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Published: November 21st 2009
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Axum
Today we move on to
Axum, the old centre of Ethiopia and the Axumite civilisation, home of the
Queen of Sheba and
The Arc of the Covenant. We have to leave the hotel at the far more reasonable time of 8a.m. to get our flight. I seem to be part of a comedy routine without realising it when I go looking for Bryan and other people are sent, in turn, to look for each other.
Our short drive to the airport has one brief stop to buy some "
Sandrea Sauce", a particularly hot sauce that Sandrea has discovered and which is now fermenting away in her bag and will probably explode somewhere in Southern Ethiopia.
At the airport all our bags are x-rayed twice and we are all given a blank boarding pass - no flight number, no destination and no seat number. We could get on any Ethiopian Air flight we want to - but there is only one flight out of Lalibela. We go through departures where the boarding pass is taken off us ready to be given to the next set of passengers.
The flight and the transfer to the
Yeha Hotel in
Axum are fairly uneventful. At first appearance the
Yeha Hotel is a definite improvement on our last hotel. We have curtains, toilet paper, a mirror, a lighter decor and the door opens and shuts. On the downside we have no water and only one towel to share between two of us - {
but we'll worry about that when we have the water!}
Stelae Fields After lunch we are taken to see some of the highlights of
Axum. Firstly there are the incredible
Stelae Fields. When I booked to come to Ethiopia I didn't even know about these! They are markers to denote the position of burial chambers and include a number of large obelisks carved out of solid granite. The largest of these still standing has only recently been returned by Italy and there is a broken, collapsed one weighing 500 tons and 33 meters high which would have been the largest obelisk in the world when it was standing. None of the burial chambers marked by the stalae seem to have survived the grave robbers, though.
From here we go to the "
Queen of Sheba's Swimming Pool", now used as a water source for women washing their
clothes, and the
Tombs of Kings Kaleb and Gebre Meskel. From here we get good views looking towards
Eritrea and the site of the
Battle Of Adwa {
that's the panorama picture at the top}.
Finally, I find the inscribed stone of
King Ezana fascinating. This is a single monolith placed at what would have been the entrance to Axum warning visitors in three languages of the military power of King Ezana and of all of his victories. It also warns visitors of what will happen to them if they move the stone. The English translation would probably be "Come on if you think you're 'ard enough!"
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