What: An 18th century manuscript including Discourses for the Festivals of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Where: The British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London NW1 2DB
Provenance: Listed as part of the “Magdala collection” in William Wright’s Catalogue of the Ethiopic manuscripts in the British Museum acquired since the year 1847
Does not appear in British Library’s online catalogue or list of digitised manuscripts
What: The Miracles of the blessed Virgin Mary and the Order of Baptism with lessons, “imperfect at the end”.
Where: The British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London NW1 2DB
Provenance: It has a note: “Obtained from the Church on the Rock at Senafe, 31st Jan. 1868. R Holmes”, referring to the British Museum’s official archaeologist on the expedition, Richard Rivington Holmes. Senafe was a stop on the march to Maqdala. Listed just before the start of the “Magdala collection” in William Wright’s Catalogue of the Ethiopic manuscripts in the British Museum acquired since the year 1847
Does not appear in British Library’s online catalogue or list of digitised manuscripts
What: The Miracles of the blessed Virgin Mary, 26 in number, “imperfect at the end”.
Where: The British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London NW1 2DB
Provenance: It has a note: “Obtained from the Church on the Rock at Senafe, 31st Jan. 1868. R Holmes”, referring to the British Museum’s official archaeologist on the expedition, Richard Rivington Holmes. Listed just before the start of the “Magdala collection” in William Wright’s Catalogue of the Ethiopic manuscripts in the British Museum acquired since the year 1847
According to thr catalogue: “Foll. 17-20 do not belong to this manuscript. They are the last leaves of a small book, about 4-1/4 in. by 4-1/8, with from 10 to 13 lines in a page, and contain a hymn to the blessed Virgin Mary. On f. 19 ft is a note, stating that the volume belonged by purchase to the priest Walda Kidan, the son of Fesha Seyon, and that he gave it, along with the Miracles of the blessed Virgin, to the church of Matara.”
Does not appear in British Library’s online catalogue or list of digitised manuscripts
What: An early 18th century manuscript of Homilies of the Archangel Michael and associated texts, with 23 paintings
Where: Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division, One Washington Road, Princeton, New Jersey 08544 USA
Listed as Garrett Ethiopic Manuscript No. 2 i in the catalogue – https://library.princeton.edu/special-collections/sites/default/files/Ethiopic_Combined.pdf
Provenance: There is a note in English on the first page that the manuscript was taken from the fortress of King Theodore (Tēwodros II) at Magdala in 1868
See the note here in the digital version of the manuscript – http://pudl.princeton.edu/viewer.php?obj=7fd2dd40-5294-432f-996e-59b9e8ab5019#page/4/mode/2up
It is described as “from the library of the Emperor Theodore”in the article PRINCETON’S ETHIOPIC MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS AT 100 in The Princeton University Library Chronicle , Vol. 71, No. 3 (Spring 2010), pp. 461-466.
Background: The broader Robert Garrett collection consists of 113 bound manuscripts in Ge’ez and Amharic. The university’s manuscript division as a whole has more than 600 Ethiopic works. There is also an illuminated manuscript, a diptych icon and a hand cross in the Princeton University Art Museum. But none mention Magdala in their provenance.
What: A 17th century collection of homilies for festivals for St Michael and others
Where: Cambridge University Library, West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9DR
Provenance: According to the Catalogue of Ethiopian manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library by Wright, S. G. and Ullendorff, E., it was : “Brought to England from India where it had been taken by a member of Napier’s 1867-8 Abysinian Expedition”.
What: An Ethiopian manuscript, possibly 18th century, including ‘Tabiba Tabiban’, Miracles of the Virgin Mary and hymns
Where: Bodleian Library, Broad St, Oxford OX1 3BG
MS. 57 was sent to this country by Col. Knight, a member of Napier’s British Expedition in 1868, and purchased in 1883, according to Edward Ullendorff’s Catalogue of Ethiopian Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Volume II.
His book describes 66 manuscripts in the collection. He writes: “On the whole, it is safe to assume that the majority of the MSS here described, were acquired in Ethiopia by individual members of Napier’s expedition in 1867-8. After the death of their owners many found their way to auction sales and were then purchased by the Bodleian Library.”
Rita Pankhurst’s paper The Library of Emperor Tewodros II at Mäqdäla is more conservative and lists MS 57 as one of six manuscripts in the Bodleian Library that probably came from Magdala, on top of five that were almost definitely taken from there.
She adds: “Thirty-two other manuscripts in the Bodleian could conceivably have also come from Maqdala although there is no evidence to this effect.”
Many of the Western academics who got a first look at the manuscripts were scornful.
Here is Jacob Leveen on some of the manuscripts listed in Ullendorff’s catalogue:
“Of the 66 items catalogued here, a large proportion consists of copies of those magical scrolls, which are perhaps too well represented in the libraries of Europe. They offer a melancholy spectacle of the depths of credulity and superstition to which Abyssinians sank. The hagiographical literature is no less depressing, with its exhibition of ‘Mariolatry run mad’ (as Willliam Wright so aptly called it).” [Jacob Leveen’s review of Ullendorff, E. (1951). Catalogue of Ethiopian manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: 2 7. Oxford: Clarendon Press]