Anecdota Oxoniensia. Semitic series.

288 CHURCIItES AND,IIONA'STERIE'S Ol E(,P7'
upon it, one at each of the four corners, and one in the middle. The
liturgy is celebrated upon the Ark four times in the year, within the
palace of the king; and a canopy is spread over it when it is taken out
from [its own] church to the church which is in the palace of the king:
namely on the feast of the great Nativity, on the feast of the glorious
Baptism, on the feast of the holy Resurrection, and on the feast of the
illuminating Cross. And the Ark is attended and carried by a large
number of Israelites descended from the family of the prophet David I,
who are white and red in complexion, with red hair. In every town
of Abyssinia there is one church, as spacious as it can possibly be.
It is said that the Negus2 was white and red of complexion, with
red hair, and so are all his family to the present day; and it is said that
he was of the family of Moses and Aaron, on account of the coming
of Moses into Abyssinia. Moses married the king's daughter3.
The eucharistic loaves of the Abyssinians are disks of leavened bread,
without stamp4.
I.e. the royal family, who as descended from Menelek l)avid, son of
Solomon, are descended fiom king David his father. On the subject of
Abyssinian Chiistianity, the reader is referred to Tellez, op. clt., and to La Croze,
Hist. du Chrzshiian2me d'l'lhirpie ( 739), and Geddes, Chur-ch listor, of El'thpoln,
London, I696. (A. J. B.)
2 It is, of course, well known that the word Negus is the Efliiopic I37/':
The form ti:l has been borrowed in Arabic as c5s".
~ This sentence is out of its place in the text.
4 The Coptic eucharistic loaf, which is also leavened, is on the contralr
stamped with a design of crosses, each enclosed within a square border. The part
in the middle is called the Isbodikon or Spourdion (IC.&OIKOtn or CnOt.IKOr
a corruption of StoerorKov), and the former appears in the Arabic Isbulidtiun, e. g.
in the modern (1886) Cairo edition of the Coptic Liturgy in the rubric before
intinction. Round the central design of the wafer are the words Holy, Holy,
Holy Lord (&Vioc &lOC V VIOC K1-psOC) or the like. See Vansleb, Hist.
de l'Eglse d'Alex. p. 99 f.; Buler, Copic Churches, ii. p. 278 seq.
Tellez says of the Abyssinians:
'Detraz da Igreja para a banda do Oriente esta sempre hua cazinha, a qual
lie a casa das hostia', & nella ha apparello para se fazerem; & vem a ser a