Richard Pankhurst
The return to Ethiopia of the Tabot looted from Maqdala by the British in 1868 has caused several beloved readers to beg me to postpone my articles on Ethiopia's twentieth century confrontation with the European powers, and write something about Tabots and Manbara Tabots.
Introduction
Before doing so I think two points are in order: Firstly, now that the Episcopal of Scotland has returned the Tabot found in Edinburgh, we wonder when the British Museum will disgorge the ten Tabots in its possession likewise looted from Maqdala.
Secondly, now that the Episcopal Church, motivated by a most praise-worthy belief in justice, has, of its own free will, carried out this act of restitution, we wonder how long the Italian Government will continue to violate its supposedly solemn agreement, signed with the Ethiopian Government in 1997, to return the Aksum obelisk looted on Mussolini's personal orders in 1937.
But to return to the Tabot question!
Ethiopian Legend about the Ark Legend in Ethiopia, since early times, has had it that one of the country's first rulers was Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who travelled to King Solomon, the Biblical King of Israel, to learn of his wisdom. On returning to her country she bore him a son, by name Menilek, who later visited his father in Jerusalem. The Jewish king, it is claimed, begged the young man to remain with him as his heir, but Menilek insisted on returning to his mother in Ethiopia. Solomon sadly agreed, but, declaring him his first-born child, insisted that he should be accompanied home by the first-born son of the High Priest, as well as the first-born of the principal men of state.
Menilek and the children of Israel duly departed, but before they did so they are said to have purloined the Ark of the Covenant, which they wanted to take with them into Ethiopia as "they could not live without it". Menilek was not privy to the plot, but when told about it some days after their departure from Israel, supposedly declared that as they had succeeded it "must have been the will of God". Drawing of three Manbara tabots, at the church of Golgotha, at Lalibla This tradition is embodied in the "Kebra Nagast", or Glory of Kings, an early fourteenth century Ethiopian national epic, which has been described by Professor Edward Ullendorff, perhaps the doyen of Ethiopian studies, as "the foremost creation of Ethiopic literature".
The story has more than one version, and finds interesting expression in one of the most popular of Ethiopian traditional paintings: "strip cartoons" of Sheba's visit to Solomon. The legend of Sheba's visit to Solomon was widely cited in the Ethiopian royal chronicles, and is also referred to in Emperor Haile Sellassie's two Ethiopian Constitutions, of 1931 and 1955, which state that the monarch must be of that descent. In the first Solomon is mentioned before the Queen; in the second, Sheba before the King!
The tradition that the Ark embodying the Almighty's commands to Moses had been reported at least a century before the "Kebra Nagast" when the very early thirteenth century Armenian writer Abu Salih wrote: "the Abyssinians possess the Ark of the Covenant"
The Tabot, or Altar Slab
The above tradition also finds expression in an important feature of Ethiopian Orthodox Church life: the existence in every Ethiopian church of at least one Tabot, or altar slab, which is considered as a symbolic representation of the Ark of the Covenant. The Tabot is in fact so important that it is this Ark - and not the church building - which is consecrated, and which gives sanctity to the building in which it is placed. This can most vividly be seen at the Temqat, or Epiphany, celebrations at Gondar when the city's Tabots are taken into the Fasiladas palace with the pool.
The significance of the Tabot is likewise evident from the fact that churches are sometimes referred to by the name of the Tabot: An eighteenth century land charter of Emperor Takla Giyorgis states for example that this ruler granted land to "the tabot of Gabre'el at Adwa". Because of its sanctity the Tabot is invariably housed in the central section of the church: the "Qedus Qedusan", or Holy of Holies, into which none but the clergy may enter. The Tabot plays moreover a major role in church ritual. The Tabot, as many readers will have seen this Temqat, is thus covered in costly cloth, and carried around with much singing and ritual dancing, the beating of drums and staffs or prayer sticks, and the slow and elegant rattling of sistra.
This practice, as many commentators have noted, is strongly reminiscent of the Biblical passage which tells of King David and the people dancing in front of the Ark. Tabots, always honourably shrouded in specially chosen vestments, are taken out of their churches each year on especial occasion, most notably on the eve of Temqat, when they are carried to a river or lake beside which they spend the night before the main celebrations on the morrow. Tabots are likewise carried around on Saints' days, as well as on military campaigns when they accompanied the soldiers.
One of the most celebrated Tabots, now housed at the Medhane Alem church on the opposite side of the road from Addis Ababa University, and the institute of Ethiopian Studies Museum, accompanied Emperor Haile Sellassie during his exile in Bath, England, in 1936-41.
The Tabot is conventionally a small slab of wood - or occasionally stone - two and a half inches or more thick, and ranging from perhaps six inches by five to sixteen inches by ten in length and width. It is often engraved with one or more cross, or sometimes with a representation of Christ in the form of a lamb, or of the Virgin and Child. There is usually an inscription, in Ge'ez, indicating the Biblical personage or Saint to which it is dedicated, and sometimes the Ge'ez words for Alpha and Omega.
Few will, however, ever read such words, for the Tabot is invariably closely closeted, and, despite its above-mentioned peregrinations, will never be seen except by officiating priests. Despite its religious and cultural importance, the Tabot is usually but simply decorated. Tabots, because of the veneration in which they were held, have seldom been described. One of the first to do so was the seventeenth century Jesuit Manoel Barradas. He says Tabots were "commonly of wood, some well wrought and incised or painted... other are of stone, white and beautiful like marble" He claims to have seen one which was unusual in bearing the names of no fewer than seven Saints.
The Manbara Tabot, or Altar
The Tabot is traditionally kept in a Manbara Tabot, which is a kind of Altar Chest, in a sense comparable to an Altar. There are two basic firms. The simplest consists of a single hollow wooden cube with a hinged door and four small legs. The more complex version are formed out of three similar cubes, arranged horizontally, likewise with four feet. Only the lowest cube will, however, be used as a repository for the Tabot. Some other Manbara Tabots are designed more in the shape of "sentry boxes". Some such Manbara Tabots may nowadays be man-high, and indeed sometimes so tall that it may be difficult to pass them through a church door.
Manbara Tabots are in many cases beautifully carved, and painted with consid erable skill. Because of the awe with which they are regarded they are seldom seen by either lay Ethiopians or visiting foreigners. It is, however, possible to see new ones at the studios of church artistscommissioned to produce them - and one such artifact found its way into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
For the same reason relatively little has been written about Manbara Tabots. Perhaps the first reference is in the chronicle of the early seventeenth century Adal conqueror, Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, better known a Ahmad Gragn, or the Left-handed, which tells of his men breaking into the church of Atronsa Maryam, in Amhara, where his men came across one such artifact, with four legs, weighing no less than a thousand ounces. With the above deviation I trust, dear readers, to return next week to the ramifications of the Tripartite Agreement of 1906, by which the three colonial powers sought to partition the country into three spheres of economic interest, "in the interest", as the British representative wrote, "of Whites as against Blacks".
email me at Dr. Ahmed Yasin -Editorial Board of HAN
