The first Amharic (Ethiopian) translation of the Book of Genesis, presented to George IV when Prince Regent.

This manuscript is the first book of the Bible that was translated into Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia) by Abu Rumi (c. 1750-1819), an Ethiopian linguist and translator. Abu Rumi embarked on the project to translate the entire Bible into Amharic after falling ill in Cairo in 1808. The French Consul, Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville (1772–1822) provided him with medical care and sponsored the venture. The Ethiopian Bible did not exist in the vernacular at that time, only in Geez (the ancient liturgical language of the Ethiopian church). Over a period of ten years (1808-1818) Abu Rumi made his Amharic translation from an Arabic copy of the Bible. Asselin’s aim for the project was more linguistic than religious: to have a comparison text in order to compare the differences between Amharic and Geez.

Asselin sent this manuscript of the Book of Genesis to George IV when Prince Regent on 1 August 1814. He mentioned in his presentation letter that the Scottish traveller Sir James Bruce (1730-1794, who had employed Abu Rumi during his time in Ethiopia) gave Louis XV an Ethiopian manuscript of the Book of Enoch (an apocryphal text preserved only in the canon of the Ethiopian Bible). Bruce also presented George III with sketches he made of the antiquities of Africa (RCINs 911628- 911714) and wrote up his travels in five volumes (RCINs 1124369-1124373).

In order to reimburse the expenses incurred in its preparation, Asselin sold the finished Amharic Bible manuscript to William Jowett on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1820 for £1,250. From this they published printed Amharic copies of the Gospels in 1824, the entire New Testament in 1829, and Abu Rumi’s complete Bible translation in 1840. This was the only Amharic bible available until Emperor Haile Sellassie commissioned another more than a century later, printed in 1960.