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Medieval art history has long emphasized the glories of the Byzantine Empire, but less known are the profound artistic contributions of Nubia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had an indelible impact on the medieval Mediterranean world. Bringing together more than 170 masterworks in a range of media and techniques—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, panel paintings, and religious manuscripts—Africa and Byzantium recounts Africa’s centrality in transcontinental networks of trade and cultural exchange. With incisive scholarship and new photography of works rarely or never before seen in public, this long-overdue publication sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of late antique Africa. It reconsiders northern and eastern Africa’s contributions to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the region as a vibrant, multiethnic society of diverse languages and faiths that played a crucial role in the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.
There are many stories to tell about the Ethiopic manuscripts in the collection of the Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Ababa. The stories about the content of the manuscripts are told in the catalogue (EMTS volume 13). But this volume recounts stories about the book culture that produced the manuscripts. One study provides a general introduction to Ethiopian Christian codicology and the scribal practices in evidence in the collection. Another focuses on the particular story of scribal errors and corrections. And a final study provides an art-historical account of all of the illuminations contained in the collection--even down to the crude drawings in pencil that adorn some pages. Books contai...
Memory is a subject that recently has attracted many scholars and readers not only in the general historical sciences, but also in the special field of art history. However, in this book, in which more than 130 papers given at the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art (Amsterdam) 1996 have been compiled, Memory is also juxtaposed to its counterpart, Oblivion, thus generating extra excitement in the exchange of ideas. The papers are presented in eleven sections, each of which is devoted to a different aspect of memory and oblivion, ranging from purely material aspects of preservation, to social phenomena with regard to art collecting, from the memory of the art historian to workshop practices, from art in antiquity, to the newest media, from Buddhist iconography to the Berlin Wall. The book addresses readers in the field of history, history of art and psychology.
Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia offers an original perspective on how the rulers of Ethiopia - one of the great subcenters of agricultural innovation and development - used land to support their dominion. Crummey draws on all the surviving documents pertaining to the holding and granting of agricultural land in the Ethiopian highlands from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. By examining how social relations affected the conditions for economic production and how people of power drew on the wealth created by society's basic producers, he provides new insight into how ordinary farming and herding folk were incorporated into and affected by the institutions that ruled them.
The Catalogue of the Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project (EMIP), volume 7, provides a full catalog for the collection of fifty-four manuscripts in the Meseret Sebhat Le-Ab collection at Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. These include one late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century manuscript of Jubilees and the Minor Prophets. Each catalog entry provides a full physical description, a listing of contents (with incipits), illuminations, varia (known works added later), notes on codicology and scribal practice, as well as a full quire map. Opening articles provide an introduction to the collection, a biography of Alaqa Meseret's life and work, an introduction to the Ethiopian musical tradition of Saint Yared, and a study on the textual character of the manuscript of Jubilees. Four indices (works, names, miniatures, and scribal practice) provide quick access for the researcher.
Despite widespread persecution, Orthodox churches not only survived the Cold War period but levels of religiosity in Orthodox countries remained significant. This book examines the often surprising relations between Orthodox churches and political regimes. It provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamics between Eastern Christianity and politics from the end of the Second World War to the fall of communism, covering 40 Orthodox churches including diasporic churches in Africa, Asia, America and Australia. Based on research from recently-opened archives and publications in a wide range of European languages, it analyses church-state relations on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It discusses the following key themes: the relationship between Orthodox churches and political power; religious resistance to communism; the political control of churches; religion and propaganda; monasticism and theological publications; religious diplomacy within the Orthodox commonwealth; and religious contacts between East and West.
Abuna Estifanos (Stephen), the edition and translation of whose hagiographical life is presented here, was the leader of a monastic reform movement that shook the foundations of the Ethiopian State and Church in the 15th century. The reform movement of Estifanos and his followers was known to the local clergy from the time of the reign of Emperor Zar'a Ya'eqob (1434-1468). The basis of the this reform movement was that monks should observe a strict monastic life, according to the rules laid down by the fathers of monasticism, and that the teachers of the Church should limit the doctrine of Christianity to what was found in the eighty-one canonical books of the Bible, recognized by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the observance of God's Commandments found in them.
"In Sentinel Musicians of the Ethiopian American Diaspora, Kay Kaufman Shelemay shares more than forty years of research among Ethiopian musicians in the midst of a widespread and evolving diaspora. Beginning on the eve of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974 all the way up to the present day, Shelemay follows musicians as some leave Ethiopia for the US, setting up essential networks of support in cities such as New York, Boston, and Washington, DC. Throughout this profound transition, Shelemay shows how Ethiopian musicians serve a critical function in social and political life by both safeguarding community identity and challenging authority within Ethiopian society. She coins the term "sentine...
There has been growing interest in recent years in the presence and image of blacks and blackness in classical antiquity. However this pioneering and much needed work is the first to survey and theorise the black as seen by early Christian writers.