Ethiopic Colophons: An Update

Ethiopic colophons are still an understudied subject among the broader field of the codex manuscript cultures of East and West. The Christian Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscript tradition in Gǝʿǝz language provides a rich, still unsystematically studied documentation of colophons. While the earliest extant colophons date to the thirteenth century, the phenomenon is certainly older. In some periods and monastic environments it has enjoyed a particular fortune and shows a tendency to the expansion. As marker of material and/or textual production, the colophon is related and at times overlaps with the phenomenon of the title and supplication.