World heritage site. For visitors to Ethiopia,
this label most likely evokes images of grandeur and awe. Think for example of
Lalibela's singularly ornate rock-hewn churches or the breathtaking landscape
of Simien Mountains
National Park. White the Tiya Stelae
Field is equally a world heritage site, its scale is altogether more modest
than that of its better known brethren.
Tiya is located about 80km south of Addis Ababa on the road
to Butajira, and the trip there is memorable in its own right, as are most road
trips in Ethiopia. Leaving Addis' Bole district mid-morning in a chartered
minivan - an Ethiopian tourism industry mainstay on roads where 4WD is not
required - we almost immediately became snarled in the capital's ever-worsening
traffic.
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| Roadside scene on the Addis-Butajira Highway |
Weaving our way past pedestrians, bajaji
(as three-wheel taxis are known locally), broken down trucks and a donkey which
had decided that the middle of a four-lane road was as good a place as any to
take a nap, we finally breached Addis' sprawling suburbs and emerged into the
open countryside.
The landscape south of Addis is beautiful: rolling hills,
lush vegetation and small farmsteads, studded with the occasional volcanic plug
and (not so attractive) roadside village. Passing through one of these villages
we had the memorable experience of a massively obese man walking into the
middle of the road, holding out his arms and blocking our vehicle no matter how
our driver tried to navigate around him. As pedestrians and their animals
walked by as though nothing odd was happening, our driver finally accepted
defeat and handed over a couple crumpled notes and the man went on his way.
Most people visiting Tiya on a day-trip from the capital
make two stops en route. The first is the Paleolithic site of Melka Kunture.
About one kilometre west of the highway down a rough track, the site apparently
features a fine museum containing many impressive stone age artefacts. I say
apparently because we did not get to see the museum ourselves, arriving too
late in the day and finding the entrance gates already locked.
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| The rural landscape south of Addis is verdant and lush |
We had better luck at our second stop at Adadi Maryam, which
has the distinction of being the most southerly of Ethiopia's
rock-hewn churches. Located on high ground about 30 kilometres west of the main
road, Adadi Maryam is thought to date from the 13th century CE, and was
reputedly built by King Lalibela himself. Whether this is true or not, the
church remained in use for the next three hundred years, when it fell into
disrepair until it was rediscovered by Emperor Menelik II in the late 19th
century.
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| Sunday market at Adadi village |
Although the church is a popular pilgrimage destination for
Ethiopian Christians, there was little road traffic on the day of our visit,
apart from the occasional herd of sheep and goats and a few farmers heading
home after a morning spent tending to their fields. However, as the farmland
gave way to the outskirts of Adadi. where the eponymous church is located, we
discovered why we had seen so few people on the way in: everyone seemed already
to be in the village, buying, selling or just walking about at the local weekly
market. Dozens of donkeys and horses were tied up on either side of the road as
we approached the market square, and soon the way forward was entirely blocked
with a mass of people. Yet our driver crawled along, with people moving out of
our path good-naturedly, and soon we arrived at the church gates.
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| Adadi Maryam Church |
Having paid our 5USD entry fee we clambered down slippery
stone steps to the church proper. Having visited Lalibela earlier in our trip I
will admit to being a little disappointed by the much less finely carved
stonework. However, in other respects Adadi Maryam is impressive. At 20 metres
long and 16 metres wide the church is imposing in its size and layout, with
large (carpeted) chambers leading into the maqdas,
or Holy of Holies, where only priests may enter. However, even without
delicately wrought stonework or elaborate wall-paintings, what struck me most
about Adadi Maryam was the sense that it was above all a working church, where
people come to worship as they have for centuries, with no effort to sanitize
or commodify the experience.
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| Interior of Adadi Maryam Church |
Leaving Adadi Maryam, the rest of the trip to Tiya took the
better part of an hour. The world heritage site sits at the end of an unpaved
but well signed road about 200 metres east of the main highway. Surrounded by
farmland and thickly vegetated with tall grass and shrubs, there is almost
nothing that gives away the site's significance as one approaches. No aspiring
tour guides or souvenir hawkers, no roofing or other site protection - just a
modest hut where a local man sell trinkets and a tiny ticket building where we
were given a laboriously written receipt after paying our USD6 entrance fee.
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| "Welcome to Tiya Ethiopian World Heritage Site" |
The Tiya stelae field, entered via a brightly coloured gate
in a low-slung barbed wire fence, consists of 46 standing stones, regarding
which remarkably little is known. Erected between the 10th and 15th centuries
CE, they are of much more recent vintage than the obelisks of Aksum,
yet their meaning and significance remains shrouded in mystery. The stelae vary
in height with the tallest reaching five metres, and they include both anthropomorphic
and phallic shapes. Most also bear elaborately carved symbols, variously
reminiscent of swords, leaves and human figures.
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| Tiya stelae field |
Despite being designated a world heritage site by UNESCO in
1980, very little archaeological work has been undertaken at Tiya. However,
evidence of mass graves of individuals whose remains bear signs of violence
suggest that the stones may be grave markers for warriors killed in battle.
Other finds in the area include Middle Stone Age tools as well as several
tombs.
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| Tiya stela detail |
On the day of our visit, we had the ruins almost
entirely to ourselves, and traipsing across the site it was easy to imagine all
manner of ancient artefacts waiting to be found beneath the uneven ground. The stelae
themselves were striking for their recurring motifs, which must have been
fiendishly difficult to carve in the hard rock. Not for the first time in Ethiopia we were struck by the country's remarkable historical
legacy, which is as rich as that of any country in the world, yet so much
remains unknown or unqueried by professional archaeologists and historians.
While the protection afforded to Tiya through its world heritage designation is
an important first step, clearly that there is much more to be done to preserve
and study this remarkable site.
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| Sword motif on Tiya stela |
