Monastery

This is part of the interior of the monastery on a peninsula in Lake Tana. Most of the monasteries (Ethiopian Orthodox Church) in this area are on islands or remote areas of the lake shore. We boated to this one and then took a short hike to it.

First, the guide took us to a local family's house. There was a coffee ceremony, and then we were offered homemade beer and then arraki, a local liquor.

The monasteries are still looked after by monks (naturally). They may date from the 1300s. The ones we saw were circular, with steel roofs, quite unlike my idea of a monastery. The round outer building housed a cubical inner one, which is covered by brightly covered images, depicting the lives of Jesus and Mary, and many saints. The images of what befell evil people, and non-believers, were quite graphic.

We couldn't go into the second monastery, Kibran Gabrael. Anj and Aysha weren't even allowed to go near it, being women. Stone bells outside predated the arrival of a metal bell in the 1600's. The bells' tones, after the monk struck them with a small rock, were quite pure.

We walked to the the small museum behind the monastery. A small cross showed the crucifixion on one side and paintings from other parts of Christ's life on the other. One image showed Mary breastfeeding the baby Jesus, something that doesn't seem to depicted in the religious images I've seen in Canada. ( I'm no expert - perhaps, in Canada, he is thought to have had formula). There were handwritten religious records, and old and new testaments. The largest weighed 17 kg. The text, painstakingly written by monks, in Ge'ez, was unbelievably precise. According to wikipedia, Ge'ez is an ancient south Semitic language, still used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

All in all, it was a very interesting day. I would go back to explore more monasteries.