Axum

Axum was the capital of a kingdom that traded between the Nile valley, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean from about the first century AD. Ivory, gold, incense and slaves moved through its port of Adulis on the coast; the kingdom minted gold, silver and copper coins from the late third century, and was named by the prophet Mani among the four great powers of the world alongside Rome, Persia and China. Its rulers raised carved granite stelae over royal graves, cut as single blocks and dressed to look like multi-storey buildings with false doors and windows. The largest of them, about 33 metres long, lies broken where it fell.

In the fourth century King Ezana adopted Christianity, recorded in his trilingual inscriptions and on his coins, making Aksum one of the earliest Christian states. Tradition holds that the Ark of the Covenant was brought here from Jerusalem by Menelik, the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and that it rests in a chapel beside the church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, where emperors were crowned. The kingdom declined from the seventh and eighth centuries as trade routes shifted, and power moved south.

The town remained a religious centre through the centuries that followed. Fasilides built the church that stands today in 1665, and a domed cathedral was added beside it in the 20th century. The ruins were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. The great obelisk, taken to Rome in 1937 during the Italian occupation, was returned in 2005 and re-erected in 2008. The war of November 2020 to November 2022 reached the town, and it has been recovering since.

Axum is the spiritual centre of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and that gives the town a weight out of proportion to its size. The church of Our Lady Mary of Zion is held to be the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, guarded by a single monk who never leaves the compound and is replaced only on his death; every Ethiopian Orthodox church keeps a tabot, a replica of the Tablets of the Law, in imitation of it. Ge'ez, the language of the Aksumite inscriptions, is still the language of the liturgy.

The great gathering of the year is Hidar Tsion at the end of November, when pilgrims come from across the country, camp around the church and hold services through the night; Timkat in January brings the tabots out in procession to the Mai Shum reservoir. Priests carry embroidered umbrellas, silver processional crosses and drums, and deacons chant with the sistrum and prayer staff.

The culture is Tigrayan: Tigrinya is the language, the shoulder-shaking dances and the krar and kebero music of Tigray are heard at weddings, and in August girls celebrate Ashenda in bright dresses and grass skirts. Hand crosses, basketwork and white cotton weaving are the local crafts. Memory of the 2020 to 2022 war, and before it of the 1984 famine and the long guerrilla struggle against the Derg, runs through everything.

Axum is a town of about 66,900 people, by a 2015 count, on the dry western edge of the Tigray plateau, low-built and spread out, with the stelae standing in open ground in the middle of it. Most families live in stone and mortar houses with corrugated roofs, and the town is ringed by fields of teff, barley, sorghum and wheat worked with oxen, with threshing grounds on the outskirts after the harvest.

Farming, trade, the church, the town's university and government offices carry the economy. Tourism was the other pillar, employing guides, drivers, hotel staff and craft sellers, and it collapsed with the war and has recovered only partly. The fighting of 2020 to 2022 brought displacement, damage to services and a long interruption of banking, electricity, telephone and internet connections across Tigray, and aid has been a part of daily life since.

Days start early, before the heat, with church bells and the sound of grain being ground. Farmers walk in for market day with donkeys and livestock, the main street fills with bajaj taxis, and by mid afternoon people gather over coffee roasted at the roadside. Water and power supplies are irregular, and the nights, at more than two thousand metres, are cold enough for a blanket most of the year.

Tigrayan cooking has its own vocabulary. Stews are tsebhi rather than wat, and the regional dish is tihlo: balls of roasted barley dough, dipped by hand or on a small wooden fork into a spicy sauce of meat or pulses, a speciality tied to the Tigray highlands. Ga'at, a stiff porridge with a well of spiced butter and berbere in the middle, is a breakfast of the region, and hilbet, a paste of ground broad beans and lentils, is eaten on fasting days.

Injera here is often made with a proportion of barley or sorghum as well as teff, and comes with tsebhi dorho, the chicken stew, tsebhi birsen of lentils, shiro of ground chickpeas, and cooked greens. Zigni, a red-hot beef stew, is the festival dish, and tere siga, raw beef eaten with mustard and awaze, is a Tigrayan treat at celebrations. Kicha fit-fit, torn flatbread mixed with spiced butter and berbere, is the standard breakfast.

To drink there is suwa, the Tigrayan home-brewed barley beer sold in neighbourhood houses marked by an upturned cup, mes or tej, the honey wine, and coffee. The ceremony follows the national form — green beans roasted over charcoal, pounded, brewed in a jebena and poured in three rounds — often with popcorn or roasted grain alongside.