CHAPTER 13

“LET’S TRY TO FIGURE out just how big Axum really was,” Ceseli said early the next morning. As they rode north of the obelisks, everywhere they looked there were traces of buildings with large stone foundations, structures of considerable size that must have been temples or palaces or other public buildings. They found another field of monoliths, rough-hewn like the menhirs of Brittany in France and Stonehenge in England. Ceseli photographed them carefully, marking down in a ledger a description of each photo so that she would not forget.

Later, southwest of the town. they found the Mount Gobederah granite quarry. It was a huge semi-circular quarry, almost like an amphitheater or football stadium, and it seemed to be the source of all the obelisks. On one side, there was an obelisk that had not been freed from its excavation site. It hung with five sides cut free like a sculpture waiting to be released.

On the granite boulder, Ceseli found the carved frieze of a leaping lioness. She had read of it in a book by a British traveler and amateur archaeologist, J. Theodore Bent, who had visited Axum in the 1890s and had discovered the frieze. She had copied the account into her bible.

“It is halfway up the steep hill at the foot of a massive granite projection,” he had written, “from which I imagine the ancients obtained their large blocks of granite for their monoliths. It is a very spirited work of art, measuring ten feet eight inches, from the nose to the tail. The running attitude is admirable and given the sweep of the hind legs show that the artist had thorough command of his subject.”

“I need to photograph this. Do you have any matches in that saddlebag?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Just what Mr. Bent did!”

Despite the fact that Standish claimed to have been an eagle scout, it took some time to get the fire started. When the twigs had become charcoal she rubbed them along the carving so that the lines were visible to her camera.

“What’s this?” Standish asked, pointing to a small circle near the nose. “Shall I rub this as well?”

“Let me see,” Ceseli said, kneeling to study what appeared to be two rays of sun. “Yes, let’s get this too.”

While Standish rubbed in the charcoal, Ceseli opened her book to Bent’s description. “A few inches from the nose of the lioness is a circular disc with rays, probably intended to represent the sun, and the whole thing impresses one strongly with the knowledge and skill possessed by the artist in depicting animal life.”

As she looked more closely at the gray stone the small circular sun now looked very different. She kept tracing her finger over the points and the carving.

“Not the rays from the sun, although that’s an honest mistake considering the people here were sun worshippers. It’s a cross. A very stylized cross. A Christian cross on an obviously pagan subject.”

“Why do you say pagan? It could just mean that there were lions in the area.”

“The question is why the cross, not why the lioness. Why a cross? I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet that I’m right. Can you see it?”

“Yes,” Standish said, looking more closely where she was tracing the carving.

Later in the afternoon, they rode back to a promontory about a mile and a half up the valley to a hilltop fortress with deep dungeons and underground chambers.

These were ancient tombs, called by the local people the Tombs of Kaleb, the king who according to Abyssinian story, led his victorious army into Yemen in the sixth century.

As they talked, Standish lit a candle and they descended into the dungeon where the blocks of stone were very large and seemed to be much older than the sixth century. The stones were wet and slippery underfoot and smelled of dank. The underground chamber was full of large stone coffers. Standish passed the light across the end of one of the coffers and then stopped. Carved into the stone was another cross.

Ceseli stooped to see it better. It’s much too dark for a photograph, but not for a rubbing, she thought. She took a page from her sketchpad and started rubbing the pencil along the cross so that the image was clearly visible. In the next large rectangular chamber, they found two more crosses. One quite crude, but the second high up on the ceiling was beautifully rendered.

That evening, Ceseli leaned back from the fire in the small room they were sharing. Here, they could cook over a fire pit. They each had a bedroom with a shuttered window. The beds were made by stretching a dried camel’s hide across a wooden frame. It was like sleeping on an army cot, but surprisingly comfortable. They also shared a bathroom, if you could call it that, with a pitcher of water and a large earthenware bowl. The toilet was of the Turkish style, really a squat hole.

The days have been rewarding, she thought. Following Standish’s suggestion, they found an agile young boy who climbed the standing obelisk to measure it with a cord held to the helmet at the top. With equal ingenuity, they found a pair of oxen and successfully lifted the side of the smallest of the pieces of the broken obelisk. By digging under the slightly elevated edge, she was able to make a rubbing and confirm that the carving continued on the fourth side. It was the only obelisk she had found carved on all four sides, and from an archaeologist’s point of view, unique.

But the most important part of the trip had happened quite unexpectedly. When they were about to lower the piece of obelisk, Ceseli saw several pieces of what she thought were metal disks. “Don’t lower it yet,” she shouted, as she started to scrape the disks out from under the obelisk. “They’re coins.”

Standish bent down and looked where she was pointing. “Coins? Get your hands out of there before something happens.”

“This is the last,” she said, scrubbing her hand over the hard earth.

That night, Ceseli sat with the coins and a small bowl of water. The mud and debris of centuries washed away to show beautifully worked gold coins.

“What are you going to do with them?” Standish asked.

“Give them to the emperor.”

“What are you thinking?” Standish asked, somewhat later as he fed some small pieces of wood into the holes left by the fire between the other logs.

“About how time does heal,” she answered. “I wouldn’t have believed it a few months ago.”

“Doing something completely different can help too. Come on,” Standish said, handing her a plate of injera, the crepe-like bread made from teff with the hot, spicy wot sauce.

“This is hot,” she said, her eyes beginning to tear as she scooped up the spicy hot tomatoes and chili sauce. “Daddy would have loved to be here,” she said a few minutes later. “Hey, as long as I have you as a captive audience, tell me about the coronation. You said you would, and Warren says it’s a wonderful story.”

“I’m going to bore you. I’m not much good at storytelling.”

“Fishing for compliments?”

Standish sat down and was silent for a moment. “It was any typically sharp blue Ethiopian morning. You could already smell the pungent odor of the breakfast fires. On the Ethiopian calendar, it was Tekemt 23, 1923. On our calendar, it was Sunday, November 2, 1930. Either way, it was Coronation Day.

“Addis had been lavishly prepared for the Coronation. Ras Tafari Makonnen was already the Prince Regent and had been since 1912. He had decided to use his baptismal name, Haile Sellassie, as his throne name. So he would be known as Haile Sellassie I, King of Kings of Ethiopia, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Neguse Negest, the 334th of all the kings of Ethiopia and 134th of the Christian Kings of the Empire.

“Workmen were still busy on the final completion of the coronation monument which was being erected on a newly built triangle in the center of the city. The three pronged propeller blades suggesting the title of the emperor: Power of the Trinity.”

“What about Menelik’s statue? The one in front of St. George’s Cathedral?”

“That one was already finished. It just needed to be unveiled. Yifru had taken the time to explain to me what to expect during the coronation ceremony. Our delegation had received a detailed schedule so that we could follow it in English. I knew that the emperor and empress had already spent the night in prayer and meditation with the priests in the Cathedral of St. George.

“The Coptic Church was revered and all-powerful in Ethiopia I had been told, but that day it showed its impressive might and splendor. Our legation is only a five minute drive from St. George’s, but we had to be ready and in our places before 7 a.m. that morning. All of us were wearing a morning coat with a flower in the lapel. We looked pretty shabby next to the brilliant military uniforms of the English, French, Germans, and Italians.

“Through the early morning, the prayers continued in Ge’ez. The chanting was accompanied by the dancing of the priests with their great pulsating drums, cadence of cymbals, and brass sistra. One of the men in our delegation said they were like the ancient Jewish rites that were in use at the time when King David danced before the Ark of the Covenant.

“All the important European powers were represented. So was the Ethiopian nobility. I knew that Tafari didn’t want to offend any of the major European powers, so he bought six matching bay horses from Austria to pull a ceremonial coach previously used at the coronation of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. A British naval band played music. The city police were outfitted in khaki uniforms from Belgium. Some of the things were quite comical.”

“Such as?”

“Well the police and bodyguards wore beautiful new khaki uniforms, but no shoes. They stood at attention ready to direct traffic. But there wasn’t any. There were several great triumphal arches, like the imperial arches of Rome, except they were of papé maché, not marble. Oceans of green, yellow and red bunting lined the streets trying to hide the tukuls.

“Yifru said that there would be forty-nine bishops and priests in groups of seven, who had held place for seven days and nights in the seven corners of St. George’s Cathedral. That morning it seemed that they were joined by hundreds of others chanting continuously the Psalms of David.

“We couldn’t all fit into St. George’s Cathedral so a large temporary pavilion had been built on the west side of the cathedral and that’s where the ceremony took place. There was seating for seven hundred officials and guests. The sidewalls of the building had been draped with white cloth, decorated only at the pillars with clusters of small flags. The lofty ceiling was made of orange and yellow cloth in several drapes and across the entire front were rich gold-shot red curtains falling in loose folds to divide the inner sanctuary from the main portion of the hall.

“Facing me across the space in front of the throne chairs was a row of imposing large gilded chairs. The Prince of Savoy, Italy’s official representative sat on one. I wondered what he felt like sitting in a church built by Italian prisoners of war. Next to him sat the Duke of Gloucester, representing the king of England, splendid in his guardsman uniform. The representative of France was Marshal Franchet d’Espérey, who was balancing a gold baton on his knees. Next to me on each side were two gaunt and venerable feudal chieftains who had lion mane headdresses that continued to scratch and tickle me.”

Ceseli smiled listening to his tale.

“I remember the rich colors of the hangings, the thick floor rugs, and the costumes. It was the most awesome thing I’d ever seen. In front of the sanctuary were the large thrones of the emperor and the empress. The throne at the left, for the emperor, was decorated in scarlet and gold and the throne for Her Majesty Menen, in blue and gold.

“Shortly after 7:30, and just as it had been planned, the studded doors to the Holy of Holies opened and through them came the muffled distant chant of hundreds of priests. Dressed in white silk communion robes, his imperial majesty entered the ceremonial hall. In front of him came the clergy waiving incense burners. As he took his place on the throne, the ceremony began. There were a few minutes of silence, then it was broken by his holiness the Abuna Kyrillos, the Archbishop speaking in Arabic. As a result, I didn’t understand a lot of it.”

“Arabic?”

“The Ethiopian Coptic Church depends on the Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt.”

“Sorry. I’d forgotten.”

Standish raised his voice as he continued in the lilting words of the Archbishop. “Ye princes and ministers, Ye nobles and chiefs of the army, Ye soldiers and people of Ethiopia, and ye doctors and chiefs of the clergy, ye professors and priests look Ye upon our Emperor Haile Sellassie the First, descended from the dynasty of Menelik I who was born of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a dynasty perpetuated without interruption from that time to ours.

“Before the questioning of the Abuna, the emperor had made his sacred pledge to uphold the orthodox religion of the Alexandrian Church, to support and administer the laws of the country for the betterment of his people, to maintain the integrity of Ethiopia and to found schools for developing the spiritual and material welfare of his subjects. After that he was presented with the royal insignia.

“Then the Abuna anointed His Majesty’s head with seven different ancient scented ointments, one for each of the seven ornaments of the coronation.”

“Again sevens,” Ceseli observed.

“One by one, in token of his position and responsibility, the emperor received the gold embroidered scarlet coronation robes, the jeweled sword, a gold and ivory imperial scepter, the orb, the diamond encrusted ring, and two gold filigree lances. Seventh, and last, came his magnificent crown made from pure native gold, encrusted with diamonds and emeralds.

“Then the Abuna finished, ‘That God may make this crown of sanctity and glory. That, by the grace and blessings that we have given, you may have an unshaken faith and a pure heart, in order that you may inherit the crown eternal. So be it. Blessed Be the King of Israel.’

“Then for the first time in Ethiopian history, the crown prince was installed, followed by the empress and other members of the royal family, signifying that the emperor was intent on creating a dynasty. He was the 134th of the Christian Kings of the Empire. He intended for his son to be the 135th.”

“It’s a wonderful story. And it’s all based on a myth, isn’t it?” Ceseli asked. “That the emperor is the descendant of Solomon and Sheba?”

“Some people feel very passionately about it.”

“I know. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”