Abyssinian Orthodox UniversityOpen KnowledgeA curated gateway to the world’s openly accessible digitised collections of Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscripts — where to find them, what they hold, and how to read them.
The Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands hold one of the world’s great manuscript civilisations — tens of thousands of Ge’ez codices in churches, monasteries, and libraries. Over recent decades, scholars and institutions have begun to photograph and catalogue this heritage and place it within reach of everyone.
This archive is a curated finding-aid. We do not host or own these images; we point you to the trusted institutions that have digitised them, explain what each holds and how to enter, and connect their manuscripts to the translations in our Open Library. The work of the scribe, continued by the work of the curator.
These are not links that send you away — they are living Ge’ez manuscripts you can open and turn, page by page, without leaving this site. Each is a public-domain codex from the Ethiopian Manuscript Collection of Princeton Theological Seminary, served through the Internet Archive.
A long-term (2016–2040) scholarly research environment at the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies, Universität Hamburg, cataloguing the manuscript tradition of Ethiopia and Eritrea in open TEI data. The best place to identify a work, its author, and its surviving witnesses.
Visit collection →The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library has digitised 50,000+ manuscripts worldwide, including the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) of 9,000+ Ge’ez codices. Viewing is free with a no-cost account; the images remain under the rights of the holding institutions. Create a free account, then search ‘Ethiopic’ or the EMML collection to open the folios.
Visit collection →Public-domain digitised editions, translations, catalogues, and grammars of Ge’ez texts — fully readable and downloadable. Search the subject ‘Ethiopic’ to begin.
Visit collection →The Bibliothèque nationale de France holds over 1,000 Ethiopic manuscripts, a great many digitised in Gallica at full resolution. Search ‘manuscrits éthiopiens’.
Visit collection →The Vatican Apostolic Library’s 1,000+ Ethiopic codices (shelfmark Vat. et.) are being progressively digitised at high resolution and are free to view.
Visit collection →Selected Ethiopic manuscripts and a deep reference collection on Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Ge’ez literature, with a growing body of digitised material.
Visit collection →Our curation is openly licensed. The descriptions, annotations, and study notes on this page are © Abyssinian Orthodox University and released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — free to reuse, adapt, and share with attribution. The manuscript images themselves belong to their holding institutions under their own terms.