Anecdota Oxoniensia. Semitic series.

.IJ'SSI.I/.IA. 29
the king and his subjects to do as they were then doing; and after this
the Abyssinians refrained from following their former custom, and began
to have each of them one wife only.
[This patriarch] also established that in the rite of consecration of
churches the same customs should be followed as in all the churches of
Egypt; and he bade the metropolitan direct the Abyssinians to slay at
the completion of the building of a church twelve beasts', namely four Fol.l07a
oxen, four sheep, and four goats, three at each side of the church; and
that they should distribute [the flesh] of all [of them] on the day when
they ceased from the building of the church, as a gift to God who had
helped them to complete a house in which offerings should be made
to him and in which his name should be commemorated, and supplications and prayers and praises should be offered.
sixty-fifth patriarch, occupied the see in the first half of the eleventh century.
(A. J. B.)
This custom of sacrificing animals at the consecration or completion of
a church is quite unexampled in Coptic church history and quite against the
Coptic canons. It can only mean, I think, that the patriarch sanctioned the
maintenance of a purely Abyssinian practice. From the earliest times there were
large Jewish settlements in Abyssinia, and it is probable that the custom of
religious sacrifice derived from the Jews remained after the conversion of the
people to Christianity, just as it remained and remains among the Arabs after
their conversion to Islam. It must be admitted, however, that the Copts also
retained the custom of slaying if not of sacrificing animals on certain solemn
occasions. Lane instances the killing of a sheep or lamb at the bridegroom's
house on the evening of a wedding, when the animal is slaughtered at the door
and the bride steps over its blood; and he mentions that at Christmas, Epiphany,
and Easter, when the Copts pay regular visits to the tombs of their relatives,
a buffalo or sheep is commonly slain and given to the poor as an act rather
of charity than sacrifice. (jMod. igyptians, ii. pp. 292, 296.) But the Muslim
sacrifices are far more numerous and more distinctly ritual in character (op.
cr i. i. pp 67, i6, 302; ii. 221, 259, 268). The present writer has seen
Muslim sacrifices with a propitiatory purpose both in Egypt and in Asia Minor.
(A. J. B.)
p p 2