Ge'ez and Its Literature (On African Civilizations pt. 1) Crossposting

While I'm on a roll this morning, I'd like to cross-post a site from my EN 201 blog.  It is on Ge'ez, a language that was once used in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea.  I realize that Ethiopia is quite far from the Congo, but I also wanted to post an example of an entry derived from one honors student's annotated bibliography.

Ge'ez was used in Abyssinia, the ancestor of Ethiopia and Eritrea.  Now Amharic is the main language of Ethiopia, and Tigrigna is the main language of Eritrea, but both are descended from Ge'ez.  Now Ge'ez is mainly used within the Ethiopian and Eritrean monasteries, which explains my choice of picture above. 

Here is a link to information about the Debra Damo monastery.  It was built on a mountain in the sixth century CE, and it is accessible only to men who are willing to be climb up a rope ladder to the top of the mountain.

http://www.ethiopiantreasures.toucansurf.com/pages/damo.htm

Other monasteries are on islands off the Ethiopian coast:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1560736.stm

A British man writes about what it is like to visit Ethiopia's churches and monasteries...and what it is like to climb up to Debra Damo!

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/vagabondrick/?p=231

But about Ge'ez....here is a site that gives the history of this language as well as examples of its alphabet:

http://www.ethiopianhistory.com/Ge'ez

This site compares Ge'ez with its "offspring":

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ethiopic.htm

Could Ge'ez be close to the "Global World Language"?

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/Ogamlang.html

For more background on writings in Ge'ez, see these sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge'ez_language#History_and_literature

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Ethiopic_literature

http://wbelcher.bol.ucla.edu/

Here Prof. Getachew Haile, a professor of medieval studies at St. John's University in Minnesota and a political activist, discusses Ge'ez and Amharic with an interviewer:

http://www.senamirmir.com/interviews/theme/5-2001/gh/lang.html

Those of you who are mathematically-inclined may be interested in this writer's efforts to adapt the Amharic/Ge'ez numbering system to include a zero:

http://www.yebbo.com/j/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=79

Abba Tesfamariam Baraki, a local pastor, is interviewed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmuJTeSQaAg