Church at Adari Mariam and Tiya Stellae site

3 September 2008

Amy had organised a day trip out from Addis today – I jumped at the chance having not seen much of the Southern part of Ethiopia.

First stop Melka Kunture which has an archaeological site and museum. The museum consists of 4 traditional buildings each with a different emphasis and time period.

Melka Kunture is the name of a ford of the Awash river, the Ziquana volcano is nearby and many of the exhibits demonstrated the geological formation of the Ethiopian Rift. Exhibits that would be carefully encased in an English Museum, lay on carpet tiles but we were warned not too touch!

The next stop was to visit the rock hewn church at Adadi Mariam.


Church at Adari Mariam

Not quite as well preserved as the churches at Lalibella (so I’m told) but a fascinating construction. These structures are incredible. It is difficult to conceive of just how many people must have been involved in the construction. Built somewhere between the 12th and 14th Centuries.

After lunch (cold spaghetti), we moved on to see the Tiya stelae – a burial site which the guide suggested was developed at the crossroads of paganism with early Christianity. The evidence being that some stones marked small, squarish areas and others marked the more Christian based rectangular shape.


Standing stones at Tiya Stellae

The early ones apparently being buried in the ‘foetal’ position whilst the Christian tradition is to lay the deceased flat. Again there is some dispute about the actual dates and even what the various symbols represent. I was fascinated by the fact that the carvings were ‘raised’ as opposed to indented. That must have meant chipping away a large part of rock to produce the desired image.



Standing stones at Tiya Stellae

Back to Addis where we turned off to go round the ‘ring road’, a motorway style road but which still had the odd person, cow, donkey wandering along!