The stelae

In the picture to the left, you see scaffolding surounding one of the stelae. When the Italians occupied Ethiopia, they cut this stele, which was 29 m. high, into 3 pieces and took it back to Italy. For many recent years, there was a lot of haggling as Ethiopia tried to get the treasure returned to its proper place. Finally, this was accomplished and the pieces were brought back, and the stele was erected. The scaffolding is holding it up and will be removed later. In the picture to the right, one of the stelae seems to be leaning, and it really is. At first they were worried that it might fall, but after watching it for a long time, decided that it was stable, and that it had originally been erected in this way.

Many of the stelae have fallen, as this picture shows. The stelae were originally taken from a quarry some distance away. How was it done? Some people suggest it was done with elephants. But, then, how was it erected? It is amazing the things people were able to do so long ago, without modern equipment we now have. In this picture, Fikre is explaining aspects of the stele. We were certainly fortunate to have him leading us because he knows a lot about all the places we visited.