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Magazine
A great little country
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Ethiopia, though mired in material poverty, has a rich cultural inheritance, say JEROO and GUSTASP IRANI.
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Exotic culture ... at Axum.
WE met Lucy in Addis Ababa. She was three feet tall and 3.5 million years old. A permanent resident of the country's national museum, Lucy — a pile of bones found in an archeological dig on the banks of the Awash river — suggests that Ethiopia was probably the cradle of mankind, the land where our ancestors first started to walk upright.
Even today the country is steeped in the past and nowhere is it more apparent than the northern historic circuit. From the Blue Nile Falls at Bahar Dar, to the castles of Gondar, the monolithic rock hewn churches in Lalibela and the historic ruins of Axum, Ethiopia, though mired in material poverty, has a rich cultural inheritance. We must, however, confess that we set out on our journey with a little trepidation about what lay ahead and ended up congratulating ourselves for taking the plunge.
Our brush with Lucy aside, we also got acquainted with the legends of the mighty kings who claimed lineage to Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and The Queen of Sheba. Yes, the queen of legendary beauty ruled over territory that stretched from Ethiopia to Yemen. The story told is that when King Solomon started to build his famous temple in Jerusalem, he entrusted the holy tabernacle that housed the Ten Commandments to his son, Menelik I, for safekeeping. The lad carried the precious words that God inscribed on stone tablets to Ethiopia and today they reside in a little church in the ancient city of Axum. Later of course, he went on to be crowned king and become the fountainhead of a 3,000-year dynasty that peppered the land with monuments and legends that nothing in sub-Saharan Africa could match.
Our adventure into this remarkable heritage circuit started with being wowed by the Blue Nile Falls, the source of the mighty African river, just outside Bahar Dar. We had been on the trail for 45 minutes, trudging painfully up a narrow path. Just as the trek started to take its physical toll, we reached the crest of the hill and the Blue Nile Falls appeared in theatrical splendour. A sheet of foaming white water, over 200 metres wide, plunged 45 metres down the face of a sheer chasm with a deafening roar. The fury of the thundering, cascading water churned up a spray that covered the surrounding forests in a veil of mist and created a rainbow that framed the gorge in an arc of spectacular colours.
An Abyssinian maiden ... celebrated even in literature.
Back in Bahar Dar we cruised across Lake Tana to explore a few of the 20 odd monasteries that dot the largest water body in Ethiopia. Within these ancient shrines were some of the finest treasures of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church: stunning murals and colourful parchment scriptures.
We got to sample more of the same the next day in Gondar when we visited an early 17th Century church whose walls were flush with colourful murals, including the famous one of the Holy Trinity, depicting scenes from the New and Old Testaments. Here the young resident priest enlightened us about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church: services, often accompanied with drums and music, could last anywhere from four to 24 hours. The calendar (eight years behind the Gregorian one) comprises 13 months. And the day (each one has its own name) started at sunrise (6 a.m.) and not midnight.
Of course, modern Ethiopia is changing but there are still many pockets that still seem moored in the past: like the impressive castle complex erected by successive rulers in the heart of the city. We walked through the abandoned citadel of fortified walls, turrets and towers that still dominate the skyline of Gondar and though it was stripped of riches, it still evoked the majesty of a bygone era.
Also in ruins were two other impressive monuments: the castle of Empress Mentewab and the bathhouse of King Fasil, the founder of Gondar.
At Lalibela we stepped back into the 12th Century and into the bowels of the earth to find living relics of the era: 11 churches hewn out of monolithic rocks. And though these structures were many stories high, we did not see them till we were no more than a few yards away from the site. The reason we almost missed the towering monuments was because they had been excavated into the ground below our feet. We looked down at St. Mary's Church, rising like a surge of devotion, and marvelled at the fact that it was not really very unique, not in Lalibela, at least.
The Holy Trinity ... at Gondar.
We walked down a narrow passageway and through a small tunnel to reach the church where the resident monk dressed in ceremonial gowns showed us filigreed crosses, well-thumbed prayer books of goat skin parchments, ceremonial drums and musical instruments, faded murals and the other treasures in his care. More subterranean passages and tunnels took us to five more churches steeped in the life and legend of the 12th Century monarch, King Lalibela, after whom the city was renamed. The story told is that when King Lalibela was born, his mother, the queen, dreamt that he would become the king even though he was the youngest son.
Driven by envy, his eldest brother spiked his drink with poison. As a result Lalibela slipped into a deep coma for three days; time he spent in heaven pouring over plans of the rock-cut monuments God wanted him to build. On his return to consciousness and the mortal world, his eldest brother, abdicated in his favour and King Lalibela immediately got down to excavating the monuments that he saw in heaven in three clusters.
St. George's Church, a stand-alone structure which represents the pinnacle of Lalibela's architectural excellence, however, was an afterthought. According to local legend, St. George, of dragon slaying fame, appeared in Lalibela's dream and protested that none of the churches built so far had been dedicated to him. The king rectified this oversight by building the most magnificent of all his monuments, the construction of which they say was supervised by St. George himself; proof of his presence being in the hoof marks of his horse embossed in the rock.
Myth aside, the historic reason for building underground shrines was to camouflage them from the invading armies of Islam that destroyed the churches in the former capital city of Axum, in the north. Today the fortified walls of the 17th Century Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, its inner walls and pillars aglow with murals portraying scenes from the scriptures, rise like a phoenix out of the ashes of past vandalism.
Within the compound walls of the cathedral is a small unpretentious church in which the Ark of the Covenant that King Solomon entrusted to his son King Menelik I, is enshrined. To the far right of the complex, the circular dome of the Church of St. Mary, its sleek lines betraying the fact that it is of fairly recent origin, towered over the tree line.
Directly opposite the church, a cluster of mysterious obelisks of unknown origin reach up and needle the sky.
These delicately etched shafts, hued out of single granite stones, stand like silent sentinels, guarding the secrets of the past. And somewhere in this misted time lurks the legend of the Queen of Sheba whose palace lies in ruin at the outskirts of the town. We browsed through the maze of stone walls that now remained and mused that our journey across Ethiopia ended where the story of the country had started.
Fact File:
Ethiopian Airways operates scheduled flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Addis Ababa, Ethipia's capital.
Green Land Tours, the leading tour operator in Ethiopia, offers a number of coach and fly-coach options across the country.
By way of accommodation, Addis Ababa has two five-star hotels — Hilton and Sheraton — and a number of three and four star properties. The government-run Ghion group has hotels in all the major tourist towns.
For more information contact:
Ethiopian Airways Mumbai: Tel: (022) 22028787 Fax: 22029392 or
Green Land Tour, Addis Ababa, Tel: +251-1-632597/8; Fax: 632595
E-mail: etgreend@yahoo.com or greenplc@yahoocom Web: www.greenlandtours.net
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