Why the Global Academy Is Turning to Ge’ez











The Classical Turn to Africa: Ge’ez Studies in the Global Academy

For more than a century, “the classics” largely meant Greece and Rome. Latin and Greek formed the twin pillars of the Western humanities, while other ancient traditions were relegated to the margins—important, perhaps, but not foundational. That definition is changing. A genuine classical turn to Africa is underway, and at its leading edge is Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic), the liturgical and literary language of Ethiopia and Eritrea. With a written tradition that spans two millennia—from royal inscriptions and biblical translations to chronicles, legal codes, and philosophical treatises—Ge’ez is no longer a niche pursuit. It has become a test case for what a decolonized, globally inclusive vision of antiquity can look like.

This expansion is not happening in a vacuum. It is propelled by three converging forces: the unmatched richness of the Ge’ez corpus; the digitization wave that has made that corpus newly accessible to scholars worldwide; and a normative shift in the academy that insists the deep past be studied as a multi-centred world, not a Mediterranean monopoly. Together they are remapping the intellectual terrain of “the classical” and revealing Ethiopia and Eritrea as key interlocutors in the histories of late antiquity, the medieval Near East, and the early modern world.

The Global Cartography of Ge’ez Studies

An international infrastructure now sustains Ge’ez studies, with complementary strengths that run from philology and manuscript preservation to pedagogy and public engagement.

Europe’s philological bedrock

Modern Ethiopic studies in Europe were built by long-running programs that treat Ge’ez with the same rigor accorded to Latin or Akkadian. The University of Hamburg’s Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies has anchored the field through large collaborative enterprises—most visibly Beta maṣāḥǝft, a long-horizon research environment that documents manuscripts, texts, and persons across the Ethiopic tradition, alongside degree pathways in Ethiopian/Eritrean Studies. Uppsala University’s Department of Linguistics and Philology offers recurring courses in Classical Ethiopic (Ge’ez) with published syllabi stretching back a decade. The University of Warsaw integrates introductory Ge’ez with manuscript and literary culture. KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt runs the Eastern Christian Studies Online Campus, widening access to Ge’ez via distance formats. L’Orientale (Naples) maintains teaching and research in Ethiopic, including a current “Lingue Geʾez e Amarica I” course and national cataloguing projects of Ethiopic manuscripts.

North America’s nexus of manuscripts, pedagogy, and preservation

In North America, growth clusters around collections, pedagogy, and preservation. Princeton couples language teaching with the PEMM digital humanities project and publicly states it holds the largest Gəʿəz manuscript collection in the Americas. The University of Washington lists GEEZ 101 (schedules vary by term). Harvard’s African Language Program includes Ge’ez among its languages. The University of Chicago regularly offers advanced Ge’ez text courses.

Ethiopian epicenters: guardians of a living tradition

Inside Ethiopia, custodianship and revival proceed in tandem. Addis Ababa University’s Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) is a primary national repository and international digitization partner, enabling broad scholarly access to Ge’ez manuscripts. Bahir Dar University is pushing an immersion model and has expanded to doctoral-level training in Ge’ez. Sankt Ignatios College (Sweden), tied closely to the Tewahedo tradition, also runs Ge’ez Levels I–II with hybrid/online delivery—an important bridge for diaspora learners.

Where to study Ge’ez: selected programs worldwide (2025)

Note: Offerings change by semester; always verify current catalogs.

The Corpus and Its Stakes: Why Ge’ez Matters

Ge’ez is not just a language with a literature. It is a literature that reorganizes what we think the ancient and medieval worlds were.

Early Abrahamic traditions, uniquely preserved

Some Second Temple Jewish works survive in full only in Ge’ez—most famously the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. Their Ethiopic witnesses are indispensable for reconstructing early Jewish theology and for understanding the intellectual environment of nascent Christianity. The early Ge’ez Bible translation—among the earliest into any language—signals the Aksumite kingdom’s integration into a transregional Christian literary sphere and positions Ethiopia as a producer, not merely a consumer, of scriptural culture.

Epics and law as technologies of state-building

Two Ge’ez classics helped constitute imperial Ethiopia. The Kebra Nagast (“Glory of Kings”), compiled in the fourteenth century, forged a Solomonic genealogy that linked Ethiopian kingship to biblical Israel and the Ark of the Covenant. The Fetha Nagast (“Law of the Kings”) braided biblical norms, patristic writings, and Byzantine legal thought into a comprehensive code used for centuries. Together they show literature and law working in tandem to build a polity.

Hagiography as archive

Ge’ez hagiographic cycles (Gädl) are not simply devotional literature; they are archives of social, monastic, and regional history. Translated compilations tie Ethiopia to Coptic and Syriac martyrologies, while indigenous lives display sophisticated rhetoric and narrative craft—yielding evidence on kinship, movement, and micro-politics across the Red Sea and Nile corridors.

The Linguistic Keystone of the Horn

Ge’ez, a South Semitic language written in a fully vocalized abugida (fidel), preserves phonological and morphological distinctions invaluable for historical linguistics. Popular shorthand casts Ge’ez as “the Latin of Amharic,” but the scholarly picture is sisterhood, not straight parentage: Ge’ez, Tigrinya, and Tigre descend from a common ancestor, while Amharic stems from another Ethio-Semitic branch. Prestige and liturgy, however, seeded heavy Ge’ez influence across modern Ethio-Semitic languages.

Ge’ez in the Twenty-First Century: Decolonization, Digitization, Revival

Digitization has moved the field from possession to access. Platforms like PEMM and Beta maṣāḥǝft turn dispersed holdings into interoperable datasets; preservation partners in Ethiopia ensure local stewardship. New frontiers—morphology tools and HTR models—are converting images into searchable text, changing what kinds of questions scholars can ask. Meanwhile, debates inside Ethiopia over introducing Ge’ez into public curricula underscore the need for inclusive, community-led policy design. Pedagogically, demand is outpacing materials; the field needs open, digitally native readers, parsers, and exercises to meet today’s students.

What Success Looks Like: A Programmatic Agenda

Pedagogy at parity — commission modular, open textbooks; build browser-based morphology/reader tools; share teaching ancillaries.

Collections as classrooms — link courses to curated, digitized micro-archives for hands-on palaeography and editing.

Interdisciplinary bridges — seed joint projects across law, Islamic/Christian studies, and computational linguistics.

Ethics and equity — co-design with Ethiopian partners; share credit, data, and infrastructure.

Public engagement & diaspora — audit tracks, weekend intensives, and certification to translate learning into service.

Conclusion: Redrawing the Map of the Classical

The rise of Ge’ez studies is remapping the ancient world. Ethiopic witnesses to Enoch and Jubilees reshape Abrahamic prehistory; the Kebra Nagast and Fetha Nagast reposition epic and law; hagiography reveals a networked Horn of Africa intertwined with the Red Sea world. Digitization has unlocked access; now pedagogy and equitable partnerships must consolidate the gains. If the aim of classical study is to illuminate durable ideas and institutions, Ge’ez belongs at the centre of that conversation—not as an add-on, but as a core strand in antiquity’s global weave.