Aksum I

We arrived yesterday after a 25 minute flight from Gonder. Interestingly, the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was on our flight. People here are very devout, so his presence on our flight caused great excitement. People were posing for pictures with him and receiving his blessing. Maybe we should’ve posed for a picture with him as well…

After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, we walked to the main attraction: the stellae field. A bit of background before I describe the attractions: Aksum was the capital of the Aksumite Kingdom, which at its height around 500 A.D. stretched from the Nile River in Sudan to parts of Saudi Arabia, trading goods with the Romans, Persians and even India. The Aksumites spoke Ge’ez, but as Marcus (2005) explains, their Hellenized elite also spoke Greek and Sabean. Ge’ez was the predecessor of the current Amharic language spoken in Ethiopia.

Up until 300 A.D., the Aksumites practiced Pagan religion, worshipping the gods of the moon and the sun. But in around 300 A.D. Christianity arrived and after the Emperor (Ezana) adopted it in 330 A.D., it became the empire’s official religion. As the story goes, after Ezana converted to Christianity, 9 men (known as the 9 saints) came from Syria to convert the entire population of the empire. Since then, this whole region has been mostly Orthodox Christian (the religion of the eastern Roman Empire) and the Aksumite Empire defended Christianity until its fall in the 7th century A.D. At that time, Islam extended into modern day Ethiopia. Since then, Orthodox Christianity and Islam have coexisted in Ethiopia, not always peacefully.

Three additional stories that I think are worth mentioning before I describe the attractions in Aksum: first, the Aksumites, and the Abyssinians that followed them claimed to be descendants of King Solomon. As the story goes, a long time ago (1000 B.C.), Queen Sheba of Aksum, also known as Mekada, traveled to Jerusalem to meet King Solomon. Once there, the beautiful Queen was tricked by the King into having sex. The pregnant Queen returned to Aksum and had their son, Menelik I, the first emperor of what would later be called the Solomonic dynasty (since then, all emperors regardless of their origins, claimed to be descendants of Menelik and King Solomon).

But the story doesn’t end there. Lore tells that when he came of age, Menelik decided to travel to Jerusalem to meet his father, King Solomon. Solomon really liked him and decided to send him back with some advisors, who happened to be the guards of the Ark of the Covenant. Well, the advisors were not about to leave the Ark behind, so in the dark of the night they stole it and brought it to Ethiopia. To this day, Ethiopians claim that the Ark of the Covenant is here, in Aksum, in the Church of St. Mary of Zion.

The second story involves the birth of Christ. As I read in the museum (where fantasy and reality overlap and legends and history merge), King Bezam of Aksum was one of the three men who went to Bethlehem to witness Christ’s birth and shower him with gifts. The King, of course, came back to Aksum after the birth, and is supposedly buried here.

The third story involves Mohammed. According to this story, Mohammed was persecuted in his native land. To escape, he fled to eastern Africa. His daughter and future wife stayed in Aksum, protected by the Aksumites. For this reason, it is said that in his deathbed, Mohammed praised the Aksumites for their religious openness.

Now, to the attractions: the first one we went to was the Stellea field. The stellae are massive carved igneous rocks, the largest measuring 33 mts in height and weighing over 500 tons. These stellae mark the graves of the pre-Christian Aksumite emperors; we actually walked down into a couple of excavated graves. Unfortunately, most of the treasures buried with the bodies have been stolen. However, the underground structures are still in good shape, with underground tunnels, rooms and even breathing holes. Still, it is sad to know that 98% of the tombs are still unexcavated and to see the old stellae just laying around, some of them broken to pieces. It’s a treasure just out on this field, unguarded (no wonder all the treasures were stolen!).



After visiting the stellae (and the adjacent museum), we visited what is known as Sheba’s bath. It’s a giant pool where people still get baptized today (Ezana, the first Aksumite Emperor to convert to Christianity, is said to have been baptized here).

From there, we went to Saint Mary of Zion’s Church (the original was built in the 4th century A.D., then emperor Fasiladas of Gonder rebuilt it in the 1600s, and finally Haile Sellassie built the most recent version in the 1970s). Although we couldn’t go into the chapel, it is here that Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant is housed. Only one person, the guard of the Ark, can see it (everyone else will go blind upon seeing it!). Not even the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church is allowed into the chapel!