Workshop at Dumbarton Oaks

For several decades, the field of Ethiopian and Eritrean studies has primarily had an inward focus. The large-scale imaging of Ethiopic manuscripts, which started in earnest in the early 1970s with the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library project, resulted in a huge influx of material—images of thousands and thousands of manuscripts. Since then, the field has primarily concentrated on studying this newly-accessible corpus, producing catalogues of Ethiopic manuscripts alongside distillations of these sources, above all the monumental Encyclopaedia Aethiopica (2003–2014). As important as this foundational work is, its gains have been primarily field internal, and the field of Ethiopian and Eritrean studies has increasingly been siloed from the humanities at large. Recent years have, however, seen promising signs of change with the growing integration of Ethiopian and Eritrean history, literature, and culture into broader humanistic frameworks. The ERC-funded project “HornEast—Horn and Crescent. Connections, Mobility and Exchange between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East in the Middle Ages,” for instance, exemplifies this new trend, including especially its international conference “Ethiopians Abroad in the Middle Ages” (Rome; May 23–26, 2023). This trend can be illustrated in other ways as well, for instance, Samantha Kelly’s magisterial new book on Ethiopians in Renaissance Rome or Verena Krebs’ award-winning book on diplomatic contacts between Ethiopia and Latin Europe in the Middle Ages. Likewise, consider two relatively-recent exhibitions in the United States, along with their corresponding catalogues: Africa & Byzantium at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ethiopia at the Crossroads at The Walters Art Museum—each of these undertakings, in its own way, aimed to connect the Horn of Africa with the broader Mediterranean world and beyond.

 The present workshop gathers a pioneering group of scholars working on entanglements, contacts, and exchanges between the Horn of Africa, on the one hand, and Egypt, Jerusalem, and beyond, on the other, to share ongoing research and to discuss emerging trends and new directions. Participants include Martina Ambu (Université libre de Bruxelles); Michael Gervers (University of Toronto); Jonas Karlsson (University of Hamburg); Samantha Kelly (Rutgers University); Mikael Muehlbauer (Metropolitan Museum of Art); Christine Sciacca (The Walters Art Museum); and Felege-Selam Yirga (University of Tennessee, Knoxville). The workshop is convened by Aaron Butts (University of Hamburg) and represents a collaborative endeavor between his ERC-funded project “BeInf—Beyond Influence: The Connected Histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity” (hosted at the University of Hamburg) and Dumbarton Oaks.