King Ezana's Stele

Start with your hand on the stone, if you are allowed close enough. It is cool, hard and slightly rough, like the skin of a mountain. Above you, a single slab of grey rock rises about twenty-one metres into the Ethiopian sky. There are no joints and no mortar. This is one piece of stone, carved and raised more than sixteen centuries ago. It is still standing.

You are in the Northern Stelae Park in Axum, in the highlands of Tigray. Around you, other stones stand, lean or lie broken in the grass. Some are rough and plain. A few are carved with great care. The tallest one still upright is the one in front of you. Most people call it King Ezana's Stele.

Let your eyes travel slowly up its face. The stone is carved to look like a tall building. Near the base is a false door, complete with a carved lock or handle. Above it, rows of small rectangular windows climb toward the top. Between the floors, you can see round, knob-like shapes. These copy the ends of wooden beams.

That detail matters. Axumite builders made real buildings from stone layers held together with timber frames. The round beam ends stuck out from the walls. Archaeologists sometimes call them monkey heads, because of their shape. So the stele is not just a monument. It is a stone picture of how the Axumites actually built. Count the storeys as you look up. Most sources describe nine.

At the very top, the stele ends in a rounded head. On one side, you may notice holes or fixing points. Scholars think a metal plate or emblem was once attached there. Nobody knows exactly what it showed. It may have been a religious symbol from the older faith of the kingdom, before Christianity arrived.

And here is the first surprise. The name of this stele may be a little misleading. Ezana was a real king of Axum in the fourth century. He is remembered above all as the ruler who adopted Christianity, making Axum one of the earliest Christian states in the world. But stelae like this one belong to the pre-Christian burial tradition. Many historians think this stone is older than Ezana, or at least not his personal monument. The name comes from local tradition, not from an inscription on the stone.

So what were these stelae for? They were grave markers on a grand scale. Beneath this field lie tombs, shafts and underground chambers. The stelae stood above them as signs of power and memory. Look at the ground at the foot of the stone. There is a stone base platform. Some bases have shallow basins cut into them, which may have held offerings for the dead.

Now turn and look nearby for the giant lying on the ground. That is the Great Stele. It was even more ambitious, around thirty-three metres long, and probably the largest single stone the ancient world ever tried to stand upright. It broke into pieces when it fell. Many researchers believe it collapsed during or soon after its erection. Perhaps that failure ended the age of giant stelae. After it, no one tried again on this scale.

The second surprise concerns a stone that travelled. Another carved stele from this park, the second tallest, was removed by Italian forces in 1937, during the occupation of Ethiopia. It stood in Rome for decades. After a long campaign, it was returned in 2005 and raised again here in 2008. When you walk through the park, you can see it standing once more among its neighbours.

Think about how this stone got here. The rock was quarried from hills a few kilometres west of the town. Workers cut the slab, shaped it, and moved it without modern machines. They probably used rollers, ramps, ropes, and many hands. Then they had to lift it upright and set it into the ground. Every step carried real risk, as the broken Great Stele shows.

Axum itself was once the centre of a major trading kingdom. Its merchants were linked to the Red Sea, to Arabia, to India and to the Roman world. The kingdom minted its own coins in gold, silver and bronze. Ezana's later coins carry a cross, one of the earliest uses of that symbol on any coinage. Elsewhere in town, a stone carries a long inscription about his reign, written in Ge'ez, in an old South Arabian script, and in Greek.

The town around you still lives closely with this past. Not far away stands the church complex of Our Lady Mary of Zion. According to Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, the Ark of the Covenant is kept there, guarded by a single monk. That belief cannot be tested, but it shapes the town deeply. On feast days, you may see crowds in white cotton shawls moving through these streets, as pilgrims have done for generations.

As you walk around the stele, notice how the light changes on the carved face. In the morning, the windows and beam ends throw sharp little shadows. At midday, the surface turns pale and flat. Over the years, engineers have worked to stabilise these stones, because their great weight and the soft ground make them vulnerable. What looks permanent is, in fact, carefully watched.

Before you leave, stand back a little and look at the stele against the sky. Listen for the sounds around you — voices in Tigrinya, birds, perhaps a church bell in the distance. The carved windows were never meant to open. The false door was never meant to let anyone in. And yet, after all these centuries, this tall stone house still stands here, in the open air, for you to look at.