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Seetzen’s word lists of African languages, compiled during his stay in early 19th-century Cairo, contributed to the expanding interest in global linguistic diversity at the time but were long overlooked and only recently rediscovered as historically significant. This paper examines his encounter with Tigriñña–spoken in the northern Ethiopian highlands and modern-day Eritrea–which was then virtually unknown to European scholars. His documentation drew on Cairo’s multi-national diversity and Egypt’s wide-ranging connections, based on conversations with travelers from Northeastern Africa, including a Tigriñña speaker. The dialect, likely from central Tigray and influenced by Muslim terminology, contains valuable cultural insights. Notably, the word list includes geographic and ethnic references that reflect an ‘oral geography’ still relevant today, as recent research confirms
