The Stelae of Axum

Stelae of Axum, landmark of Axum, Ethiopia.

The Kingdom of Axum was founded in the early first-century common era, flourishing until the ninth century in the horn of Africa, now known as modern Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Djibouti, and southern Yemen. The heart of this kingdom was in Axum, Ethiopia. The Stelae of Axum are a series of granite monoliths in the heart of the Kingdom of Axum. The stelae range from heights anywhere from seventy feet to well over one-hundred feet, an achievement in itself because the stelae are singular shafts of granite. The slab of granite is carved in a peculiar fashion, with fake doors carved at the bottom, log-like flooring carved above it to symbolize a new floor of the tower, then several tiers of carved windows.  Each stela is oblong, not square like at all, with a crescent and disk symbol adorning the top.  While it is well documented that the carved symbols are religious, the meaning of the symbols can only be speculated. The Axum people were pagans up until the fourth century when the new king declared the kingdom Christian. Because of this, we cannot speculate the symbols in terms of Christianity, but rather paganism.  Looking at the symbology of ancient paganism, the symbol of the crescent is a symbol commonly used to represent the phasing from life to death. While a disc symbol can either represent a sun or the shift from mortality to divinity. The true purpose of these stelae is unknown but given the symbology and the placement of them the stelae are widely accepted and believed to serve as grave markers or memorials to important members of society in the third to the fourth-century common era. 

Obelisk of Axum, Henry Salt (1809)

The Axumites put a lot of time, effort, and capital into the creation of the stelae. Each stelae was designed around the person who was being buried. For example, when a king was buried he would have a stelae that were around thirteen stories tall, while a lord would have one that was around two stories tall. The grander the stelae, the grander the title of the individual. That is why the stelae of Axum hold importance to the overall historical narrative. Grave markers are important to society, they are symbols of remembrance for loved ones and have been used for thousands of years. The way people are buried and how their grave is decorated gives an insight into the culture and society that the person once lived in. Across the world, we all have different cultures and ways of doing things such as celebrating our dead. Latin cultures have holidays such as Dia De Los Muertos (the day of the dead) where they go visit the graves of loved ones and make altars for them, while in India they celebrate their ancestors' souls through a holiday called Shradh, not visiting a grave because in Hindu culture most bodies are cremated. These stelae give an insight into the culture of the Axum kingdom before it fell under Christian control, how they remembered their dead, making it vital for it to not be buried under the narrative of Christian gravemarkers. These monoliths are one of the last remnants of this ancient Kingdom and its practices. 

Citations: 

Butzer, Karl W. “Rise and Fall of Axum, Ethiopia: A Geo-Archaeological Interpretation.” American Antiquity, vol. 46, no. 3, 1981, pp. 471–495. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/280596.

Lipsky, George A. (George Arthur). Ethiopia: Its People, Its Society, Its Culture. HRAF Press, 1962, accessed October 28, 2020, https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/62/247/172/75627?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

The British Museum, "The kingdom of Aksum," in Smarthistory, September 23, 2016, accessed October 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/the-kingdom-of-aksum/.