Garima Gospels

The three Garima Gospels were produced and are still housed at the Monastery of Abba Garima in Ethiopia's northern highlands. They were produced between the fifth and seventh centuries at the zenith of Ethiopia's ancient Christian civilization. The Abba Garima manuscripts are among the very oldest illustrated Gospels in the world. When it comes to firmly dated parallels, only the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, produced near Antioch in 586, is earlier. Then, as today, Ethiopia lay far, far away from Syria and Ireland. Despite this, the manuscripts show striking similarities to the art of other ancient Christian cultures outside of Africa. Indeed, they are a testament to the deep connections between Ethiopia and the wider late antique world.

The picture at left shows a temple image on folio 260r, Abba Garima II. It depicts what McKenzie and Watson term the "Renewed Temple." It is a curious building, with a trapezoidal roof, a course of bricks and columns, and a base with two doors, from which slender white deer poke their heads. In its specifics, the image is almost without precedent in the arts of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The image at right compare it with an illustration from the 7th-century Irish manuscript, The Book of Kells. Folio 202v in this manuscript depicts the Temptation of Christ with a similar Temple.