A tapestry, a story

This tapestry has hung on the wall at my in-laws' house for at least the twenty years that I've known them. But it was only last weekend that I had a close look at it. My daughter and I sat in their kitchen and tried to decode the story that it tells. We struggled.

It begins clearly enough. A man feeds a goat – presumably with some kind of poison? – and then feeds the goat to a crocodile. The crocodile dies, and the man shows its body to a group of other people. He then sets off on a journey that seems to involve him recruiting a lion to his cause. There is a lot of finger pointing and bargaining along the way.

I don't know where the story is set. One drawing features what looks like a pair of pyramids. The script that captions each frame is, according to Twitter sources, almost certainly Amharic. That would put us in Ethiopia.

I do know a little bit about how the tapestry came to be in the family. My father-in-law did a lot of work with Oxfam in its early days. When its staff went overseas, they would often return laden with gifts and curiosities, which they auctioned to raise money. He bought this at one of those auctions, in the early 1970s, I think. It cost about £70 – or about £700 in today's prices. That seems rather generous, but perhaps this is a priceless artefact – who knows.

I'm not sure why this tapestry has suddenly piqued my interest. I suspect it's that my father-in-law, who I'm sure would have known its provenance, died recently. This could be the first of many "I'll ask George... oh no, I can't" occasions.

And so if I want to unlock this particular puzzle from the family's past, I'll have to find the answer on my own. That's something I'll need to get used to.

A close up of the mysterious text