Öffentlicher Vortrag im Rahmen der Summer School „Working in Manuscript Studies: Traditional and New Approaches, with a focus on the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition “ vom 04. bis 15.09.2023

Ethiopian manuscripts have been preserved in large numbers, but the description of bindings and binding decoration is relatively underdeveloped, especially compared to its European and Mediterranean analogues. With the explosion of availability of manuscripts via digital surrogates using the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)—including very substantial numbers of manuscripts being hosted by the Beta maṣāḥǝft project—the time has come not only to expand the description of Ethiopian binding decoration, but to re-image how we catalogue this material, taking all advantage of the rich possibilities for referencing and linking data. Madgwas is a project to address this need, cataloguing and describing features of Ethiopian binding decoration holistically. Taking advantage of the newest tools in digital manuscript studies, it reimagines the catalogue of binding decoration: in a field typified by small sample sizes and fragmented and non-comparative work, Madgwas catalogues not highly-selected exemplars, but instances of all features in every manuscript they appear in, linked to the original manuscript image and region. This allows for a comparability based on real, auditable patterns in the data, rather than patterns being fit into pre-existing moulds. Complementing this is a new, more-objective method for describing the typology of binding decoration, since traditional naming paradigms have obscured a much wider variety of patterns than previously believed. Furthering the focus on comparability, the catalogue is designed from the start to employ Linked Open Data practices and follow FAIR principles.

The research is funded through the ERC Project “From Digital to Distant Diplomatics”.

Please let us know if you would like to attend by sending us an email to aethiopistik(at)uni-hamburg.de with your name and affiliation before September 1, 2023.

We shall be offering an online stream via Zoom; please specify if you are not able to come in person but would like to receive the Zoom link.

Wednesday, 6 September 2023
17:00 CEST
Universität Hamburg
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Western Wing, Room 221
20146 Hamburg
(also on Zoom)