3-021-137 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Facsimile of two pages of an Abyssinian Bible, 1868. 'Mr. Holmes, the representative of the trustees of the British Museum,...has collected some manuscripts and specimens of church furniture and ornaments for the Museum. We have engraved, from a photograph, the facsimile of two pages of an Abyssinian Bible. The curious pictures of religious subjects with which these two pages are filled show a very primitive condition of art. One page represents the Creation of Adam and Eve, and the Crucifixion, in another compartment. The other exhibits the figures of St. Theodore and of St. George with the Dragon'. (Richard Rivington Holmes was part of the British Expedition to Abyssinia in 1868, during which many Ethiopian documents, cultural artefacts, and art objects were looted as spoils of war by British soldiers. Holmes himself took a large cache of loot from the Battle of Magdala back to Great Britain, much of which found its way into the British Museum). From "Illustrated London News", 1868.