The Ge'ez Language and Literature: From Biblical Tradition to Digital Memory

This research explores the profound civilizational, literary, and spiritual significance of the Ge'ez language and its enduring heritage in shaping Ethiopian identity. At the foundation of this legacy lies the unique Ethiopian Biblical Tradition, most notably embodied in the preservation of canonical and apocryphal texts that survived exclusively within the Ethiopic corpus. The study examines how Ge'ez literature—encompassing hagiographies, poetry, historical chronicles, and theological treatises—laid the literary, lexical, and moral foundation for modern Ethiopic languages, particularly Amharic. Furthermore, it highlights the pivotal role of Greek and Coptic-Arabic literary heritage in shaping Ge'ez literature. Amid contemporary geopolitical shifts and complex multilingual policies in Ethiopia, Ge'ez has transcended ecclesiastical boundaries to become a potent symbol of national identity and cognitive empowerment. Finally, the paper reviews emerging technological solutions for safeguarding this two-millennium-old linguistic heritage, demonstrating how artificial intelligence, manuscript digitization, and neural machine translation (NMT) can preserve and revitalize Ge'ez manuscripts, bridging ancient spiritual roots with modern digital memory.

Gəʿəz (also written Geʿez) is the classical literary and liturgical language of Ethiopia and Eritrea and preserves one of the most important manuscript traditions of ancient and medieval Christianity. The Ethiopian biblical tradition includes translations, textual forms, interpretive traditions, hagiography, liturgy, and other works transmitted through Gəʿəz manuscripts. The study of Gəʿəz is therefore important not only for Ethiopian and African studies, but also for biblical textual history, Christian literature, comparative Semitic studies, manuscript studies, and the reception of biblical and parabiblical traditions.

Prof. Marwa Ibrahim Eid's research is especially relevant to this field because it combines Ethiopic literary studies with comparative work on Coptic, Christian, Jewish, and broader Oriental literary traditions.

Prof. Dr. Marwa Ibrahim Eid Mohamed is a scholar of Ethiopic literature in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. Her specialization is Ethiopic (Gəʿəz) literature, and her research encompasses Ethiopian literary history, Gəʿəz texts, Ethiopian Christian literature, hagiography, the relationship between Ethiopic and Coptic literary traditions, Beta Israel/Falasha literature, Amharic literature, and the preservation of Ethiopic literary heritage.

Her academic training was completed at Cairo University. She earned her undergraduate degree in 2005 in the Department of Oriental Languages, Semitic Languages branch, followed by an M.A. in 2011 and a Ph.D. in 2015 from the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University.

Her language background includes Gəʿəz, Amharic, Syriac, and Hebrew, as well as research competence in additional European languages. Her recent work also addresses the role of artificial intelligence and natural-language technologies in the preservation of Ethiopic literary heritage.