Abuna Yemata Guh
Interesting facts
- It is often described as the most inaccessible place of worship in the world, yet priests have no record of anyone dying on the climb.
- The church is one of more than 35 rock-hewn churches in the area, the largest concentration anywhere in Ethiopia.
- The way in is a small opening low in the centre of the rock face, reached after the final wooden footbridge.
- The chapel is carved into Enticho and Adigrat sandstones, and its domed architecture is traditionally attributed to the sixth century.
- The murals include diptychs and triptychs with inscriptions in Ge'ez, the classical liturgical language of the Ethiopian church.
- Painters laid their pictures on a ground of red mud strengthened with straw, spread over the chiselled sandstone walls.
- Laboratory analysis identified orpiment, an arsenic-based mineral, as the yellow used across the main painting programme.
- Services are still held in the cliff church, and worshippers continue to make the climb for prayer and baptisms.
Why it is worth it
Abuna Yemata Guh is a church hidden in a sandstone pinnacle of the Gheralta range in Tigray, and reaching it is part of what makes it so extraordinary. The chapel lies about 2,580 metres above sea level and roughly 200 metres above the surrounding plain, hollowed out of the cliff face near the top of the rock. The last part of the approach is a genuine climb on hand and footholds worn into the stone, then along a natural rock ledge with a sheer drop of around 250 metres on either side, and finally over a short wooden plank bridge to the door. Pilgrims and priests traditionally make the ascent barefoot, and it has long been said that no one has died on the climb.
Local tradition places the foundation of the church in the sixth century and dedicates it to Abuna Yemata, one of the Nine Saints, the monks who are said to have come to Ethiopia from different parts of the Roman and Byzantine world at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centuries and helped spread monastic Christianity in the north of the country. As with many of Tigray's rock-hewn churches, the tradition is older than any document, and the date of the cutting itself is uncertain.
What rewards the climb is the interior. The walls and the small domes carved into the ceiling are covered with paintings in rich, warm colours: the Nine Saints and the Twelve Apostles gaze down from the domes, and among the figures are Moses, Paul, Peter and Thomas. Scholars date the paintings to the second half of the fifteenth century; an X-ray fluorescence study in 2016 showed that they were made with locally obtained pigments and found no older layer beneath them, with the exception of retouching on the image of Mary. The dry air inside the rock has kept them remarkably fresh. From the ledge outside, the view across the red and ochre towers of the Gheralta and the farmland below is one of the great panoramas of the Ethiopian highlands.
Getting there
The church lies in the Gheralta area of the Hawzen district, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia; the town of Wukro is about 31 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Alula Aba Nega Airport at Mekelle (MQX), about 54 km away, and the drive from Mekelle to the Hawzen area takes around one and a half to two hours. The trailhead is a short drive from the village of Megab; about half an hour on foot brings you to the foot of the pinnacle, and the climb itself takes one to two hours.
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From the encyclopaedia
Abuna Yemata Guh is a monolithic church located in the Hawzen woreda of the Tigray Region, Ethiopia. It is situated at an altitude above sea level of 2,580 metres (8,460ย ft), or about 200 meters above the surrounding terrain, and it has to be climbed on foot to reach. It is notable for its spectacular location, its architecture and dome dating back to the sixth century, and its 15th century wall paintings.
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