The TEI-XML Architecture of Ethiopian Manuscript
Archives: Respecting the Integrity of Primary Sourcesand Asserting Editorial ChoicesAnaïs Wion, Centre National de la recherche scientifique, Institut des Mondes Africains
The paper illustrates the choices made by the Ethiopian Manuscript Archives collaborative project when defining the TEI-XML schema and architecture for theencoding of charters and similar documentary texts transmitted within Ethiopian
manuscripts.

The Ethiopian Manuscript Archives (EMA) is a collaborative project carriedout by historians and philologists working on manuscript documents producedby the Ethiopian Christian kingdom between the tenth and the twentieth centuries. It was developed at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes(IRHT, Paris)1 thanks to a grant from the Agence nationale de la recherche(ANR-Cornafrique) between 2010 and 2012.
Medieval and early modern Ethiopian archives and electronic editing tools
Ethiopian manuscript archives is a general term encompassing administrative,
juridical, and historical texts, which were produced by the Ethiopian politicaland religious authorities to proclaim their laws, rules and traditions. The term‘archives’ is to be thought of in a very wide sense—practical writings, legal
and pseudo-legal writings, local or would-be ‘universal’ historiography—andalso as standing in juxtaposition to religious and literary texts. The producersof these documents were the royal, and, to a lesser degree, religious administrations. Private acts were issued comparatively late, from the mid-eighteenth
century or a little earlier. Several thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of such documents of diverse character, constitute a coherent corpus ofprimary sources, so far largely under-exploited. One of the reason for this is
the fact that these documents are spread in blank spaces within the liturgicaland biblical manuscripts of monasteries and churches of the Ethiopian highlands, as well as in the Ethiopian manuscripts collections of the Western libraries. Ethiopian ancient archives are literally dissolved inside the libraries.2
Establishing ways of publishing and analysing these documents is thuspart of an approach, innovative in so far as it draws on digital technologies,
1 <http://www.cn-telma.fr/>, accessed 29 May 2018.
2 See the special issue of Northeast African Studies, 11/2 (2011) on the topics of Ethiopian archives, edited by Anaïs Wion and gathering articles by Donald Crummey,Manfred Kropp, Claire Bosc-Tiessé and Marie-Laure Derat, Deresse Ayenachew,Anaïs Wion, and Paul Bertrand.

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Au verso du premier folio de garde,<hi rend="it">ex-libris</hi>
de la main d'Antoine d'Abbadie : ዝንቱ፡ መጽሐፍ፡ ክብረ፡ ነገሥት። ወታሪከ፡ ነገሥት፡ ዘገብሩ፡ ለአድባር፡ ዘቅዱሳን። ወመጽሐፈ፡ ትርታግ፡ ንጉሠ፡ አርማንያ።ወመጽሐፈ፡ ያዕቆብ፡ ጳጳስ፡ አንቀጸ፡ አሚን። ወለዝ፡ ኵሉ፡ ዘአጽሐፎ፡ አንጦንስ፡ ፈረንሳዊ፡ በሊሐ፡ ልሳን። (L’éloquent Antoine de France a fait copier ceslivres du Kebra Nagaśt, et de l’Histoire des Rois en ce qui concerne les impôts (<term type="act">gabru</term>) pour les monastères des saints, et ce livre de Tertāg roi d’Arménie, et ce livre de la Porte de la Foi (<title xml:lang="gez">Anqaṣa Amin</title>) par l’évêque Jacques.) Par ailleurs, les deux premiers textes ont été entièrement relus par Antoine d'Abbadie qui y apporte denombreuses corrections. On peut donc penser qu'il eut accès au codex ayant servi de source pour collationner cette copie.
<list><item xml:id="a1" n="01"><!-ici je rajoute un @ n que je remplis manuellement, à partir de 01--><locus target="#58va"/><title xml:lang="fra">
Clause d’immunité émise par le roi Galāwdēwos (1540-59) en faveur du monastère de Wāldebbā</title><note type="résumé">...</note><note type="scientifique">...</note><date type="production" notAfter="1559" notBefore="1540">1540-59</date><q xml:lang="gez"><seg ana="#invocation" type="interpretation">በአኰቴተ፡ አብ፡ ወወልድ፡ ወመንፈስ፡ ቅዱስ፡</seg><seg ana="#provision" type="interpretation">አነ፡ ሠራዕኩ፡ ወአውገዝኩ፡ ለሰብአ፡ ገዳም፡ ዘዋልድባ</seg>
፡<seg ana="#suscription" type="interpretation">አነ፡ ንጉሥ፡ ገላውዴዎስ፡ ዘተሰመይኩ፡ አጽናፍ፡ ሰገድ፡</seg><seg ana="#clauses" type="interpretation">ከመ፡ ኢይቅረብ፡ ፩፡ ዘኢነበረ፡ ውስተ፡ ገዳም፡ በአፈ፡ አብ፡ ወወልድ፡ ወመንፈስ፡ ቅዱስ፡ ወበአፈ፡ ፲ወ፭፡ ነቢያት፡ ወ፲ወ፪፡ ሐዋርያት፡ ወበአፈ፡ እግዝእትነ፡ማርያም፡ ወላዲተ፡ አምላክ፡</seg><seg ana="#clauses" type="interpretation">ከመ፡ ኢይባዕ፡ ጕልት፡ ውጉዘ፡ ይኩን፡ በሥልጣኖሙ፡ ለጴጥሮስ፡ ወጳውሎስ፡</seg><seg ana="#clauses" type="interpretation">ወከመ፡ ኢይፍሐቅ፡ ዘንተ፡ ዘተጽሕፈ፡ ኀብ፡ ዝንቱ፡ መጽሐፈ፡ መንግሥት።።።</seg></q><q xml:lang="fr">À la gloire du Père, du Fils et du Saint Esprit. J’ai légiféré sous peine d’excommunication pour les gens du monastère de<placeName type="religious-institution" ref="place.xml#L002">Wāldebbā</placeName>, moi,<persName ref="pers.xml#p002"><name>Galāwdēwos</name>qui ait pris le nom d’<addName>Aṣnāf Sagad</addName></persName>, afin que celui qui ne résiderait pas dans ce monastère n’en approche pas par la bouche du Père, du Fils et du Saint Esprit,et par la bouche des quinze prophètes et par la bouche des douze apôtres et par la bouche de Notre Dame Marie mère deDieu. Afin qu’il ne pénètre pas dans ce<term>gʷelt</term>
qu’il soit excommunié par le pouvoir de Pierre et de Paul. Et afin que l’on n’efface pas ceci qui a été écrit dans ce<term>maṣḥafa mangeśt</term><ptr target="#note3-1"/>.
</q><note xml:id="note3-1" n="1" type="traduction">...</note><listRelation>Anaïs WionFig. 1. XML mark-up of a document (BNFabb152#a2).

and classical by its situation within the tradition of diplomatics. The electronic
publication of these documents has a number of objectives in mind: gathering, editing, translating, annotating, analysing these primary sources. EMA
privileges the use of the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) mark-up, a versatilelanguage that can report on the different states of a text: its content, its materiality, and also the intention, notes, comments of all the authors, scribes,readers, other users, including the scholars participating to the digital edition.
Indeed, one of the main scientific assets of TEI mark-up is that data can beextracted directly from the document. Encoding preserves the integrity of thetext while generating layers of enriched data.3 It offers also the possibility ofinteroperability, and guarantees that this publication of sources will evolve inharmony with tools and practices in international use. A starting collaboration
with the project Beta maṣāḥǝft at Hamburg has proven that interoperability is
not an empty word.
Metadata architecture: sticking to the facts and promoting scientific choices
Structuring the metadata is the first scientific choice, in the limit of what thestandard allows, of course. Resulting from a collaboration between myself,Anaïs Wion (IMAF-CNRS), Cyril Masset (IRHT-CNRS) and Lou Burnard(formerly consultant for TGE Adonis at CNRS, now TGIR Huma-Num), the3 Always worth reading: Burnard 2014.
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35Fig. 2. View of a charter with transcription, translation, and commentary, the formulaic
elements are highlighted (as appearing on <http://betamasaheft.eu> portal).

architecture chosen for the XML files in the EMA project respects the materiality of the documentation and allows the authors to create their own scientificcollections. TEI deals with each level of the project, which are: text, manuscript, and corpus.
The textual document is the main item. It is the smallest semantic unit.
It is encoded with a <msItem> and receives an @xml:id. Such a ‘textual document’ can be for instance a land charter, a list of kings, a private transfer ofland property and so on. Each document is transcribed and translated. Semantic encoding (dates, place-names, names of persons, and so on) is strictly doneon the text itself and not on the paratextual elements (see fig. 1, the semantic
mark-up is conducted on the translation). The aim is to extract data from theprimary source only, or at least to allow the readers to search through indexes
and understand if the information is extracted from the primary sources or,in some cases, from elements added by the external sources. Another type of
encoding wants to highlight the structure of the diplomatic discourse, using
some <seg> tags. It concerns mainly the charters, which are very formalized
documents (see fig. 1 for the XML mark-up on transcription and fig. 2 forthe possible visualization). Then, the textual document is described by two
different types of notes. One is a simple summary, with no other information
than the one provided by the document itself (following the diplomatic classical tradition of the ‘regest’). The other type, often much more elaborate, is ascientific note. This is where the analysis of the author can be displayed (fig.
3).
We decided not to impose any taxonomy for categorization (using labels such as ‘charter’, ‘list’, ‘contract’ and so on), but instead to mark up
systematically the ‘technical vocabulary’ used by the documents themselves.
Terms used to refer to land, to transaction, to taxation, to legal and archival
practices, etc. are therefore encoded and serve as index keys to navigate thecorpus (fig. 4). Here again, the philosophy is to reduce as much as possible
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Fig. 3. View of the reproduction, the summary, and the scientific note accompanying aland charter (as appearing on the EMA portal).

Fig. 4. The EMA filters for the ‘technical vocabulary’.

external description and let the primary source display the material for theirunderstanding.
Each of those textual items remains linked to the manuscript in which itis copied. Each manuscript is described in a separate XML file, the digital unit
corresponding to the material unit. This metadata architecture was selected
to stress that archival documents are spread across the manuscripts. Archival
documents in Christian medieval and early modern Ethiopia have been preserved because churches and monasteries played the role of archival centres,
most of the time for their own benefit but sometimes also at a regional level,
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37

and the main media for copying and preserving pragmatic documents werepre-existing manuscripts. This feature has to be better understood, and forthat it should be painstakingly documented. So far, the choices regarding thearchitecture of the metadata have scrupulously followed the materiality of thedocumentation. To put it simply: no document can be separated from the codex in which it is copied, and the codex is considered the main documentaryentity.
Being an editorial project, EMA had to provide a solution going beyond
the scrupulous respect of the factual reality and offer the liberty of choices andself-determination to the scholars working in it. They are considered as authors and editors of their own corpus: they gather different manuscripts with
their documents, arrange them in a collection, and are in charge of their own
scientific project (fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Description of archives crediting the authorship (detail, as appearing on <http://betamasaheft.eu> portal).

TEI-XML is much more than an editing tool
Scientific expectations from EMA, which we hope will be revived by thecollaboration with the Beta maṣāḥǝft project, are numerous. The first one is toedit documents that have been used extensively for a long time, often without
thinking sufficiently about what they really are, and often using a small fraction of the huge existing body of documentation. Yet, simple editing and index
generation would not be a sufficient reason in order to engage in such a longand sometimes complicated process of encoding in TEI-XML. The potential
this encoding offers is far too often under-used, and the wide possibilites areworth thinking about. For instance, using the tags related to the identity ofpersons and linking those tags with a time-line, with a space dimension, andCOMSt Bulletin 4/1 (2018)38Anaïs WionFig. 6. Explicit and implicit relations of ‘Lǝbna Dǝngǝl’, including those provided bythe EMA project (as appearing on <http://betamasaheft.eu> portal).

with social networks, one could significantly improve the prosopography of
Ethiopian medieval and early modern society (fig. 6). Mapping the territories
that the charters and other land documents mention would also be of great
help to understand Ethiopian land tenure and the political and economic issues at stake when controlling the land. But here, again, first of all one has toencode strictly what the documents say, and thus gradually gather enough dataon the type of lands and tenure throughout time and space.
Generic tools for manipulating encoded texts are so far scarce, and notevery scholar wants to learn XPath and XQuery in order to interrogate his or
her own material. Yet there is little doubt that encoding is a rewarding intellectual activity and shall be even more so in the future. The multiplication ofexperiences and the dialogue between projects is for sure a sign of dynamism
and it creates the conditions for building a common culture in digital humanities.
References

Burnard, L. 2014. What is the Text Encoding Initiative? How to add intelligent
markup to digital resources (Marseille: OpenEdition Press, 2014) <http://books.openedition.org/oep/426>.
Wion, A., ed., 2011. Northeast African Studies, 11/2 = Special Issue: Production,Preservation, and Use of Ethiopian Archives (Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries) (2011) <http://msupress.org/journals/issue/?id=50-21D-55C>.

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