The giant granite obelisks of Axum, about 1,000 kilometers north of Addis Ababa, remained one of Ethiopia’s main tourist attractions, Kenya’s Business Daily reported in a travel feature in August 2019.
Stelae in the Main Stelae Field at Axum, photographed on May 2, 2013. (Adam Jones / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) [file photo]
The four-sided monuments, each carved from a single stone, stand more than 20 meters high and weigh more than 100 tonnes, the paper said. It linked them to King Ezana, who it said introduced Christianity to Ethiopia in the fourth century. UNESCO inscribed Aksum on its World Heritage List in 1980.
There were six or seven obelisks at the site, according to differing accounts cited by the paper, and some may have fallen because of structural weakness, tremors or military incursions in the 16th century. Several of those still standing were propped up with steel bars and chains, it reported. Some accounts say the stones were moved from a site four kilometers away using elephants.
Decorations on the monuments include crosses and carved false doors and windows. “There are Aksumite, Gondarian, and Lalibelan crosses,” tour guide Abenezer Dereje told the paper.
Ethiopian Airlines said in April 2019 that the obelisks, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela and the walled town of Harar “have always remained tourist magnets,” the Business Daily reported. The World Travel and Tourism Council said Ethiopia’s tourism grew 48.6 percent in 2018, the fastest in the world, earning $7.4 billion and supporting 2.2 million jobs, against a world average of 3.9 percent.
Rashid Kaittany of ATS Travel in Kenya said historical tours need knowledgeable guides. “Going to places of rich histories like Rome, you need professional guides who understand the subject,” he said.
Italian troops took one of the obelisks to Rome in 1937 on Benito Mussolini’s orders. The 24-meter stela, weighing about 150 tonnes, was cut into three sections and returned by Italy in April 2005, and Italy paid for its dismantling, transport and reinstallation, according to UNESCO.
UNESCO teams mounted the third and last block at its original site on July 31, 2008, and the obelisk, the second-largest stela at Aksum, was formally inaugurated on Sept. 4, 2008, the agency said.
Sources: Business Daily: “Axum’s Obelisks Take Visitors to Ethiopia” (Wayback Machine archive), UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Aksum Obelisk reinstalled (2008), UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Inauguration of the Aksum Obelisk (2008), UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Aksum