We males visited the monastery after this.  I always feel badly that the women are not able to join us on these visits.  Granting equal rights to women means a changed view on the importance of sexual intercourse.  People become something more that sex driven creatures when this happens.  Perhaps this attitude about sex is important in conversations with Africans about human sexuality and church.  Anyway we saw the crown, a processional cross, the shield the emperor carried into battle.  Then we went on to the ruins of the Queen of Sheba’s palace.  I completely don’ know what to make of this.  I wonder what the archaeologists say about this place.  Our guide told us the now familiar story about the Ethiopian queen who loved wisdom so much that she left her kingdom and sought out Solomon, the king of Israel.  She and the king had an agreement that she wouldn’t take anything that belonged to the king.  Solomon then served a very spicy banquet and left a pitcher of water beside her bed.  When she drank the water the king pointed out that she now owed him.  So the king insisted that Sheba sleep with him.  She did this and returned to Ethiopia carrying his child Menelik.  When Menelik grew up he returned to live with his father in Israel for 3 years.  Solomon was so impressed by this man that he wanted Menelik to be the next king of Israel.  The people however objected to this plan and Menelik returned to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant.  Some Ethiopians claim to be God’s chosen people, inheritors of the Old Testament tradition who quickly embraced Jesus.

So we visited the queen’s palace and saw the ruins of the throne room where she sat in judgment and the room where she bathed.  So much that is great becomes lost to history.  We know almost nothing about these places.  We see pottery made a thousand years before Jesus’ birth and know nothing else about the whole civilization that produced it.  Being at these ruins at sunset with the rocks burning red, everything seems so ephemeral.

We drove up to the Queen of Sheba’s baths and saw some young children getting water for washing.  There have been serious water shortages here.  With the sun going down we drove up a rocky dirt road to the mountaintop tomb of King Caleb.  In the dusk we looked at the ruined foundations, perhaps of a pre-Axumite kingdom.  We went down into the excavated tombs at dusk holding quickly burning candles.  From that mountain we saw into distant Eritrea and the Adwa battlefield where the Italians were defeated.  I wonder how the futurist movement was connected to this military defeat.

In total darkness we descended from our peak stopping at a little tin shack to visit the Ethiopian Rosetta stone.  A stone erected by an ancient ruler in Ge’ez, Greek and Sabian (an ancient South Arabian culture mentioned in the Bible) was discovered by three farmers in 1983.  It is another amazing Ozimandias-esque discovery.  We are learning at a faster rate than we can assimilate our findings.  We also feel the pressure of the end.  Lalibela might be the last we see of Africa for another twenty years – maybe more.  Still the quality of our accommodations has declined steadily during the whole trip.  It will be nice to have hot water again and no mosquitoes buzzing in our ears as we try to sleep.  Last night’s hotel had roosters in the parking lot that crowed from roughly 3:00 a.m.

We had dinner in our hotel.  Our travel pace has picked up and even though Axum feels totally different than Gondar, I keep forgetting that I’m not there anymore.  Our flight to Lalibela was originally scheduled for 9:00 a.m. then postponed to 11:30 a.m.  we got to the airport early for the flight which ended up getting delayed until 4:45 p.m.  Another unnecessarily long day at the airport.  At 2:00 p.m. we went and walked around the meager two topiary gardens.  We went around twice playing tag as we went.

 

 

Lalibela, Ethiopia

 

We are at our final destination in Africa.  Originally our pilgrimage was to celebrate Timkat here.  We changed plans so that we could meet Abuna Paulos in Addis Ababa.  There are eleven rock hewn churches in Lalibela.  There are three kinds of special churches in this region: 1. monolithic – carved from a single stone, 2. semi-monolithic – have some part that is not carved out, 3. cave churches – built inside caves.  King Lalibela was assisted in building a church by angels.  We will see so much tomorrow which really is our last real day in Africa.  Right now we are having supper at the Seven Olives Hotel, the first hotel in Lalibela.  Hailie Selassie’s daughter promised that the money from this hotel would go to the church and to poor people.  The Derg disagreed and subsumed it under the Ghion, the government run hotel chain.