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, for medieval and modern periods. See also the list of documents contained in the additiones in the manuscripts described by the Beta maṣāḥǝft project . Works of interest to Ethiopian and Eritrean studies.
✖While encoding manuscripts, the project Beta maṣāḥǝft aims at creating an exhaustive repertory of art themes and techniques present in Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian tradition. See our encoding guidelines for details. Two types of searches for aspects of manuscript decoration are possible, the decorations filtered search and the general keyword search.
Index of decorationsArt KeywordsIlluminations
The filtered search for decorations, originally designed with Jacopo Gnisci, looks at decorations and their features only. The filters on the left are relative only to the selected features, reading the legends will help you to figure out what you can filter. For example you can search for all encoded decorations of a specific art theme, or search the encoded legends. If the decorations are present, but not encoded, you will not get them in the results. If an image is available, you will also find a thumbnail linking to the image viewer. [NB: The Index of Decorations currently often times out, we are sorry for the inconvenience.] You can search for particular motifs or aspects, including style, also through the keyword search. Just click on "Art keywords" and "Art themes" on the left to browse through the options. This is a short cut to a search for all those manuscripts which have miniatures of which we have images.
✖We create metadata for all places associated with the manuscript production and circulation as well as those mentioned in the texts used by the project. The encoding of places in Beta maṣāḥǝft will thus result in a Gazetteer of the Ethiopian tradition. We follow the principles established by Pleiades and lined out in the Syriaca.org TEI Manual and Schema for Historical Geography which allow us to distinguish between places, locations, and names of places. See also Help page fore more guidance.
PlacesRepositories
This tab offers a filtrable list of all available places. Geographical references of the type "land inhabited by people XXX" is encoded with the reference to the corresponding Ethnic unit (see below); ethnonyms, even those used in geographical contexts, do not appear in this list. Repositories are those locations where manuscripts encoded by the project are or used to be preserved. While they are encoded in the same way as all places are, the view offered is different, showing a list of manuscripts associated with the repository.
✖We create metadata for all persons (and groups of persons) associated with the manuscript production and circulation (rulers, religious authorities, scribes, donors, and commissioners) as well as those mentioned in the texts used by the project. The result will be a comprehensive Prosopography of the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition. See also Help page for more guidance.
Persons and groupsEthnic units
We encode persons according to our Encoding Guidelines. The initial list was inherited from the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and there are still many inconsistencies that we are trying to gradually fix. We consider ethnonyms as a subcategory of personal names, even when many are often used in literary works in the context of the "land inhabited by **". The present list of records has been mostly inherited from the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and there are still many inconsistencies that we are trying to gradually fix.
✖This section collects some additional resources offered by the project. Select Bibliography to explore the references cited in the project records. The Indexes list different types of project records (persons, places, titles, keywords, etc). Visit Projects for information on partners that have input data directly in the Beta maṣāḥǝft database. Special ways of exploring the data are offered under Visualizations. Two applications were developed in cooperation with the project TraCES, the Gǝʿǝz Morphological Parser and the Online Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae.
BibliographyIndexesProjectsVisualizationsGǝʿǝz Morphological ParserOnline Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae
Help

You are looking at work in progress version of this website. For questions contact the dev team.

Hover on words to see search options.

Double-click to see morphological parsing.

Click on left pointing hands and arrows to load related items and click once more to view the result in a popup.

You can run a simple search which will look in all text indexes. This is the simplest search that we can offer. Check the options below the input box if you want to change the default settings.

Note that you can click on and/or symbols under the search field for additional filters/facets and on to activate the virtual keyboard.

When the results appear you can use facets to narrow your selection. For that, first select the facet (Item type, Author of changes, Keywords, etc.) and then press "refine search results ". Here you can get a list of items given some parameters, like the entity type, without searching for a string. You can play with the filters to restrict the search and you can certainly combine these with a text search. If you know the identifier (ID) of an item (LIT1234name, MS123abc, PRS12345name, etc.) you can paste it here, and you will get it in the results. if you know only a part, eg. LIT20... it will give you all those which match. To reach a given item with its ID, you can also append that to the base URL of the website, https://betamasaheft.eu/LIT1234name and you will be redirected to the correct landing page. If you have at hand the Clavis Aethiopica number of a Textual Unit, e.g. CAe 1234, you can enter it here and the search will point you to that record. We record (unsystematically) corresponding identifiers from other Claves, like CAVT or CANT, here you can select which one you want to look for and search for records pointing to that. We record for each repository information on settlement, region and country. By searching for the identifier of a place the query will look at related places and check for other repositories which may be associated. If you know how to write your XPath, and know the source TEI (available for each file, by appending .xml to the identifier of the record) you will be able to run that query against the db here. Not all possible paths are optimized. Parallel to the XML, also an RDF triple store is maintained by the project. Here you get an interface to the SPARQL endpoint. You can add your SPARQL query and see the results available.
In the search mask above, you can search for text, below there are options and you can add filters ( ). You can then use facets to narrow your selection.
But text is not all you can search for. In the top menu you can switch to other types of queries and searches which rely on different indexes and data formats. You can check this box to use 'smart' ranking, where a higher score is assigned to hits in placeName, persName, title or to records with text or an occupation element. This will make you wait a bit more. If running a text search, you can select the type of text search. This determines how the single words which you enter are matched in the indexes here By default the search will use OR as an operator, which means that if you search two words you will get hits which contain one OR the other. You may wish to use AND to get the matches which contain your first word AND your second word. If you want them in that particular order, consider using phrase mode from the search type. Click on this plus button to see a series of additional options for your search. If you wish to search for a given word in the hands descriptions and another word in the decorations, here you can do that, using fields. This may help you enter characters which are not immediately present on your keyboard. Keep a letter pressed for additional forms. Use Shift and Alt for alternative keyboards. Instead of the pointer you can use your own keyboard with these values when active. Homophones are mechanically replaced for you, so that for example, if you search for one of 'ሀ', 'ሐ', 'ኀ', 'ሃ', 'ሓ', 'ኃ' we will search for all of them. If you deselect this checkbox the list of homophones will not be considered and only the exact string you searched will be passed on. Homophones are not replaced for search strings longer than 10 characters and is not applied in all modes. If you entered a search string for a Gǝʿǝz string, either typing it in Fidal or in a transliteration format, we can try to convert it and search also the other form. If you entered ወልደ the search engine will look also for walda. If you entered walda also for ወልደ. This depends on the availability of the alternate form.

You can enter above your SPARQL query to the RDF representation of the data stored in Apache Jena Fuseki. Please use single quotes ' not double.

PREFIXes are already there (see below), so you can start with SELECT. If you prefer to use your prefixes, do so, no problem. A super tutorial on how to build SPARQL queries is here at Apache Jena.

Results do not have facets and are presented as they are requested in the query from the SPARQL response.



PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX lawd: <http://lawd.info/ontology/>
PREFIX oa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#>
PREFIX ecrm: <http://erlangen-crm.org/current/>
PREFIX crm: <http://www.cidoc-crm.org/cidoc-crm/>
PREFIX gn: <http://www.geonames.org/ontology#>
PREFIX agrelon: <http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/agrelon.owl#>
PREFIX rel: <http://purl.org/vocab/relationship/>
PREFIX dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/>
PREFIX bm: <https://betamasaheft.eu/>
PREFIX pelagios: <http://pelagios.github.io/vocab/terms#>
PREFIX syriaca: <http://syriaca.org/documentation/relations.html#>
PREFIX saws: <http://purl.org/saws/ontology#>
PREFIX snap: <http://data.snapdrgn.net/ontology/snap#>
PREFIX pleiades: <https://pleiades.stoa.org/>
PREFIX wd: <https://www.wikidata.org/>
PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX t: <http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0>
PREFIX sdc: <https://w3id.org/sdc/ontology#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>

You can also use the API to query the SPARQL endpoint, using https://betamasaheft.eu/api/SPARQL with the query in a parameter q. The results are SPARQL Query Results XML Format, as the one visualized below.

In the Beta maṣāḥǝft Guidelines you can find the OWLDoc Documentation and a visualization thanks to webVOWL of the current ontology developed with Protégé.

Some examples of the data you are querying

Documentation on Linked Open Data can be found here.

Examples:
Search for female donors: "SELECT ?ms ?person WHERE { ?annotation a bm:donor ; oa:hasBody ?person ; oa:hasTarget ?ms . ?ms a bm:mss . ?person foaf:gender 'female' . } "
Manuscripts with a patron of the imperial family: "SELECT DISTINCT ?manuscript ?patron ?relation ?ruler WHERE{ ?annotation a bm:patron ; oa:hasTarget ?manuscript ; oa:hasBody ?patron . ?manuscript a bm:mss . ?patron snap:hasBond ?bondName . ?bondName rdf:type ?relation ; snap:bond-with ?ruler . ?ruler snap:occupation 'Emperor' . }"
Mountains mentioned in Liturgy manuscripts: "SELECT DISTINCT ?mountain ?manuscript WHERE { ?att oa:hasBody ?mountain ; oa:hasTarget ?manuscript . ?manuscript a bm:mss ; a bm:Liturgy . ?mountain a bm:place ; pleiades:hasFeatureType in <https://betamasaheft.eu/authority-files/mountain> . } LIMIT 50"

The results presented here are visualized with d3sparql

Enter above your XPath 3.0 query to the data. (You can alternatively use the old XPath search page here) Please, use t: namespace for TEI elements. The starting point of any Xpath should be $config:collection-root if you are searching the entire dataset.

NB: if you are a member of the BM GitHub organization and work with Oxygen you may run your XPath Queries directly in your Oxygen project; in this case start the string directly with //TEI.

You can also use, as a cached and short form to point to collections the following variables: $config:collection-rootMS for manuscripts; $config:collection-rootW for Textual Units $config:collection-rootPl for places; $config:collection-rootPr for persons; $config:collection-rootIn for repositories; $config:collection-rootA for authority files.

Examples:
Persons marked up in colophons: $config:collection-rootMS//t:colophon[t:persName]
Manuscripts with at least 26 additions: $config:collection-rootMS//t:additions/t:list/t:item[@xml:id='a26']
Manuscripts with a text marked up as Amharic: $config:collection-rootMS//t:TEI[descendant::t:textLang[@mainLang='am' or @otherLangs='am']]
Manuscripts with additions that contain something tagged Amharic: $config:collection-rootMS//t:TEI[not(contains(@xml:id, 'IHA'))]//t:additions[descendant::t:*[@xml:lang='am']]
Records with the title with the subtype inscriptio: $config:collection-root//t:title[contains(@subtype,'inscriptio')]
Manuscripts that have at least 31 quires: $config:collection-rootMS//t:collation/t:list[count(t:item) ge 31]
Manuscripts where a roleName appears: $config:collection-rootMS//t:roleName
Additons of the type OwnershipNote: $config:collection-rootMS//t:additions/t:list/t:item[t:desc[@type='OwnershipNote']]
Place records revised in 2022: $config:collection-rootPl//t:revisionDesc/t:change[contains(concat(' ', @when, ' '), '2022')]
Work records that contain "Senodos" inside title: $config:collection-rootW//t:titleStmt/t:title[contains(.,'Senodos')]
Works that contain the string "Senodos" somewhere: $config:collection-rootW//*[contains(.,'Senodos')]
Person record which have at least some attribute for birth and death (can be when, notBefore, notAfter) elements and occupation type ruler: $config:collection-rootPr//t:person[t:birth[@*]][t:death[@*]][t:occupation[@type='ruler']]
Manuscripts with miniatures in them: $config:collection-rootMS//t:decoDesc[t:decoNote[@type='miniature']]
Manuscripts with an addition element typed Ownership Note followed by another one with type Supplication: $config:collection-rootMS//t:additions/t:list/t:item[t:desc[@type='OwnershipNote']][following-sibling::t:item[t:desc[@type='Supplication']]]

Here you can differentiate your search by looking at the text of constructed strings from specific portions of the data. You can search for records which have a word occurring in the decoration and another in the content description, for example.















Resource type
manuscript1
textual unit3
General
Alessandro Bausi1
Angela Müller1
Antonella Brita1
Denis Nosnitsin1
Dorothea Reule3
Hizkiel Mitiku1
Jonas Karlsson1
Massimo Villa1
Pietro Maria Liuzzo2
Simone Seyboldt1
Solomon Gebreyes2
Susanne Hummel1
2021-12-281
2020-03-021
2020-10-281
2020-12-211
2019-04-251
2019-05-071
2019-07-232
2018-03-161
2018-05-281
2017-05-121
2017-05-221
2017-08-081
2017-11-031
2016-05-101
2016-07-261
2015-02-041
2012-08-011
2011-11-251
Gondarine1
Postaksumite I1
Canon Law1
Christian Literature4
Chronicles2
Hagiography1
History and Historiography2
Liturgy1
Translation1
English4
Gǝʿǝz 3
Manuscripts
Ethio-SPaRe1
21
complete1
incomplete1
deficient1
Sǝnkǝssār (Group B)1
15801
15301
1001
Codex1
3901
no3
yes1
parchment1
03
11
04
03
61
03
11
04
04
03
6981
1751
no4
Qandāʿro Qǝddus Qirqos1
Ruling pattern: 1A-1A-1A1A/0-0/0-0/C.1
Ethiopic1
some text present4
bindingMaterial1
Endbands1
Other1
GuestText1
2901
26 311
Textual and Narrative Units
some text present4
Places and Repositories
Persons and Groups
15751
15251
ethnic1
n/a4
individual4

There are 4 entities matching your text query for "ሜሰ" with the parameters shown at the right. (searched: ሜሰ)

Search time: 0.677 seconds.
mode: nonesearchType: text
    title
    hits count
    first three keywords in context
    item-type specific options
    stubworksLIT2677ACABt1TEI
    Apostolic canons Abṭelisāt (81)
    CAe 2677Clavis Aethiopica, an ongoing repertory of all known Ethiopic Textual Units. Use this to refer univocally to a specific text in your publications. Please note that this shares only the numeric part with the Textual Unit Record Identifier.
    1 in ab

    ... አዕረገ፡ ህየንተ ሥራበ፡ ወይን፡ ሥራበ፡ ሶከር። ወኢምንተኒ፡ ሜሰ፡ ወይን፡ ዘግቡር፡ በእሳት፡ አው፡ ወይን፡ ዘግቡር፡ በፀሐ...

    in element ab within a div, at 3
    comparemap of msscollateplacespersonsrelations

    List of computed witnesses

      stubworksLIT4633ChronicleTEI
      Chronicle of Bakāffā
      CAe 4633Clavis Aethiopica, an ongoing repertory of all known Ethiopic Textual Units. Use this to refer univocally to a specific text in your publications. Please note that this shares only the numeric part with the Textual Unit Record Identifier.
      4 in t:ab
      Author attributions

      ...ፋቃቲሆሙ፡ ወያሰትዮሙ፡ ሜሰ፡ ጸወርተ፡ ሜስ፡ በበጽዋዖሙ። ወኢያስተኃልፉ፡ ጽዋዓ፡ ፩ለ...

      in element t:ab within a t:div, at 90

      ... እሙንቱኒ፡ ኢየኃጥኡ፡ እምዘፈቀዱ። ወቀዊሞሙ፡ ይሰትዩ፡ ሜሰ፡ ወይወፅኡ። ወእምዝ፡ ይረፍቁ፡ እለ፡ ይጸውሩ፡ ወላትወ፡ ...

      in element t:ab within a t:div, at 91

      ... ወአርወዮሙ፡ ጽሩየ6፡ ሜሰ፡ እስከ፡ ይወፅኡ፡ በፈቃዶሙ። ...

      in element t:ab within a t:div, at 129
      comparemap of msscollateplacespersonsrelations

      List of computed witnesses

        stubworksLIT4646ChronicleTEI
        Chronicle of Zarʾa Yāʿqob
        CAe 4646Clavis Aethiopica, an ongoing repertory of all known Ethiopic Textual Units. Use this to refer univocally to a specific text in your publications. Please note that this shares only the numeric part with the Textual Unit Record Identifier.
        1 in t:ab
        Witnesses
          Abstract

          ... ኢያእመርኩ፡ አስማቲሆሙ፡ እለ፡ ኢይበልዑ፡ ሥጋ፡ ወኢይሰትዩ፡ ሜሰ።

          in element t:ab within a t:div, at 22
          comparemap of msscollateplacespersonsrelations

          List of computed witnesses

          stubmanuscriptsESqdq004TEI
          Gāntā ʾAfašum, Qandāʿro Qǝddus Qirqos, QDQ-004
          1 in ab
          Signatures
          QDQ-004
          Short Description
          This parchment codex is composed of 175 leaves. It has 424 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: Mid- or late 16th cent.. There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description does not include a collation of the quires.

          ...ኵሎ፡ ዕለት፡ ወያሰትይዎ፡ ሜሰ፡ ወቅብአ፡ ወኀነጸ፡ ሎቱ፡ ...

          in element ab within a div, at 4.16.1
          placespersonsrelations

          List of related persons

          No persons related to this manuscripts are known.