The Ethiopian Monastery

June 22, 2009

On the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is a modest Ethiopian monastery. The monks worship in the chapel, which is just inside a substantial and quite old looking door. I made it my mission one morning to understand something about this monastery, and I stood for over an hour trying to talk with monks as they walked inside or came out. The picture above is what everyone can see: a small courtyard overlooked by a window from the domiciles of the monks. There is nothing very regular about the pattern of windows, which seem to be simply sculpted into the wall rather than fitted by plan.

The barrier to further advancement into the monastery was this green cross that stood in the low entrance. I could see and hear the monks beyond this, and occasionally they came out through this door, but no one let me in. My lucky break came as I talked to the caretaker in the chapel (they apparently take turns sitting and watching the chapel). I talked to him about prayer and he sang something for me. Then I asked if I could film him, and he agreed, and when it was done he was excited to see himself on my little Flip camera. He told me to show the other monks this small video camera, and after another twenty minutes or so waiting at the door of the monastery I found someone who would let me in and who knew a little bit of English. Here he is, inside the monastery:

From the inside there are lots of green doors, again randomly spaced, which give access to the small rooms for the monks. There is one sacred site marked with a cross that the monk claimed was the place where Abraham attempted to sacrifice Isaac.

There are lots of claims for the spot where that biblical story occurred (rock on Temple Mount) but I guess this is as good as anywhere.

The monks live a life of prayer and worship.. and their small space is nicely veiled from tourist eyes. Once inside I could look through the trees and see tourists or pilgrims walking out on the roof, but the life in this enclosed monastery space goes on in peace.. even if the steady hum of tourist voices in the background continues most of the day. In the video clip below I pan around the monastery, but listen for the sounds of people just outside the walls:

One of the largely unknown facts about Ethiopia is that they have their own classical language. Ethiopians speak a number of modern languages, but their Latin is called Ge'ez. Most of their liturgical books are organized into two columns, one for modern Amharic and the other Ge'ez. Need I say that for years I have wanted to learn Ge'ez? In the following video clip one of the monks holds up his New Testament and then reads a verse in Ge'ez:

I did not see all the monks, but I took a photo portrait of four who were sitting in the interior. I've made a slideshow of these monks:

The small Ethiopian Orthodox chapel could almost be mistaken for a Coptic one, with its inlaid wood front panel and icons of Jesus and Mary.

What really stands out as Ethiopian is the large painting hung on the side wall that depicts the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. The picture is glossed by a single verse from the Bible, so the significance of this picture is not totally clear to visitors. This is something of an origin story for the people of Ethiopia: the Queen of Sheba visited and was tricked into sleeping with Solomon; her son then returned to Israel and fled to Ethiopia with the best and brightest of the ancient Israelites; these become the core of the new Israel that took root in Ethiopia. The line of kings down to Hailie Selassie was thus in the lineage of Solomon, which went some way to establishing their legitimacy.

In the scheme of things the Ethiopian Orthodox church is not too important. It is the official church of a poor country in an out of the way part of the globe. Yet I find bracing and exciting the boldness of its claims. These monks are not the power brokers of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.. and the roof was probably not a place of honor.. but century after century they keep on with their traditions and recall among themselves the importance of their people and land.