Ethiopian figurines from Mugar monastery in Shawa.

In traditional highland Ethiopia, handicraft workers were not considered part of mainstream society and were shunned on account of their occupation and supposed polluting habits. Such workers--for the most part blacksmiths, weavers, and potters--traditionally constituted a distinct class, almost a separate caste. Though they supplied handicraft products essential to the country and society, including ploughshares and spear heads, as well as pots and cloth of all kinds, they tended to be despised by the rest of the population. Blacksmiths were also feared as possessing the Evil Eye. In many areas such craftsmen and craftswomen lived apart from the rest of the population in isolated communities, often at the edge of the main settlement or at the foot or sides of deep ravines. The division of labor was such that the men worked as blacksmiths and weavers and, in some instances, easily moved from one occupation to another, while their wives, sisters, and daughters were potters, making a wide variety of containers and cooking-ware.

In addition to such pottery, Ethiopian potter-women, at least by the post-World War II period, also modeled and fired a wide range of black clay figurines of animals, birds, and people. Such works, though usually crude, were the more remarkable in that the Ethiopian Judeo-Christian tradition, influenced by the Mosaic condemnation of graven images, tended to eschew any form of three-dimensional art. It should, however, be noted that clay representations of animals and human heads have been discovered by archaeologists working on the Aksumite and pre-Aksumite civilizations of northern Ethiopia, which flourished from the last centuries BC to the first six or seven centuries AD.

Ethiopian clay figurines, which are produced mainly for the tourist market but also for the resident foreign community, are usually between 3" and 5" long (7.6-12.7cm) and very simply molded. Some of the earliest and internationally best known were the work of the Beta Esra'el, formerly called Falasha, virtually all of whom have emigrated to Israel. Falasha figurines are now so well known that it comes as a surprise to discover that this form of representational art began to be produced only in the late 1940s (see Pankhurst 1964, Rauschenbauch and Hammerschmidt 1966, Schoenberger 1975).

In Addis Ababa the demand for clay figurines, mainly on the part of foreigners, became so great in the 1950s and early 1960s that such artifacts began also to be turned out by potters of other ethnic origins in and around the city. This handicraft work was sold primarily in open-air or other roadside markets or stalls on two of the five main roads leading out of the town, as well as in many souvenir shops.

Very different from the small black figurines made by the Beta Esra'el and others who seem to have copied them are those produced in the Mugar Gadam, or monastery, of northern Shawa (Pankhurst 1994, 1995). One of the oldest and most important of a score of isolated religious establishments in that region, it is inhabited by poor but remarkably devout craftsmen and craftswomen. They are probably the descendants of Beta Esra'el crafts workers who migrated southwards to Shawa around the early eighteenth century. At that time they appear to have adopted the Christianity of their new neighbors but remained organizationally distinct and separate from the established Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and continued to practice the handicraft skills of their Falasha forebears. Their frugal lives today turn almost entirely on their work as blacksmiths, weavers, and potters, as well as on their devoted and lifelong service to God.

Mugar Gadam

Mugar Gadam is located in the Dalite area some 84 miles (135km) north of Addis Ababa, off the road to Fitche. The establishment is situated near the bottom of a deep ravine overlooking the Mugar River, one of tributaries of the Blue Nile. This isolated and little-known monastery occupies a complex of subterranean caves as well as a number of nearby rectangular houses.

The monastery is headed by an azaj, or superior, Abbe Balaynah. The nuns have their own head, termed a set-azaj, literally "woman azaj," who is, however, subordinate to the male azaj. In 2002, the establishment had an enrollment of about 130 monks and slightly fewer nuns. A significant proportion of both have come to the monastery to spend their last days in dignity and spiritual serenity. They are invariably dressed in characteristic white Ethiopian cotton clothing.

Members of the community, who are influenced by both Judaism and Christianity, celebrate two Sabbaths, the Judaic from Friday night to Saturday night, and the Christian from Saturday night to Sunday night. Like the Falasha (and many Ethiopian Orthodox Christians of medieval times), they refrain from all work, travel, and cooking on their two-day Sabbath. Ritual includes chanting, bowing, clapping, and drumming, as well as the sacrifice of an ox or smaller animal, the eating of dabbo (bread), the drinking of talla (beer), and the use of lighted tapers. Prayers are held seven times a day.

Monks and nuns live a most parsimonious life. Though they eat three times a day on Saturdays and Sundays, for the rest of the week they eat only once a day, when they partake of a communal evening supper. On Wednesdays and Fridays they abstain, like other Orthodox Ethiopian Christians, from all animal foods.

The main geographical features of Mugar Gadam, which presumably led to its establishment, are two large, adjacent crevices in the rock face, and above them a nearby spring. Both caves are some 49' (15m) wide and deep, and 10' to 13' (3-4m) high. One is occupied by the monastery's Salot Bet, or House of Prayer; the other by the combined kitchen and nun's quarters. Use of the spring, which is to this day the community's source of water, has been facilitated in recent years by the installation of pipes, provided through the generosity of a member of the community now living in Addis Ababa.

The House of Prayer is shaped like a squarish oval. Though a small portion of the ceiling is now open to the sky, the interior, when not lit by candles, is inevitably gloomy. This chamber has two entrances: that for men on the east, and that for women on the west. The room is surrounded on the inside by a maddab, or long low seat, made of mud and stone, which runs around the wall. Before entering the chamber, persons remove their shoes, a deferential practice universal in Ethiopian Orthodox Christian churches and, for that matter, mosques.

Most of the monks and nuns live in individual caves. Some of these are so small as to provide space only for lying down to sleep. The more level land above the caves is occupied by half a dozen rectangular wattle-and-daub houses devoted mainly to the monastery's traditional handicrafts: sheds for the women potters, as well as the men who practice ironwork and weaving.

The potter women, some half a dozen in number, several of whom at the time of our visit (2002) wore crosses tied around their necks, work in two separate houses. They make use of water from the nearby spring and clay carried up from the lowlands some half an hour's walk away. Most of the more routine articles, such as pots, plates, and jugs, are made with a simple hand-operated potter's wheel, but the figurines are carefully and skillfully molded by hand.

The Mugar Gadam pottery, as well as ironwork and cloth, are either ordered by customers in advance or exhibited for sale at the nearby Hamus Gabaya, or Thursday market, held an hour's walk away on flat land overlooking the Mugar River valley below.

The Mugar pottery, which on the whole resembles that of the Beta Esra'el and other groups, is mostly fired a beautiful jet-black. This is done without a kiln, by building a fire of dried dung cakes and branches over and around the items to be fired and keeping it burning at low heat for a minimum of five hours for small pots and figurines, longer for larger artifacts. To make the pots black, they are covered with leaves while still hot and left for five to ten minutes. Before firing, the potters utter a brief prayer to God or to Madhane Alam (the Savior of the World, i.e., the Messiah), appealing to Him to stave off too much wind, which could endanger the firing. They beg Him also to "protect our pots."

The pottery that the Mugar nuns produce contributes significantly to the monastery's meager financial revenues. Artifacts sold include drinking jars and bowls, cooking pots of all kinds, jugs for pouring coffee, saragalla or "magical" water pots which pour from a spout but are tilled at the base, and large, semi cylindrical bodies of kabaro, or drums. An innovation in recent years is the production of attractive terracotta figurines painted, apparently with ordinary house paint, in various colors.

The Mugar Gadam figurines, which are larger and of a finer order than those made by the Beta Esra'el and other groups, are mainly the handiwork of one talented and basically self-taught young nun called Yanenash Walda Sellase. She was too modest to talk about herself, feeling perhaps that her work should be judged only on its merits. Like the purely utilitarian pottery she and her colleagues produce, her figurines are sold only locally. They serve to adorn the houses of the local peasantry and others and have not reached Addis Ababa, let alone the international market.

The potters of Mugar Gadam, though probably descended, as we have suggested, from the Beta Esra'el several centuries ago, seem to have developed their figurines quite independently of those turned out by the Falasha. Mugar Gadam figurines are infinitely finer, better worked, and considerably more expressive than those of the Falasha. Those crafted by Yanenash Walda Sellase are in many cases twice as large as those of the Beta Esra'el, usually being about 10" (25cm) high. Unlike Falasha and other Ethiopian figurines, those of Mugar Gadam are hollow. They are not fired a shiny black, but are painted in fairly bright colors: white, the predominant color of Ethiopian highland dress, as well as blue, red, and yellow. More significantly, perhaps, the themes depicted by the Falasha and Mugar Gadam communities tend to be different. In the main, the Falasha produce, or produced, representations of their qesoch, or priests; models of the biblical King Solomon and the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba lying in bed together; lions decorated with either the Star of David or the Cross of Christ; and a remarkable variety of different animals and birds (Figs. 3-5). The figurines of Mugar Gadam consist mainly of representations of the world in and around the monastery: monks and nuns, sometimes reading or carrying bound manuscripts; women holding children in their arms or carrying pots of water on their backs; women spinning or grinding grain; and, a favorite, large long-horned zebu, or humped cattle, signifying prosperity and wealth. Mugar Gadam figurines are also unusual among Ethiopian craft ware in general in that those we have traced are all signed and dated. The dating is done using the Ethiopian calendar, whose dates are between seven and eight years earlier than those of the Gregorian calendar adopted in the West. The Yanenash figurines are generally identified on the inside or border of the figure with a note in Amharic stating that the painter was Yanash or Yanesho--an abbreviation of Yanenash--and specifying that the figurine was made in, for example, the Ethiopian Year of Mercy 1992, which is some time during the Gregorian years 1999-2000 AD.

[FIGURES 3-5 OMITTED]

Such figurines, reproductions of which have not hitherto been published, vividly reflect the world view of the Mugar Gadam nuns, and fall into three main categories: 1) representations of nuns and monks holding a Bible or other book; 2) women engaged in household tasks or nursing babies; 3) realistic white zebu cattle, complete with hump and horns.

Nuns and Monks

Two figurines, of a nun and monk, may be taken as representative of the Mugar convent and monastery. Both are seated and carry Christian holy books, probably Bibles, with crosses on their covers.

The first represents a nun, slim and ascetic in appearance (Fig. 6). She is looking up from a manuscript book, which she is holding in front of her with both hands, with an air of detached concentration. The book is bound in red, to signify red leather, often used to cover holy books, while the edges, representing pages, are white. Front and back are both incised with a cross. This cross, found on other Mugar figurines, resembles the so-called apex cross placed on the pinnacle of many Ethiopian churches, which consists of eight arms. The side arms are shorter than the upper and lower arms and the diagonals are shorter still. On the two open pages, in crude script, is the Amharic caption, "The nun at her prayers," followed by the date "1992 AM," i.e., the Ethiopian Year of Mercy 1992. She wears the characteristic yellow robes and cap of an Ethiopian nun. Over her shoulders and arms she wears a short, pale blue cape, embroidered with one gold leaf on each side and fastened with a clasp. The cap, which is particularly large, is decorated with a cross in red. Her face is of unglazed terracotta-colored clay. Her eyes are painted white with black pupils and are large, a characteristic of Ethiopian physiognomy often remarked upon. Her eyelids and eyelashes are delineated in black. Below the cap, her short hair is visible. Her shoes, just discernible below the robe, are black.

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The figure of the monk, our example of which is unfinished (Fig. 7), is in terracotta-color clay. It is largely unpainted and undated. The figure has a broad and open face with a serious expression and a short, ear-to-ear beard and a mustache, both painted in gray. On his head is a dark gray, almost black, cap such as Ethiopian monks wear. An apex cross, as worn by many Ethiopians, hangs from a chain around his neck, etched onto his robe. His hands emerge from unusually wide sleeves, characteristic of a monk's attire, and in his left hand he holds a holy book. Its cover is painted red and decorated with the cross. This figurine was designed as a candlestick, with the holder protruding from the base on either side.

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

Other Women

Prominent among the Mugar figurines produced by Yanenash are representations of women as mothers or at work (Fig. 2). They have smiling, terracotta-colored faces, in some instances glazed; well-molded hands; and characteristic large eyes painted in white with thick eyelids and black eyebrows. Their long, jet-black hair, ornately braided in the manner known as shuruba, falls in a single mass well below the back of the neck. The same shuruba hairstyle can be seen already on the small ceramic heads produced in Aksumite times. The Mugar Gadam women are wearing tight-bodiced, long-sleeved white dresses, flowing to the ground, such as country women of the area wear today as "Sunday best." The dresses are embroidered with one or more crosses painted pale blue. Their poses and expressions differ strikingly one from another.

One figurine, with an unglazed terracotta face, represents a young mother seated on a circular terracotta base (Fig. 8). She has one breast exposed, preparing to give milk to her baby. Round her neck she wears a matab, or silk necklace, the symbol of Ethiopian Christianity, indicated in ink in the traditional dark blue, and on her feet, surprisingly for an Ethiopian girl in the deep countryside, shoes, which are depicted in black. She looks downward toward the infant she is cradling in her left arm with a wistful expression of motherly love and contentment. Her child, whose up-turned face is clearly visible, is swaddled as is customary.

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

An older woman, with a glazed and slightly darker face and protruding ears is also seated upright on a roundish terracotta base (Fig. 9). She has a more elaborately decorated dress, embroidered at the neck and down the front, and black shoes. She is engaged in a typical female occupation: spinning. In her raised left hand she holds a handful of raw cotton portrayed in the Ethiopian fashion: It emerges as a thread through her bent index finger and thumb and is drawn towards a miniature, accurately fashioned spindle held in her right hand. She has a determined expression, looking upward, her lips slightly parted to reveal bright white teeth.

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

A third woman, also with glazed skin, is engaged in another widespread occupation of women: grinding corn in the manner still common in the Ethiopian countryside (Fig. 10). Kneeling and barefooted, she leans forward, holding in both hands the representation of a stone, painted dark brown, with which she is supposed to be grinding grain (not represented). She rubs the stone on a typical sloping, separate grinding-stone, painted a lighter brown. In real life, the flour produced slides down into the hole scooped out of the grinding-stone at its base. Her brown-sashed dress is embroidered at the neck and cuffs with a cross at the back. The folds of her skirt are realistically portrayed.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

A fourth woman, standing, possibly walking, is engaged in yet another common women's occupation: water-carrying (Figs. 1 and 11). Bent slightly forward, but apparently neither tired nor depressed by her toil (which in real life is almost backbreaking), she holds her head upright and looks undaunted. She has a gumbo, or large earthenware jar, tied to her back. This is done with a rope, signified here by a string, which passes through the holes in the jar's three handles, stretches round her neck, and is held in place above her chest with both hands. Her dress, similar to that of the other women, has a blue sash and blue border at the back. The movement of her body is clearly indicated by the folds of her skirt. The water jar is a perfect replica in miniature of those traditionally carried by Ethiopian peasant women.

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

Zebu Cattle

The Mugar figurines also comprise representations of fine, well-fed oxen, painted white (Fig. 12). Standing with front and back feet anchored on two small, thin, terracotta clay slabs, they have pronounced humps, characteristic of the zebu cattle widespread in Ethiopia. Their prominent eyes, nostrils, and mouth are unpainted. Above their ears rises a pair of large horns. The latter played an important role in the traditional Ethiopian economy: used as drinking horns, they also sometimes served as wall hooks for hanging clothes and other articles.

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

Conclusion

Yanenash Walda Sellase's Mugar figurines are executed with originality and skill. The persons emerging from the clay are essentially credible, each with her or his individual personality and expression. They are remarkably realistic as well as ethnologically interesting. The work of a humble but devout countrywoman with considerable artistic talent, living in an isolated religious community in northern Shawa, they provide a unique glimpse into traditional Ethiopian life and labor. They represent a somewhat idealized picture of the world with which Yanenash is familiar: the nuns and monks of Mugar convent and monastery, the daily life and household tasks of the women of Shawa, and the fine cattle which play so important a role in the country's life.

[This article was accepted for publication in June 2001.]

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--. 1994. "The Craftsmen's Monasteries of Shawa and Their Judaeo-Christian Customs: A Review of the Literature." In Horizonte der Christenheit: Festschrift fur Friedrich Heyer zu seinem 85. Geburtstag. M. Kohlbacher and M. Lesinski, eds. Erlangen: Oikonimia.

--. 1995. "The Balla Ejj Community of Shawa." In Between Africa and Zion. S. Kaplan, T. Parfitt, and E. Tevisan Semi, eds. Jerusalem: Benzvi Institute.

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Schoenberger, M. 1975. The Falashas of Ethiopia: An Ethnographic Study. M.A. thesis, Cambridge University.