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Foreign Borrowings in the Lexis of the Chronicle of John of Nikiu
 
Код статьиS086919080031358-0-1
DOI10.31696/S086919080031358-0
Тип публикации Статья
Статус публикации Опубликовано
Авторы
Гусарова Екатерина Валентиновна 
Должность: Научный сотрудник; библиотекарь; доцент
Аффилиация:
СПбГУ
Институт Восточных рукописей Российской Академии наук
Российская национальная библиотека
НИУ «Высшая школа экономики»
Адрес: Санкт-Петербург, Россия
Название журналаВосток. Афро-Азиатские общества: история и современность
ВыпускВыпуск 4
Страницы147-154
Аннотация

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.

Ключевые словаMǝhǝrka Dǝngǝl, John of Nikiu, Universal history, Foreign borrowings in lexis, loanwords, Ethiopian scribes, Coptic scribes, Medieval Ethiopian Historiography, Ethiopian manuscripts
Источник финансированияИсследование осуществлено при финансовой поддержке РНФ, проект № 22-18-00493, выполняемый на базе Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета.
Получено12.08.2024
Дата публикации25.08.2024
Кол-во символов25117
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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.

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