Healing scroll (ma’ero qumät, tälsäm, or yä branna ketab),

ca. 1770-1830

Until the late twentieth century, many Ethiopian Christians sought good health by commissioning a healing scroll. Customized for their user by a <em>däbtära</em> (unordained cleric), the scrolls combine sacred imagery with written prayers. Invoking the power of Christian holy figures, this scroll aims to drive demons, disease, and pains away from its owner, a woman named Asädä Maryam. In part, its text reads: “I appeal for protection in the name of Saint George that they may heal God’s servant Asädä Maryam from the sickness of plague and malaria, for the word of God can quell the flame of the fire.” The paintings visible here show a talismanic design of an eight-pointed star with eyes (likely a cherub), an ouroboros (a snake eating its tail), and a fish (a probable reference to Christ). Scrolls were generally rolled and sewn into small leather tubes that could be worn. The unusually long length (96 inches overall) and holes at both ends of this example, however, suggest it was once hung from a home’s interior post.