Kaf (Ka) ከ

Kaf writes a plain k and continues the Semitic consonant behind the Hebrew kaph, the Syriac kaph and the Arabic kaf, all four keeping the same inherited name. Beside the plain letter Ge'ez has a labiovelar counterpart, a k made with the lips rounded, and it does the same for g, for the ejective q and for the velar fricative of harm.

Those labiovelars are written as signs of their own, and they behave differently in the grid. Where a plain letter has seven orders, one for each vowel of the classical language, a labiovelar has five, because the rounding and the rounded vowels do not combine and the u and o forms are not written. A reader who takes the fidel to be a tidy rectangle of twenty-six by seven will meet these rows and find them short.

That is the practical reason the atlas records the twenty-six plain consonants as its letters rather than attempting the whole character inventory. The twenty-six are what is recited, what is taught and what the traditional order names. The labiovelars, the consonants added for Amharic and Tigrinya, the numerals and the punctuation all sit around that core, and describing them as further letters of the Ge'ez alphabet would overstate what the classical language actually used.

Kidan, the Ge'ez word for a covenant, begins with this letter, and it names the two testaments: Haddis Kidan is the New Testament, the new covenant. The word also stands in one of the most common of all Ethiopian church dedications. Kidane Mehret, the Covenant of Mercy, names a promise the tradition holds Christ made to his mother, that those who call on her name will be shown mercy, and there are churches under that dedication throughout Ethiopia and Eritrea and in the diaspora.

Marian devotion is unusually prominent in this tradition even by the standards of Eastern Christianity. The Weddase Maryam, the Praise of Mary, is recited daily; the Miracles of Mary, a large collection of narratives, was translated and then extended in Ethiopia with local material; and thirty-three feasts of the Virgin are kept through the year.

The word kidan carries the same Semitic root as the Hebrew term for a covenant, so the vocabulary of the covenant is continuous across the family even where the theology built on it is not. That is the sort of thing a comparative dictionary is for, and it is the reason the atlas records letter-level cognates at all: they are the visible end of a shared lexicon.

The thirty-three feasts of the Virgin are spread across the months rather than gathered into a season, so a Marian commemoration falls somewhere in almost every month of the Ethiopian year. That distribution is itself the argument. The devotion is not concentrated into one part of the calendar but built into its ordinary run.