Bete Krestiyan, and What Is Inside One

Bete krestiyan, the house of Christians, is the Ge'ez term for a church building, and the buildings it names are laid out on a plan the phrase does not prepare a visitor for. A traditional Ethiopian church is often round, with three concentric zones: an outer ambulatory where the cantors stand and the chant is sung, a middle ring where communicants receive, and an inner sanctuary at the centre that only priests enter.

What is in that sanctuary is the tabot, a consecrated tablet that is the real centre of the building. A church without one is not a church. It is kept covered, and when it is carried out in procession at Timkat and at other feasts it is wrapped in cloth so that it is never seen. The congregation is oriented towards it.

The resemblance of that arrangement to the plan of the temple in Jerusalem is obvious, and it is one of the reasons the relation between Ethiopian Christianity and Israelite practice has been argued over for more than a century. The atlas records the arrangement and the argument without deciding between the readings. The letter is where a description of the building starts, because bet is the word the building is named with, and the same word names both a house and the community that meets inside it.