December 25, 2019 • 35 mins
The complex at Lalibela was excavated from volcanic rock about 700 years ago, and has been in continuous use since then. It's connected to the overall history of Christianity in Ethiopia -- different from Christianity in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Today we have something that's been suggested by at least
a couple of listeners, including William and Thomas, and that's
(00:23):
the rock hewn churches of Ethiopia, in particular the complex
of them that is known as Lollibella. There are at
least two hundred rock hun churches in Ethiopia. The oldest
ones are in the Tigray region and are carved from sandstone.
Those dates all the way back to about the fifth century.
This complex that Lollibella, is a little newer. It was
(00:44):
excavated from volcanic rock about seven hundred years ago and
the site has been in continuous use since then. Today
Lollibella is a deeply important religious site in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.
So these churches are just an incredible feat of engineering,
both in terms of the structures themselves and all of
(01:05):
the water management that's involved with them. And they're also
connected to the overall history of Christianity in Ethiopia, which
evolved very differently from Christianity and the rest of Sub
Saharan Africa. So today we will have a brief overview
of the origins of Christianity in Ethiopia before talking about
these Rocket Churches at Lalibela, from their original building to
(01:26):
the threats that the site is facing today, before we
get to the introduction of Christianity in Ethiopia. The nations
of Africa as we know them today have roots in
the Scramble for Africa that took place in the late
nineteenth century. That is, when European nations divided the continent
up among themselves without regard for the existing nations, empires,
(01:47):
and political alliances that were already there. This is something
that has come up on the show multiple times before.
The resulting national borders were really arbitrary in terms of
everything from geography to existing territorial boundary. These nations and
their borders continued to evolve after the Scramble for Africa,
but in general they also continued to group people's that
(02:08):
hadn't necessarily been affiliated before, creating the idea of nations
that didn't necessarily match up to the existing political landscape.
So of course that applies to Ethiopia, and then in
terms of Ethiopia in particular. That name can mean a
lot of different things depending on when a person is
talking about and when they were using that term. A
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lot of ancient writing from outside of Sub Saharan Africa
uses the word Ethiopia in a generic kind of way
to just mean Africa in general, or in particular Africa
south of Egypt. Ancient sources, including the Christian Bible, also
used the word Ethiopian to describe anyone with very dark skin,
so in these early uses of the word Ethiopia and Ethiopian,
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it's not always clear exactly who or where they are
talking about. There are also a couple of written uses
of the term that came from what's now Ethiopia rather
than from elsewhere. They date back as far as the
third or fourth century. One of them references a king
of the Oxomites and the Ethiopians. The Oxomite Empire was
in what's now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, and this wording
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suggests that people thought of these as two different places.
In the history we're talking about today includes this same
general region, which at some points has also been called Abyssinia.
Christianity has been present in Northern Africa since the earliest
years of the religion, as it's spread through areas that
were part of the Roman Empire, but in most of
Sub Saharan Africa it was introduced much later, starting with
(03:37):
Portuguese missionaries in the fifteenth century, so for the most part,
in Sub Saharan Africa, Christianity is associated with European colonialism.
Ethiopia is an exception, though Ethiopia's Christian traditions trace back
to Biblical accounts, including the flight of Mary, Joseph, and
Jesus from Herod, the Roman king of Judea shortly after
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Jesus was born in the Book of Matthew and in
some of the New Testament Apocrypha, an angel appeared to
Joseph and told him that Herod planned to kill Jesus,
so the Holy Family fled to Egypt and lived there
for several years. In the Ethiopian tradition, they continued into
Ethiopia and they took refuge there. The Book of Acts
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in the Bible also describes the apostle Philip baptizing a
eunuch from the court of Candice, Queen of the Ethiopians,
with that baptism happening in Jerusalem, and his fourth century
ecclesiastical history, Bishop Assebius of Cesarea wrote that this person
returned to Ethiopia, arriving there sometime before the apostle Matthew did.
(04:40):
But like we just talked about, it's not really clear
exactly where Ethiopia is in these accounts in terms of
the introduction of Christianity as an established religion that goes
back to the days of the Oxomite Empire, also called
the Kingdom of ox Um. This umpire was established sometime
between one fifty b c. And fifty sea, and it
(05:01):
flourished from the third to the six centuries. Because of
its position on the northern Horn of Africa along the
Red Sea, this empire had extensive trading relationships with what's
now Sudan, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. It was a wealthy,
cosmopolitan kingdom with primary exports that included ivory and gold.
The kingdom used the revenue from these exports to invest
(05:23):
in agriculture, moving the region from subsistence farming to raising
cattle and export crops. The foreign merchants who visited or
worked in the Oxomite Empire included Christians, and at first
Christianity was viewed in the Empire as a foreign religion
rather than as something that Oxymites might practice for themselves.
Multiple accounts document the same basic story about how that changed,
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and in that story, two men described as coming from
Syria or Tire were shipwrecked and given employment in the
king's household. The king died while his son was still
too young to take the throne, and these two men
remained at court while his widow served as regent for
the late king's son, Azanna. Along the way, they made
connections with Christian traders and merchants, although it's not clear
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whether these shipwreck survivors sought them out because they were
already Christian themselves, or if they converted to Christianity at
some point. When Azanna came of age, the younger of
the two shipwreck survivors returned home, but the older, known
as Frumentius of Tire, traveled to Alexandria Egypt to petition
church patriarch Athanasius to appoint a bishop to lead the
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growing community of Christians in the Kingdom of Axum. The
patriarch appointed Frumentius himself, and in Ethiopia he became known
as Abba Salama or Father Peace. Abbas Salama also baptized
the king, marking the royal family's conversion to Christianity, and
about the year three thirty Azanna became the first monarch
to put the symbol of the cross on coins, and
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the capital of Oxom grew into a religious as well
as the political center, So the establishment of Christianity and
Ethiopia was happening at about the same time as it
was in Armenia, which is usually noted as the first
country to make Christianity the official state religion. It took
another couple of centuries before Christianity was widely practiced outside
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of the royal family and nobility in the Kingdom of Oxom.
Much of that shift started with the introduction of monasticism
in about the sixth century. This is traditionally described as
being brought by nine saints who were refugees fleeing religious
persecution in Syria. There are still monasteries in Ethiopia that
are dedicated to or trace their origins back to one
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of these nine saints. These monastic communities were hugely influential
in the conversion of the general public to Christianity. Although
the Oxomite Empire had a robust trading network and relationships
with other Christian nations, it was relatively isolated from other
predominantly Christian parts of the world. Its primary contact was
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the Coptic Church in Egypt, which appointed Egyptian bishops to
lead the church in oxom and about the seventh century,
Muslim conquest of surrounding areas also cut off the kingdom's
contact with most other Christian nations, so for centuries, the
Church and what's now Ethiopia didn't have formal contact with
the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches as
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they evolved at all. Consequently, the Orthodox Christianity that developed
in the Horn of Africa is unique, with rituals and
beliefs and practices that are specific to that region and
sometimes have more in common with Judaism than with other Christianity.
The Oxomite Empire went into decline around the seventh century,
but by that point Christianity was established enough among the
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population that it survived the end of the political dynasty.
The historical record is a little bit fuzzy on the
years that followed, but the next people documented as coming
to power where Kushite speaking Zagwe people. In about the
eleventh century, they moved the capital south from Oxom to Roha.
One was King Lallabella, which brings us to the rock
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Hun church complex that is named for him, and we
will get to that after a sponsor break. The complex
of rock Hun churches in Lallabella is named for and
attributed to King Gibrae Mescal Lallabella. Most sources spell his
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name and the name of the church complex the same way,
but one of the sources that I used for this
episode spelled the king's name is ending with b a
l a rather than be e l a, and that
author noted that it has some pronunciation nuances that aren't
necessarily perceptible to people who aren't from Ethiopia. I have
also heard reputable sources say this name in three totally
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different ways. If you go watch videos from the Smithsonian, UNESCO,
and the World Monuments Fund, you will hear three different pronunciations.
King la Labella's biography and his connection to the church
complex named after him are also really important and devoutly
believed in the Ethiopian Orthodox religious tradition. We have a
couple of pieces of documentation that helped pinpoint the dates
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of King Lallabella's reign. Both are land grants that he
issued to churches, the first in twelve oh four and
the second in twelve Most sources conclude that he ascended
to the throne sometime towards the very end of the
twelfth century, and that he ruled for at least a
few years after twelve Most of the information that we
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have about his biography comes from a fifteenth century work
called Life of King Lallabella, which was written after he
had already attained sainthood, so apart from the centuries that
passed between when he lived and when this was written,
it's not clear how much of his content is strictly
factual and how much is more related to creating kind
of an idealized portrayal of the life of a saint.
(10:55):
According to Life of King Lallabella, when he was born,
a swarm of b's circled around him, almost as though
he was made from honey. His mother interpreted this as
being like an army surrounding its leader, and she took
it as a sign that one day he would become king.
His name has also been translated to the bee recognized
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his sovereignty, or the Bee has seen his grace. Lallabella's brother,
King Harby became jealous over this and later tried to
poison Lallabella. Let's attempt to assassinate his brother failed and
a deacon and a dog were killed instead. Lallabella blamed
himself for all of this and took the same poison.
He fell unconscious for three days, and during that time
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God gave him a vision of ten churches hewn from
solid rock, and commanded that he would build them. After
recovering all of this poison incident, Lallabella fled to the desert,
and there he married a woman named Kebra Mescal. Together
they went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and when they
returned to Roja, they were escorted by the archangels Michael
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and gave Brieal. King Harbey abdicated and Lallabella took the throne.
In addition to the religious vision that's described in this account,
sometimes there's other reasoning folded into Lallabella's excavation of this
complex of churches, and that's that after the fall of
Jerusalem to Saladin in eleven eighty seven, it became impossible
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for Christians to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so King
Lallabella wanted to make a new Jerusalem in Ethiopia. He
wanted a new pilgrimage site that people could visit. They
could go to each church as they might visit the
sites in Jerusalem that were associated with Jesus. The traditional
account of these churches construction also has religious elements that
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human workers excavated during the day and then angels did
three times that amount of work each night. For this reason,
the religious community at La Llabella today regards the entire
site as sacred, including any dust or rubble that might
have been created during the excavation. This complex of churches
at Lalibela is one of the things that's been nicknamed
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an unofficial eighth Wonder of the World. The churches are monolithic.
They are excavated from the surrounding volcanic rock in one
contiguous piece. For most of them, the workers excavated from
the top down, creating a huge trench around the perimeter
that also included the exterior faces of the walls, and
then another team excavated the interior ceilings and floors, hollowing
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out the insides. In some places, you can see how
this was the work of multiple teams excavating simultaneously because
occasionally the interior elements don't quite match up with the exterior.
The resulting structures average about four stories tall, and they're
situated in similarly deep excavated pits, with a system of
underground tunnels and trenches connecting them to each other. Their
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upper portions of the structures have a reddish appearance thanks
to the oxidized iron in the volcanic material that they
were carved from, and the lower portions are gray basalt.
There are also a sore did other rooms and nooks
carved into the rock all around these churches themselves, and
evidence that at some point in the past there were
also above ground structures built from wood and stone. There
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are also remains of traditional village houses in the area
that are still standing. Those were circular, two story houses
with thatched roofs. And then, aside from the churches, Lollabelah
is also a town with a population of about twenty
thousand people. As we mentioned at the top of the show,
different sources group or describe the buildings in the hun
Lallabella complex slightly differently, but most of the time they
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are described as being in two clusters, separated by a
seasonal torrent bed known as the River Jordan's. Initially, all
the structures were probably connected to the torrent bed by
trenches or tunnels, but some of those have collapsed or
fallen in overtime. There's also one building that separated off
on its own rather than being in one of these
two groups, but it's connected to the others by trenches,
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and that one is the House of St. George, which
is probably the most well known of the churches. When
you look at this from above, it's shaped like a cross,
with nested crosses carved into the roof. The cross itself
measures about twelve meters by twelve meters or forty forty feet.
To the north of the torrent bed are the House
of the Savior of the World, the House of Mary,
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the House of the Cross, the House of Virgins, and
the House of Gogatha Michail. To the south or the
House of Emmanuel, the House of Merkorios, the House of
Abbott Lebanos, the House of Gabriel Raphael, and the House
of Holy Bread. The House of the Savior of the
World is a five aisled basilica with a Colonnade and
is believed to be the largest monolithic church in the world.
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Each of these churches is unique. They vary in details
from one to another, and we have different window shapes,
different structural elements and designs and artwork, and you can
see multiple influences reflected in the various buildings. Before the
Oxomite royal family converted to Christianity, royal burial sites were
marked with these monolithic stone steele a that represented very tall,
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multi story buildings. Some of these are still standing in
oxom which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and
some of the windows and other design features that Lalibela
are patterned after these carved obelisks. Ethiopia's historic churches also
include more traditional above ground structures built from stone blocks
and wooden beams. Many of them have the square ends
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of beams jutting out horizontally from the corners of the windows.
They're locally nicknamed monkey heads. Some of the windows at
Lalibela replicate the look of these beams as well. The
House of Emmanuel in particular, tries to replicate the look
of a built wooden church, even though these structures are
hewn from solid stone as one piece. Many of their
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interiors replicate structural elements that would hold up the ceiling
and the roof, and buildings that were made from another
material like stone blocks. So if you look up at
the ceilings, you'll see things like pillars, which are a
good idea anyway, but then archway is up in the
ceilings that would be structural elements. In another context, the
houses of Mary Angle Gotha, Michale were once completely plastered
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and painted on the inside, with the plaster covered with
murals and other artwork. It's not totally clear how far
back all of this artwork dates, and in a lot
of places there's paint from artwork that is no longer visible.
One of the most complete murals depicts Mary riding a
mule with Joseph walking by her side, led by the
archangel Gabriel as the Holy Family arrived in Egypt. Along
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with the sculptures, religious carvings, and other artwork, these buildings
are also home to a collection of arcs. In the
Ethiopian religious tradition, the Queen of Sheba, who was Ethiopian,
had a son with the Israelite king Solomon. This son
was mental like the first and When he reached adulthood,
his mother took him to visit his father. He returned
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to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant, which remains
hidden in a church in ox Sum guard did by
one monk who is the only person allowed to see it.
The churches at Lallabella contain replicas of this arc, which
are decorated with stylized carvings and then treated with a
similar amount of reverence. Some of the arcs are carved
from a single piece of wood, and nine of them
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are dedicated to King Lallabella UH with no disrespect intended.
I can't stop thinking about Indiana Jones Uh. The excavation
of these buildings was an incredible feat of engineering. In
addition to just the planning and labor, Volcanic rock is
not uniformly dense or stable. When artists and artisans are
carving from stone, they're usually choosing a piece that's consistent
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and of the right quality for their purposes. But you
just do not have that option when you're carving an
entire building from the living rock. These artisans had to
account for all kinds of variations in the structure and
strength of the material to get the aesthetic look that
they were seeking, as well as the stability to make
sure everything remains standing. And on top of that, this
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required a complex and massive hydro engineering project. Lalibela is
situated in the Ethiopian highlands about two thousand, six hundred
thirty meters above sea level that's about eight thousand, six
hundred eight feet. There is no water at the surface
of the site, so a whole system of canals, trenches, cisterns,
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sluice gates, damns, catch basins, and other devices was created
to both bring water into the area from an aquifer
that was miles away and to manage all the rain
and run off during the rainy season. This includes the
creation of multiple pools that were used for drinking water, baptisms,
and healing and cleansing rituals. This hydro engineering work is
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usually credited to someone named abe Lebanos, and one of
the churches at Lalibela is named for him. Sometimes the
House of abe Lebanos is described as the only church
at Lalibela dedicated to a specifically Ethiopian saint, but there's
also some debate about whether he was Ethiopian. He was
definitely brought from somewhere to oversee this work, but it
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is not entirely clear if it was from within Ethiopia
that he was brought or from without Ethiopia, especially considering
that they were built in the thirteenth century. These churches
are just extraordinary, and we will talk about what archaeological
study has revealed about them and the threats that they're
facing today after a sponsor break. The rock hewn churches
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of Lalibela presents some particular challenges when it comes to
archaeological study because most of them were carved from the
top down. That meant that most of the evidence of
earlier phases of work was destroyed as that work progressed.
A lot of what remains is found in spoil heaps
that are all over the area, But because the spoil
heaps weren't really planned as carefully as the buildings themselves,
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they don't necessarily represent a neatly chronological stratificcation, with the
oldest debris on the bottom and the newest on the top.
These are also remember deeply holy sites in the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church and home to an active religious community that
has been there continually for centuries. Some parts of the
churches can only be entered by very specific monks. The
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idea that these buildings were excavated by angels and that
the work was commanded by God is also part of
this community sincerely held religious belief. In some cases, this
has meant that researchers have only been able to study
the buildings from the outside. Restoration and conservation projects also
have to account for the idea that even the debris
may have been handled by angels. As we said earlier,
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in addition to the churches themselves, there are rooms and
nooks and other elements that are hewn from the surrounding rock.
But because naturally occurring basalt blocks can really resemble something
that was carved by human hands, it can be hard
to identify which features are hand carved and which are
not without further study. I mean, obviously the entire churches
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are carved by hands, but there are things like that
looks like a throne. Is this a thing that someone
carved to look like a throne or did the rock
just form that way. It's also physically hard to get
from one part of the complex to another. A lot
of the tunnels that connect the different structures are roughly
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the height and width of a person, so there's not
a lot of extra room to be moving around and
hauling equipment that you might need for some kind of
a dig uh and my claus trophobia has just kicked him. Also,
La Labella's fairly remote. It's about three hundred seventy miles
at six dred kilometers north of the Ethiopian capital of
Addis Ababa. Until the late nineteen fifties, it was only
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accessible by foot or mule. An airstrip opened up in
nineteen sixty, but not only operated during the dry season.
Ethiopian oral histories have been passed down, but there's virtually
no written record of the site's construction, and only a
very few written accounts by foreign visitors to the site.
Before the nineteenth century. It was virtually unknown beyond the
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Horn of Africa until the mid nineteenth century, and virtually
unstudied by archaeologists until the nineteen sixties. Two of the
very sparse earlier accounts of Laali Belah were written by
Portuguese missionaries. Francisco Alvarez wrote of visiting a place called
Lalibela in the sixteenth century after spending six years in Ethiopia.
Portugal was hoping to form an alliance with the Empire
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against Muslim nations. Alvarez's book was first published in fifteen forty,
but his description of what he saw is more about
how it was so fantastic that no one would believe
him than about what the site actually looked like at
the time. For example, he wrote, quote, it seems to
me that I shall not be believed if I write more,
and because regarding what I have already written, they may
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blame me for untruth. Therefore I swear by God and
whose power I am, that all that I have written
is the truth. And there is much more than what
I have written, and I have left it that they
may not tax me with its being falsehood. A later
edition of his book included some diagrams of the rock
youn churches, but there's no documentation of where they came
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from or who drew them, and they're also not particularly accurate.
Even the name Lalibela wasn't consistently used until more recently.
Most older Ethiopian references called the town Roha and the
church complex Deborah Roja. Archaeologists and other researchers have started
to draw some different conclusions about Lallibella and more recent decades,
though it appears that the buildings were excavated over multiple phases,
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possibly starting as early as the seventh or eighth century
and then stretching into the thirteenth century, so definitely overlapping
with the reign of King Lalibela. Although all of the
buildings are currently used as churches and other religious sites,
and they have been for a very long time, at
least some of them were probably originally built for other purposes.
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The House of Gabriel Raphael, for example, was probably initially
used as a castle. There's also some speculation that King
Lalibela's aims may have been as much about moving the
capital from Axum to Roja and solidifying a political dynasty
as it was about creating a religious pilgrimage site. After
King Lalabella died, he was reportedly entombed at Lollabella in
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the house of Golgatham Michael. About fifty years later, his
successor was killed, and the dynasty that came to power
from there traced its lineage back to Solomon and Mettle
at the First. Much later, this was dubbed the Solomonic Restoration.
The Solomonic emperor's branded the previous Zagwe dynasty as usurpers,
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and that fed into debate about who should be credited
with excavating the churches at Lallabella. This dynasty remained in
power until nineteen seventy four, with the deposition of Ethiopia's
last emperor, highly Selassie. Stay tuned for a Saturday classic
about that for more information. After the Solomonic Restoration, Ethiopia
continued to grow wealthier, especially through trade with Christian nations
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in Europe that didn't want to trade with Muslims or
send their merchants through Muslim controlled territory. Then, in fifteen
thirty and fifteen thirty one, Ahmad Grin conquered about three
fourths of Ethiopia and forced the people living in those
areas to convert to Islam. The Solomonic dynasty retained control
of some territory, though, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity survived. In
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the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries arrived in the remaining Christian
regions of Ethiopia and began trying to convert the population
to a more European style of Christianity. Whilata Petros, who
was the wife of one of the emperor's counselors, left
her husband, became a nun, and led a successful resistance
movement to retain traditional Ethiopian practices. The Life and Struggles
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of Our Mother Whileta Petros was written about thirty years
after her death, and it is the earliest known book
length biography of an African woman. It documents both the
resistance movement and her lifelong partnership with another nun. In
the nineteenth century, King Teodri's the Second tried to reunify
Ethiopia under a Christian monarch and did reclaim much of
the previously conquered territory. He hope to gain the sympathies
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of Britain as a Christian nation, but was ultimately defeated
by a British expeditionary force and took his own life.
Of course, Ethiopia has its own social and political history
from there, but our focus today is really on Lalibela
and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. For most of its history,
the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had been headed by an Egyptian
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appointed from Alexandria. That changed in nineteen fifty one, when
Basilios became the first Ethiopian to be appointed by the
Church in Alexandria. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, now called the
Ethiopian Orthodox to Waado Church, became fully independent in nineteen
fifty four. The Eritrean Orthodox Church became independent from the
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Ethiopian Church in nine three. Today, the Ethiopian Orthodox to
Wahado Church is also the second largest Orthodox church in
the world, with roughly fifty million adherents. Ethiopia's monasteries were
nationalized after the Alster of highly Selassie in nineteen seventy four,
and at that point they stopped being as economically powerful
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as they had been, but they continued to be a
huge center of religious importance in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Today,
Lalibela is still a deeply important religious and pilgrimage site,
particularly on Christmas, which is celebrated on January seven. As
many as sixty thousand pilgrims visit the site for the
Christmas festival, which is known as Genna. The site gets
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between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand visitors each year,
many of them making that pilgrimage on foot, but this
volume of visitors has contributed to ongoing issues with conservation
at the site. These are massive monolithic structures that were
excavated from the rock about seven hundred years ago and
have been exposed to the elements since then, so naturally
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they've been affected by weather, water, erosion, seismic activity, and
even like in another plant life. The World Monuments Fund
started some conservation work on the site in the nineteen sixties,
making it one of the World Monuments Funds first projects.
In the nineteen nineties, temporary roofs were placed over some
of the churches as an emergency measure to try to
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protect them from the sun in the seasonal rains. Lalibela
was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in nineteen seventy eight,
and in two thousand seven UNESCO and the WMF teamed
up for additional conservation work, including the installation of more
sophisticated shelters over some of the churches. Plans started for
conservation work at the House of Gabriel Raphael in two
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thousand nine. That's not one of the churches that's currently
protected by a roof. Work started in and finished in
twenty fifteen, and it included training local artisans and craftspeople
to handle ongoing conservation work. A field school provided further
trading in team it brought in students from New York's
Columbia University and Ethiopia's Addis Ababa University. Additional funding was
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secured for repair work on two other churches that same year.
In eighteen though, Ethiopians organized protests about ongoing issues at
the site, including concerns about the quality of restoration work
that had already been done. One of the issues is
those temporary shelters that are protecting some of the churches.
They really are not attractive. Locals have nicknamed them gas
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station roofs. Because the churches are made from solid stone
with small windows, the roofs make their already dark interiors
even darker. There's also some argument that the use of
these roofs has protected the sites from rain and runoff,
but the downside is that they're making the stone too dry.
There are also concerns about what might happen if one
of the roofs collapses onto the structure that it is
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supposed to be trying to protect. Clearly, there's still a
lot of work to be done, and in the words
of UNESCO a quote, there is a need for stronger
planning controls for the setting of the churches that address housing,
land use, tourism, and for a management plan to be
developed that integrates the conservation action plan and addresses the
overall sustainable development of the area with the involvement of
(31:16):
the local population. It's hard to describe how stunning these
churches are in the context of an audio podcast. This
is always the trick with like art or architecture, or
particularly things like this that are almost um I mean
it would be unheard of if someone today said I
(31:38):
am going to carve a building from an existing rock.
I think they would get a lot of shocked faces.
But they did this over and over on this site. Yes,
it is quite quite spectacular. They are I have a
little listener mail fantastic. This is from Lindsay Lindsay Rights. Hi, guys,
(32:01):
love the show in particular, I've enjoyed learning about American history,
which as an Australian, was never part of my education
and I felt was a void in my understanding of
world history. Anyway, Finally I feel like I have something
to contribute. I was fascinated to hear about the relationship
between barbecues and politics in your recent episode, and this
(32:21):
got me thinking about a recent phenomenon in Australia. A
bit of background. Community groups in Australia make the most
of any opportunity to hold a fundraising sausage sizzle, a
budget affair where the cheapest sausages are barbecued, probably grilled
question mark and served on a slice of white bread
with tomato sauce. Definitely not catch up with grilled onions optional.
(32:44):
So kind of election day. The choice of which polling
place to use can often be determined by which one
is hosting the best sausage sizzle. Fun fact, voting is
compulsory in Australia, so here's the hilarious part. The election
day sausage in bread has become such a big deal
that it has become known as a democracy sausage, and
(33:04):
the most recent federal election it was trending hashtag democracy sausage.
I would encourage everyone in the US to exercise of
democratic right to vote next year and perhaps partake in
a democracy sausage ps. The term selfie is also widely
accepted to have originated in Australia, So on behalf of Australia.
You're welcome, Lindsay, Thank you, Lindsay. I wanted to read
(33:26):
this for two reasons. One is that the idea of
democracy sausage cracks me up. Uh. And the other is
that when I was working on the Barbecue episode, which
I did the research for, UH, it gradually narrowed down
to being a specifically United States North American story about
(33:47):
the intersection between indigenous cooking methods and introduced food and
the work of at first enslaved black people and then
later on um free people in in making this culinary tradition.
But as I was starting out, it was much broader
before it became clearer that it needed to narrow down.
(34:08):
And one of the things that I had in my
notes is that there is a draft addition into the
Oxford English Dictionary from that is the Australian slang barbecue stopper,
and a barbecue stopper is a topic of conversation that
is so compelling or controversial that if you brought it
(34:29):
up at a barbecue, everything would stop. And that cracked
me up, uh. And I was a little bummed that
by narrowing down the focus, I didn't have a reason
to include it in the episode anymore. So I'm including
it today. UM. So thank you Lindsay for writing to
us with that if you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast where at History
podcast at I heart radio dot com. Then we're all
(34:51):
over social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll
find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. This is typically
when I would say that you can come to our
website for show notes about the episode and a picture
of some of these churches. But if you've been to
our website recently, it has been changed significantly. We don't
have a timeline for when those show notes are going
(35:11):
to be visible again, but it is something we are
actively working on. All that information still exists, it's just
not currently visible on the website. So to see pictures
of these churches for now, go to the unesco website.
They have so many. You can also subscribe to our
show in Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, and
anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
(35:37):
History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Today we have something that's been suggested by at least
a couple of listeners, including William and Thomas, and that's
(00:23):
the rock hewn churches of Ethiopia, in particular the complex
of them that is known as Lollibella. There are at
least two hundred rock hun churches in Ethiopia. The oldest
ones are in the Tigray region and are carved from sandstone.
Those dates all the way back to about the fifth century.
This complex that Lollibella, is a little newer. It was
(00:44):
excavated from volcanic rock about seven hundred years ago and
the site has been in continuous use since then. Today
Lollibella is a deeply important religious site in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.
So these churches are just an incredible feat of engineering,
both in terms of the structures themselves and all of
(01:05):
the water management that's involved with them. And they're also
connected to the overall history of Christianity in Ethiopia, which
evolved very differently from Christianity and the rest of Sub
Saharan Africa. So today we will have a brief overview
of the origins of Christianity in Ethiopia before talking about
these Rocket Churches at Lalibela, from their original building to
(01:26):
the threats that the site is facing today, before we
get to the introduction of Christianity in Ethiopia. The nations
of Africa as we know them today have roots in
the Scramble for Africa that took place in the late
nineteenth century. That is, when European nations divided the continent
up among themselves without regard for the existing nations, empires,
(01:47):
and political alliances that were already there. This is something
that has come up on the show multiple times before.
The resulting national borders were really arbitrary in terms of
everything from geography to existing territorial boundary. These nations and
their borders continued to evolve after the Scramble for Africa,
but in general they also continued to group people's that
(02:08):
hadn't necessarily been affiliated before, creating the idea of nations
that didn't necessarily match up to the existing political landscape.
So of course that applies to Ethiopia, and then in
terms of Ethiopia in particular. That name can mean a
lot of different things depending on when a person is
talking about and when they were using that term. A
(02:29):
lot of ancient writing from outside of Sub Saharan Africa
uses the word Ethiopia in a generic kind of way
to just mean Africa in general, or in particular Africa
south of Egypt. Ancient sources, including the Christian Bible, also
used the word Ethiopian to describe anyone with very dark skin,
so in these early uses of the word Ethiopia and Ethiopian,
(02:52):
it's not always clear exactly who or where they are
talking about. There are also a couple of written uses
of the term that came from what's now Ethiopia rather
than from elsewhere. They date back as far as the
third or fourth century. One of them references a king
of the Oxomites and the Ethiopians. The Oxomite Empire was
in what's now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, and this wording
(03:14):
suggests that people thought of these as two different places.
In the history we're talking about today includes this same
general region, which at some points has also been called Abyssinia.
Christianity has been present in Northern Africa since the earliest
years of the religion, as it's spread through areas that
were part of the Roman Empire, but in most of
Sub Saharan Africa it was introduced much later, starting with
(03:37):
Portuguese missionaries in the fifteenth century, so for the most part,
in Sub Saharan Africa, Christianity is associated with European colonialism.
Ethiopia is an exception, though Ethiopia's Christian traditions trace back
to Biblical accounts, including the flight of Mary, Joseph, and
Jesus from Herod, the Roman king of Judea shortly after
(03:57):
Jesus was born in the Book of Matthew and in
some of the New Testament Apocrypha, an angel appeared to
Joseph and told him that Herod planned to kill Jesus,
so the Holy Family fled to Egypt and lived there
for several years. In the Ethiopian tradition, they continued into
Ethiopia and they took refuge there. The Book of Acts
(04:18):
in the Bible also describes the apostle Philip baptizing a
eunuch from the court of Candice, Queen of the Ethiopians,
with that baptism happening in Jerusalem, and his fourth century
ecclesiastical history, Bishop Assebius of Cesarea wrote that this person
returned to Ethiopia, arriving there sometime before the apostle Matthew did.
(04:40):
But like we just talked about, it's not really clear
exactly where Ethiopia is in these accounts in terms of
the introduction of Christianity as an established religion that goes
back to the days of the Oxomite Empire, also called
the Kingdom of ox Um. This umpire was established sometime
between one fifty b c. And fifty sea, and it
(05:01):
flourished from the third to the six centuries. Because of
its position on the northern Horn of Africa along the
Red Sea, this empire had extensive trading relationships with what's
now Sudan, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. It was a wealthy,
cosmopolitan kingdom with primary exports that included ivory and gold.
The kingdom used the revenue from these exports to invest
(05:23):
in agriculture, moving the region from subsistence farming to raising
cattle and export crops. The foreign merchants who visited or
worked in the Oxomite Empire included Christians, and at first
Christianity was viewed in the Empire as a foreign religion
rather than as something that Oxymites might practice for themselves.
Multiple accounts document the same basic story about how that changed,
(05:47):
and in that story, two men described as coming from
Syria or Tire were shipwrecked and given employment in the
king's household. The king died while his son was still
too young to take the throne, and these two men
remained at court while his widow served as regent for
the late king's son, Azanna. Along the way, they made
connections with Christian traders and merchants, although it's not clear
(06:11):
whether these shipwreck survivors sought them out because they were
already Christian themselves, or if they converted to Christianity at
some point. When Azanna came of age, the younger of
the two shipwreck survivors returned home, but the older, known
as Frumentius of Tire, traveled to Alexandria Egypt to petition
church patriarch Athanasius to appoint a bishop to lead the
(06:32):
growing community of Christians in the Kingdom of Axum. The
patriarch appointed Frumentius himself, and in Ethiopia he became known
as Abba Salama or Father Peace. Abbas Salama also baptized
the king, marking the royal family's conversion to Christianity, and
about the year three thirty Azanna became the first monarch
to put the symbol of the cross on coins, and
(06:55):
the capital of Oxom grew into a religious as well
as the political center, So the establishment of Christianity and
Ethiopia was happening at about the same time as it
was in Armenia, which is usually noted as the first
country to make Christianity the official state religion. It took
another couple of centuries before Christianity was widely practiced outside
(07:16):
of the royal family and nobility in the Kingdom of Oxom.
Much of that shift started with the introduction of monasticism
in about the sixth century. This is traditionally described as
being brought by nine saints who were refugees fleeing religious
persecution in Syria. There are still monasteries in Ethiopia that
are dedicated to or trace their origins back to one
(07:38):
of these nine saints. These monastic communities were hugely influential
in the conversion of the general public to Christianity. Although
the Oxomite Empire had a robust trading network and relationships
with other Christian nations, it was relatively isolated from other
predominantly Christian parts of the world. Its primary contact was
(07:58):
the Coptic Church in Egypt, which appointed Egyptian bishops to
lead the church in oxom and about the seventh century,
Muslim conquest of surrounding areas also cut off the kingdom's
contact with most other Christian nations, so for centuries, the
Church and what's now Ethiopia didn't have formal contact with
the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches as
(08:20):
they evolved at all. Consequently, the Orthodox Christianity that developed
in the Horn of Africa is unique, with rituals and
beliefs and practices that are specific to that region and
sometimes have more in common with Judaism than with other Christianity.
The Oxomite Empire went into decline around the seventh century,
but by that point Christianity was established enough among the
(08:41):
population that it survived the end of the political dynasty.
The historical record is a little bit fuzzy on the
years that followed, but the next people documented as coming
to power where Kushite speaking Zagwe people. In about the
eleventh century, they moved the capital south from Oxom to Roha.
One was King Lallabella, which brings us to the rock
(09:03):
Hun church complex that is named for him, and we
will get to that after a sponsor break. The complex
of rock Hun churches in Lallabella is named for and
attributed to King Gibrae Mescal Lallabella. Most sources spell his
(09:26):
name and the name of the church complex the same way,
but one of the sources that I used for this
episode spelled the king's name is ending with b a
l a rather than be e l a, and that
author noted that it has some pronunciation nuances that aren't
necessarily perceptible to people who aren't from Ethiopia. I have
also heard reputable sources say this name in three totally
(09:49):
different ways. If you go watch videos from the Smithsonian, UNESCO,
and the World Monuments Fund, you will hear three different pronunciations.
King la Labella's biography and his connection to the church
complex named after him are also really important and devoutly
believed in the Ethiopian Orthodox religious tradition. We have a
couple of pieces of documentation that helped pinpoint the dates
(10:11):
of King Lallabella's reign. Both are land grants that he
issued to churches, the first in twelve oh four and
the second in twelve Most sources conclude that he ascended
to the throne sometime towards the very end of the
twelfth century, and that he ruled for at least a
few years after twelve Most of the information that we
(10:32):
have about his biography comes from a fifteenth century work
called Life of King Lallabella, which was written after he
had already attained sainthood, so apart from the centuries that
passed between when he lived and when this was written,
it's not clear how much of his content is strictly
factual and how much is more related to creating kind
of an idealized portrayal of the life of a saint.
(10:55):
According to Life of King Lallabella, when he was born,
a swarm of b's circled around him, almost as though
he was made from honey. His mother interpreted this as
being like an army surrounding its leader, and she took
it as a sign that one day he would become king.
His name has also been translated to the bee recognized
(11:15):
his sovereignty, or the Bee has seen his grace. Lallabella's brother,
King Harby became jealous over this and later tried to
poison Lallabella. Let's attempt to assassinate his brother failed and
a deacon and a dog were killed instead. Lallabella blamed
himself for all of this and took the same poison.
He fell unconscious for three days, and during that time
(11:39):
God gave him a vision of ten churches hewn from
solid rock, and commanded that he would build them. After
recovering all of this poison incident, Lallabella fled to the desert,
and there he married a woman named Kebra Mescal. Together
they went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and when they
returned to Roja, they were escorted by the archangels Michael
(11:59):
and gave Brieal. King Harbey abdicated and Lallabella took the throne.
In addition to the religious vision that's described in this account,
sometimes there's other reasoning folded into Lallabella's excavation of this
complex of churches, and that's that after the fall of
Jerusalem to Saladin in eleven eighty seven, it became impossible
(12:19):
for Christians to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so King
Lallabella wanted to make a new Jerusalem in Ethiopia. He
wanted a new pilgrimage site that people could visit. They
could go to each church as they might visit the
sites in Jerusalem that were associated with Jesus. The traditional
account of these churches construction also has religious elements that
(12:41):
human workers excavated during the day and then angels did
three times that amount of work each night. For this reason,
the religious community at La Llabella today regards the entire
site as sacred, including any dust or rubble that might
have been created during the excavation. This complex of churches
at Lalibela is one of the things that's been nicknamed
(13:03):
an unofficial eighth Wonder of the World. The churches are monolithic.
They are excavated from the surrounding volcanic rock in one
contiguous piece. For most of them, the workers excavated from
the top down, creating a huge trench around the perimeter
that also included the exterior faces of the walls, and
then another team excavated the interior ceilings and floors, hollowing
(13:26):
out the insides. In some places, you can see how
this was the work of multiple teams excavating simultaneously because
occasionally the interior elements don't quite match up with the exterior.
The resulting structures average about four stories tall, and they're
situated in similarly deep excavated pits, with a system of
underground tunnels and trenches connecting them to each other. Their
(13:49):
upper portions of the structures have a reddish appearance thanks
to the oxidized iron in the volcanic material that they
were carved from, and the lower portions are gray basalt.
There are also a sore did other rooms and nooks
carved into the rock all around these churches themselves, and
evidence that at some point in the past there were
also above ground structures built from wood and stone. There
(14:11):
are also remains of traditional village houses in the area
that are still standing. Those were circular, two story houses
with thatched roofs. And then, aside from the churches, Lollabelah
is also a town with a population of about twenty
thousand people. As we mentioned at the top of the show,
different sources group or describe the buildings in the hun
Lallabella complex slightly differently, but most of the time they
(14:33):
are described as being in two clusters, separated by a
seasonal torrent bed known as the River Jordan's. Initially, all
the structures were probably connected to the torrent bed by
trenches or tunnels, but some of those have collapsed or
fallen in overtime. There's also one building that separated off
on its own rather than being in one of these
two groups, but it's connected to the others by trenches,
(14:56):
and that one is the House of St. George, which
is probably the most well known of the churches. When
you look at this from above, it's shaped like a cross,
with nested crosses carved into the roof. The cross itself
measures about twelve meters by twelve meters or forty forty feet.
To the north of the torrent bed are the House
of the Savior of the World, the House of Mary,
(15:18):
the House of the Cross, the House of Virgins, and
the House of Gogatha Michail. To the south or the
House of Emmanuel, the House of Merkorios, the House of
Abbott Lebanos, the House of Gabriel Raphael, and the House
of Holy Bread. The House of the Savior of the
World is a five aisled basilica with a Colonnade and
is believed to be the largest monolithic church in the world.
(15:40):
Each of these churches is unique. They vary in details
from one to another, and we have different window shapes,
different structural elements and designs and artwork, and you can
see multiple influences reflected in the various buildings. Before the
Oxomite royal family converted to Christianity, royal burial sites were
marked with these monolithic stone steele a that represented very tall,
(16:05):
multi story buildings. Some of these are still standing in
oxom which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and
some of the windows and other design features that Lalibela
are patterned after these carved obelisks. Ethiopia's historic churches also
include more traditional above ground structures built from stone blocks
and wooden beams. Many of them have the square ends
(16:28):
of beams jutting out horizontally from the corners of the windows.
They're locally nicknamed monkey heads. Some of the windows at
Lalibela replicate the look of these beams as well. The
House of Emmanuel in particular, tries to replicate the look
of a built wooden church, even though these structures are
hewn from solid stone as one piece. Many of their
(16:49):
interiors replicate structural elements that would hold up the ceiling
and the roof, and buildings that were made from another
material like stone blocks. So if you look up at
the ceilings, you'll see things like pillars, which are a
good idea anyway, but then archway is up in the
ceilings that would be structural elements. In another context, the
houses of Mary Angle Gotha, Michale were once completely plastered
(17:11):
and painted on the inside, with the plaster covered with
murals and other artwork. It's not totally clear how far
back all of this artwork dates, and in a lot
of places there's paint from artwork that is no longer visible.
One of the most complete murals depicts Mary riding a
mule with Joseph walking by her side, led by the
archangel Gabriel as the Holy Family arrived in Egypt. Along
(17:34):
with the sculptures, religious carvings, and other artwork, these buildings
are also home to a collection of arcs. In the
Ethiopian religious tradition, the Queen of Sheba, who was Ethiopian,
had a son with the Israelite king Solomon. This son
was mental like the first and When he reached adulthood,
his mother took him to visit his father. He returned
(17:54):
to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant, which remains
hidden in a church in ox Sum guard did by
one monk who is the only person allowed to see it.
The churches at Lallabella contain replicas of this arc, which
are decorated with stylized carvings and then treated with a
similar amount of reverence. Some of the arcs are carved
from a single piece of wood, and nine of them
(18:16):
are dedicated to King Lallabella UH with no disrespect intended.
I can't stop thinking about Indiana Jones Uh. The excavation
of these buildings was an incredible feat of engineering. In
addition to just the planning and labor, Volcanic rock is
not uniformly dense or stable. When artists and artisans are
carving from stone, they're usually choosing a piece that's consistent
(18:39):
and of the right quality for their purposes. But you
just do not have that option when you're carving an
entire building from the living rock. These artisans had to
account for all kinds of variations in the structure and
strength of the material to get the aesthetic look that
they were seeking, as well as the stability to make
sure everything remains standing. And on top of that, this
(19:00):
required a complex and massive hydro engineering project. Lalibela is
situated in the Ethiopian highlands about two thousand, six hundred
thirty meters above sea level that's about eight thousand, six
hundred eight feet. There is no water at the surface
of the site, so a whole system of canals, trenches, cisterns,
(19:22):
sluice gates, damns, catch basins, and other devices was created
to both bring water into the area from an aquifer
that was miles away and to manage all the rain
and run off during the rainy season. This includes the
creation of multiple pools that were used for drinking water, baptisms,
and healing and cleansing rituals. This hydro engineering work is
(19:44):
usually credited to someone named abe Lebanos, and one of
the churches at Lalibela is named for him. Sometimes the
House of abe Lebanos is described as the only church
at Lalibela dedicated to a specifically Ethiopian saint, but there's
also some debate about whether he was Ethiopian. He was
definitely brought from somewhere to oversee this work, but it
(20:05):
is not entirely clear if it was from within Ethiopia
that he was brought or from without Ethiopia, especially considering
that they were built in the thirteenth century. These churches
are just extraordinary, and we will talk about what archaeological
study has revealed about them and the threats that they're
facing today after a sponsor break. The rock hewn churches
(20:33):
of Lalibela presents some particular challenges when it comes to
archaeological study because most of them were carved from the
top down. That meant that most of the evidence of
earlier phases of work was destroyed as that work progressed.
A lot of what remains is found in spoil heaps
that are all over the area, But because the spoil
heaps weren't really planned as carefully as the buildings themselves,
(20:56):
they don't necessarily represent a neatly chronological stratificcation, with the
oldest debris on the bottom and the newest on the top.
These are also remember deeply holy sites in the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church and home to an active religious community that
has been there continually for centuries. Some parts of the
churches can only be entered by very specific monks. The
(21:19):
idea that these buildings were excavated by angels and that
the work was commanded by God is also part of
this community sincerely held religious belief. In some cases, this
has meant that researchers have only been able to study
the buildings from the outside. Restoration and conservation projects also
have to account for the idea that even the debris
may have been handled by angels. As we said earlier,
(21:42):
in addition to the churches themselves, there are rooms and
nooks and other elements that are hewn from the surrounding rock.
But because naturally occurring basalt blocks can really resemble something
that was carved by human hands, it can be hard
to identify which features are hand carved and which are
not without further study. I mean, obviously the entire churches
(22:05):
are carved by hands, but there are things like that
looks like a throne. Is this a thing that someone
carved to look like a throne or did the rock
just form that way. It's also physically hard to get
from one part of the complex to another. A lot
of the tunnels that connect the different structures are roughly
(22:25):
the height and width of a person, so there's not
a lot of extra room to be moving around and
hauling equipment that you might need for some kind of
a dig uh and my claus trophobia has just kicked him. Also,
La Labella's fairly remote. It's about three hundred seventy miles
at six dred kilometers north of the Ethiopian capital of
Addis Ababa. Until the late nineteen fifties, it was only
(22:48):
accessible by foot or mule. An airstrip opened up in
nineteen sixty, but not only operated during the dry season.
Ethiopian oral histories have been passed down, but there's virtually
no written record of the site's construction, and only a
very few written accounts by foreign visitors to the site.
Before the nineteenth century. It was virtually unknown beyond the
(23:11):
Horn of Africa until the mid nineteenth century, and virtually
unstudied by archaeologists until the nineteen sixties. Two of the
very sparse earlier accounts of Laali Belah were written by
Portuguese missionaries. Francisco Alvarez wrote of visiting a place called
Lalibela in the sixteenth century after spending six years in Ethiopia.
Portugal was hoping to form an alliance with the Empire
(23:33):
against Muslim nations. Alvarez's book was first published in fifteen forty,
but his description of what he saw is more about
how it was so fantastic that no one would believe
him than about what the site actually looked like at
the time. For example, he wrote, quote, it seems to
me that I shall not be believed if I write more,
and because regarding what I have already written, they may
(23:55):
blame me for untruth. Therefore I swear by God and
whose power I am, that all that I have written
is the truth. And there is much more than what
I have written, and I have left it that they
may not tax me with its being falsehood. A later
edition of his book included some diagrams of the rock
youn churches, but there's no documentation of where they came
(24:16):
from or who drew them, and they're also not particularly accurate.
Even the name Lalibela wasn't consistently used until more recently.
Most older Ethiopian references called the town Roha and the
church complex Deborah Roja. Archaeologists and other researchers have started
to draw some different conclusions about Lallibella and more recent decades,
though it appears that the buildings were excavated over multiple phases,
(24:40):
possibly starting as early as the seventh or eighth century
and then stretching into the thirteenth century, so definitely overlapping
with the reign of King Lalibela. Although all of the
buildings are currently used as churches and other religious sites,
and they have been for a very long time, at
least some of them were probably originally built for other purposes.
(25:00):
The House of Gabriel Raphael, for example, was probably initially
used as a castle. There's also some speculation that King
Lalibela's aims may have been as much about moving the
capital from Axum to Roja and solidifying a political dynasty
as it was about creating a religious pilgrimage site. After
King Lalabella died, he was reportedly entombed at Lollabella in
(25:23):
the house of Golgatham Michael. About fifty years later, his
successor was killed, and the dynasty that came to power
from there traced its lineage back to Solomon and Mettle
at the First. Much later, this was dubbed the Solomonic Restoration.
The Solomonic emperor's branded the previous Zagwe dynasty as usurpers,
(25:44):
and that fed into debate about who should be credited
with excavating the churches at Lallabella. This dynasty remained in
power until nineteen seventy four, with the deposition of Ethiopia's
last emperor, highly Selassie. Stay tuned for a Saturday classic
about that for more information. After the Solomonic Restoration, Ethiopia
continued to grow wealthier, especially through trade with Christian nations
(26:07):
in Europe that didn't want to trade with Muslims or
send their merchants through Muslim controlled territory. Then, in fifteen
thirty and fifteen thirty one, Ahmad Grin conquered about three
fourths of Ethiopia and forced the people living in those
areas to convert to Islam. The Solomonic dynasty retained control
of some territory, though, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity survived. In
(26:30):
the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries arrived in the remaining Christian
regions of Ethiopia and began trying to convert the population
to a more European style of Christianity. Whilata Petros, who
was the wife of one of the emperor's counselors, left
her husband, became a nun, and led a successful resistance
movement to retain traditional Ethiopian practices. The Life and Struggles
(26:53):
of Our Mother Whileta Petros was written about thirty years
after her death, and it is the earliest known book
length biography of an African woman. It documents both the
resistance movement and her lifelong partnership with another nun. In
the nineteenth century, King Teodri's the Second tried to reunify
Ethiopia under a Christian monarch and did reclaim much of
the previously conquered territory. He hope to gain the sympathies
(27:17):
of Britain as a Christian nation, but was ultimately defeated
by a British expeditionary force and took his own life.
Of course, Ethiopia has its own social and political history
from there, but our focus today is really on Lalibela
and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. For most of its history,
the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had been headed by an Egyptian
(27:37):
appointed from Alexandria. That changed in nineteen fifty one, when
Basilios became the first Ethiopian to be appointed by the
Church in Alexandria. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, now called the
Ethiopian Orthodox to Waado Church, became fully independent in nineteen
fifty four. The Eritrean Orthodox Church became independent from the
(27:58):
Ethiopian Church in nine three. Today, the Ethiopian Orthodox to
Wahado Church is also the second largest Orthodox church in
the world, with roughly fifty million adherents. Ethiopia's monasteries were
nationalized after the Alster of highly Selassie in nineteen seventy four,
and at that point they stopped being as economically powerful
(28:20):
as they had been, but they continued to be a
huge center of religious importance in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Today,
Lalibela is still a deeply important religious and pilgrimage site,
particularly on Christmas, which is celebrated on January seven. As
many as sixty thousand pilgrims visit the site for the
Christmas festival, which is known as Genna. The site gets
(28:42):
between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand visitors each year,
many of them making that pilgrimage on foot, but this
volume of visitors has contributed to ongoing issues with conservation
at the site. These are massive monolithic structures that were
excavated from the rock about seven hundred years ago and
have been exposed to the elements since then, so naturally
(29:02):
they've been affected by weather, water, erosion, seismic activity, and
even like in another plant life. The World Monuments Fund
started some conservation work on the site in the nineteen sixties,
making it one of the World Monuments Funds first projects.
In the nineteen nineties, temporary roofs were placed over some
of the churches as an emergency measure to try to
(29:23):
protect them from the sun in the seasonal rains. Lalibela
was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in nineteen seventy eight,
and in two thousand seven UNESCO and the WMF teamed
up for additional conservation work, including the installation of more
sophisticated shelters over some of the churches. Plans started for
conservation work at the House of Gabriel Raphael in two
(29:45):
thousand nine. That's not one of the churches that's currently
protected by a roof. Work started in and finished in
twenty fifteen, and it included training local artisans and craftspeople
to handle ongoing conservation work. A field school provided further
trading in team it brought in students from New York's
Columbia University and Ethiopia's Addis Ababa University. Additional funding was
(30:10):
secured for repair work on two other churches that same year.
In eighteen though, Ethiopians organized protests about ongoing issues at
the site, including concerns about the quality of restoration work
that had already been done. One of the issues is
those temporary shelters that are protecting some of the churches.
They really are not attractive. Locals have nicknamed them gas
(30:32):
station roofs. Because the churches are made from solid stone
with small windows, the roofs make their already dark interiors
even darker. There's also some argument that the use of
these roofs has protected the sites from rain and runoff,
but the downside is that they're making the stone too dry.
There are also concerns about what might happen if one
of the roofs collapses onto the structure that it is
(30:54):
supposed to be trying to protect. Clearly, there's still a
lot of work to be done, and in the words
of UNESCO a quote, there is a need for stronger
planning controls for the setting of the churches that address housing,
land use, tourism, and for a management plan to be
developed that integrates the conservation action plan and addresses the
overall sustainable development of the area with the involvement of
(31:16):
the local population. It's hard to describe how stunning these
churches are in the context of an audio podcast. This
is always the trick with like art or architecture, or
particularly things like this that are almost um I mean
it would be unheard of if someone today said I
(31:38):
am going to carve a building from an existing rock.
I think they would get a lot of shocked faces.
But they did this over and over on this site. Yes,
it is quite quite spectacular. They are I have a
little listener mail fantastic. This is from Lindsay Lindsay Rights. Hi, guys,
(32:01):
love the show in particular, I've enjoyed learning about American history,
which as an Australian, was never part of my education
and I felt was a void in my understanding of
world history. Anyway, Finally I feel like I have something
to contribute. I was fascinated to hear about the relationship
between barbecues and politics in your recent episode, and this
(32:21):
got me thinking about a recent phenomenon in Australia. A
bit of background. Community groups in Australia make the most
of any opportunity to hold a fundraising sausage sizzle, a
budget affair where the cheapest sausages are barbecued, probably grilled
question mark and served on a slice of white bread
with tomato sauce. Definitely not catch up with grilled onions optional.
(32:44):
So kind of election day. The choice of which polling
place to use can often be determined by which one
is hosting the best sausage sizzle. Fun fact, voting is
compulsory in Australia, so here's the hilarious part. The election
day sausage in bread has become such a big deal
that it has become known as a democracy sausage, and
(33:04):
the most recent federal election it was trending hashtag democracy sausage.
I would encourage everyone in the US to exercise of
democratic right to vote next year and perhaps partake in
a democracy sausage ps. The term selfie is also widely
accepted to have originated in Australia, So on behalf of Australia.
You're welcome, Lindsay, Thank you, Lindsay. I wanted to read
(33:26):
this for two reasons. One is that the idea of
democracy sausage cracks me up. Uh. And the other is
that when I was working on the Barbecue episode, which
I did the research for, UH, it gradually narrowed down
to being a specifically United States North American story about
(33:47):
the intersection between indigenous cooking methods and introduced food and
the work of at first enslaved black people and then
later on um free people in in making this culinary tradition.
But as I was starting out, it was much broader
before it became clearer that it needed to narrow down.
(34:08):
And one of the things that I had in my
notes is that there is a draft addition into the
Oxford English Dictionary from that is the Australian slang barbecue stopper,
and a barbecue stopper is a topic of conversation that
is so compelling or controversial that if you brought it
(34:29):
up at a barbecue, everything would stop. And that cracked
me up, uh. And I was a little bummed that
by narrowing down the focus, I didn't have a reason
to include it in the episode anymore. So I'm including
it today. UM. So thank you Lindsay for writing to
us with that if you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast where at History
podcast at I heart radio dot com. Then we're all
(34:51):
over social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll
find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. This is typically
when I would say that you can come to our
website for show notes about the episode and a picture
of some of these churches. But if you've been to
our website recently, it has been changed significantly. We don't
have a timeline for when those show notes are going
(35:11):
to be visible again, but it is something we are
actively working on. All that information still exists, it's just
not currently visible on the website. So to see pictures
of these churches for now, go to the unesco website.
They have so many. You can also subscribe to our
show in Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, and
anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
(35:37):
History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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