Already in the medieval period, the Ethiopian region (which was in that time mostly called “India” or “Minor India”) occasionally appeared in German literature, e.g. in the 12th/13th cent. poetical work “Parzival” by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which was possibly adapting the Queen of Sheba myth. The chevalier of the grail Parzival was the uncle of “Prester John” of India.

Renaissance literature linked with pilgrimages to Jerusalem contains information on Ethiopia collected at the Ethiopian monastery (see, e.g., the publications of the 15th cent. pilgrims Siebald Rieter from Nürnberg and Bernhard von Breydenbach from Mainz). German scholarly interest into Ethiopia is deeply linked with the first origins of Oriental Studies, which were a branch of biblical research. The existence of a Christian people far in the South, whose origins might be linked with biblical peoples, caused speculations, if their culture or their language could have preserved extra-biblical wisdom from the first biblical fathers. The hope existed to identify the “lost” language Chaldaic, probably bearer of ancient wisdom – and this hope seemed to be confirmed, when the first samples of the Gi’iz script were published in Germany (by Breydenbach in 1486), and later the first manuscript(s) reached German theologians. In 1513 Johannes Potken from Cologne, a Gi’iz student of abba Tomas of Weldebba in Rome, published the Ethiopian Psalms of David, believing that Gi’iz could in fact be identified as Chaldaic.