If you spoke Ge’ez (and odds are you don’t – it’s an ancient language only used today in the liturgy of Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christians), you could read these 44 pages that were once sewn together as a book. At some point, they were taken apart and shuffled around, making their original order a mystery. We do know they’re more than 400 years old, illustrated with hand-painted Biblical scenes and Ethiopian saints, monks, and worshippers. And that they comprised a kind of devotional prayer book for an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian—so it’s lucky we have these pages at all, given how much they were handled. As for who’s who and what’s what, you’ll need to study your Ge’ez or dive into the subtitled version available here.
The loose pages of the book arrived at the museum in 2009, in the order you’re seeing them in this photograph. Since then, the pages have been examined by art conservators, art historians, and experts in Ethiopian Orthodox Christian book arts. As a result of their analysis, we’ve attempted to put the jumbled pages back into their original order. Select “More” to page through the re-ordered book.