Carried in procession, placed at the top of a church to mark the landscape, held by a priest to bestow blessings, or worn around the neck for protection and to assert identity, the cross, in all its manifestations, has been for centuries a ubiquitous symbol in the daily and religious life of Christian Ethiopians.1 Thanks to the publication of catalogs, articles, and books, the organization of exhibitions, anthropological research, and the study of literary sources, our knowledge of Ethiopian crosses has improved considerably since Eine Moore's pioneering work on the subject (1971; 1973).
However, the study of Ethiopian crosses is still very much in its early stages. In particular, the approach to dating Ethiopian crosses has seen little development, and the criteria one must adopt are still those first clearly outlined by Moore.2 Inscriptions providing reliable dating evidence for Ethiopian crosses are rare—especially on pieces...