Framing the Other Within: Sebhat of Sadai, Narrative Inversion, and Ethiopian Manuscript Aesthetics in Pentiment

By Blair Apgar (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania)

 “I know Tassing seems big to you, but the world is so much bigger than we can imagine.” – Brother Sebhat, Pentiment

As past iterations of the Middle Ages in Modern Games Asynchronous Conference have demonstrated, representations of the Middle Ages in video games have traditionally been steeped in Euro-coded (albeit it highly genericized) visual language, implicitly reinforcing the notion that the Middle Ages belongs only to white Europeans. Pentiment (Obsidian Entertainment, 2022) offers a rare and instructive departure from this trend through its portrayal of Sebhat of Sadai, an Ethiopian monk whose character is grounded in the distinct traditions of Ethiopian manuscript illumination, grounding his presence in a coherent and legitimate historical world. Sebhat’s design exemplifies how regional visual language can be effectively used, if briefly, to decentralize Eurocentric notions of the medieval past in games.

Sebhat is introduced in Pentiment’s first act, staying at Kiersau Abbey as an envoy from the Ethiopian Church in Rome, perhaps based on three Ethiopian monks, P̣etṛos, Bärtälomewos & Ǝntọnǝs, who Verena Krebs has traced across various fifteenth-century sources and who were documented in attendance at the Council of Constance—the same council of which Sebhat makes mention to Andreas.¹ While his appearance nominally conforms to the game’s decorative use of simulated pigment on paper, Sebhat’s character design is marked different from that of Andreas and the other monks at Kiersau (Figure 1). Andreas, like most characters in the game, is drawn in a style reminiscent of late medieval Central European visual culture, particularly influenced by woodcuts, marginalia, and the illustrative conventions of early printed books. His features, distinctly influenced by the numerous illustrations of the fifteenth-century Nuremberg Chronicle, are defined by sharp contours, minimal shading, and a linear emphasis on outline over volume.²

In contrast, Sebhat’s character design draws from the Ethiopian Christian manuscript tradition. His elongated, almond-shaped eyes, narrow nose, darker skin, and stylized curls reflect visual conventions found in medieval Ethiopian manuscripts. That Sebhat’s face is lined in red (Figure 2), rather than black as his European counterparts, reflects a tradition found in Early Solomonic Period manuscipts (Figure 3).

His clothing is marked by rhythmic folds and bold color contrasts, evoking the palette and visual construction of figures found in contemporaneous Ethiopian texts such as the Zir Ganela Gospels (New York, The Morgan Library and Museum, MS. M.828, Figure 4).³ Additionally, Sebhat’s robes are rendered with layered textural patterns—repetitive bands, crosses, and woven-like motifs—that recall the traditional textiles of his homeland.⁴ These same patterns later appear in Sebhat’s recollection of the Raising of Lazarus and The Feeding of the Five Thousand on the garments of Christ and his apostles (Figures 5, 6).

Thus, these patterns are not simply decorative but signal a different cultural system of visual storytelling, one in which materiality and surface intricacy are charged with intermingled historical, theological and liturgical meanings. Though his appearance within the game is restricted to the first act, the player is offered a chance to more deeply engage with Sebhat during a shared meal. In the background appears a portrait of Saint Maurice who, by the fifteenth century, was predominantly depicted with African features (Figures 7, 8), subtly anchoring the game within a network of African-European contact.⁵

After the meal the player is transported into Sebhat’s illustrated stories. Like his character portrait, the scene adopts the aesthetics of medieval Ethiopian illuminations: vivid yellows, reds, and greens with thick graphic lines. The top of the page features harag, a Ge’ez term referring to the bands of interlacing tendrils used to frame scenes.⁶ Biblical characters such as Christ and Lazarus are depicted with African features and darker skin.When asked about this difference, Sebhat’s answer notions to the world beyond Tassing, recentering the story through his cultural lens.

This scene casts Andreas and Tassing as outsiders, repositioned within a new visual language. Though brief, this inversion destabilizes the default Eurocentric aesthetic and places Sebhat’s perspective on equal visual footing, generating a moment of aesthetic parity. Crucially, this does not exoticize Sebhat, but affirms the presence and legitimacy of the Ethiopian Middle Ages. In effect, the game stages a dialogue between manuscript cultures—Central European and Ethiopian—without collapsing one into the other, allowing each to retain its visual and epistemological specificity. Sebhat’s inclusion in Pentiment represents a meaningful intervention in the typically Eurocentric visual culture of medievalist games—one that re-centers a non-European manuscript tradition within the game’s visual and narrative logic, positioning it as a part of the extended medieval world, rather than as an exotic aside.  When a game depicts an outsider through the aesthetic style of their own tradition, it not only expands medievalist game aesthetics beyond the European Middle Ages, but also models a compelling strategy for reimagining how the medieval world can be visualized in games.

Notes

1. Krebs, Verena. Medieval Ethiopian kingship, craft, and diplomacy with Latin Europe. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 34-37.  Krebs, Verena (@KrebsVerena/@Tweetistorian). “How 3 Ethiopian monks crossed the Alps…” Twitter, April 20, 2021, 15:37. https://x.com/Tweetistorian/status/1384597109664534528 ↩︎
2. Bedingfield, Will. “Pentiment’s Director Wants You to Know How His Characters Ate.” WIRED, November 17, 2022. https://www.wired.com/story/pentiment-josh-sawyer-interview/. ↩︎
3. Zir Ganela Gospels, 1400-1401, 207 leaves (2 columns, 25-29 lines), vellum, 362 x 251 mm, MS. M.828, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. https://www.themorgan.org/collection/zir-ganela-gospels ↩︎
4. Gervers, Michael. “Cotton and Cotton Weaving in Meroitic Nubia and Medieval Ethiopia.” Textile History 21, no. 1 (January 1990): 13–30. https://doi.org/10.1179/004049690793711244. ↩︎
5. Jung, Jacqueline E. “Reflections on Africans in Gothic Sculpture, Part 1.” Yale University Press, April 12, 2022. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2020/07/21/reflections-on-africans-in-gothic-sculpture-part-1/.  ↩︎
6. Zanotti-Eman, Carla “Linear Decoration in Ethiopian Manuscripts,” in African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia, ed. Marilyn Heldman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 63–67. ↩︎