MEROE.
Language and Of the differ ent dialects spoken in modern Abyssinia, the Amharic and the Tigre are the most remark able. The former of these shows little affinity with the ancient language of the country, the Gee; or the Ethiopic properly so called, which since the beginning of the 14th century, when a dynastic change made the Amharic the lan guage of the court, has ceased to be the ver nacular, and is used only by people of educa tion and learning, in religious and civil docu ments. This ancient language, which has ite name from the inhabitants calling it tesana gees, that is, language of science, as it is also called language of books, is of Semitic origin, resem bling in roots, structure and grammatical forms, the ancient South Arabian dialect of the Himyarites, which since Mohammed has disappeared from the peninsula. This favors the hypothesis of some historians, who suppose the Ethiopians to have been a colony from Arabia. The alphabet also of the Geez greatly resembles that of the Himyarites, as found in their remaining inscriptions. It consists of 26 consonants and 7 vowels, which are small marks inseparably connected with the former, thus forming a peculiar syllabic mode of writ ing, analogous to the Devanagari and some other Indian alphabets. Few of these letters show a resemblance to the Phoenician alphabet, while 24 of them may be traced in the Arabic. There are no diacritical marks; the single words are separated by two dots; the accent is difficult; the mode of writing is from left to right, the reverse having been the practice be fore the introduction of Christianity into Abys sinia. In roots, and forms of expression and construction, the Geez is poorer than the Arabic. According to Gesenius, one-third of all the roots can be traced distinctly in the Arabic, and many other words may be pre sumed to be of the same origin, while the roots of others can be found in the Hebrew, Syriac, or Chaldaic, some being native African, a few of Greek, scarcely any of Coptic derivation.
The Geez has 10 conjugations, 8 of which answer to those of the Arabic, the 5th and the 6th being peculiar. A double infinitive is used substantively, this mood having both an absolute and constructive form. There is no participle. The dual is unknown both in verbs and nouns; the difference of masculine and feminine is observed throughout in the second and third persons. The relation of the genitive is ex pressed by an inflection, causing some changes in the terminations, or through the relative pronoun; the dative by prepositions; the com parative and superlative degrees by particles. The plural is formed by affixed syllables, an in masculine, at in feminine nouns, on the prin ciple common to the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic, or by changes in the radical letters, after the manner of the so-called broken plural in Arabic. In the formation of nouns the Geez most resembles the Hebrew, but it has superfluous final vowels, modified in certain cases, in which it is analogous to the Arabic in its nunnation. Besides a few fragments in inscriptions, there are no remnants of the ancient Ethiopian literature of a period preced ing the introduction of Christianity under Con stantine the Great, but of works composed since that time about 200 are known to European scholars. The Old Testament, translated from
the Septuagint by unknown Christian writers in the 4th century, is extant in manuscripts in Europe, but only a part of it has been printed. The Psalms were published in Ethiopic and Latin by Ludolf (Frankfort 1701), and in Ethiopic alone (London 1815). The version of the New Testament appeared at Rome in and in the London polyglot Bible. Of versions of apocryphal books, in which the Ethiopic is particularly rich, several have been published, as the of Enoch,' translated by Richard Laurence into English (2d edition, London 1833), and by Hoffmann into German (Jena 1838), in Vatis, translated by Laurence into Latin, and published in both languages (Oxford 1819). Geez in 1840 (London), and Ascensio Isola'. The or Apostolical Constitution of the Abyssinian Church,' was published in Ethiopic and English by Platt (London 1834). The Synaxar contains lives of saints, martyrologies and the hymns of the Ethiopian Church, in rude rhythmical form, every three or five lines often ending in the same consonant, which forms a kind of rhyme. The profane literature of the Ethiopian lan guage is comparatively poor, consisting chiefly of chronicles, which appear to be of consider able interest, but have not yet been generally accessible. Of these the most remarkable are the za Nageste,) containing the tradi tional and legendary history of the once mighty kingdom of Aksum, a copy of which was brought to Europe by Bruce, and a translation of it appended to his travels; and the Nagushti,> or chronicle of kings. In Europe the Ethiopian language was almost unknown until the time of Job Ludolf, who, being assisted by an excellent native scholar, Abbas Gregorius, made himself master of it, and published an admirable dictionary and grammar (2d im proved and enlarged edition, Frankfort 1702). Manuscripts written in the Ethiopian language are in possession of Abyssinian monks and in libraries in Europe. Their knowledge of music may be inferred from their musical notation which has been published. After a long inter val the interest in this language and literature has been revived by the works of Platt, Lau rence, Gesenius, Hupfeld, Hoffmann, R6diger, Ewald and others, as well as by the contribu tions of Isenberg, Blumberg, and D'Abbadie.
Breasted, 'History of Egypt' (New York 1909) ; Budge, 'The Egyptian Sudan' (London 1907) ; D'Almeida, 'Historia de Ethiopia aim' (Coimbra 1660) ; Bosset, 'Etudes sur l'histoire d'Ethiope' (in Journal Asiatigue, Paris 1881) ; Bent, 'Sacred City of the Ethiopians' (London 1893) ; Bruce, 'Travels in Abyssinia' (Edinburgh 1773) ; Hoskins, 'Travels in Ethiopia) (London 1835) ; Dillmann, 'Grammatik der Athiopischen Sprache' (Leipzig 1859; 2d ed. by Bezold, 1899) ; Praztorius, 'Die amharische Sprache' (1871) ; id. 'Grammatik der tigrina Sprach& (1871) ; Schrieber, 'Manuel de la langue tigrai) (Vienna 1887) ; Goldschmidt, theca lEthiopica' (Leipzig 1892) ; Fumagalli, 'Bibliografia Etiopica' (Milano 1893) • Litt mann, 'Die deutsche (Berlin 1913) ; Beccari 'Documenti inediti per la storia d'Etiopia' (Rome 1903).