ALEXANDER THE GREAT

alexander the great, section on the legends, ad fin. of law the most important monument is the _fatha nagaset_ (judgment of kings), of which an official edition was issued by i. guidi (rome, 1899), with an italian translation; it is a version probably made in the early 16th century of the arabic code of ibn 'assal, of the 12th century, whose work, being meant for christians living under moslem rule, was not altogether suitable for an independent christian kingdom; yet the need for such a code made it popular and authoritative in abyssinia. the translator was not quite equal to his task, and the brit. mus. ms. 800 exhibits an attempt to correct it from the original. science can scarcely be said to exist in geez literature, unless a medical treatise, of which the british museum possesses a copy, comes under this head. philosophy is mainly represented by mystical commentaries on scripture, such as the _book of the mystery of heaven and earth_, by ba-hailu michael, probably of the 15th century, edited by perruchon and guidi (paris, 1903). there is, however, a translation of the book of the wise philosophers, made by michael, son of abba michael, consisting of various aphorisms; specimens have been edited by dillmann in his chrestomathy, and j. cornill (leipzig, 1876). there is also a translation of _secundus the silent_, edited by bachmann (berlin, 1888). far more interesting than these is the treatise of zar'a ya'kub of axum, composed in the year 1660 (edited by littman, 1904), which contains an endeavour to evolve rules of life according to nature. the author reviews the codes of moses, the gospel and the koran, and decides that all contravene the obvious intentions of the creator. he also gives some details of his own life and his occupation of scribe. a less original treatise by walda haywat accompanies it. epistolography is represented by the diplomatic correspondence of some of the kings with the portuguese and spanish courts; some documents of this sort have been edited by c. beccari, _documenti inediti per la storia d' etiopia_ (rome, 1903); lexicography, by the vocabulary called _sawasew_. the first ethiopic book printed was the psalter (rome, 1513), by john potken of cologne, the first european who studied the language. see c.c. rossini, "note per la storia letteraria abissina," in _rendiconti della r. accad. dei lincei_ (1899); fumagalli, _bibliografia etiopica_ (1893); basset, _etudes sur l'histoire de l'ethiopie_ (1882); catalogues of various libraries, especially british museum (wright), paris (zotenberg), oxford and berlin (dillmann), frankfurt (goldschmidt). plates illustrating ethiopic palaeography are to be found in wright's catalogue; an account of the illustrations in ethiopic mss. is given by budge in his _life of maba sion_; and a collection of inscriptions in the church of st stefano dei mori, in rome, by gallina in the _archivio della soc. rom. di storia patria_ (1888). (d. s. m.*) footnote: [1] for the topography and later history see sudan and abyssinia. ethnology and ethnography (from the gr. [greek: ethnos], race, and [greek: logos], science, or [greek: graphein], to write), sciences which in their narrowest sense deal respectively with man as a racial unit (_mankind_), i.e. his development through the family and tribal stages into national life, and with the distribution over the earth of the races and nations thus formed. though the etymology of the words permits in theory of this line of division between ethnology and ethnography, in practice they form an indivisible study of man's progress from the point at which anthropology (q.v.) leaves him. ethnology is thus the general name for investigations of the widest character, including subjects which in this encyclopaedia are dealt with in detail under separate headings, such as archaeology, art (and allied articles), commerce, geography (and the headings for countries and tribes), family, name, ethics, law, mythology, folk-lore (and allied articles), philology (and allied articles), agriculture, architecture,