July 21 – Axum

Going back further still in Ethiopian history here.

Had a completely on-time, non-eventful trip here to Axum, and I was met at the airport perfectly by my guide and driver for the day. Funny little guide with his heavy army boots that are decorated with steel ornaments. I know that anything related to gay anything is heavily repressed here, but this little guy is as obvious as you can get without a slogan on a t-shirt – lots of style, lots of manner, lots of swish. And smart as a tack. He even speaks Ge’ez, the ancient language that is only used by the clergy here; he went to a monastery to learn it because he wanted to.

I got in the van, and we headed into town. Wonderful van, and the driver had clearly cleaned it up and burned some incense in it to give it nice smell. It was nice – nicest transportation I’d had in Ethiopia. We paused on the road into town to look at a church on a hilltop in the distance. This Disney-looking church belonged to a monastery founded in the 6th century. It was from a cartoon – tall, narrow peak with the church on top that was so big I don’t think there was enough room to walk around the perimeter. This spot dates back to the earliest days of Ethiopia’s Christian history.

Again, I didn’t waste time at the hotel because, while I’d been lucky with the rain so far, I didn’t want to press my luck. I FINALLY got to send an e-mail to David, and we headed to the famous stelae field that I’d mostly come here to see.

The origins of this city go way back into the BCs, but the known history of it starts about 100 AD. Axum was the center of a big empire based, predictably, on its important position for trade. The empire stretched east across the Red Sea and into what is now Saudi Arabia and Yemen, north into Sudan, and south through the Horn; the empire’s also prominent in Greek, Roman and Arabic literature. How did I miss this in my ancient history classes? Axum was the first empire to accept Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century, though Christianity arrived here much earlier via Egypt and trade along the Red Sea. It was also a uniquely African civilization, though its span brought in Semitic influences also.

I wanted to get to the famous stelae in Axum first, so that’s what we did. These monuments are great; the biggest one still standing is 72’ tall, taller than the obelisks of Egypt. The biggest one overall is 99’ tall, but it’s fallen and broken. They are tomb markers, but so little excavation work has been done that only a couple of the tombs have been opened. The stelae are made of granite similar to what we use as tombstones today, and these huge monuments were cut and transported several miles to this site. Hard to imagine – they weigh tons and tons. There were elephants in this part of the world at that time, so it’s speculated that they were used (Church legend has it that they were moved by angels, though.)

Well, they’re magnificent. There are about 120 in this field, some engraved and some just smooth. There’s still a lot of excavation work to do.

From there, we went to the Church of St. Mary of Zion. This is an important church in Ethiopia, though it “only” dates back to the 16th century, the Gondar period, because other structures at this site were razed during the various invasions that occurred after the Axumite decline in the 700s. It has the crenellated top I saw in Gondar. There were a couple of interesting things here. For one, this is where the Ark of the Covenant is. It has its own building, twelve security guards, and a hermit chosen by God as the only one who can go in the room with the tablets. The Ark got here by a rather circuitous route. The Queen of Sheba (Ethiopian, by the way) went to Jerusalem to consult Soloman, with whom she conceived a child which she delivered in Axum. This child, Menelik, went back later to meet his father, and Soloman gave him the Ark as a gift. That’s why it’s been here ever since and why Menelik is the founder of Ethiopia.

In any case, you can’t get in to see the Ark. If anyone other than God’s chosen hermit sees the Ark, he dies immediately, just like in Raiders.

The other interesting thing in the church is the all the iconographic painting. Just like in Medieval Europe, these paintings, even though 20th century, illustrate the lives and stories of the Bible, the Church and the saints. I saw one that explained the story of Soloman and Menelik.

There are ruins all over Axum, almost none of which have been excavated. I saw the reservoir of the old city, which still held water and had steps carved into the rock leading down into it. There was a 6th century palace complex a short way out of town, too, that had yet another stelae field with several hundred menhirs. There were fields of corn and millet that you had to walk through to get to the stones. There was also another palace up on a mountain with a couple of tombs. The workmanship in all the tombs I saw was wonderful – large stones perfectly cut laid seamlessly. Amazing.

It was getting dark at this point, and you could look out over the entire valley from this point. My guide pointed to the site of an archaeology dig he’d worked on and told me they’d found several chambers and lots of pottery and Axumite coins at that site. Nearby, the ruins of another palace had been identified, and there was yet another stelae field a bit further up the mountain with several hundred stones. He told me farmers were always finding old coins and pottery here and that they had for centuries. I always thought it was mysterious and cool that we’d find arrowheads and pottery on my grandparents’ farm in KY, but relics of a 6th century Ethiopian empire?

The rains came with sunset, so we headed back into town. On the way, we stopped to look at a fascinating monolith setting beside the road. It’s shape recalls the monolith in 2001, but this 4th century marker is a bit shorter and in three languages – Ge’ez, Sabatean (Arabian Peninsula language) and Greek (trade language of the day). It’s a sort of Ethiopian Rosetta Stone. It confirms the legendary 330 AD exploits of an early Axumite king in conquering the Arabian Peninsula. The inscription also says that anyone who moves the stone will die, and it’s been there for the last 1,700 years.