Geʽez (/ˈɡiːɛz/;^[6][7] ግዕዝ, Gəʿəz IPA: [ˈɡɨʕɨz] (listen); referred to in some scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language of the Ethiopic branch. The language originates from the region encompassing southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia regions in the Horn of Africa.

Today, Geʽez is used only as the main liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church and Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community. However, in Ethiopia, Amharic or other local languages, and in Eritrea and Ethiopia's Tigray Region, Tigrinya may be used for sermons. Tigrinya and Tigre are closely related to Geʽez.^[8][9]

The closest living languages to Geʽez are Tigre and Tigrinya with lexical similarity at 71% and 68%, respectively.^[10] Some linguists do not believe that Geʽez constitutes a common ancestor of modern Ethiosemitic languages, but that Geʽez became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested language,^[11] which can be seen as an extinct sister language of Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya.^[12] The foremost Ethiopian experts such as Amsalu Aklilu point to the vast proportion of inherited nouns that are unchanged, and even spelled identically in both Geʽez and Amharic (and to a lesser degree, Tigrinya).^[13]

In the transcription employed by the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, which is widely employed in academia, the contrast here represented as a/ā is represented ä/a.

Geʽez is transliterated according to the following system:

Because Geʽez is no longer a spoken language, the pronunciation of some consonants is not completely certain. Gragg (1997:244) writes "The consonants corresponding to the graphemes ś (Geʽez ሠ) and ḍ (Geʽez ፀ) have merged with ሰ and ጸ respectively in the phonological system represented by the traditional pronunciation—and indeed in all modern Ethiopian Semitic. ... There is, however, no evidence either in the tradition or in Ethiopian Semitic [for] what value these consonants may have had in Geʽez."

A similar problem is found for the consonant transliterated ḫ. Gragg (1997:245) notes that it corresponds in etymology to velar or uvular fricatives in other Semitic languages, but it was pronounced exactly the same as ḥ in the traditional pronunciation. Though the use of a different letter shows that it must originally have had some other pronunciation, what that pronunciation was is not certain. The chart below lists /ɬ/ and /ɬʼ/ as possible values for ś (ሠ) and ḍ (ፀ) respectively. It also lists /χ/ as a possible value for ḫ (ኀ). These values are tentative, but based on the reconstructed Proto-Semitic consonants that they are descended from.

In the chart below, IPA values are shown. When transcription is different from the IPA, the character is shown in angular brackets. Question marks follow phonemes whose interpretation is controversial (as explained in the preceding section).

Geʽez consonants have a triple opposition between voiceless, voiced, and ejective (or emphatic) obstruents. The Proto-Semitic "emphasis" in Geʽez has been generalized to include emphatic p̣. Geʽez has phonologized labiovelars, descending from Proto-Semitic biphonemes. Geʽez ś ሠ Sawt (in Amharic, also called śe-nigūś, i.e. the se letter used for spelling the word nigūś "king") is reconstructed as descended from a Proto-Semitic voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ]. Like Arabic, Geʽez merged Proto-Semitic š and s in ሰ (also called se-isat: the se letter used for spelling the word isāt "fire"). Apart from this, Geʽez phonology is comparably conservative; the only other Proto-Semitic phonological contrasts lost may be the interdental fricatives and ghayn.

Geʽez distinguishes two genders, masculine and feminine, which in certain words is marked with the suffix -t. These are less strongly distinguished than in other Semitic languages, in that many nouns not denoting persons can be used in either gender: in translated Christian texts there is a tendency for nouns to follow the gender of the noun with a corresponding meaning in Greek.^[14] There are two numbers, singular and plural. The plural can be constructed either by suffixing -āt to a word, or by internal plural.

Nouns also have two cases, the nominative which is not marked and the accusative which is marked with final -a (e.g. bet, bet-a).

Internal plurals follow certain patterns. Triconsonantal nouns follow one of the following patterns.

Quadriconsonantal and some triconsonantal nouns follow the following pattern. Triconsonantal nouns that take this pattern must have at least one long vowel^[2]

Noun phrases have the following overall order: (demonstratives) noun (adjective)-(relative clause)

Adjectives and determiners agree with the noun in gender and number:

Relative clauses are introduced by a pronoun which agrees in gender and number with the preceding noun:

As in many Semitic languages, possession by a noun phrase is shown through the construct state. In Geʽez, this is formed by suffixing /-a/ to the possessed noun, which is followed by the possessor, as in the following examples (Lambdin 1978:23):

Possession by a pronoun is indicated by a suffix on the possessed noun, as seen in the following table:

The following examples show a few nouns with pronominal possessors:

Another common way of indicating possession by a noun phrase combines the pronominal suffix on a noun with the possessor preceded by the preposition /la=/ 'to, for' (Lambdin 1978:44):

Lambdin (1978:45) notes that in comparison to the construct state, this kind of possession is only possible when the possessor is definite and specific. Lambdin also notes that the construct state is the unmarked form of possession in Geʽez.

Geʽez is a prepositional language, as in the following example (Lambdin 1978:16):

There are three special prepositions, /ba=/ 'in, with', /la=/ 'to, for', /ʼəm=/ 'from', which always appear as clitics, as in the following examples:

These proclitic prepositions in Geʽez are similar to the inseparable prepositions in Hebrew.

The normal word order for declarative sentences is VSO. Objects of verbs show accusative case marked with the suffix /-a/:

Questions with a wh-word ('who', 'what', etc.) show the question word at the beginning of the sentence:

The common way of negation is the prefix ʾi- which descends from ʾey- (which is attested in Axum inscriptions) from ʾay from Proto-Semitic *ʾal by palatalization.^[2] It is prefixed to verbs as follows:

Geʽez is written with Ethiopic or the Geʽez abugida, a script that was originally developed specifically for this language. In languages that use it, such as Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is called Fidäl, which means script or alphabet.

Geʽez is read from left to right.

The Geʽez script has been adapted to write other languages, usually ones that are also Semitic. The most widespread use is for Amharic in Ethiopia and Tigrinya in Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is also used for Sebatbeit, Meʼen, Agew and most other languages of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it is used for Tigre, and it is often used for Bilen, a Cushitic language. Some other languages in the Horn of Africa, such as Oromo, used to be written using Geʽez but have switched to Latin-based alphabets. It also uses four series of consonant signs for labialized velar consonants, which are variants of the non-labialized velar consonants:

Although it is often said that Geʽez literature is dominated by the Bible including the Deuterocanonical books, in fact there are many medieval and early modern original texts in the language. Most of its important works are also the literature of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which include Christian liturgy (service books, prayers, hymns), hagiographies, and Patristic literature. For instance, around 200 texts were written about indigenous Ethiopian saints from the fourteenth through the nineteenth century. This religious orientation of Geʽez literature was a result of traditional education being the responsibility of priests and monks. "The Church thus constituted the custodian of the nation's culture", notes Richard Pankhurst, and describes the traditional education as follows:

However, works of history and chronography, ecclesiastical and civil law, philology, medicine, and letters were also written in Geʽez.^[17]

Significant collections of Ethiopian manuscripts are found outside of Ethiopia in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The collection in the British Library comprises some 800 manuscripts dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries, notably including magical and divinatory scrolls, and illuminated manuscripts of the 16th to 17th centuries. It was initiated by a donation of 74 codices by the Church of England Missionary Society in the 1830s and 1840s, and substantially expanded by 349 codices, looted by the British from the Emperor Tewodros II's capital at Magdala in the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has at least two illuminated manuscripts in Geʽez ^[55] .

The Geʽez language is classified as a South Semitic language. It evolved from an earlier proto-Ethio-Semitic ancestor used to write royal inscriptions of the kingdom of Dʿmt in the Epigraphic South Arabian script. The Geʽez language is no longer universally thought of, as previously assumed, to be an offshoot of Sabaean or Old South Arabian,^[18] and there is some linguistic (though not written) evidence of Semitic languages being spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia since approximately 2000 BC.^[19] However, the Geʽez script later replaced Epigraphic South Arabian in the Kingdom of Aksum. Epigraphic South Arabian letters were used for a few inscriptions into the 8th century, though not any South Arabian language since Dʿmt. Early inscriptions in Geʽez and Geʽez script have been dated^[20] to as early as the 5th century BC, and in a sort of proto-Geʽez written in ESA since the 9th century BC. Geʽez literature properly begins with the Christianization of Ethiopia (and the civilization of Axum) in the 4th century, during the reign of Ezana of Axum.^[17]

The oldest known example of the old Geʽez script is found on the Hawulti obelisk in Matara, Eritrea. The oldest surviving Geʽez manuscript is thought to be the 5th or 6th century Garima Gospels.^[21][22] Almost all texts from this early "Aksumite" period are religious (Christian) in nature, and translated from Greek. Indeed the range and scope of the translation enterprise undertaken in the first century of the new Ethiopian church has few parallels in the early centuries of Christian history. The outcome was an Ethiopic Bible containing 81 Books: 46 of the Old Testament and 35 of the New. A number of these Books are called "deuterocanonical" (or "apocryphal" according to certain Western theologians), such as the Ascension of Isaiah, Jubilees, Enoch, the Paralipomena of Baruch, Noah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Maccabees, and Tobit. The Book of Enoch in particular is notable since its complete text has survived in no other language; and, for the other works listed, the Ethiopic version is highly regarded as a witness to the original text.

Also to this early period dates Qerlos, a collection of Christological writings beginning with the treatise of Saint Cyril (known as Hamanot Reteʼet or De Recta Fide). These works are the theological foundation of the Ethiopic Church. In the later 5th century, the Aksumite Collection—an extensive selection of liturgical, theological, synodical and historical materials—was translated into Geʽez from Greek, providing a fundamental set of instructions and laws for the developing Ethiopian Church. Included in this collection is a translation of the Apostolic Tradition (attributed to Hippolytus of Rome, and lost in the original Greek) for which the Ethiopic version provides much the best surviving witness. Another important religious document is Serʼata Paknemis, a translation of the monastic Rules of Pachomius. Non-religious works translated in this period include Physiologus, a work of natural history also very popular in Europe.^[23]

After the decline of the Aksumites, a lengthy gap follows; Some writers consider the period beginning from the 14th century an actual "Golden Age" of Geʽez literature—although by this time Geʽez was no longer a living language; in particular in the major enterprise of translating an extensive library of Coptic Arabic religious works into Ge'ez.

. While there is ample evidence that it had been replaced by Amharic in the south and by Tigrigna and Tigre in the north, Geʽez remained in use as the official written language until the 19th century, its status comparable to that of Medieval Latin in Europe. Important hagiographies from this period include:

Also at this time the Apostolic Constitutions was retranslated into Geʽez from Arabic. Another translation from this period is Zena ʼAyhud, a translation (probably from an Arabic translation) of Joseph ben Gurion's "History of the Jews" ("Sefer Josippon") written in Hebrew in the 10th century, which covers the period from the Captivity to the capture of Jerusalem by Titus. Apart from theological works, the earliest contemporary Royal Chronicles of Ethiopia are date to the reign of Amda Seyon I (1314–44). With the appearance of the "Victory Songs" of Amda Seyon, this period also marks the beginning of Amharic literature. The 14th century Kebra Nagast or "Glory of the Kings" by the Neburaʼed Yeshaq of Aksum is among the most significant works of Ethiopian literature, combining history, allegory and symbolism in a retelling of the story of the Queen of Sheba (i.e. Saba), King Solomon, and their son Menelik I of Ethiopia. Another work that began to take shape in this period is the Mashafa Aksum or "Book of Axum".^[24]

The early 15th century Fekkare Iyasus "The Explication of Jesus" contains a prophecy of a king called Tewodros, which rose to importance in 19th century Ethiopia as Tewodros II chose this throne name. Literature flourished especially during the reign of Emperor Zara Yaqob. Written by the Emperor himself were Matsʼhafe Berhan ("The Book of Light") and Matshafe Milad ("The Book of Nativity"). Numerous homilies were written in this period, notably Retuʼa Haimanot ("True Orthodoxy") ascribed to John Chrysostom. Also of monumental importance was the appearance of the Geʽez translation of the Fetha Negest ("Laws of the Kings"), thought to have been around 1450, and ascribed to one Petros Abda Sayd — that was later to function as the supreme Law for Ethiopia, until it was replaced by a modern Constitution in 1931.

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Islamic invasions put an end to the flourishing of Ethiopian literature. A letter of Abba ʼEnbaqom (or "Habakkuk") to Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, entitled Anqasa Amin ("Gate of the Faith"), giving his reasons for abandoning Islam, although probably first written in Arabic and later rewritten in an expanded Geʽez version around 1532, is considered one of the classics of later Geʽez literature.^[25] During this period, Ethiopian writers begin to address differences between the Ethiopian and the Roman Catholic Church in such works as the Confession of Emperor Gelawdewos, Sawana Nafs ("Refuge of the Soul"), Fekkare Malakot ("Exposition of the Godhead") and Haymanote Abaw ("Faith of the Fathers"). Around the year 1600, a number of works were translated from Arabic into Geʽez for the first time, including the Chronicle of John of Nikiu and the Universal History of George Elmacin.

Geʽez is the liturgical language of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo, Ethiopian Catholic and Eritrean Catholic Christians, and is used in prayer and in scheduled public celebrations. It is also used liturgically by the Beta Israel (Falasha Jews).

The liturgical rite used by the Christian churches is referred to as the Ethiopic Rite^[26][27][28] or the Geʽez Rite.^{[29][30][31][32]}

The first sentence of the Book of Enoch: