Hiob or Job Ludolf ( or Ludolphus; 15 June 1624– 8 April 1704), also known as Job Leutholf, was a German oriental studies, born at Erfurt. Edward Ullendorff rates Ludolf as having "the most illustrious name in Ethiopic scholarship".[Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People, second edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 9.]
Life
After studying
philology at the Erfurt academy and at
Leiden, he travelled in order to increase his
Linguistics knowledge. While searching in
Rome for some documents at the request of the Swedish Court (1649), he became friends with
Abba Gorgoryos, a monk from the
province of
Bete Amhara, and acquired from him an intimate knowledge of the
Amharic.
In 1652 he entered the service of the duke of Saxe-Gotha, in which he continued until 1678, when he retired to Frankfurt am Main. In 1683 he visited England 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. 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 on linguistics was published in 1755 by August Benedict Michaelis.[Jobi Ludolfi et Godofredi Guilelmi Leibnitii Commercium Epistolicum, Göttingen, 1755]
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 Frankfurt am Main) is noted for the detailed account given of 1652 Batih massacre, a Mass murder of Poland captives by Ukrainian Cossacks.
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
