For countries like Ethiopia, manuscripts are the main and reliablernchannels that transmit the knowledge and experience of the past to thernpresent and the future. Ethiopia is rich in manuscripts, which arerndispersed all over the country, in monasteries, churches, public andrnprivate collections. Even if the exact number of the manuscripts inrnEthiopia (including Eritrea) is not known, some estimate it to be aroundrn200.000 (excluding scrolls). In spite of the historical, theological, legal,rnlinguistic, literary, etc ... importance of these collections to the country,rnlittle work is done to exploit them. Therefore, there is a need to describernthem and publish catalogues, and to invite scholars with varied interestsrnto these forgotten treasures.rnThere is a monastery in Ziway Island (dabra ~Oyon church) in which arnpeople called Zay live. It is believed they migrated during the war of YoditrnGudit with the Ark of the covenant of Axum. The monastery is one of thernmain depositories collections of codices, written from 6th-8th C after therncoming of the Nine Saints. However, individual scholars, and local andrninternational projects did not give enough attention to the collection ofrnZiway Island, not even the UNESCO sponsored EMML project, althoughrnit did microfilm some from 8 Sep. 1969 to 12 Feb. 1970.rnThis paper seeks to fill this gap by focusing on the collection of ZiwayrnIsland (dabra ~Oyon monastery) The monastery, located in East-south ofrnAddis Ababa 160km far from Addis Ababa, is to believed to have beenrnfounded in 845 E.C, the people from Axum who migrated to Ziway Lakernand lived there for 40 years during the war ofYodit Gudit.rnIt is also believed that after the death of Yodit Gudit, they left many Arksrnand manuscripts in the Island when some of them returned to Axum.rnAccording to the inventory of the monastery, it possesses around 40rnmanuscripts some of them damaged through time. The paper tries to list,rndescribe and prepare a complete catalogue of 12 biographicalrnmanuscripts which happen to be the better preserved ones. I hope thernstudy will invite secular as well as ecclesiastical scholars to utilize therntreasure hid in them.