A more recent introduction of the goddess to Ethiopia

2.3.1 Wolleka

The reality, however, is that none of the worthy proposals outlined in the previous section provide the truth behind the existence of the figurine in Fig. 2.6 and Fig. 2.10 (ahead). Rather, it appears that its conceptual origins lie in the main Beta Israel enclave of Wolleka (sometimes Wollaqa; 12°38’N 37°29’E, Map 2), a village 6 km north-east of Gondar, in the 20th century CE. In the early 1960s, Western residents, including aid workers and Peace Corps volunteers,346 had encouraged Beta Israel women near Gondar to apply their pottery skills, which hitherto had been used only for utilitarian purposes, towards making figurines for sale to foreign residents and travellers. In this initial period, their statues reflected not only scenes from everyday life in the village, such as women carrying children, but also included forms based on photographs of “Primitive Art” that were shown to the Wolleka locals in 1960 by Franz Rosa, the European wife of an American doctor.347,348 The compilation apparently contained examples of West African sculptures349,350 _{but also seems to have contained a selection of prehistoric artifacts,} which presumably included bird-goddess figurines from the Ancient Near East.

Thus prompted, the potters began to produce “rough clay models of cows, horses and even fertility figures” which sold well as at the new Itegue Hotel in Gondar,351,352 where they were billed as “Falasha idols.” By 1966, archaic female fertility figurines (Fig. 2.8a) were plentiful in Wolleka, and possibly other Beta Israel settlements too.353 The figures are distinguished by long necks (reminiscent of Figs. 1.9, 1.10 & 1.11b,c) marked with multiple rings, a feature of bird-goddess effigies from as early as the 5th millennium BCE.354,355,356 The “dolls” were often dressed in textile clothing (Fig. 2.8b, 2.9),357 and the locals sometimes identified them to Westerners as children’s toys.358 Soon, however, the Beta Israel women – following the lead of an elderly Wolleka potter named Takai Elias – turned their attention to making distinctively Jewish artifacts, both as an

expression of self-identity and to appeal to the growing number of Jewish tourists visiting the region, and the creation of primitive/prehistoric figures declined.359 The practice had ceased entirely by 1980,360 and probably long before.

In 1984-5, during a period of famine, a covert air evacuation called “Operation Moses” saw the airlifting to Israel of some 8000 Ethiopian Beta Israel people, using airstrips near the Ethiopian/Sudanese border as departure points. In 1991, when Ethiopia was threatened with dangerous political destabilization by Eritrean and Tigrean rebels, another covert evacuation of Beta Israel was organized. “Operation Solomon” airlifted most of the remaining Beta Israel population of Ethiopia to Israel.

2.3.2 A seductive misconception

In 1966, the primitive and Neolithic-style figurines were mistakenly identified as traditional fertility idols of the Beta Israel by a German professor of Coptology at the

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American University in Cairo, who published an academic paper on them.361 Formal rebuttals followed considerably later,362 by which stage the myth of the statuettes as

Fig. 2.8 Female human figurines from the Beta Israel near Gondar, in the 1960s. (a) Effigy of a pregnant woman described as a child’s doll, 14 cm high, 1963. British Museum Af1963,03.1, image available online.363 _{(b) Female figurine with baby in carrier on back, 17 cm high, Gondar or}

Simien Mts., pre-1972. British Museum Af1972,30.12, image available online.364 _{Both panels ©}

The Trustees of the British Museum, reproduced here under the Standard Terms of Use.

Fig. 2.9 Collection of 20th-century Falasha dolls from Gondar and Simien Mts. Small pottery figurines of mothers carrying infants, etc., made by Falasha woman mainly for sale to Western tourists; it includes the

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dolls in Fig. 2.8. British Museum Af1972,30.10. © The Trustees of the British Museum, reproduced here under the Standard Terms of Use. Image available online.365

modern survivals of ancient African customs had taken root. Indeed, it continues to flourish even today; speaking of the fertility figurines, Kaplan & Rosen (1996) comment that “their image as a traditional art form of considerable venerability has proven to be surprisingly durable.”366 This is particularly true in Israel, where almost all of the Beta Israel now reside, and where there is an ongoing socio-political hunger for any

anthropological data that appears to support an ancient Israelite origin for the “Black Jews of Ethiopia.”

One outcome of this Israeli desire was a 1993 exhibition in Beer-Sheva (Map 1) in which the Negev Museum of Art presented a selection of Neolithic-style Falasha figurines as “traditional artistic Ethiopian ceramics and pottery with parallel objects found in archaeological digs in Israel,”367 the latter mainly dating from the 7-8th centuries BCE.368,369 The archaic figurines in the exhibition were apparently created spontaneously by Beta Israel women during or soon after a pottery workshop held in Beer-Sheva in 1991.370 These artifacts are a uniform sandy-yellow colour,371 whereas the original Ethiopian figurines were reportedly red-brown and sometimes accidentally blackened in parts (e.g., Fig. 2.8, 2.9).372 Some are also executed more finely than the earlier Wolleka sculptures.373 Given the golden colour, three-dimensionality and obvious sophistication of the bird-goddess figurine that is the focus of our discussion (Fig. 2.6 & 2.10), as well as the vendor’s proximity to Beer-Sheva, one must suspect that the sculpture was in fact created by a Falasha potter in that part of Israel during the 1990s. One might also suspect that the artist was inspired in her new homeland by additional exposure to archaeological examples of the Middle Eastern bird-goddess.