Veteran Ethiopian Philologist, Linguist Passes Away

(ENA) The veteran Ethiopian philologist and linguist of modern and ancient Ethiopian languages and literature, Professor Getachew Haile, has passed away at the age of 90.

The professor was a philologist and linguist of modern and ancient Ethiopian languages and literature, whose research and publications help to preserve Ethiopian and Oriental Christian traditions.

Haile was the Regents Professor of Medieval Studies and Cataloguer of Oriental Manuscripts at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, which supports, among other projects, a landmark microfilming effort aimed at making ancient literature more accessible for scholarly investigation.

He has cataloged more than 5,000 manuscripts and published ten catalogues describing these Ethiopic manuscripts on microfilm.

Among the manuscripts are the oldest texts of virtually every book of the Ethiopic Old Testament, including important intertestamental books such as the Book of Enoch, which survived in its entirety only in Ethiopia.

He has also written many articles on Ethiopian studies.

He taught for over ten years at the Haile Sellassie I (now Addis Ababa) University in Ethiopia, before he moved to the United States in 1976. Haile was a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.

Source: Ethiopia News Agency