The Metropolitan Museum in New York is set to open a new exhibition, "Africa and Byzantium," from November 19, featuring around 200 objects from Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia spanning the fourth to fifteenth centuries and beyond. According to the museum's website, the exhibition aims to broaden public understanding of the Byzantine world, its scale, and its influence on global culture.

The organizers state that the exhibition will highlight the crucial role played by early African Christianity, its heritage, traditions, and history in the Byzantine world. It also challenges common prejudices about art in both Africa and Byzantium. By presenting Africa as a central place in the late antique and Byzantine world, the exhibition explores the global impact of ideas and art created in North and East Africa, according to the museum's press service.

The Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai sent an illuminated manuscript and four precious icons, including a sixth-century icon depicting the Virgin Mary, the Infant Jesus, and the Hand of God—one of the oldest in the world. Executed in encaustic on wood, this icon may have been gifted to the monastery by Emperor Justinian in the mid-sixth century. Additionally, the exhibition features seven items from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir and the Coptic Museum.

From Sudan, the renowned frescoes of the Faras Cathedral were transported to New York for the exhibition. This early Christian cathedral of the Coptic Church operated from the seventh to the fourteenth century. The entire area was submerged during the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, and archaeologists managed to extract only a portion of the frescoes just before the flooding. Today, the ruins of the cathedral and the remaining paintings that could not be saved are submerged beneath Lake Nasser.