Introduction
James Bruce was born in 1730 into a family related to the Scottish kings. In the 1750s he travelled through continental Europe and bought books on oriental studies. From 1763-65 Bruce served as British consul in Algiers. There he improved his Arabic and acquired medical knowledge. He then travelled west and finally decided to search for the source of the Nile in Ethiopia.
Bruce arrived in the capital Gondar in February 1770. In the same year, he visited the source of the Blue Nile—as had several Jesuits more than hundred years before (which Bruce neglected to mention in his books). Bruce left Gondar in December 1771 to travel to the Kingdom of Fung:
Bruce spent most of his time in Gondar and surrounding. He was often in the nearby Qwəsqwam, where the former kings mother and grandmother, Bərhan Mogäsa (christened Wälättä Giyorgis), had built her residence. She and her circle, which included several members of the Agaw ethnic group, supported Bruce. The Scottish traveller introduced himself as who introduced himself as Yacoube Kibtsi, Jacob the Copt (Egyptian Christian). There were more than 200 clerics and monks in Qwəsqwam.
Bruce’s relevance for language research and Bible translation
Bruce commissioned the translation of the Old Testament book named “Songs of Songs” into six local languages:
“In order to gratify such as are curious in the study and history of language, I, with great pains and difficulty, got the whole book of the Canticles translated into each of these languages, by priests esteemed the most versant in the language of each nation.
As this barbarous polyglot is of too large a size to print, I have contented myself with copying six verses of the first chapter in each language; but the whole book is at the service of any person of learning that will bestow his time in studying it, and, for this purpose, I left it in the British Museum, under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks, and the Bishop of Carlisle.” (Bruce, Travels [1790], vol. 1, p. 404 [Italics and paragraph break added])
These manuscripts are now located at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. In most of these languages (except Amharic) they are the oldest written document still available.
Bruce also brought several manuscripts in Ge’ez [Classic Ethiopic] to Great Britain. These included biblical books. The Ethiopian Book of Enoch, which is part of the biblical canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church but was only known in Europe from translations, caused a particular stir.
It appears that Abba Abraham (alias Abu Rumi), the scholar who first translated the entire Bible into Amharic, accompanied James Bruce on some of his travels in Ethiopia and then to Cairo.
Further reading
» Bibliography with links