The Ethiopian eucharist, the Qeddase, is served with a liturgical wealth no other church matches: fourteen anaphoras in use, where Rome historically kept one and Byzantium two. The ordinary prayer is the anaphora of the Apostles, an Ethiopian development of the ancient prayer known to scholarship from the church order tradition, and around it stand prayers ascribed to the Lord himself, to John the Evangelist, to the three hundred eighteen fathers of Nicaea, to Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Cyril, and, uniquely in Christendom, an anaphora of Our Lady Mary, attributed to Cyriacus of Behnesa, whose Marian devotion is the rite's most beloved festal prayer.
The choice of anaphora follows the calendar and the feast. Every Ethiopian church is built around the tabot, the consecrated altar tablet representing the Ark of the Covenant, and it is the tabot, not the building, that makes the church holy; on the great feast of Timkat the tabots are carried out in procession wrapped in brocade, and the liturgy goes to the water with them. The rite's Judaic colouring has fascinated scholars for centuries: circumcision on the eighth day, the observance of Saturday sabbath alongside Sunday in parts of the tradition, and dietary distinctions kept from the Old Testament, features the church itself grounds in its national epic of descent from Solomon.