When the representational images on the scrolls are captioned, the inscriptions resemble those in religious paintings: "Image of Michael," they say, or "How Our Lord told the demon to be silent." Also as in religious paintings, these images illustrate certain texts, among them the passages from the Gospels describing Christ's healing miracles. It is unsurprising, then, that scroll images and religious paintings are sometimes iconographically and stylistically identical. Among the martyrs, George, the foremost of them, is as popular on the scrolls as in the church. The cross, instrument of the triumph of Jesus over Satan and over death, figures explicitly on the majority of scrolls.

15. The cross painted on this scroll is a benediction cross as clerics have used since the seventeenth century. Protective scroll, eighteenth century , parchment, 35 x 18.5 cm. Collection: Musee National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie, Paris. Gift of Jacques Mercier. Photo courtesy fo Guy Vivien

Paradoxically, the most pious scrolls, and the only ones of which one can be sure that no astrology has gone into their preparation, are not illustrated. This may be out of humility, for they are mostly intended for older people who have become monks, and who, being closer to death, seek only the salvation of their souls. These scrolls carry the "Prayer for salvation and book of life, the band of justification [Lefafa Tsedq ] that the Father gave to Our Lady Mary, mother of God, and which bring into the Kingdom of the Heavens and salvation from the narrow gate." This prayer comprises a series of secret Names revealed to Mary, the disciples, or to Saint Andrew by God or by Christ in order to drive away demons, elude the flames of Hell, and open the gates of the Kingdom of the Heavens (Budge 1929). Such scrolls are therefore buried with their owners, rather as the Book of the Dead was buried with ancient Egyptians.

16. "Our Lady Mary with her beloved Son;" Gabriel and Michael stand to either side. Page from a gospelbook, early sixteenth century, parchment, this page 34.5 x 26.5 cm. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Guy Vivien

The differences between the images on the scrolls and those on other religious objects are as obvious as the similarities. First, their iconography is more archaic, which is consistent with the limited number of themes. Images of Mary and of the Crucifixion, for example, are extremely rare in scrolls but have been common religious painting since the fifteenth century for Mary and the sixteenth century for the Crucifixion. This historical deficit in the scrolls has been perpetuated across the centuries by the idea that people are drawn beneath a cross (without a crucified figure) on a scroll, they are not Mary and John, as in religious iconography, but the owner of the scroll, or intercessor saints, or else angels, for, as one prayer has it, "angels praise the cross."