Obelisk of Axum
Interesting facts
- While standing in Rome, the obelisk was struck by lightning during a violent storm on 27 May 2002 and suffered considerable damage.
- When it was re-erected in Aksum, its three sections were joined with aramid-fibre (Kevlar) bars instead of steel, partly so the stone would no longer attract lightning.
- In 1937 the pieces were trucked to the port of Massawa in five trips over two months, then shipped to Naples aboard a vessel named Adwa.
- In Rome it stood before the Ministry of Italian Africa, a building that later became the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
- A bronze Lion of Judah, symbol of the Ethiopian monarchy, was taken to Rome with the obelisk; it went home in 1967, nearly four decades before the stele.
- The runway at Axum's airport had to be upgraded specifically so that cargo planes carrying the stele could land there.
- The middle section, flown home on 19 April 2005, has been described as the largest and heaviest single piece of air freight ever carried.
- Bringing the obelisk back cost Italy about 7.7 million US dollars, and the three pieces arrived on three separate flights within a week.
- Hundreds of smaller and plainer stelae stand in Aksum's stele fields; the size and decoration of each marker reflected the rank of the person buried beneath.
- Drawings of Aksum's stelae brought to England by the traveller Henry Salt influenced the design of the Nelson Monument on Portsdown Hill near Portsmouth.
Why it is worth it
A single block of grey stone 24 metres tall, carved to look like a tower house of many storeys, stands again in the field of royal stelae in Aksum. The Obelisk of Axum, or Rome Stele, was raised in the 4th century AD by the Kingdom of Aksum, the trading power that controlled the highlands of northern Ethiopia and the Red Sea routes in late antiquity. Cut from one piece of phonolite and weighing about 160 tonnes, it marked the burial place of the kingdom's elite. Two false doors are carved at its foot, and above them rows of false windows and the ends of imitation wooden beams climb all four faces to a rounded top that once held metal fittings.
It was among the last great stelae to be raised: the custom of marking royal tombs this way ended after King Ezana adopted Christianity in the mid-4th century. Sooner or later the obelisk fell and broke, and by the 19th century the only one of the three great stelae still standing was King Ezana's Stele. The largest of them, the Great Stele, some 33 metres long, still lies shattered on the ground beside it, probably having collapsed when it was raised or soon after.
The obelisk's modern history is a story of war and restitution. In 1937, during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, it was cut into three pieces, shipped to Italy and re-erected in Rome on the Piazza di Porta Capena, in front of the Ministry of Italian Africa, unveiled on the anniversary of the March on Rome. Italy undertook to return it under a 1947 United Nations agreement, but the return came only in April 2005, when the three sections were flown back to Aksum on an Antonov An-124. Under UNESCO supervision the stele was reassembled and stood upright again on 4 September 2008, next to King Ezana's Stele. The stelae park is part of the archaeological ruins of Aksum, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1980. Aksum itself, once the capital of the kingdom, remains a holy city of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church; local tradition holds that the Ark of the Covenant is kept in a chapel beside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion.
Getting there
The obelisk stands in the Northern Stelae Park in the town of Aksum, about 1 km from the centre. The nearest airport is Axum Airport (AXU), about 6 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Obelisk of Axum is a 4th-century CE, 24-metre (79 ft) tall phonolite stele, weighing 160 tonnes, in the city of Axum in Ethiopia. It is ornamented with two false doors at the base and features decorations resembling windows on all sides. The obelisk ends in a semi-circular top, which used to be enclosed by metal frames.
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