The Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library consists of over 9,000 manuscripts microfilmed in Ethiopia from 1973 to 1994. The impact that this collection has had upon Ethiopian Studies is difficult to fully describe as these microfilms dramatically increased the number of manuscripts accessible to scholarship.

Catalog work on this collection began in Ethiopia under the direction of Dr. Sergew Hable Selassie. His metadata serves as the foundation for this work. The cataloging effort of EMML at HMML began with Dr. William F. Macomber. He cataloged the first 1100 manuscripts of the collection in volumes 1-3 of the catalog series. After assisting Macomber with volume 3, Dr. Getatchew Haile continued cataloging the EMML collection with manuscripts 1101-5000 in volumes 4-10 and an additional nine hundred manuscripts in an unpublished volume 11. Ted Erho continued the cataloging work for EMML manuscripts with numbers higher than EMML 5904 and he cataloged over 130 manuscripts directly into Reading Room. Moreover, Ted Erho, Dr. Ralph Lee, and Dr. Jeremy R. Brown have added metadata and additional cataloging data for thousands of the EMML manuscripts cataloged by Macomber and Getatchew Haile. The digitization of manuscripts and metadata creation are now complete for EMML volumes 1-4, which accounts for the first 1,500 manuscripts microfilmed by the project. All these manuscripts are now available in Reading Room.

The first 1,500 manuscripts in EMML are a treasure trove from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. These manuscripts include biblical manuscripts, hymn and chant books, liturgical texts for the life of the church, hagiographies of saints, and chronicles of Ethiopian history.

Of particular value to scholars of the Bible are EMML 25 and EMML 26, two manuscripts that were copied at Gunda Gundē Monastery, came into the possession of a bookseller in Addis Ababa, and now are preserved in the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University.

Another important contribution to scholarship is the quantity of manuscripts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that provide insight into the copying work of the royal scriptoriums in those centuries. EMML 217 is a wonderful example of a manuscript of the Life of Stephen copied at the command of Empress Zawditu and donated to a church dedicated to that same saint, Dabra Salām Qeddus Esṭifānos Church in Addis Ababa.

Another remarkable manuscript is EMML 76, a richly illuminated copy of the Miracles of Mary with over 300 stories about the wondrous acts performed by the Virgin Mary. This manuscript’s paintings depict Emperor Menilek and Empress Ṭāytu alongside scenes of the Virgin Mary’s life.

The EMML collection has already revealed numerous important and remarkable manuscripts and will certainly continue to do so as even more of these microfilms are digitized and studied.