Armed with a bamboo ink pen and a steady hand, Ethiopian Orthodox priest Zelalem Mola carefully copies text in the ancient scriptural language Geez from a religious book onto a goatskin parchment.
This painstaking task is preserving an ancient tradition, while bringing him closer to God, 42-year-old Mola said.
At the Hamere Berhan Institute in Addis Ababa, priests and lay worshipers work by hand to replicate sometimes centuries-old religious manuscripts and sacred artwork.
Photo: AFP
The parchments, pens and ink are prepared at the institute, in the Piasa district in the historic heart of the Ethiopian capital.
Hamere Berhan head of communications Yeshiemebet Sisay, 29, said the work began four years ago.
“Ancient parchment manuscripts are disappearing from our culture, which motivated us to start this project,” she says.
The precious works are mainly kept in monasteries, where prayers or religious chants are conducted using only parchment rather than paper manuscripts.
“However, this custom is rapidly fading... We thought if we could learn skills from our priests, we could work on it ourselves, so that is how we began,” Yeshiemebet said.
In the institute’s courtyard, workers stretch the goatskins tightly over metal frames to dry under a weak sun.
“After the goatskin is immersed in the water for three to four days, we make holes on the edge of the skin and tie it to the metal so that it can stretch,” Tinsaye Chere Ayele said. “After that, we remove the extra layer of fat on the skin’s inside to make it clean.”
Once clean and dry, the skins are stripped of the goat hair and cut to the desired size for use as pages of a book or for painting.
Yeshiemebet said that most of the manuscripts are commissioned by individuals who donate them to churches or monasteries.
Some customers order small collections of prayers or paintings to have “reproductions of ancient Ethiopian works,” she said.
“Small books can take one or two months. If it is a collective work, large books can take one to two years. If it’s an individual task, it can take even longer,” she said.
Sitting in one of the institute’s rooms, with parchment pages placed on his knees, Zelalem patiently copies a book, entitled Zena Selassie — “History of the Trinity.”
“It is going to take a lot of time. It’s hard work, starting with the preparation of the parchment and the inks. This one could take up to six months to complete,” Zelalem said. “We make a stylus from bamboo, sharpening the tip with a razor blade.”
The scribes use different pens for each color used in the text — black or red — and either a fine or broad tip, with the inks made from local plants.
Like most other religious works, Zena Selassie is written in Geez.
This dead language remains the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its alpha syllabic system — where the characters represent syllables — is still used to write Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic, as well as Tigrinya, which is spoken in Tigray and neighboring Eritrea.
“We copy from paper to parchment to preserve [the writings] as the paper book can be easily damaged, while this one will last a long time if we protect it from water and fire,” Zelalem said.
Replicating the manuscripts “needs patience and focus. It begins with a prayer in the morning, at lunchtime, and ends with prayer,” Zelalem said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS