Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/336

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314
THE LESSER EASTERN CHURCHES

round, with a dome. Over the door is sculptured their crowned lion. Within there is a broad passage around the central choir and sanctuary. This has a wall all round it up to the roof, and beyond, for it rises above the outer wall and becomes the drum of the dome. The central space is divided by a straight screen across it into choir and sanctuary. The arrangement of the altar, vessels, and so on, is sufficiently Coptic to justify a reference in general to that use (pp. 267-270). They have, of course, no statues, but numbers of paintings of our Lord and of saints. All the Abyssinian paintings I have seen are exceedingly rude, without artistic merit of any kind,[1] but very curious and interesting.[2]

The ark (tābōt) on every Ethiopic altar has puzzled many people.[3] The Abyssinians say that the Queen of Sheba brought the ark of the Covenant back with her to Aksum, where it is kept in the Metropolitan church.[4] Every other church has a tābōt, a copy of the one at Aksum. They pay enormous reverence to the tābōt. Their liturgy contains a special prayer for blessing it;[5] they carry it in processions, bless with it, bow down before it. What then, exactly, is this ark? It is tempting to suppose that it must be a vessel containing the Holy Eucharist, as Neale thinks.[6] It seems, however, that it is not so. The Abyssinians have, at least now, no reservation of the Holy Eucharist (cf. p. 286). The real explanation is a simple one. The tābōt is the Coptic pitote, a box, otherwise empty, in which the chalice stands

  1. Coptic paintings are rude too, in the sense of showing very naïve drawing and ignorance of all the usual rules; but the older ones have great artistic beauty. I do not think the most enthusiastic archæologist could find any beauty at all in Abyssinian painting, though much of their ornament form (crosses, geometric patterns, and so on) shows a sense of design and Coptic influence.
  2. Some curious Abyssinian paintings, ornaments and church vessels (brought back by the expedition of 1867), may be seen in the British Museum (Christian Room, wall-cases 16-18). But the guide to this room (by Mr. C. H. Read) contains many bad blunders, including the amazing statement that Ge'z is written from right to left (p. 96).
  3. Renaudot: Liturg. Orient. Coll. i. 498; Neale: Holy Eastern Church, Gen. Introd. i. 185-186.
  4. For this legend see Ludolf: Hist. Aethiop. L. ii. cap. iii. § 8. For the tābōt in other churches, ib. L. iii. c. vi. § 62. The tābōt at Aksum is magnificent, covered with gold and jewels. Abū Ṣāliḥ describes it (Churches and Monasteries, pp. 287-288).
  5. Renaudot: loc. cit. i. 474.
  6. Loc. cit. i. 186.