Description
This Gospel book was written in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in the early 14th century, and was once owned by the Church of Saint George in Debre Mark’os. It was written by the scribe Mäṭre Krastos in the official liturgical language of Ethiopia, Ga’az. Most notable is its prefatory image cycle, which makes references to holy places in Jerusalem, such as Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher, as they appeared in the sixth century. The manuscript therefore appears to be based on a sixth-century exemplar containing images connected to the Byzantine cult of holy places. Several related manuscripts have been identified that seem to be based on the same prototype, most notably Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, eth. 32, a fragment in the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, Inventory no. 3475 a-b, and another fragment in the National Museum, Stockholm, NM B 2034. The Paris manuscript contains a mid-14th-century colophon which helps to date the group. Although water has damaged some of its elaborately decorated pages, this Gospel book is still an important record of the resurgence of monasticism that flourished in 14th-century Ethiopia.
