African Folktales at Internet Archive: Kebra Nagast

For today's epic post (see all this week's epic posts on one page), I'm going to shift back in time with the great national epic of Ethiopia, composed in written form in the 14th century: here's the Kebra Nagast, translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, just a click away at Internet Archive. The full title gives you a sense of what this amazing book is about: The Queen of Sheba and her only son Menyelek; being the history of the departure of God and His Ark of the covenant from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, and the establishment of the religion of the Hebrews and the Solomonic line of kings in that country.

Because this translation is in the public domain, it's available at a variety of online libraries, in addition to Internet Archive; here's a chapter-by-chapter list of links to the Sacred Texts online publication. You can find out more at Wikipedia, and also at this information page for Columbia's World Epics: Kebra Nagast. 

Another useful book about this tradition is by Enno Littmann (whom you might remember from this earlier post: Tales, Customs, Names, and Dirges of the Tigre Tribe); this book focuses on the Queen of Sheba portion of the story: The Legend of the Queen of Sheba in the Tradition of Axum, also just a click away at Internet Archive; the "Axum" of the title refers to the ancient Kingdom of Axum (Aksum) in what is today Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. 

This illustration shows the Menelik, the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, son bearing the ark:

And here are two more books that might be of interest on this topic, both available online; Post Wheeler's book is at Internet Archive, while Bessie van Vorst's book is at Hathi Trust.

The Golden Legend of Ethiopia:

The Love Story of Maqeda,

Virgin Queen of Axum and Sheba, 

and Solomon the Great King

by Post Wheeler

Magda, Queen of Sheba

by Bessie van Vorst

So, plunge into this wealth of epic storytelling from Ethiopia; some great books await you online!

Kebra Nagast

by E. A. Wallis Budge

The Legend of the Queen of Sheba

in the Tradition of Axum

by Enno Littmann

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Tales, Customs, Names, and Dirges of the Tigre Tribe

For today's book, I want to across the continent to eastern Africa, featuring a monumental collection of folktales published in 1915: Tales, Customs, Names, and Dirges of the Tigre Tribes by Enno Littmann. Because this book is in the public domain, it is available at any time, not just for digital checkout.

This is Volume 2 of "The Princeton Expedition to Abyssinia" (which took place in 1905), and it contains 125 folktales translated into English. Many of the stories are animal tales and, beware, Littmann has rendered the Tigray word hashil or "jackal" with the word "fox" as the jackal is playing a role similar to the role played by the clever fox in European folktales. So, if you see a fox, that's really a jackal!

Volume 1, which is also available at Internet Archive, contains the Tigre text of the stories.  

Volume 2 includes some photographs as well, such as these pictures showing how young women wore their hair:

and this photograph of bread-making:

As you can see from the book title, this dates back to when Abyssinia was used for the name of the countries now known as Ethiopia and Eritrea; the English name Abyssinia comes from the Arabic al-Habash. The Tigray region, which is where these stories come from, is in northern Ethiopia, inhabited by the Tirgrayan people who speak the Tigrinya language. You've probably been reading about the Tigray conflict in the news.

So, if you would like to learn something about the Tigrayan people and their traditions, this monumental book of stories is ready for you to read and explore!

Tales, Customs, Names, and Dirges

of the Tigre Tribes

by Enno Littmann