HISTORY: ETHIOPIA CHURCHES, LALIBELA, Solomon

Queen Of Sheeba, Medieval Texts, Kebra Nagast

The first written records pertaining to the Horn of Africa date back approximately four thousand and seven hundred years. We owe these early historical commentaries to two of the very first centres of human civilization, Sumeria and Egypt, for both of which the Horn seems to have served as an emporium of much-prized tropical products.

Egyptian hieroglyphic records indicated that the Pharaohs obtained frankincense and myrrh, from Ethiopia (Kush) and from the Somali coast (The Holy Land Of Punt), as far back as 2700 BCE. Trade with India was likewise of great antiquity the Horn has supplied the subcontinent with vast quantities of ivory since time immemorial.

Today silent witness is borne to this noble past by extensive ruins of temples, fortresses and palaces as well as by a series of vast stelae, carved granite monoliths, some of which exceed 50 feet in height and weigh more than 500 tons. Adding substance to Chimeras and testifying to the lost truths embedded in myths and tables, the bones of long gone eras protrudes everywhere through the soil and hordes of gold, silver and bronze coins, continue to be washed out from time to time by heavy downpours of rain.

Glory of Kings, Beta Medhane Alem, House of the Saviour of the World

Beta Mariam, House of Mary, Beta Amanuel, House of Emanuel

'The Jewish Talmud', also contains oblique references to the story, as well the New Testament where Sheba is referred to as "The Queen of the South." There is, in addition, a fairly detailed account in the Koran, echoed in several Arabic and Persian folk tales of later date, (in which she is known as Bilqis).

Further afield, in southern enigmatic stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe are said by the local Mashona people to have been the palace of the Queen of Sheba, and tribal elders still repeat their own fully evolved version of the legend.

Of all these different narratives, however, it is in the Ethiopian variant (where Sheba's name becomes Makeda) that is the richest and the most convincing, despite the fact that it does not seem to have been set down in writing until medieval times when it appeared in the Kebra Nagast (Glory of Kings), the Ethiopian national saga.

Towering edifices, the Lalibela churches were not built at all in the conventional sense. Instead they were hewn directly out of the solid red volcanic rock on which they stand. Close examination is required before the full extent of this achievement can be appreciated: some of the churches lie almost completely concealed within deep trenches, while others hide in the open mouths of quarried caves.

Connecting them all is a complicated network of tunnels and narrow passageways with offset crypts, grottos and galleries - a cool, lichen-enshrouded, subterranean world, shaded and damp, silent but for the faint echoes of distant footfalls as priests and deacons go about their timeless business.

Four of the Lalibela churches are completely freestanding, being attached to the surrounding rock only by their bases. These are Beta Medhane Alem (the House of the Saviour of the World), Beta Mariam (the House of Mary), Beta Amanuel (the House of Emanuel) and Beta Ghiorghis (the House of Ghiorghis).

Although the individual dimensions and configurations are very different, all four take the form of great blocks of stone, precisely sculptured to resemble normal buildings yet completely isolated within the deep courtyards excavated around them.

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