Q&A: Eyob Derillo– Literatures of the Horn of Africa, a conversation series

By Africa in Words Guest on 1 June , 2023 • ( 0 )

AiW Guests
Interviewers: Jiali Chen, Josephine Stanton, George Ackerley, Natalia Bielecka
Interviewee: Eyob Derillo
Interview date: 12 January 2022.

AiW note: This is one in a series of interviews carried out by undergraduate students as part of the module “Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali literatures in global intellectual history,” taught by Dr Sara Marzagora in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures of King’s College London in the 2021-2022 academic year. The interview scripts have been transcribed and first-edited by Nadira Ibrahim, who holds a first-class English degree from King’s College London and is proud to have contributed to the wider scholarly discussion surrounding these important literatures.

Eyob Derillo holds a Bachelor’s degree in History of Art and Archaeology from the SOAS University of London, a Masters of Arts in Film Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, and is currently completing his doctorate at SOAS in the department of Religions and Philosophies. His doctoral research focuses on the nature and historical development of the concept of Ethiopian ‘magic’ and its use within a specifically Christian context.

Derillo is the Curator for the Ethiopic and Ethiopian Collections at the British Library, where he is responsible for the library’s collections of printed Ethiopian books and Ethiopian manuscripts produced from 13th to early 20th century. He curated the British Library’s exhibition “African Scribes: Manuscript Culture of Ethiopia” (2018), the first exhibition to be held at the Library devoted entirely to Ethiopian manuscripts. Derillo’s specializations include: Ethiopian Manuscripts, Modern and Contemporary Ethiopian Literature; Ethiopian Codicology, medical and magical; Ethiopian history from the 15th-19th century; Ethiopian manuscript illumination and Geez literature; and liturgical and hagiographical texts of the Medieval period.

Josephine Stanton (to Eyob Derillo, for KCL): To begin, could you introduce yourself and briefly describe your main area of interest?

Eyob Derillo: My name is Eyob Derillo. I’m a curator at the British Library. My job title is “Curator for Ethiopic and Ethiopian Collection”. The title of my job covers not only printed books but also heritage material such as manuscripts.

My background in Egyptian studies is quite broad and I’m also very much interested in Ethiopian history, literature and magic. I’m currently working on producing a critical edition of Ethiopian manuscripts, which also touches a bit on philology.

George Ackerley: What made you choose this field to study and work in?

Eyob Derillo: My undergraduate degree was in History of Art and Archaeology of Africa and Asia at SOAS University of London. We partly covered Ethiopia but we mostly focused on Asia and the Middle East. When we did study Ethiopian art it was always from a Western perspective that I felt lacked depth. I was very much interested in Ethiopian culture and I read many Amharic books. I wasn’t really satisfied with western art historians who wrote about Ethiopia from a very derogative point of view.

My main interest began when I started getting really into the talismanic arts of Ethiopian amulet scrolls. These manuscripts themselves were very unique and most of these images were very abstract. It wasn’t clear whether they were just iconography or sending messages. Later, I began reading the work of a French scholar called Jacques Mercier, who is a good friend. When I started reading his work on talismanic art and Ethiopian amulet scrolls, I realised that the knowledge of this Ethiopian art was so lost in time. I felt however, that the only way to understand those talisman works was through understanding the roles of the scribes who produced this material — that’s what got the ball rolling.

Josephine Stanton: Earlier you mentioned that Ethiopia is often seen through a Western lens: how did Britain come to possess these manuscripts in the first place?

Eyob Derillo: Those that are part of what is known as the Maqdala Collection, held by the British Museum, were taken in 1868 during the attack on Maqdala, the northern fortress, library, and treasury of the Emperor Tewodros II. This battle was the culmination of the British Expedition to Abyssinia, a large-scale military action against Tewodros carried out in 1868 by the armed forces of the British Empire against the Ethiopian Empire (also known at the time as Abyssinia).

It was a rescue mission and a punitive expedition — the word “punitive” was used a lot in the Victorian period – purely to punish Tewodros; it was never a question of possessions, or owning land or territories. Actually, there had been a strong relationship between the two Christian kingdoms of Britain and Ethiopia.

However, there was a misunderstanding between Emperor Tewodros and Queen Victoria: he had sent her a letter requesting assistance in military training so he could defend and retain control of his regional strongholds, but she didn’t receive it. Insulted by what he saw as the slight of being ignored, Tewodros imprisoned a group of missionaries and British diplomats.

Shortly after this misunderstanding, the expedition was mounted. It was a massive operation with huge armed forces and thousands of military trained animals boarding ships from India to Abyssinia. It resulted in the destruction of Maqdala and Tewodros’ suicide. For more context on this I recommend the book The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy by Phillip Marsden.

But the West has been collecting Ethiopian manuscripts as early as the 14th century, perhaps even earlier, because Ethiopia has been seen as the land of the mythical Christian king. From the early mediaeval period in Europe, Ethiopia became the centre of the search for the kingdom of Prester John. Prester John was a mythical legendary Christian ruler of the East, popularised in mediaeval Latin and Greek chronicles.This legend was born in Europe just after the crusade.

Even prior to that, there was still a great fascination with Ethiopia. Ethiopia occupies a strange position in the West because of its long history of Christianity. There is also a lot mentioned about Ethiopia in the Bible. This created a lot of mythical views among Westerners about Ethiopia, and there was a great interest in Ethiopian manuscripts. Due to that interest, it was important for the British Library to have something from Ethiopia.

So when the British Expedition to Abyssinia took place, they decided to send an archaeologist from the British Museum to accompany it and acquire manuscripts. When we say ‘acquire’ here, he had a large budget that could allow him to buy manuscripts. (For more on this, see my article, Derillo, Eyob. “Exhibiting The Maqdala Manuscripts: African Scribes: Manuscript Culture Of Ethiopia”. In African Research & Documentation, suppl. Special Issue: Archives and Collections for/in Ethiopian Studies, 135 (2019): 102-116.)

However, when Emperor Tewodros was defeated about a thousand manuscripts fell in the hands of the British. Emperor Tewodros had been building a library in Maqdala, so had himself been acquiring manuscripts across Ethiopia. And what we know is that out of some 900-1000 of these Ethiopian manuscripts, the British left around 500 in Ethiopia, the rest having been looted by soldiers and then auctioned off. Of these, some of the smaller manuscripts were stolen by these soldiers, and around 350 went to the British Museum.

British Museum, Contested Objects Collection – Maqdala Collection.
“…Accompanying the expedition in an official capacity as ‘archaeologist’ was Richard Rivington Holmes, assistant in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. Holmes was one of the principal buyers at the auction and returned to the UK with a significant collection of objects including over 300 manuscripts (now in the collections of the British Library)
https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/maqdala-collection]

George Ackerley: That’s interesting. I believe we’re living in a time where many cultural artefacts from around the world are being returned to their original locations. What would you say your role at the British Library is in that process?

Eyob Derillo: Working as a curator, my role is making these collections more discoverable for researchers. I hope to allow more Ethiopians to access this material.

I believe the debate of restitution always rages above curators, museum professionals or academics. So, my main focus is making the manuscripts accessible wherever they are. For a long time, these manuscripts were effectively only accessible to a few learned scholars and that shouldn’t be the case.

Josephine Stanton: With these texts more accessible, what can we learn from them? Do you think they offer an insight into aspects of history previously unknown or ignored?

Eyob Derillo: The fascinating thing about this collection is that it covers all aspects of Ethiopia – from magic, divinations, mathematics, geology, philosophy, poetry and art. What you can learn is the depth of the tradition that Ethiopia has. Another important thing made more accessible through these cultural artefacts is science. When I say science here, I’m talking about early 17th and perhaps late 16th century medicine, such as plants and their use.

Folklore and the belief in magic is also preserved in these artefacts. We Ethiopians have charms to make anyone fall in love with you; we have incantations to destroy or kill someone; to turn someone into a lion or a python. The overarching lesson that one can learn from this collection however is that Africa does have a manuscript culture. It is not the random act of a single tribe, which has been a predominant view in the West, but rather vast, and throughout Ethiopia. There is a strong literary culture and oral history that is preserved in manuscripts.

George Ackerley: Definitely! My next question is about the translation of texts. I was looking at the Bound Manuscript: The Miracles of Mary (Te’amire Maryam) which is very visual and beautiful. I suppose the drawings aid the text’s accessibility to a wider audience in some ways, but the language needs to be translated also. What does this process of translation look like? Do some things get lost in translation?

Maqdala Ms Or 481 ኦሪት Octateuch, ወንጌል Gospels and Ecclesiastical works. 17th C. c. Eyob Derillo

Eyob Derillo: Translating these texts is obviously quite difficult. As a curator, one of my main roles is reading these texts and understanding them so that I can catalogue them. I have to describe each page of the manuscripts: is it a religious prayer, the Epistle of St Paul, or just a theological work? The difficulty arises when you’re a philologist, for example [someone who is particularly interested in the history of languages, working with etymologies as they appear at the intersections of textual, historical, and perhaps more particularly literary criticism], and you’re trying to determine what source the manuscript was copied from. For example, was it the original Greek text, somehow lost in translation in time; then did it go into Coptic; and then back again into Ge’ez?

Things certainly do get lost in translation and one example I can give you is a work called Kebra Nagast (The Glory of the Kings), which is at the British Library. It is an epic story of how the Queen of Sheba gave birth to the King Menilek, his father being King Solomon. Now, the British Library has the 17th – 19th century copy of this manuscript. The earliest surviving was apparently from the 14th – 15th century and is believed to have been translated from Coptic [an Egyptian language family of closely related dialects] to Arabic, and then to the Ethiopian language [Ge’ez, an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language]. This text was first considered by some scholars in the West to be written in Coptic first, so being an Egyptian work — a book about Ethiopia by Egyptian authors. But when you read the text, you realise it is very nationalistic. So, others believe it was first written in the ancient Ethiopian language, then translated into Coptic, then to Arabic, to then be translated again, back into Ge’ez, with one of the manuscripts getting lost along the way.

There is this possibility, but quite a lot of Eurocentrics would not be happy with this because it puts Ethiopia as much older than it ‘should’ be. So yes, there is this possibility that through translation we lose aspects of the original text irrevocably, keeping them open to these uncertainties and debate.

Josephine Stanton: My next question relates to something you have already mentioned, Ethiopia’s Christian tradition and heritage: could you tell us a bit more about what these manuscripts say about that and what they reveal about the uniqueness of Ethiopia’s Christianity?

Eyob Derillo: In the manuscripts, you don’t just have the Bible itself, but also important works related to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. For example, we have books that were composed in the 15th century. Some of these only survived from the 17th century onwards, but the significance of these manuscripts is what’s preserved about the ways the Church was governed.

We have books on the Church laws and rules, such as a book called The Laws of Kings, that look at the rules about how a king should govern a country, but more importantly, how the Church operates sociologically. What’s preserved in these books is really the history of Ethiopia.

British Library MS Or 723 18th century, the Life and Acts of Saint Takle Haymanot. One of the manuscripts looted during the Battle of Maqdala 1868. c. Eyob Derillo

What’s unique about Ethiopia’s Christianity is that there’s a lot of different aspects of Ethiopian Christianity that are not found anywhere else – the hymns, the singing, various festivals in the Church, some of the fasting traditions. Take the latter, the tradition of fasting for example, where fasting happens for around 250 days of the year and Ethiopian Christians abstain from eating meat and/or dairy products. There are many similarly unique examples.

There’s also the fact that Ethiopia was the first official Christian nation. There were Christians as early as the 2nd century, but Christianity in Ethiopia came from the top — the king, Ezana, of the early mediaeval kingdom of Askum, converts himself and he declares the state to be Christian.

The other unique aspect of Ethiopian Christianity is that it tells its own story; it doesn’t look for any other nations to tell it. The traditional belief is that Ethiopia first became Jewish at the time of King Solomon; then in the Old Testament, just after Christ, it became Christian. So, it has its own history, a history which tells itself, and which is documented historically within the nation and Church.

George Ackerley: Thank you! You touched on this already, but the next question is whether these texts challenge Eurocentric perceptions of Christianity?

Eyob Derillo: Yes, it challenges that in a big way. The whole textual tradition of Ethiopia has! There has also been a lot of debate on Ethiopia’s position because of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which is part of the Eastern Christian churches. Ethiopia’s main church is theologically very close with, or even the same as: the Armenian Church; the Coptic Orthodox Church; the Indian Orthodox Church; the Syriac Orthodox Church; and the Eritrean Orthodox Church. Therefore, it does challenge the Western conception of Christianity greatly.

Josephine Stanton: Moving on to your work on Ethiopian magic, could you explain the importance of magic in Ethiopia’s history and culture?

Eyob Derillo: My PhD is on Ethiopian magic and I’m currently working on a unique divination manuscript. I’m also trying to define what constitutes Ethiopian magical tradition.

The word ‘magic’, for example, is complex in that it does not explain what we’re studying, but it is the word that we have to use. What I’m looking at are not illusions or tricks, they are the private books of people who wanted to change nature or the outcome of things; they didn’t perform card tricks. They would use incantations to invoke demons, to invoke angels, to make it rain, to stop the rain – this is what is encompassed in the term ‘magic’.

Ethiopia has a long tradition of magic. I particularly enjoy looking at the relationship between the practitioner and the client, and what that relationship tells us. A practitioner, traditionally called a Dabtaras in Ethiopia, is someone who could be ordained or non-ordained clergy, with the knowledge of plants and medicine. Many of these traditions by practitioners have been preserved on amulet scrolls and manuscripts but what’s significant about the practitioners in Ethiopia is that their knowledge has been lost through time. We have the manuscripts, but the knowledge of plants and how to use them has died out; the reason is a modern education and the negative view that people had during the turning of the century. When people were educated abroad in the West, they often looked down on this kind of medicine on their return. So magic is of high significance in Ethiopia’s history, but it’s not a history that is easy to decode. That is what I’m interested in learning more about.

https://www.bl.uk/a-history-of-magic

George Ackerley: The exhibition on Harry Potter that you co-curated with Julian Harrison (Lead Curator of Medieval Historical Manuscripts at the British Library) for the British Library in 2017 – Harry Potter: A History of Magic – was a nice way for people to approach magic and learn about Ethiopia’s history. Could you tell us how making the work accessible through public exhibitions can change preconceived notions about Ethiopia that people might have?

Eyob Derillo: The Harry Potter exhibition was important to me. I have a son who was five years old at that time, and he was interested in Harry Potter. When the opportunity came to tell the history of magic, I was determined to show everyone that magic has a global history, it is not deeply rooted in just one area.

I would also argue that Ethiopian magic fits so perfectly into the story of Harry Potter. There was, for example, a 17th-century Ethiopian text on how you can change yourself into a lion or a python that we discussed alongside J.K. Rowling’s work. We couldn’t include everything, or the exhibition would have been Harry Potter and the History of Ethiopian Magic, but it was an incredible starting point.

I believe this exhibition was really important; it’s not about just showing people objects and saying, ‘this is from Africa, have a look at it’, but rather engaging people. When you step into a museum as a person of colour, you want to recognise yourself in that space, especially when you’re young. You look at so many objects and try to somehow make sense of them. There are so many museums in the UK and yet there’s not a single museum dedicated to Africa. An exhibition like the Harry Potter one, then, is an opportunity to make it relevant for everyone, to make Africans and generally non-whites feel represented in that space.

Josephine Stanton: I agree entirely and think the work you’re doing is very necessary and important in helping people feel seen and represented. Within your work then, what would you say is the biggest challenge you have experienced?

Eyob Derillo: The biggest challenge in working with this kind of collection is the amount of work I have. I don’t have a predecessor, so with the collection comes the challenge to cover everything because so much hasn’t been shown to the public yet.

Another challenge I face all the time are the misconceptions that people have about Africa. Every time I do a talk on the Ethiopian collection, I have to give a background on Ethiopia, its history, location, and things of that nature. When you look at other historians and curators, all the groundwork has been done; there is no need to explain to the public that Leonardo DaVinci lived in Rome or where Picasso lived, you just go straight onto their paintings.

Maybe that’s because nearly every aspect of Western art has been looked at. But that’s always a challenging aspect of my job. I would love to go into the room and just start talking about the certain text without spending a long time on its background.

Josephine Stanton: Do you believe you would encounter the same challenges in Ethiopia if you were curating there?

Eyob Derillo: When I was in Ethiopia, I had the opportunity to work with the National Library of Ethiopia and visit a lot of monasteries and collections. The challenges in Ethiopia I believe are outside of reasons associated with the scholarship. Ethiopians are beginning to lose deep traditions and there are many reasons for this. One reason is that a lot of the heritage was looted, but also, in terms of education, there isn’t much investment; churches are too poor to invest in education.

There is also a lack of access to these manuscripts in Ethiopia. One thing we did to help rectify this was to share a lot of digitised images from the British Library with the National Library of Ethiopia, giving more people more access to studying this material.

George Ackerley: Our final question for this interview is: what are your plans for your research and what goals that you would like to achieve over the next couple of years?

Eyob Derillo: At the British Library, the core objective in relation to Ethiopian cultural artefacts is to digitise as many as possible, focus more on the engagement of the wider public and Ethiopian people, and work closely with Ethiopian scholars to bring their work to light.

We are hoping to invite the National Library of Ethiopia to come and visit our library in the near future. In relation to the Ethiopian collection, what I want to do particularly with that Ethiopian collection is to invite Ethiopian students for PhD placements, for example a researcher to work on a specific Ethiopian manuscript, so that we can learn more about it. There are a number of manuscripts that were created really early but, as of yet, we don’t know their dates — I want to establish that, with some help.

I also recently finished an article about a particular textile found in these manuscripts. Many manuscripts have what we call ‘pastedown’: they have a binding and very elaborated and beautiful textiles. I’d say 99% of these textiles were imported from China, Persia, France and India, and no one has taken an interest in them as yet. The earliest we have is from around the 1540’s. These textiles help us date manuscripts and recently, through collaboration with the University of Toronto and other institutions, I’ve been able to promote more research into this.

So those are what I hope to do and expand on in terms of my research, inshallah (‘if god wills’ in Arabic) as they say!

Josephine Stanton: Thank you so much for your time and for all this insightful information.

Eyob Derillo: Thank you for having me, goodbye!

Nadira Ibrahim

Jiali, Josephine, George, and Natalia’s conversation with Eyob is the fourth in our conversations in the Literatures of the Horn of Africa series — each emerging from an undergraduate module taught by Dr Sara Marzagora, “Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali literatures in global intellectual history,” (Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures of King’s College London in the 2021-2022 academic year), and all of which have been transcribed and first-edited by Nadira Ibrahim.

Follow this link for all posts in the series so far – the latest of which is an interview with Professor Ghirmai Negash — translator of Tigrinya language novel, The Conscript: a Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War, by the Eritrean novelist Gebreyesus Hailu (written in 1927, published in 1950 and translated, by Negash, in 2012) — and/or follow the links that are embedded in each post in the conversation series for the students’ enlivening discussions with Dr Fiori Berhane, and Prof Nadia Nurhussein.