Hiob or Job Ludolf ( or '; 15 June 1624– 8 April 1704), also known as Job Leutholf, was a German orientalist, born at

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital (political), capital and largest city of the Central Germany (cultural area), Central German state of Thuringia, with a population of around 216,000. It lies in the wide valley of the Gera (river), River Gera, in the so ...

. Edward Ullendorff rates Ludolf as having "the most illustrious name in Ethiopic scholarship".

Life

After studying

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

at the Erfurt academy and at

Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...

, he travelled in order to increase his

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

knowledge. While searching in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

for some documents at the request of the Swedish Court (1649), he became friends with Abba Gorgoryos, a monk from the

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

n province of Amhara, and acquired from him an intimate knowledge of the Ethiopian language of Amhara. In 1652 he entered the service of the duke of

Saxe-Gotha Saxe-Gotha () was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine duchies, Ernestine branch of the House of Wettin, Wettin dynasty in the former Landgraviate of Thuringia. The ducal residence was erected at Gotha (town), Gotha. History The duch ...

, in which he continued until 1678, when he retired to

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

. In 1683 he visited

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to promote a cherished scheme for establishing trade with Ethiopia, but his efforts were unsuccessful, chiefly due to the resistance of the authorities of the

Ethiopian Orthodox Church The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church () is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. One of the few Christian churches in Africa originating before European colonization of the continent, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church dates bac ...

. Returning to Frankfurt in 1684, he devoted himself wholly to literary work, which he continued almost to his death. In 1690 he was appointed president of the Collegium Imperiale Historicum. His correspondence with

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many ...

on linguistics was published in 1755 by August Benedict Michaelis. Ludolf died at Frankfurt.

Works

The works of Ludolf, who is said to have been acquainted with twenty-five languages, include ''Sciagraphia historiae aethiopicae'' (Jena, 1676); and the ''Historia aethiopica'' (Frankfort, 1681), which has been translated into English, French and Dutch, and which was supplemented by a ''Commentarius'' (1691) and by ''Appendices'' (1693–1694). According to Ullendorff, Ludolf's :Ethiopic and Amharic dictionaries and grammars were of importance far transcending his own time and remained, for well over a century and a half, the indispensable tools for the study of these languages, while his monumental history of Ethiopia (with an extensive commentary) can still be read with profit as well as enjoyment.Ullendorff, p. 11 Among his other works are: *
Grammatica linguae amharicae
' (Frankfort, 1698) *''Lexicon amharico-latinum'' (Frankfort, 1698) *''Lexicon aethiopico-latinum'' (Frankfort, 1699) *''Grammatica aethiopica'' (London, 1661, and Frankfort, 1702) * His posthumously published ''Allgemeine Schau-Bühne der Welt'' (1713 in

) is noted for the detailed account given of 1652 Batih massacre, a

mass execution Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members witho ...

of Polish captives by Ukrainian Cossacks.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* Christian Juncker, ''Commentarius de vita et scriptis Jobi Ludolfi'' (Frankfort, 1710) * Ludwig Diestel, ''Geschichte des alten Testaments in der christlichen Kirche'' (Jena, 1868) * Johannes Flemming, "Hiob Ludolf," in the ''Beiträge zur Assyriologie'' (Leipzig, 1890-1891) * * John T. Waterman (1978), ''Leibniz and Ludolf on Things Linguistic: Excerpts from Their Correspondence (1688-1703)''. translated and edited with commentary and notes. Berkeley: University of California Publications in Linguistics 88. *

External links

* *
Pictures from a supplementary volume to Ludolf's ''Historia Aethiopica''
i
Early Printed Books at St. John's College Library
website.
Psalterium Davidis aethiopice et latine
at th
Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML)

Hiob Ludolf
i
die Erfurt-Enzyklopädie
website. *
Nouvelle histoire d'Abyssinie ou d'Ethiopie tirée de l'histoire latine
'—a French translation of Ludolf's ''Historia aethiopica'' (Paris 1684) in Gallica, the digital library of the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

(

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

). * ''A new history of Ethiopia being a full and accurate description of the kingdom of Abessinia, vulgarly, though erroneously, called the Empire of Prester John'' by the learned Job Ludolphus, translated out of his learned manuscript commentary on this history (1684) available o
Early English Books Online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ludolf, Hiob 1624 births 1704 deaths 17th century in Ethiopia Ethiopianists German orientalists German philologists Writers from Erfurt 17th-century German writers German male non-fiction writers 17th-century German male writers