Thursday, December 10th - Axum, Ethiopia

I was awake around 6 a.m. and alert and feeling better, which was really great.  I took my time showering and getting ready and it was probably 8 before we actually ate breakfast.  It was still cool out so I had my shirt, sweater and jacket on for breakfast outside but it was supposed to be sunny and in the 20's today so actually good touring weather.  

By 9:30 we were on our way to see the sights of Axum.  Despite not having any GPS or map with us we only made one error and quickly corrected that.  The first place we visited was the Church of St. Mary of Zion.  The first gate we came to was into a yard beside a church that looked rather castle like in structure.  Well, that was a no-no for me because females are not allowed in the gate so I had to turn around and exit while Randy continued on.  The man who was saying no did not speak any other English so we weren't sure whether it was my hat had to come off or a shawl had to go on or just I had to go.  We decided on the latter and I left and walked around the far end of the complex and waited for Randy to resurface.  He eventually came out the other way and had not gone into the church but just around it.

We eventually figured out that there was a whole complex of buildings related to the Church of St. Mary of Zion.  The first building, where I was not allowed, was the monastery.  The bigger round church building was built in the 60's by Haile Selassie to replace the original one that used to be in the same location.  The even older church (4th c) was destroyed in the 16th century and then rebuilt on the same site by King Fasilides in the 17th century.  The ruins of this church were between the new church and the monastery.  The museum was beside it and the room that housed the Ark of the Covenant was also a separate building.  After going through the new church and museum Randy did go into the monastery.  I spent more time in the church just admiring the painting.

The church is circular with and east/west orientation from main door to altar.  The ceiling is high and the top part of the building is all glass so it is a very bright complex during the day.  I'm not sure what it would be like at night but there is a huge chandelier in the very centre.  There are beautiful bright paintings of Biblical scenes on the walls.  There are also some original old paintings which are covered up but, for a small fee or tip, the monks will gladly show them to you.  They will also uncover and open the old Bible that is kept under cover.  I'm not sure how long those pages are going to last.  The language is Ge'ez and they still use it during ceremonies today.  Outside the church there is a high bell tower resembling a stella and it is used for calling people to church.  

The museum had a lot of church material in it but also some royal items as well.  At one time all kings of Ethiopia had to have their coronation in this church and each king had a new crown made for the occasion.  A lot of these crowns were on display along with some of the gowns, staffs, crosses, Bibles that were part of the ceremony.  Some of them were pretty impressive.  Haile Selassie was the last king to be crowned in Ethiopia and his crown was not as big as some of the others but it did have more diamonds than anyone else.  The Bibles they have in the museum are hundreds of years old and yet they still handle them and they are not kept in air-tight or temperature-controlled cabinets.  The pages are goat skin and the colours are so bright and strong that I really had to wonder if they were actually authentic.  The museum also displayed Bible and altar covers, harnesses and decorations for the royal horses, musical instruments, etc.  Outside on the lawn there were pieces of collapsed stellae and large stones which could once have been thrones or seats for bishops.

Across the street from this church complex is the field of granite stellae or obelisks.  These are grave markers that have been found in the area.  Some are very plain and others are decorated with symbols.  The two tallest now are decorated the same and are 23 and 24 metres high.  The tallest one has collapsed.  It is much wider than the others and believed to be 33 metres high and weighing 500 tons.  Most people believe it collapsed during construction so I guess it never actually stood.  The granite quarry is over 5 km away and each of the stella are carved from one stone.  It is believed that they were then pulled here by elephants.  At one point there were over 500 elephants in the are and a lot of camels.  The stellae marked the tombs of important people.  There are a couple of excavated tombs on the site and you can go down and see the empty rooms.  Of course there is nothing in them now.

I don't remember ever hearing about the kingdom of Axum or Aksum but it supposedly ranked up there with the Greeks, Romans and Persians.  It encompassed a lot of north eastern Africa and, because they were right on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, did a lot of trade with various countries.  The museum behind the stellae had information on the Axum empire and had a timeline that showed all kinds of events that involved the powers of the world from about 400 BC on up.  Axum's period of power was from the 3rd to the 5th c AD if I remember correctly.  There was pottery and some coins and other artifacts but to be honest I don't remember too much of it any more. 

At that stage we decided to take a tuk-tuk to see five other sites that were all included in the ticket as the stellae - 100 birr for the two of us or $2.50 each.  We had a great driver who is a tourism management student at university in the evenings and he is from the area so he was a great guide as we drove around.  The Queen of Sheba was born in Axum and the first place we visited were called Sheba's pools or baths.  It is now a reservoir for the town's water and has big wide steps so people can get down to get water when needed.   The original stone stairs can also still be seen but I have to admit that to me the pool looks more like a water reservoir than a bath that I can imagine the Queen of Sheba using.

Our next stop was at the Ezana Inscription.  This is a big stone that is inscribed in Greek, Sabean and Geez.  Geez is the native language of the Axum kingdom but I don't know where the Sabean comes from and no one could tell us.   This slab was found by three farmers while out working in their fields and it is King Ezana describing his victories in the 4th c AD.

From there we went to see a cross-shaped hole in the ground which was apparently a series of underground tunnels that were used for trade.  This didn't make a lot of sense to us but the tunnels have been excavated for 4-5 metres in each of the four directions of the cross so who knows what it really was.  It's a pretty deep hole so I can't imagine anyone lowering their camels or mules and their goods into the hole to go all the way underground to the Red Sea, but then what do I know.  Well, what I do know is that we were on the side of a hill and the views were spectacular.  There are tree or shrub lined fields of gold and some farmers were thrashing their grain by herding their cattle around in a circle - the usual way to thrash in this country.  Beyond the fields were rolling hills and then beyond that you get sudden peaks of various sizes and descriptions, part of the volcanic system no doubt.

Right across the road we came to what is called King Kaleb's tomb.  In fact he was never buried here but in a church; however, the space was available if needed.  We went down into the tomb area where there were three rooms for Kaleb, his wife and his son.  Since no coffins were found here, it is now assumed that this was just a storage area but no one knows for sure.  This was the basement in the building.  The next floor was the palace and the top floor was a church but only the basement exists at this time.  All of the complex was made of granite from the local quarry.  Next to this complex, and perhaps adjoining it at one time, was the son's place.  On the lower floor were three tombs again and three empty stone coffins so some of these rooms were indeed tombs.  There was a cross on the one coffin so the person was a Christian.  On one of the walls there was a drawing of an elephant so trade was important to them.  There was also a money chamber where their coins were kept.   Above ground there were excavations and ruins of the palace that would have been on ground level.

We stopped briefly at another excavation site but there wasn't much to see.  The road cut right through the middle of it and there were some fallen, broken stellae on the one side while the other side we could not really see.  I believe this was also a palace of one of the king's.

Then we came to the Queen of Sheba's palace.  This is just a ruins with walls outlined and not much more but it is still impressive.  There are 55 rooms and it is a very large complex.  We wandered around on the inside for a while but it was sort of like a labyrinth with many dead ends.  We couldn't identify any of the rooms and there were no details posted any where.  We did eventually find the main entrance, as identified by its wide stone staircase.  To the left of it there were two wells, and above it there was an open area probably for receiving guests.  We had seen a model of the site at the National Museum but it was hard to even match the two places up.  It was also hard to imagine how a palace could be built out of rocks stacked on top of one another with no mortar or anything to hold them together.  They looked like they could easily fall over but I guess if they haven't in many centuries they are probably pretty solid.  There was another stellae field across the road from the palace but the stellae were all plain as far as we could see.

We went to another tomb site and went down into the tomb where there were several rooms but no coffins.  It was a very different style than the others - still granite but a rough chiselled look not smooth sides as the others.  Outside there was a stella on one side and another hole in the ground in front of a hillside on the other side.  The hole had about ten arched caves going off of it into the hillside and I assume those were caves too.  The guide at this site did not speak a lot of English and was much harder to understand.  Somewhere in this site was supposedly the burial ground of Balthasar (?), one of the three wise men who happened to be from Axum.

Our last stop was at a park in the downtown area.  There are more stellae here and another inscribed stone.  The park also has a nice restaurant and quiet sitting area among the trees so we sat and had a coffee and some cake, which was very nice.  Some of the streets and sidewalks in Axum are cobblestone and have designs in them so they are very reminiscent of some of the towns in Spain.  Axum has a population of about 80,000 but during the Festival of St. Mary on December 1st over 100,000 pilgrims come into town.  I'm so glad we were visiting a week later instead of at that busy time.  We saw two other white people at the church and one at Sheba's Palace and that was it for tourists so we had the place virtually to ourselves.  Axum is a very polite town and no one really bothers you.  The guides and the sellers understand no thank you and don't keep hounding you.  The children may follow you for a while but generally they are more curious than anything.  They might ask for pens but they don't ask for money like in other places.

We came back to our hotel and did some computer work out in the garden area for a while.  I went to have a nap and when I woke up the power was out again.  That meant not much got charged up.  The internet hasn't worked at all so there's no use even trying that.  We went down for dinner and finally got to have a pizza.  This is their specialty but the oven needs to be really hot so the power issue has been a problem.  However, tonight they had it heated sufficiently during the day that it was still  hot and we got to try their pizza.  It was quite good with a thin crispy crust so we enjoyed it.  We ate inside and they had some candle lanterns out.  We did some more computer work after dinner but the mosquitos seemed to like the computer screens too much so that didn't last long.  About 8:30 I headed back to my room to do a bit more work and then went to bed early.