Aksum

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Aksum
አክሱም
State : EthiopiaEthiopia Ethiopia
Region : Flag of the Tigray Region.svg Tigray
Coordinates : 14 ° 7 '  N , 38 ° 44'  E Coordinates: 14 ° 7 '  N , 38 ° 44'  E
Height : 2,000-3,000 meters above sea level
Area : 17.2769  km²
 
Residents : 66,800 (2015)
Population density : 3,866 inhabitants per km²
Time zone : EAT (UTC + 3)
 
Website :
Aksum (Ethiopia)
Aksum
Aksum

Aksum (also written Axum , in the local language Tigrinya Akhsum , older form Akhwsem , Amharic አክሱም ) is the former capital of the kingdom of Aksum . Today's Aksum is located at an altitude between 2000 and 3000 m in the administrative region of Tigray in northern Ethiopia , 1004 kilometers from Addis Ababa , 248 km from the regional capital Mekele and 62 kilometers from the border with Eritrea . The city is administered as an urban woreda (comparable to an independent city) and is surrounded by the woreda La'ilay Maychew . Aksum is considered a holy city in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church , while the Ark of the Covenant is kept in the Church of St. Mary of Zion according to Ethiopian Orthodox tradition .

location

Aksum is located at the approximately one kilometer wide exit of a valley between the two up to 2320 meter high hills Beta Giyorgis and Mai Qoho between the seasonally flowing brooks Mai Lahlaha and Mai Hejja at an altitude of 2100 meters. The built-up area of ​​today's Aksum takes up about 5 km²; the extent of the ancient city is estimated to be a similar area today due to the remains that have been preserved. The urban area including the airport, university campus and undeveloped areas covers approx. 25 km².

history

Aksum
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem
Stela aksum.jpg
King Ezana's stele in Aksum
National territory: EthiopiaEthiopia Ethiopia
Type: Culture
Criteria : (i) (iv)
Reference No .: 15th
UNESCO region : Africa
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 1980  ( session 4 )

Early history

The founding of Aksum cannot be dated with certainty. In the written sources, Aksum can be found for the first time in the Periplus Maris Erythraei (1st century AD) and in the Geographikè Hyphégesis (around 150) by Claudius Ptolemy . Both sources refer to Aksum as the residence of the king of the Aksumite Empire , which was also only mentioned at that time and which already controlled the port city of Adulis (today in Eritrea) in addition to the northern Ethiopian highlands . After King Ezana's conversion to Christianity (4th century), Aksum became one of the first Christian capitals.

The center of ancient Aksum was to the west of the modern city, on both sides of Mai Lahlaha. The remains of some larger, representative buildings that apparently belonged to the upper class were found there. By contrast, no remains of the residential buildings of the population have been discovered so far, and there are no traces of fortifications either, presumably the natural protection of the city by the surrounding mountains made such structures unnecessary. Further to the east, in the area of ​​the Cathedral of Maryam Tseyon, there was another larger building, perhaps a pre-Christian temple, in the immediate vicinity of which there are the remains of stone thrones, which, like the Monumentum Adulitanum , perhaps once bore inscriptions. Similar structures can also be found at the foot of Mai Qoho, west of the southeastern field of stelae, whose eponymous monumental steles are grave monuments of distinguished people. Similar stelae fields are also in the north and south-west. The tallest stele, 33 meters high and weighing 517 tons, probably broke when it was erected. The second highest, 25 m high stele ( Obelisk von Axum ) was stolen by the Italian occupiers in 1937 after the Abyssinian War, erected in Rome and, despite Ethiopian protests, only returned in April 2005 and erected again in September 2008. Smaller specimens have defied time to this day.

From 600 to the present

The city suffered from the collapse of the empire from around 600 and was abandoned in the meantime, but later regained importance as a religious center, among other things. Aksum remained the place of coronations of Ethiopian kings until the time of the last emperor Haile Selassie in the 20th century.

Chapel in which the ark is said to be located

Today Aksum is the most important pilgrimage site for the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is convinced that the ark of Israel is in Aksum. This is said to have been brought into the country by Menelik I , son of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba , according to the Kebra Negest , an Ethiopian script from the 13th century . A monk is charged with guarding the ark until the end of his life. This task is given to a successor before his death.

Politically, Aksum is now a small district capital (in the woreda Laelay Maychew in the Mehakelegnaw zone ), which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1980 due to its historical ruins and outstanding history .

archeology

Steles in Aksum

On March 7, 1905, the German-Ethiopian trade and friendship treaty and the agreement on the exchange of diplomatic relations were signed by the envoy of the German government Friedrich Rosen and Emperor Menelik II . As part of these contacts, Emperor Menelik II asked for a German excavation team for Aksum. Kaiser Wilhelm II gladly accepted this request. In 1906 he sent an excavation team under the direction of Enno Littmann at his own expense . This was a special honor for the German Reich , since until now all other nations that asked to be allowed to excavate in Aksum had not been granted permission. This success was probably due to the personality of the orientalist Rosen.

Since the 1980s, numerous excavations have been carried out by the British Institute under the direction of the most important Aksum researcher Stuart Munro-Hay (1948–2005). Munro-Hay not only laid the foundations for coin dating for the Aksumite Empire, but is also an undisputed reference for early Aksumite history and archeology worldwide. From 1993 to 1998 David Phillipson was in charge of the excavations on the large field of stelae and discovered numerous burial chambers that have been dated to the Aksumite period before the conversion to Christianity. The famous catacombs under the large stele and the Tomb of the Brick Arch were uncovered. This was the first time that the steles were clearly identified as tombs.

Since the early 1990s, excavations have been carried out on the Beta Georgis table mountain above Aksum by the Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Fattovich, who succeeded in establishing a typology of Aksumite ceramics.

From 1999 onwards, Helmut Ziegert , professor at the University of Hamburg, carried out excavations in Aksum and the surrounding area. Under a Christian building, the so-called Palace of Dungur , dated to the 7th century AD, he found older building structures, which he dated to the 10th century BC in the media in 2008 and ascribed to the Queen of Sheba. Both the dating and the interpretation of the finds were extremely controversial.

population

In 1994, 98.54% of the 27,148 inhabitants were Tigray . The largest minorities were Amharen (0.82%) and Eritrean citizens (0.37%), 0.26% belonged to other ethnic groups. 98.68% spoke Tigrinya as their mother tongue and 1.14% spoke Amharic .

Population development

The following overview shows the population by area since the 1984 census.

year 1984 1994 2007 2011 2015
Residents 17,753 27,148 44,647 54.004 66,800

sons and daughters of the town

See also

literature

  • Franz Altheim , Ruth Stiehl : History of the Aksūmischen Empire. In: Franz Altheim, Ruth Stiehl: Christianity on the Red Sea. Volume 1. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1971, ISBN 3-11-003790-4 , pp. 393-483.
  • Heinzgerd Brakmann : Το παρα τοις βαρβαροις εργον θειον. The roots of the church in the late ancient empire of Aksum. Borengässer, Bonn 1994, ISBN 3-923946-24-4 (At the same time: Bonn, Universität, Dissertation, 1993: The roots of the church in the late antique empire of Aksum. ).
  • Francis Breyer : The Kingdom of Aksum. History and archeology of Abyssinia in late antiquity (= Zabern's illustrated books on archeology . ). Philipp von Zabern, Darmstadt et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-8053-4460-9 .
  • Glen W. Bowersock : The Throne of Adulis. Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-973932-5 .
  • Stuart Munro-Hay: Aksum. An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1991, ISBN 0-7486-0106-6 .
  • Stuart Munro-Hay: Excavations at Aksum. An account of research at the ancient Ethiopian capital directed in 1972–4 by the late Dr Neville Chittik (= Memoirs of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Vol. 10). British Institute in Eastern Africa, London 1989, ISBN 0-500-97008-4 .
  • Timothy Power: The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500-1000. The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo 2012.

Web links

Commons : Aksum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Axum. City Administration. ( Memento from March 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Ayele Bekerie: The Rise of the Aksum Obelisk is the Rise of Ethiopian history. ( Memento of January 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University (PDF; 254 kB).
  3. ^ Benjamin H. Freiberg: German Development Policy in Ethiopia. The influence of German development cooperation on the general and socio-political situation in Ethiopia since 1991. An analysis. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8370-0059-7 .
  4. ↑ Steffen Wenig : Ethiopia and Eritrea 100 years ago. Historical photographs by Theodor von Lüpke . The German Aksum expedition in 1906 led by the German orientalist Enno Littmann. Humboldt University - Seminar for Archeology and Cultural History of Northeast Africa, Berlin 2005, p. 1 ff.
  5. ↑ Researchers from the University of Hamburg discover the palace of the Queen of Sheba. IDW, June 7, 2008
  6. ↑ Berthold Seewald: The Empire of Saba: A royal palace between myth and sensation . Into Die Welt , May 8, 2008
  7. ↑ CSA: ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: 1994 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia: Results for Tigray Region, Vol. 1 ), 1995 (PDF; 84.7 MB), pp. 76, 88, 107@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.csa.gov.et
  8. ↑ Ethiopia: Regions & Cities - Population Statistics in Maps and Tables. Retrieved January 6, 2019 .
  9. ^ Axum City Administration - Demography. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 26, 2015 ; accessed on April 25, 2015 .