Reimagining Africa’s place in Byzantine art history

Map of Byzantine Empire, approximate boundaries, mid-6th century (underlying map © Google)

What happens when we center Africa in the long history of Byzantium? For too long the dominant narratives of Byzantine art history have mapped the empire from Constantinople outward, reinforcing a geography that marginalizes Africa as a distant or secondary participant in the Byzantine world. However, Africa was never marginal. This essay reframes the Byzantine world as a shared space of exchange—religious, artistic, linguistic, and political—that stretches across Carthage, Alexandria, Nubia, and Aksum (modern-day Ethiopia).

Works of art such as textiles, pottery, and manuscripts highlight the extent to which African regions participated in far-reaching networks of commerce, pilgrimage, and intellectual exchange. These connections extended across the Mediterranean basin to Constantinople, through the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula, and into the Indian Ocean, linking Africa with South Asia and beyond. Spanning the 4th to the 15th century and beyond, the themes explored in this essay challenge periodization, emphasize regional specificity, and trace enduring visual and material legacies in both historic and contemporary terms.

Mosaic Panel with Preparations for a Feast, 4th quarter of the 2nd century, marble, limestone, glass paste, 213 x 235 x 6.5 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In the centuries following Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312 C.E., North and East Africa thrived as vibrant centers of Christian life and artistic production. Cities like Carthage and Alexandria were not only theological powerhouses but also vital economic arteries within the empire. Even beyond the empire’s borders, the kingdoms of Nubia and Aksum developed deep connections with Byzantium, shaped by commerce, shared creeds, and visual exchange. North Africa, particularly modern-day Tunisia, was among the wealthiest provinces in the late Roman and early Byzantine world. The mosaics of Carthage reveal the synthesis of African landscape, Roman technique, and Christian symbolism.

Peacocks and vines were used pagan imagery and then adopted by early Christians. Mosaic with peacocks, Basilica of Justinian, Sabratha (North Africa), 527–565 C.E. (photo: Carsten ten Brink, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Jug, 290–320 C.E., African red slip ware, 23 x 11.5 x 11 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

By the 6th century, mosaicists in North Africa were adapting Byzantine iconography to local tastes. Animals, flora, and saints appeared in brilliant tesserae that captured both regional identity and universal Christian themes.

African red slip ware and carved rock crystal objects, exported across the Mediterranean, further testify to the material wealth and interconnectedness of the region.

Textile Fragment with Artemis and Actaeon, 5th century (Byzantine; Akhmim [?], Egypt), linen and wool; tapestry and plain weave, 147.3 x 183 cm (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London)

Panel with Painted Image of Isis, 2nd century, tempera on wood, 40 x 19.1 x 13 cm (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Coptic Egypt

Egypt, meanwhile, served as Byzantium’s breadbasket and a spiritual nerve center. Coptic Christian traditions, especially the veneration of the Virgin Mary, transformed Egyptian devotional life and art. The visual language of Mary often echoed older Egyptian motifs, such as the ancient Egyptian deities Isis and Horus, blending Greco-Roman, ancient Egyptian, and Christian forms. Textiles, carved wood combs, and pilgrim flasks illustrate how art circulated across household, liturgical, and funerary spaces. Notably, several surviving textiles depict Black figures drawn from mythology and biblical scenes, reminding us of the ethnic and visual diversity embedded in Christian art.

Nubian kingdoms and the Aksumite Empire

South of Egypt, the Nubian kingdoms and the Aksumite Empire stood as powerful Christian states, negotiating their place within the Mediterranean world through diplomacy, artistic patronage, and ecclesiastical alliance. Nubian aristocrats commissioned ivory-inlaid wooden chests, gold jewelry, and frescoes that incorporated Hellenistic (Greek, pagan) deities and Christian saints alike.

Bridal Chest, 4th–6th century (Nubian; Qustul, Egypt), wood and ivory, 75 x 80 cm (The Egyptian Museum, Cairo; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Greek inscriptions found in tombs and churches suggest a high degree of literacy and cultural exchange. Aksum, often described as the first Christian kingdom in sub-Saharan Africa, minted coins bearing crosses modeled on Byzantine examples. These coins circulated as both currency and statements of theological allegiance.

Saint Peter and Bishop Petros (detail), Wall Painting from Faras Cathedral with Bishop Petros Protected by Saint Peter, late 10th century (Nubian; Faras), plaster and tempera, 240 x 101 x 4.8 cm (National Museum, Warsaw; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By the time the Byzantine Empire’s direct influence receded from many African regions, the visual and religious connections had taken deep root. In Nubia, the Faras Cathedral murals show bishops and royalty depicted with richly patterned garments and dark skin tones, often under the protection of pale, ethereal saints or the Virgin Mary herself. The royal imagery from Nubia blended indigenous traditions with iconography found in the Byzantine sphere.

African Christian rulers viewed themselves as full participants in the global Christian world, while also asserting identities that were unapologetically connected to their own cultures and regions. These artistic strategies of representation offered powerful claims to legitimacy and authority, securing political power through the sacred, and demonstrating that African Christianities were deeply invested in issues of governance, piety, and public imagery. These paintings are not merely echoes of Byzantine prototypes; they are interpretive, innovative, and deeply rooted in African contexts.

Solomonic dynasty, Ethiopia

Ethiopia emerged as a major center for Christian art, especially during the Solomonic dynasty. Illuminated manuscripts (like the one below), tabots (portable altars), and processional crosses reflect a sophisticated theological and visual culture. The lost-wax casting method used for Ethiopian crosses demonstrates both technical mastery and artistic innovation. These crosses, worn, carried, and kissed, are sacred objects and public statements, often infused with geometric complexity and local meaning.

Gospel Book, c. 1504–05 (Ethiopia), tempera, 34.5 x 26.5 cm (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 102, 2008.15; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

From the 16th century onward, Ethiopian Christian art embraced and reimagined Byzantine traditions, even as it confronted new pressures from Islamic polities and European missionaries. The 16th-century artistic renaissance in Ethiopia and the vibrant ecclesiastical traditions of the Ethiopian and Coptic Churches both demonstrate the persistence of Byzantine aesthetics. The use of Greek in Ethiopian and Nubian texts, the adoption of Christian liturgical vestments modeled on Byzantine forms, and the continuation of icon painting traditions all suggest a visual and spiritual continuity that resists easy periodization.

This continuity of Byzantine impact also complicates the canon of medieval art history. Rather than see African Christianity as a peripheral tradition, we should understand it as generative: transforming, indigenizing, and innovating within a shared visual vocabulary.

Tsedaye Makonnen, Senait & Nahom | ሰናይት :: እና :: ናሆም | The Peacemaker & The Comforter, 2019, acrylic mirror, LED light, and hardboard, 7 towers of different heights (National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) © Tsedaye Makonnen

Byzantine legacies in contemporary art

Today, contemporary artists of African descent continue to engage with Byzantine legacies, often as a way to reclaim spiritual authority, interrogate heritage, and navigate diasporic memory. Tsedaye Makonnen’s Senait & Nahom series fuses Copto-Ethiopian iconography with the visual language of grief and resistance. Her illuminated sculptures bear the names of Black women lost to systemic violence, framed by protective cross forms. These works do not merely appropriate Byzantine visual traditions, they activate them, positioning Africa as both inheritor and innovator.

Africa was always part of Byzantium

The legacy of Byzantium in Africa invites us to reconsider the very foundations of the field. Why has African Christian art been relegated to the margins of Byzantine studies? How might our understanding of Byzantine art shift if we begin from Aksum rather than Constantinople? These are not only art historical questions, they are questions of power, pedagogy, and cultural memory. To reconsider Africa’s place in Byzantine history is not to extend Byzantium’s borders, it is to redraw its center. The Byzantine world was shaped by African thought, materiality, and spiritual expression. These connections did not end with the empire’s fall. They continue to inform how artists, scholars, and communities imagine belonging and continuity today. Africa was always part of Byzantium, and Byzantium remains, indelibly, part of Africa.