Cyber Ethiopia

Now that the return (or should I rather say the non-return?) of the Aksum obelisk in Rome is arousing increasing interest, it may be convenient to look at five important documents.

“One of the Obelisks Should be Brought to Rome”

(1) A telegram of 24 October 1936 from Alessandro Lessona, the Italian Minister of the Colonies, to Marshal Graziani, the Italian Fascist Viceroy of Ethiopia. In this document, Lessona explained that “H.E. the Head of the Government [i.e. his master, the dictator Mussolini] has ordered that… one of the obelisks of Axum should be brought to Rome. The obelisk must reach Rome in time to be inaugurated on 9 May 1937″. That date was the first anniversary of the Duce’s pronouncement of the founding of the Fascist Empire in Ethiopia. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Road from Harar to Jijiga

The road from Harar to Jijiga is quite beautiful, but there are some dangers. From Harar you descend through beautiful hills, forests and neatly planted crops. The largest town along the way is Babile, which is a normal crowded little town in the midst of fabulous rock formations. Someone had the idea of growing peanuts around Babile, and now vendors enthusiastically sell you wonderful fresh peanuts at the side of the road.

Just past the town are the famous Babile rocks, including the ones where one is perched precariously on top of another. The rock formations are spectacular, although it’s not advisable to stop along the road for too long looking at them. Read the rest of this entry »

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We looked last week at five important documents related to the question of the Aksum Obelisk looted from Ethiopia on the personal orders of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and to this date still not returned, in violation of two international agreements (1947 and 1997).

We turn now to examine nine further historical documents:

1. The Italo-Ethiopian Agreement of 1956

One of the Italian Government’s least honourable acts in the whole obelisk story was the conclusion, on 5 March 1956, of an entirely new Italo-Ethiopian.This document, which shocked many who read it, relegated the question of the obelisk’s return to an appendix, Appendix C, which violated both the letter and the spirit of the Italian Peace Treaty of 1947. Read the rest of this entry »

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In the last two articles we have been looking, as readers will recall, at some basic documents, and articles, about the Aksum obelisk, looted from Ethiopia on the personal orders of the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in 1937, and, despite the terms of the Italian Peace Treaty of 1947, not yet returned by post-war “democratic” Italy.

We have argued that if the Duce was responsible for the original act of looting the obelisk, his successors were no less guilty of violating the Peace Treaty, which provided for its restoration, and of prevaricating on the issue for over half a century. Read the rest of this entry »

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The easiest way to get to the magnificent Axum with the famous obelisks and numerous other sites is to fly there. The hardest way is to drive up the difficult road from Gondar, across the deep Tekkeze Valley. An intermediate alternative is to fly or drive to the capital of Tigray, Mekelle, then drive to Axum from there. The drive is exceptional, and it should be taken at least once.

There are two routes you can take from Mekelle, more or less straight across through Tembien, or north to Adigrat, then west to Adua and Axum. The former route is very nice, taking you through the Tigray highlands on a windy but pretty good gravel road. However, the route through Adigrat is much more spectacular and offers many more interesting points of interest. Read the rest of this entry »

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After the dramatic suicide of Emperor Tewodros, or Theodore, II, at Maqdala on Easter Monday, 13 April 1868, the British commander, Robert Napier, decided, as we all know, to take the Ethiopian ruler’s young son, Alamayahu, to England.

Captain Speedy

The youngster, then aged about eight, was accordingly placed in the custody of Captain J.C. Speedy, a member of his staff, who had previously travelled to Ethiopia: he had met Tewodros before the war, and spoke some Amharic, but probably less than he later claimed.

Speedy and Alamayahu embarked on HMS Feroze, a British vessel bound for England, on 11 June. According to a contemporary British report, quoting Speedy, they were accompanied by the boy’s tutor, who is referred to as “Alaca Zarat”, and a eunuch called Gabra Medhen. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yeha has the oldest building in Ethiopia, a large square temple which dates from about 500 BC. At this site were found some of the most marvellous artefacts in Ethiopia - including the calm faced sitting matrons now held in the National Museum. Also found at the same site were stone carved examples of South Arabian semitic script.

Because Yeha represents the earliest symbol of civilization in Ethiopia, it raises the question of who built it and what went before. The traditional interpretation by Western scholars has been that Semitic migrants or invaders from South Arabia crossed the Red Sea and established an outpost of their civilization in northern Ethiopia sometime before 500 BC. Semitic culture and language spread through northern and central Ethiopia, and formed the basis for the Axumite civilization which flourished from about 100 - 800 AD. Axum became powerful enough that it recrossed the Red Sea and conquered Southern Arabia. Read the rest of this entry »

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Axum

Axum is a wonderful place to visit. Arguably the most important archaeological site in Ethiopia, Axum is also a living city still. The streets are lively and regular, and apart from the Land Cruisers in the street it may not be too much different from its height during the time of the Roman Empire.

There are probably many more discoveries to be made in Axum, but archaeology has been repeatedly interrupted by pesky wars. As Axum nestles on the border with Eritrea, the warfare between 1998-2000 closed the area for all but the most determined visitors. There was only 8 years of peace before that, during which teams began to make some important discoveries. For 12 years before that, essentially 1978-1990, Axum had been rendered unsafe by the battle between the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Derg government. Earlier excavations had stopped with the overthrow of the Emperor in 1974, and had only briefly resumed in the 1990’s before being stopped again. Read the rest of this entry »

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Today, and for the next few weeks, we will be focusing our attention on Ethiopian craft-workers. They were, as is generally known, a class of individuals who played a major role in Ethiopia, making such essential artifacts as spear-heads and ploughshares, as well as woven cloth and pottery of all kinds. The craftsmen, who made such goods, tended, however, to be looked down upon by the rest of society, to a greater or lesser extent.

What Abba Gorgoreyos Said One of our most revealing early references to blacksmiths comes from the learned Abba Gorgoreyos, the Ethiopian friend and informant of the seventeenth century German linguist and historian Hiob Ludolf. Gorgoreyos, an enlightened man, speaking to Ludolf, observed that “the silly vulgar people” of his country “could not endure Smiths, as being the sort of Mortals that spit fire and were bred up in Hell”. Read the rest of this entry »

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Next to the church compound is a museum, which is very nice for the artefacts, but not very well marked or organized. I have to say that there is a real trade off between the highly interactive and information rich modern museums of the ‘First World’ versus the artefact rich but information poor museums of countries like Ethiopia or Egypt. I have to say that my preference is exploration amongst the dusty and disorganized but fabulous reality of relic museums. This museum has plenty of small statues, pieces of pottery, coins, and so on.

There are other sites right in the town of Axum, especially at King Ezana park where you see stone carved writing and a stone bench which is gruesomely said to have been used to clean dead bodies. Archaeologists guess that the stelae with the writing was brought from another site near town. King Bazen’s tomb is also in the park. I suspect the park has been preserved as a tourist site, which is good considering that so many of the buildings excavated and drawn by the ‘Deutsche Expedition’ in 1906 have been completely overtaken by settlement and are not available to see. Read the rest of this entry »

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