Medical Museum
Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine
in Ethiopia
Talismans and Scrolls
| The mystery of talismans, and other esoteric arts--the knowledge of spells and conjurations, the knowledge of the Names of God (a knowledge closely linked to talismanic art), the knowledge of cures (partially a pharmaceutic knowledge, more a knowledge of how to summon spirits)--all these make up the Ethiopian Wisdom, the tebab. Certain aspects of this body of lore stem from the same neo-Pythagorean and neo-Platonic sources as alchemy and the Cabala do; Ethiopians got them from Egyptian Christians, from Muslims, even perhaps, in some elements, directly from the schools of the late Hellenistic world at the time of Aksum. Drawings like the one bearing the inscription "powerful medicine" are called talsam, from the Arabic tilasm, which itself comes from the Greek telesma, "effective object." Beginning perhaps as early as late antiquity, Ethiopians developed talismanic art to a unique degree, working from rough drawings they received from the Mediterranean (judging from the tiny fraction that have survived). Over the centuries they have produced thousands of superb and arresting images, part talismanic, part figurative. |
9. A seal with "Powerful medicine" written in the top left corner. Protective scroll (detail), eighteenth century, parchment, 19 x 11 cm. Collection: Berlin (West), Staatsbibliothek PreuBischer Kulturbesitz. Orientabteilung |
| Few truly ancient works survive. Some extant works are datable to before 1700, a few dozen may be attributed to the eighteenth century, a few thousand to the nineteenth. How to explain this rapid disappearance? Unlike church relics, these are not sacred objects, and priests may urge the faithful to avoid or even destroy them. Also, in times when temporal power saw itself as spiritual power (as it did under the rule of Emperor Zara-Yaqob, in 1434-68), it might undertake massive campaigns of destruction. More recently the Communist government, in its struggle against "bad" aspects of Ethiopian culture, ordered the destruction of many books and scrolls considered magic. Moreover, the scrolls, produced for a specific person and specific ills, are in principle nontransferable, and disappointed patients are likely to be negligent in preserving them. |
Text courtesy of Mercier, Jacques. Art That Heals: the Image as Medicine in Ethiopia. New York: Prestel Books and The Museum For African Art, 1997.
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