SYNAXARION, ETHIOPIAN. There are two reasons for an article on
the Ethiopic Synaxarion to be in a Coptic encyclopedia: first,
the Ethiopic Synaxarion contains historical notices about
Egypt—for example, the patriarchs or the churches of Old Cairo,
based on lost documents; and, second, the Egyptian edition of
the Coptic SYNAXARION by the qummus ‘Abd al-Masih Mikha’il and
Armaniyus Habashi Shata al-Birmawi (1935-1937) has become the
semiofficial edition of the Coptic church. For this edition its
authors used an Arabic version of the Ethiopic Synaxarion
(Coptic Museum, MS Lit. 155 a-c). Certain notices complete the
ancient recension of the Synaxarion of the Copts. It is
therefore important to say a few words about the genesis of the
Ethiopic Synaxarion. Until 1951 the ABUN, the religious head of
Ethiopia, was an Egyptian monk chosen by the patriarch of
Alexandria. It was therefore entirely natural that Ethiopia
should turn to Egypt when it desired to acquire a Synaxarion for
its use. In the first effort a very l