This week's photo essay is The Royal Tombs of Aksum, and it is a new update of one of the very first photo essays I did here on About.com.
The 17th-18th century church of Mary of Zion at Axum is the reputed resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.
Photo Credit: Stuart Munro-Hay (c) 1998
Aksum (also spelled Axum) was an Iron Age kingdom in Ethiopia from the 1st through 6th century AD. Through its ports on the Red Sea, the rulers of Aksum controlled trade between Rome and India and all kinds of places in between. Although the site is in ruins today, it is an important center of Coptic Christianity, and Axum's Mary of Zion Coptic church is the legendary location of the Ark of the Covenant, if you believe in that kind of thing.
Back in 1998, I was approached by archaeologist Stuart Munro-Hay who was looking for a place to put his website on Aksum, where he'd excavated with Neville Chittick back in the mid-1970s. He passed along several great photos and a wonderfully written text about the site, and I was elated to do it.
Stuart died a few years ago, but I recently pulled out that old file and updated it, giving his figures a larger format, and adding a few photos to flesh out the story. I hope he'd have approved.
The 17th-18th century church of Mary of Zion at Axum is the reputed resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.
Photo Credit: Stuart Munro-Hay (c) 1998
Back in 1998, I was approached by archaeologist Stuart Munro-Hay who was looking for a place to put his website on Aksum, where he'd excavated with Neville Chittick back in the mid-1970s. He passed along several great photos and a wonderfully written text about the site, and I was elated to do it.
Stuart died a few years ago, but I recently pulled out that old file and updated it, giving his figures a larger format, and adding a few photos to flesh out the story. I hope he'd have approved.
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