Ethiopian cross
The cross of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, best known in its openwork metal forms: processional crosses carried on poles and hand crosses priests bless with. Their designs repeat the cross within the cross and seldom show Christ on it: Ethiopian Orthodoxy holds the cross to be the Tree of Paradise as well as the sign of the Crucifixion.
Meaning
The Metropolitan Museum of Art calls the cross central to devotion and a pre-eminent cultural icon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and says that in Ethiopia it is seen as an emblem of triumph rather than of death. Since Christianity came to Ethiopia around 330, crosses have been everywhere: as liturgical objects in churches and monasteries, and in popular devotion and everyday life. The church’s word for the cross is meskel (mäsqäl), the name of its great autumn festival.
Origin and history
Devotion to the cross began soon after the Aksumite kingdom became Christian around 330, the Met writes, and the flaring pattée cross, a square cross with arms widening to their ends, is among the earliest forms in Ethiopian art, on Aksumite coins and carvings. Processional crosses older than the seventeenth century are rare, which the Met puts down to the sixteenth-century Islamic incursions that devastated the region. Ethiopian monarchs gave processional crosses to important monasteries, whose clergy remembered them in their prayers. Hand crosses copied the processional ones: the Walters Art Museum writes that their makers, hammering them from silver, brass or iron, often imitated styles developed at great religious centres such as Lalibela (Lalibala in the museum’s spelling), and that because they copied older models they are hard to date.
Why Christ is rarely shown
On one processional cross at the Met, three pattée crosses nest one inside another, with diamond and interlace patterns between them, and seven smaller crosses sprout from the top, the sides and the diagonals. Kristen Windmuller-Luna, writing for the museum in 2016, explains that images of Christ are rare on Ethiopian crosses because Ethiopian Orthodoxy holds the cross to be both the sign of the Crucifixion and the Tree of Paradise; the small crosses sprouting from the frame may be budding leaves. The looped arms either side of the shaft held coloured cloths for Christ’s shroud or Mary’s veil.
Processional crosses and hand crosses
Clergy carry the large metal processional crosses on poles in processions and services, the Met says. The hand or blessing cross (“yaedj masqal” in the V&A’s spelling) is the mark of an ordained priest’s office and his personal possession, which he uses to bless believers anywhere and at any time. The V&A records two readings of its square base: Adam’s tomb, on which the cross of Christ was said to have been planted, after the New Testament’s pairing of Adam and Christ in Romans; or the Ark of the Covenant. The Walters points to the scratches on one hand cross as the marks of its daily use in its owner’s hands. On a cross from the Lasta region, the Met notes one suggestion that its winding, serpent-like line recalls the brazen serpent of Moses (Numbers 21:4–9).
Meskel, the finding of the cross
Every September Ethiopia celebrates Meskel for the finding of the True Cross, a festival UNESCO lists among the intangible heritage of humanity. A great bonfire, the Damera, is built in Meskel Square in Addis Ababa, and the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church lights it. The church’s Sunday School Department (Mahibere Kidusan) tells the story behind it: Queen Helena lit a fire with incense, and its smoke rose and bent down to the hill where the cross was buried. The next morning believers mark their foreheads with a cross in the ashes. A piece of the True Cross is said to be kept at Gishen Mariam church in northern Ethiopia, given to Emperor Dawit by the Patriarch of Alexandria in return for his protection of the Coptic Christians.
Read next
- Next in Christian symbolsChi-RhoA monogram of the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, used by Christians as a symbol of Christ.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsFuntunfunefu Denkyemfunefu (Siamese crocodiles)Funtunfunefu Denkyemfunefu are the Siamese crocodiles, two crocodiles with one stomach that still fight over food. The adinkra symbol stands for unity in diversity.
See also
Coptic cross, Armenian cross (khachkar), Skull and crossbones, Ichthys, INRI, Latin cross.
Sources
- Processional Cross (qäqwami mäsqäl), Amhara or Tigrinya peoples (1999.297), collection record, text by Kristen Windmuller-Luna, 2016 (Internet Archive copy, February 2026), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Description
- Processional Cross, Ethiopia, Lasta region, collection record (Internet Archive copy, February 2026), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Description
- Hand Cross, 13th–15th century, 52.296, collection record (Internet Archive copy, December 2025), The Walters Art Museum, Description
- Hand cross, Ethiopia, before 1868, collection record, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Commemoration feast of the finding of the True Holy Cross of Christ, Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, inscribed 2013 (Ethiopia), UNESCO, Description
- Meskel: Finding of the True Cross, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church Sunday School Department, Mahibere Kidusan (eotcmk.org)
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from crosses or diamonds.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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