Recueil des inscriptions de l'Éthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite

In the early seventies A. J. Drewes (d.2007), R. Schneider (d.2002), and É. Bernand (d.2013), with Anfray, started a cooperation in a project aiming at the publication of a complete corpus of ancient Ethiopian inscriptions. In 1991 they published the first two volumes (I and II) of the Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite with the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Diffusion de Boccard) in Paris. A third volume of translation and commentary of the Greek inscriptions edited by Bernand appeared in 2000 (III, A). The present volume (III, B), authored by A. J. Drewes and posthumously edited by M. Kropp and H. Stroomer, completes this major enterprise. It contains the translations and commentaries of all the Semitic inscriptions presented in volumes I and II. These three volumes (I, II, and III B) altogether offer both a complete overview as well as an in-depth study of all Ethiopian Semitic inscriptions known so far. They are written in Sabaean and in an old form of Classical Ethiopic or Gǝʿǝz, a language still in use in modern Ethiopia as the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawāḥǝdo Church. The book is a major reference work for specialists in Ethiopian Semitic languages and Ethiopian history and archaeology, for specialists in Epigraphic South Arabian as well as for those interested in Comparative Semitic linguistics.