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You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (July 2025) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must follow the LLM translation guideline, revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Enno Littmann]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Enno Littmann}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

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Ludwig Richard Enno Littmann (16 September 1875, Oldenburg – 4 May 1958, Tübingen) was a German orientalist. In 1906, he succeeded Theodor Nöldeke as chair of Oriental languages at the University of Strasbourg. Later on, he served as a professor of Oriental languages at the Universities of Göttingen (1914–16), Bonn (1918–21) and Tübingen (1921–49).^[1]

In 1901, he successfully deciphered the Safaitic script.^[2] He went on to decipher and annotate Palmyrene, Nabataean and Syriac inscriptions as well as historical texts of ancient Ethiopian monuments. In 1905 he stayed among the Tigre people in Eritrea, and during the following year, directed the German Aksum-Expedition in Ethiopia.^[3] He published a translation of One Thousand and One Nights from Arabic into German, "Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten" (6 volumes, 1921–28, 3 1954).^[3]

• 1897: "Die Pronomina in Tigré", in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 12, pp. 188–230, 291–316.
• 1898: "Das Verbum der Tigre-Sprache", in: Zeitschrift für Assyrologie 13, pp. 133–178; 14, pp. 1–102.
• 1902: (ed.) Debtera Zaneb, The chronicle of King Theodore of Abyssinia. Princeton University Library.
• 1904: Philosophi abessini. (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 18–19; Scriptores Aetiopici, 1–2)
• 1904: Semitic Inscriptions. New York: The Century Co. (online version at the Internet Archive)
• 1905: Modern Arabic tales. – Vol. 1: Arabic Text. Leyden: Brill. (online version at the Internet Archive)
• 1910–15: Publications of the Princeton expedition to Abyssinia, 4 vols. Leyden: E. J. Brill.
• 1935: Abessinien. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt.
• 1962: (with: Höfner, M.) Wörterbuch der Tigrē-Sprache: Tigrē-Deutsch-Englisch. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.

• Biesterfeldt, H. H. (1986). "Enno Littmann: Leben und Arbeit. Ein autobiographisches Fragment (1875–1904)", in: Oriens 29, pp. 1–101.
• Ullendorff, E. (1958). Obituary of Enno Littmann, in: Africa 28, p. 364.
• Ullendorff, E. (24 May 1958). Obituary of Enno Littmann, in: The Times.

• Axel Knauf (1993). "Littmann, Enno". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 5. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 134–136. ISBN 3-88309-043-3.
• Enno Littmann's Biography by Eike Haberland, in Lissan Magazine (online magazine for Ethiopian art, culture & lifestyle).