Aksum at the transition to Christianity - article ; n°1 ; vol.19, pg 215-230

Helmut Ziegert, Marlies Wendowski

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Annales d'Ethiopie - Année 2003 - Volume 19 - Numéro 1 - Pages 215-230
16 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: ANNALES_D-ETHIOPIE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 495
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

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Marlies Wendowski
Helmut Ziegert
Aksum at the transition to Christianity
In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 19, année 2003. pp. 215-230.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Wendowski Marlies, Ziegert Helmut. Aksum at the transition to Christianity. In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 19, année 2003. pp.
215-230.
doi : 10.3406/ethio.2003.1044
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ethio_0066-2127_2003_num_19_1_1044Annales d'Ethiopie, 2003, vol. XI X : 215-230.
CHRISTIANITY" "AKSUM AT THE TRANSITION TO
Marlies Wendowski and Helmut Ziegert
Introduction
Ethiopia is the only state in Africa with an almost non-colonial history; fu
rthermore Ethiopia is a with a tradition in Christianity far back to the ear
liest spread of Christian belief. Both facts attrack even foreign researchers to
focus their interests on the history of this country, for the beginnings even
'Archaeology as History' (H.Ziegert,2002).
If we look for the gaps in our knowledge and where archaeology can con
tribute to the history of Aksum and the early state of Ethiopia we find as one of
the main problems the period and processes of statebuilding influenced by the
introduction and adoption of Christianity.
Our research project focusses on these topics including the environments as
historical factors, technological, settlement-, chronological and additional
methodological problems.
In an early stage of archaeological theory and methods and objectorientated
the German Axum Expedition 1906 registered, mapped, cleaned and recon
structed many settlement and grave ruins, churches and stelae. These results
brought Aksum back to international attention, made a great number of inter
esting remains available for tourism, but without sufficient historical informat
ion on dating, function and meaning.
Far away from critical methodological discussions and control, even later
investigations by excavation were more or less of the same standard; e.g. how
old are the carved stelae in the stelae park ? Who and at which time were the
inhabitants of Dungur-palace? (Obviously not "Queen Sheba"). This lack of
information is one of the reasons for the one-day-stay of tourists in Axum and
for the 5-minutes-stay in the Archaeological Museum.
Without historical questions and without critical methodological background
several excavations left behind many building and grave remains without the
record of contexts, associations, stratigraphy and relation to environmental fea
tures. Therefore it is very difficult to use these remains as sources to solve new
questions. 216
The only way is now to discover and excavate new remains for investigations
with new historical questions, step-by-step starting from model-building, survey
with profile-drilling, test-excavations, problemorientated excavations using the
theoretical and methodological background in archaeology. This way we can
reach a higher level of information on dating, function, settlement and cultural
behaviour, and on the environmental conditions as an additional source for his
tory.
Aksum in its environments
Geology:
The highlands of northern Ethiopia are due to the tectonic shifting and uplift
in East Africa, and mainly consist of volcanic rocks, deep weathered under
plateaus. Volcanic tuff layers from eruptions interbedded with cultural remains
can be used as time-markers for dating and chronological comparison.
Topography:
Axum at the hight of 2150 to 2300 m a.s.l. is surrounded by high volcanoes,
volcanic ridges and some granite outcrops. Steep rocks are heavily eroded; slope
deposits as finegrained sediments originating from chemical weathering are
only preserved at the foot of the hills, covering ancient surfaces and cultural
remains on different layers.
The climates:
Due to a higher amount of rainfall the surface-soils were washed down to the
valleys and finally deposited in the Nile-valley, up to the time of the Ezana-
inscription-stones in the early fourth century AD. For the following time we can
recognize deep weathering of the volcanic hills and soil creeping and covering
of the old surfaces and cultural remains by slope deposits. This was probably
due to a gradual reduction of rainfall and longer rainy seasons. Not dated till
now, the trend to decreasing led to dry soils, surface run off and -wash,
gully erosion, lowering of the ground water level - a phase lasting till today.
Soils and surfaces:
The recent fields on the slope deposits are covered with stones over 20 cm
fertile soils due to ploughing, and terraced against erosion. Old surfaces, that
means also living horizons, are preserved in the slope deposits and covered up
to several meters, as at 'Berik Audi', an excavation site of our mission to Axum
during the last seasons. This geomorphological background opens the possibili
ties for a new time-sequence, and with the identification of the stratified vol
canic tuff layers it yields the basis for relative dating.
Vegetation and fauna:
For the ancient times of Aksum City State we can assume that there existed
a similar highland vegetation and sudanic and endemic fauna as in some isolat
ed areas today. The economic base for settlement must have been cattle herd- 217
ing; plough horizons could only be recognized from later historic periods.
An interesting topic of our research is the passible contribution of ancient
Aksum to the change of cattle in Africa. According to cattle representations in
rock drawings the domestigated cattle in Africa during prehistoric times orig
inated from the Near Eastern and European species Bos primigenius, primarily
domesticated probably in the Near East (Troy et al., 2001). In contrary the
recent African cattle is an Indian humped zebu. There must have been a change
from Bos primigenius to Bos indicus, at a time about 2000 years ago, and prob
ably by East Africa.
At these times the City State Aksum controlled the Indian-Mediterranean-
trade, by these contacts it might have been possible to import zebu cattle from
India. In stelae texts of king Ezana of early 4th century it is recorded that he
offered a great number of cattle to defeated tribes which probably were cattle
herders before. Our assumption is therefore that he presented the new type of
cattle which was imported and breeded for Aksum. The benefit of this cattle
type was the better adaptation to step vegetation with long dry seasons and the
pieceful behaviour, important for the handling by farmers and herders.
Archaeological investigations 2000-02 yielded bone fragments of cattle of the
time about 200 to 600 AD in stratified layers. It seemed to be important to know
by DNS-analysis whether - and when - these bones originated from Bos primi
genius or Zebu cattle, to estimate the role of Aksum in the change of cattle in
Africa. DNS-analyses of recent African cattle show that the mtDNS, inherited
from cows, originated from Bos primigenius, but the DNS from Bos indicus
which is dominant and yields the phenotype Zebu. The conclusion is that only
Zebu-bulls had been imported and crossbreeded with Bos primigenius tradi
tional cattle (Loftus et al.,1994). In recent times such a process was reported
from Australia, and from Richmond (USA): crossbreeding of longhorn-and
Indian Zebu-bulls.
'Berik Audi'
North of the Kaleb-graves at the feet of the mountains hill 'Kube' and hill
'Terer' we found the eroded and destructed foundation walls of palaces of
Aksumite times. Half the way from Kaleb to hill 'Kube' we could observe irreg
ularities in the sloping planes - steps from diggings and from covered structures
- and surface stone cover of wall building materials lifted up by ploughing.
Testexcavations 2000 and excavations in the following seasons shew a settl
ement place with a palace in two phases of construction and other structures
around, a big king's grave of 16 xl6m and 4m high, with a renewed wall at the
southern face and smaller graves beside. The palace was left at last, the rooms
artificially filled with soils and a pottery-content offered on top of the filling of
the ground floor rooms. The king's grave and the annex correspond each one to
the end of the first and second palace phase. Human sacrifices indicate a
prechristian inhabitatian of the site. 218
Fig 1: A*um - Benk Audi' - palace: a child-offering in a jar under the court
second yard of palace, the first covered palace-building; by stones in of the profile demolition the soil of the of the upper ritual floors filling of the 219
Fig. 2: 'Berik Audi' second phase of the palace : open air courtyard with
a floor of volcanic tuff, drainage system and stairs around, to east up to the
main palace building.
Fig. 3: 'Berik Audi' main palace groundfloor with soil-filling and jar
(content) offering on top; the jar contained a layer of volcanic tuff as it was
deposited on the soil; that means just after the ritual burial of the palace. 220
A quarry for copper-ore, slag heaps, furnaces of smelting processes and
remains of continuing technical processes refer to glass and copper-production
and fabrication and probably to minting of coins. 'Dynamic experiments' beside
and re