amuletsEthiopian talismanic scrollክታብ

said kitab, ketab

also: healing scroll · protective scroll · kitab · ketab

amuletEast Africa and the HornEthiopiaconfidence mediumneeds checking

This one is not fully ours to publish

The prayers, the mystical names of God and the invocations written on a scroll are the dabtara's craft and are not reproduced here. This record prints what the scroll is, what it is for, and how it is made — not its text, and no formula. — the practice itself, as described in the source: the scroll works only when read aloud in Ge'ez by a literate third party, and the writing is the dabtara's training rather than public knowledge

The atlas prints the restriction and stops. Why.

A long strip of parchment — goat or sheep hide, soaked, dried, stretched, scraped and washed until it takes ink — painted with prayers in Ge'ez and with talismanic drawings, then rolled. A personal one is cut to the height of the person it is for. Larger ones hang on a wall. The colours are black, white, red, blue, green and yellow. Crosses and eight-pointed stars recur; so does the gätsä säb'e, a face inside an eight-pointed star; so do eyes, painted in geometric pairs and rimmed in red.

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When

earliest surviving examples sixteenth century; in use to now still carried cited

Period	sixteenth century to the present
How the date is known	a dated example survives
Note	from_year is the source's 'earliest extant examples date to the 16th century'. The same source says the scrolls are held to have been in use since the tenth century; that earlier claim is not carried into the years here because it rests on no surviving object this project has read of.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Scroll
Made of	Parchment and vellum · Ink · Cloth · Leather and hide
Goes	At the neck · On a wall · In a pocket or a bag
Made by	a dabtara — an unordained cleric trained past the Psalms in poetry, liturgy and writing
It says	prayers in Ge'ez, Christian invocations and mystical names, with painted talismanic figures — crosses, eight-pointed stars, the gätsä säb'e face in a star, and paired eyes rimmed in red (Ge'ez)
Colour	black · white · red · blue · green · yellow
Retired	no — it is kept
Note	The Metropolitan Museum's eighteenth- or nineteenth-century example is catalogued as parchment, pigments and cotton. Length is not entered as a number because the source's rule is relative: the scroll is cut to the height of the person it is for.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The evil eye — harm carried by a look, often an admiring one citedsaid by the scrolls themselves — the spells, prayers and formulas they carry offer protection or cure against the Evil Eye
Ghosts and hungry spirits citedsaid by the same texts, against malevolent spirits
Illness — sickness in general, where no cause is named citedsaid by the source, which gives the range as 'bed bugs, to home intruders, to smallpox', and says the scroll treats the spiritual cause while homeopathic medicines address the physical symptoms
Death in childbirth citedsaid by the historical manuscript record, which the source says shows the majority made for women's reproductive health conditions
Theft citedsaid by the source's own list, which names home intruders

The story

The scroll is the size of its owner. That is the first fact anybody who handles one notices, and it is the fact that explains the rest: this is not a text about a person, it is a stand-in for one.

It is made by a dabtara — an unordained cleric of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church who has gone past memorising the Psalms into poetry, liturgy and writing. In Ethiopia the power to write includes the power to write prayers and spells, so the word carries a second sense as well. The making involves the sacrifice of an animal, usually a goat or a sheep, standing for the person the scroll is for; the patron is rubbed by and bathed in the contents of the animal, and the hide becomes the parchment.

The writing is Ge'ez, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's liturgical language. Because few speak it now, a scroll does not work by being owned: a third party literate in Ge'ez has to read it aloud to the afflicted person. Inference — that makes the scroll one of the few amulets in this atlas that needs another human being present to function at all.

What it is against runs from the small to the fatal. The range the source gives is bed bugs, home intruders, smallpox. It treats the spiritual cause; homeopathic medicines are used alongside it for the physical symptoms. Historical manuscripts show the majority were made for conditions of women's reproductive health.

The oldest surviving examples are sixteenth-century, though the practice is held to go back to the tenth. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds several, including an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century scroll of parchment, pigments and cotton.

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How it is made and carried

An animal is sacrificed for the person the scroll is for. The hide is soaked for several days, dried, stretched, then scraped, washed and dried again into parchment. The dabtara writes the prayers and the mystical names and paints the talismanic figures in the six standard colours. A personal scroll is cut to the owner's height, though it may be made longer. It is rolled, often kept in a leather case, and carried; a larger one hangs. To work, it is read aloud in Ge'ez by somebody who can read Ge'ez.

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Now

Still made and still commissioned, and still being collected. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle publishes one, and the Metropolitan Museum publishes several. As of 2026 the split between scrolls made for a patron and scrolls made for the trade in old Ethiopian manuscripts is not something this project has read a figure for.

inference

Where you can see one

The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Ethiopian healing scrolls, including an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century example of parchment, pigments and cotton
Wellcome Collection — Ethiopian and other amulet material in the collection Henry Wellcome assembled

An accession number appears here only where it was read off a catalogue page that is linked. No link, no number.