Ethiopian Psalter. Seventeenth century.

The Library maintains several study centers for its special microfilm collections. One such center represents the Ethiopian collection. Over 7,500 Ethiopian Orthodox Christian manuscripts are preserved on microfilm at HMML. Ethiopian monks have continued the practice of handwriting and recopying ancient texts to the present day. These manuscripts are of particular interest to modern biblical scholars because a number of them preserve religious text that were destroyed or lost in the medieval West. This seventeenth-century psalter was written on parchment in the ancient Ge'ez language and script still used in the Ethiopian Church. From the Franklin H. Williams collection.