Manar Al-Athar – förlag

The Queen of Sheba is one of the most famous women of antiquity, rivaled only by Cleopatra and Helen of Troy for wealth, power and beauty. She is best known for her legendary meeting with King Solomon, an encounter that has resonated through time, nowhere more powerfully than in Ethiopia, where she is a foundational figures within the Ethiopian Church. There, the legend is known not only through the text called the Kebra Nagast, but also through traditional paintings. One of the most impressive of these paintings is a goatskin example by the artist Janbaru Wandemmu, at Groton School, USA, given by Professor Asrat Woldeyes, personal physician to Haile Selassie. The painting, which shows the legend in 25 panels, is presented here alongside another 56-panel work. This book illustrates the scenes from both paintings, with translations of their accompanying texts and an introduction.

The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, from the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia. This book reproduces all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time, and presents extensive comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated books. 316 colour illustrations. Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of the different versions of the same material in the gospels. Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames, portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and the unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are explored.

Khirbet et-Tannur was a religious sanctuary of the Nabataeans, ancient Arabs whose capital was the rose-red rock-cut city of Petra in Jordan. Excavated in 1937, the temple sculptures from Khirbet et-Tannur are in important public collections of the Jordan Museum, Amman, and the Cincinnati Art Museum. Nelson Glueck's fascinating finds of cult offerings and equipment were buried deeply in the Harvard Semitic Museum until they were unearthed by scholars decades later in 2002. New research on those discoveries and the sites sculpture by an international team of experts, led by Judith McKenzie (Oxford), has illuminated the religious practices and art of the Nabataeans. This gem of a small Nabataean temple has a fascinating story.

An introduction for children to the wonders of Petra, by Judith McKenzie, author of The Architecture of Petra (OUP, 1990).  The marvellous ancient city of Petra in Jordan is very special, because it was carved out of the rose-red stone by the Nabataeans, a people who lived there 2,000 years ago. Among the city's many monuments and impressive buildings, the Petra Great Temple stands out because its columns had elephant-head capitals. Two elephants, Feal and Zarafeh, are among them. They realise that they have lost their tusks. In order to search for their tusks, they decide to climb down from the capital and start an adventure. During their quest, they explore Petra, visit many places, meet other animals, and make friendships. Will they succeed and find their tusks? To find out, join them in their search, as told in this book . . .

The essays in this lavishly illustrated volume shed light on Ethiopia and Eritrea's fascinating past by looking at some of the most remarkable Ethiopic manuscripts kept at the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, manuscripts, often beautifully illustrated, have for centuries been the principal means of recording not just the Scriptures but also historical information. Ethiopic manuscripts thus provide a unique window into the life and culture of Ethiopians and Eritreans up to the twenty-first century. The first three essays function as an introduction and examine the history of the collection, the classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) language, and the production of manuscripts in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The remaining nine contributions—each devoted to one of the Bodleian's manuscripts—explore different facets of the manuscript tradition of Ethiopia and Eritrea. With its unique focus on the Bodleian's collection, this landmark volume presents a comprehensive and accessible overview of the context in which Ethiopic manuscripts were produced and makes the library's treasures more accessible to scholars and the interested public. The collection of Ethiopic manuscripts in the Bodleian Library in Oxford is one of the most significant in Europe. The Bodleian acquired its first Ge'ez manuscript in 1636 and further expanded its collection in 1843, when it acquired twenty-four of the manuscripts that the Scottish explorer James Bruce had brought back from Ethiopia and Eritrea. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the Bodleian Library has continued to expand its holdings of Ethiopic manuscripts through new acquisitions. Especially noteworthy are the forty-five manuscripts that the former Oxford University Medical Officer Bent Juel-Jensen bequeathed to the library at his death in 2007.  Colour illustrations throughout.

From 1981 until 1986, the archaeologist Judith McKenzie, then a graduate student at the University of Sydney, travelled to the ancient site of Petra in Jordan, living in a cave there for extended periods, in order to survey and measure architectural mouldings on the rock-cut monuments.It was a critical time in the history of Petra, where, for centuries, its local inhabitants, known as the Bdoul, had lived and worked. But that tradition was coming to a close. In 1985, the Bdoul began a move to the nearby village of Umm Sayhoun, as directed by the Jordanian government. This first-hand account of life in a cave at Petra, based on diaries Judith kept at the time she lived among the Bdoul, is therefore important as a record of a lifestyle now largely vanished. As she writes in her introduction: "I spent so much time socializing with the Bdoul, I came to observe many aspects of Bdoul life in a series of visits over three main field seasons. As women we had access to the world of young girls and women, which men from outside did not, while we were also sometimes treated as honorary men." This memoir thus stands as a reminder of life at Petra before the arrival of modern-day tourism at the site. But this book is not only a memoir. Observations are made on the ways in which the Bdoul have adapted to their new environment. Changes at the site that have taken place since 1981 because of weathering and erosion are recorded through comparisons between photographs taken forty years ago and more recent images. Ramifications of the expansion of the tourist-industry at Petra in the 21st century are also considered. Life in a Cave in Petra with the Bdoul: 1981-1986 is therefore an important and essential volume on the archaeology and history of one of the best-known ancient sites in the world.