Ethiopia, ca. 18th to 19th century CE. This is a pair of vellum handwritten healing scrolls, written in the distinctive Ge'ez (Ethiopic) language. The names of the people being prayed for, along with the names of saints or other important personages, are highlighted in the text by red writing. The Ge'ez language is what most of the literature of Christian Abyssinia is written in and comes from the ancient Aksumitic Empire. Ethiopia can lay a claim to being one of the oldest Christian countries and they practice a distinctive form of the religion, embodied in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which has a large and diverse Biblical canon, many of which would not be familiar to other Christians. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has very similar one made by the Tigrinya peoples of the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Size of largest: 3.75" W x 60" H (9.5 cm x 152.4 cm).

Provenance: Ex- Estate of M. Reiniger, Chicago, IL

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#111552

Both have wear to the vellum and are somewhat fragile, but can be unrolled and the words and artwork are clear.