Aksum II

Today is our third day in Aksum. Although Kimmie makes fun of this town because there really isn't that much to do except visit the few historical sites, I actually think it's been pretty interesting.

After spending most of our first day at the stellae field, the museum and Queen of Sheba's bath without a camera, we decided to hike back there yesterday to take some pictures. After taking a few, we moved on to the attractions of the day: King Ezana's Inscription and the tombs of King Kaleb and his son, King Gebre Meskel.

Describing the whole experience of finding where King Ezana's Inscription is kept is a story I will recount shortly. But first let me explain what the Inscription is. King Ezana, as you might recall from my last entry, was the first Aksumite leader to adopt Christianity (in fact, he made Christianity Aksum's official religion). This same King was a warrior - he aggressively expanded the borders of the Aksumite Empire. According to the Lonely Planet, King Ezana's Inscription is "an Ethiopian version of the Rosetta Stone, a pillar inscribed in Sabean, Ge'ez and Greek... It dates between AD 330 and AD 350 and records King Ezana's Christian military campaigns in Ethiopia and Southern Arabia, as well as his quest to return the Ark to Aksum from Lake Tana..."

To find it, we had to follow a little dirt road up a hill. There were absolutely no signs for it, so we had to ask random people, putting our sign language skills to use. Finally, we came upon it. Now, because the Inscription carries a curse preventing anyone from moving from its current location per threat of death, it's still in the same place where it was found...on the field of some farmer! It is kept in a wooden shack, guarded by an extremely old man. The only sign is a red, handwritten "welcome" on the shack's tin door.

The Inscription itself is impressive. It is a single stone stellae with carved writing on all sides. I really can't believe a treasure like this is left to survive in a shack that literally looks exactly the same as several other shacks along the road. Anyway, on the way out we tipped the old man what I thought was 6 Birr (about $0.60), as recommended by the Lonely Planet (I'll explain later why I mention this) and continued to our next attraction.

The same road leading to King Ezana's Inscription continues up the hill to the tombs of King Kaleb and King Gebre Meskel. From the tombs location we could see Adwa (where the Ethiopians defeated the Italian army in the 1890s) and even Eritrea (40 kms. from Aksum). The tombs themselves are very interesting. They're underground structures made of stone, with several rooms and some inscriptions on the stone walls. It's pretty impressive that the Aksumites could build such tombs in 300 A.D.

The guard/self-appointed guide also showed us some inscriptions. As he explained, King Kaleb, the father, had fought in Saudi Arabia and once he won that war, retired as Emperor and became a monk (yes, that's how religious they were! Obviously, Kaleb was emperor after Ezana), leaving the throne to his son, Gebre Meskel. For this reasons, the inscriptions in the tombs depicted Christian symbols.

After our tour of the tombs, we started back to town, down the same road. As we passed the shack of Ezana's Inscription, the old man shot up with a huge smile on his face, waving at us and greeting us alternatively in Tigrinya (the local language) and English. We were a bit confused by his affectionate display. Only a half hour earlier he'd been kind of quiet and dejected. Only later did we realize that instead of tipping him 6 Birr, we'd tipped him 105 Birr. A 100 Birr bill had slipped into the ones we gave him! But we made him happy, which is always good...

Today we had a pretty relaxed day. The most interesting part was a visit to the Palace of Queen of Sheba. Although the Queen of Sheba never actually lived in this palace (the palace was built in 400 A.D., and if the Queen of Sheba actually existed, she must've lived around 1000 B.C), it is still impressive for its sheer size. It had more than 300 rooms! It's made of small stones piled on top of each other and glued with mud. Although only some low walls survive (the palace had at least two floors), we still got a feeling for how majestic it must have once been.



Across the road from Queen of Sheba's palace (it's right next to the next road connecting Aksum with Gondar) is a middle-class Aksumite graveyard. It's surprising to see dozens of small stellae just laying around this field which also seems to have been used for growing crops. From what I could tell, no excavations are taking place here at the moment. In a sense, I think this graveyard stands as an example of what shocked me most about current day Aksum: the wasted archaeological and tourist potential of the capital of what must have been a powerful, influential empire. In fact, in the museum, one of the explanatory slides proudly claims that 98% of Aksum still lies buried, undiscovered! And no one is in any rush to excavate!