We stayed last night at General Grazziani’s house now the Fogera Hotel.  I’m glad we didn’t know that we were in his bedroom until the next day.  I wrote about the Italian general back in the Debre Libanos section.  He is the least admirable figure in all Ethiopian history for his responsibility in killing thousands of Ethiopians and seeking to eradicate their culture.  I better not go on.

 

 

Axum, Ethiopia

 

We arrived a few hours ago.  In flight we could see hundreds and hundreds of the circular threshing areas.  You could see from the chaff what the prevailing wind direction is.  There were thousands of these circles laid out across the landscape like a patter in a rug.  On the most remote mesas on the way to the Simian mountains I saw a tiny village, hours away from the nearest neighbors.  What is life like for the people in this place.  Perhaps that is part  of what Ethiopia teaches me.  This is a settled country.  Places, landscapes in America that would have no one in them here have small farmers struggling to get by.  The countryside is so dry and dusty.  I can see why 10-15 million people here depend on food aid every year (30 million in a bad year).

Axum brings us back to another period of time altogether.  225? Kings have had coronation ceremonies here.  The Axumite empire controlled trade on the Red Sea and had colonies in South Arabia.  The guides also remind us of a more remote mythical-biblical time here.

We left our luggage at the Abnet Hotel – it’s three years old on a street newly planted with palm trees.  The we went to the famous Axum stele.  We feel especially fortunate to be here.  The border with Eritrea is only a few kilometers away and the war has not been over for long.  The whole region seems to be recovering.  The stele that Mussolini stole during the five year Italian occupation of Ethiopia is in the metal braces that supported it on its journey home.  It is in three sections under two tin-roofed covers.  The guide told us that Italy was returning it and re-erecting it (it had already collapsed when they stole it) under pressure from the US and France.  So we saw the three largest stelae: one absolutely huge one could have collapsed as they were erecting it, the Italian one, and the one still standing.  Can you imagine these structures built 700 years before the Norman conquest of England by a civilization that has largely vanished?  Perhaps some of their inventions, cultural innovations and other discoveries are still with us.  Wedding parties kept visiting while we were there.  We also went down into a tomb excavated some time during the last century.  There still remains so much archaeological work to be done here.

We visited what our excellent guide called the “really ark of the covenant.”  This ark is the model for all other replicas in every church in Ethiopia.  Mohammed the Left-Handed I think destroyed one of the ancient churches there.  Hailie Selassie built St. Mary’s, a huge modern church in the 1960’s that could probably seat a few thousand people.  All of us visitors from California want to tidy up these churches both new and old.  Pews, chairs, junk, ratty old carpets, clutter and random, no longer used electrical wires, etc.  These are beautiful churches and this makes the clutter more distracting.