Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

At intervals of a little less than 50 centimeters as the podium walls rose they were 
rebated, each rebate setting the wall back about 5 centimetres. These rebates or gradins, 
sometimes up to seven, were often topped with flat slate- like stones forming a shelf or 
string-course. This design was perhaps inspired by the same architectural tradition 
illustrated in the pre-Aksumite period at the Grat-Beal-Guebri and the temple at Yeha 
(Anfray 1972ii: 58). It not only narrowed the walls as they rose higher, but assisted the 
run-off of rain from the surfaces of the walls, and thus protected the mud- mortar to some 
extent. The rebated walls with re-entrants and salients are one of the chief distinguishing 
marks of Aksumite architecture, and apart from their reinforcing function they would 
have enhanced the appearance of the massive podia of the palaces and mansions by 
breaking up the solidity of their mass with light and shadow. A wall at the structure 
called Enda Sem`on was remarkable in that it had not only five surviving rebates, but the 
wall above was preserved for a further 1.80m, including a blocked-up window with a 
stone lintel (Munro-Hay 1989).  
Most of the surviving podium walls of these Aksumite structures were furnished at all 
corners with large and carefully cut granite corner blocks, which protected, linked, and 
supported the weaker parts of the walls. Occasionally a podium might be strengthened by 
a complete row of cut granite blocks, as still visible at Dungur and in the Aksumite part 
of the Maryam Tseyon cathedral podium. Granite was also used for architectural features 
such as columns, bases and capitals, doors, windows, paving, and the like, and 
particularly for the massive flights of steps which sometimes flanked two or three sides of 
the pavilions. A good deal of this stonework consisted of undecorated but well-dressed 
blocks, but some of the doorway blocks, or the columns and their bases and capitals, were 
decorated with a variety of designs.  
A thick lime plaster was noted on the walls of one room in the large tomb called the 
Mausoleum at Aksum (Munro-Hay 1989), and similarly appears on a chamfered column 
at Maryam Nazret. Lime mortar has also been observed fixing stones on the podium of 
the Aksumite church at Agula, but it does not appear to have been regularly used.  
At Adulis the main construction material was porous basalt (the same material was used 
for the stele at Adulis which Kosmas saw behind the marble throne there, lying broken 
into two pieces — Wolska-Conus 1968: 364) or sandstone. Polygonal blocks of basalt 
were used for walls, and cut cubes were assembled to form square columns. During the 
excavations at Adulis, Paribeni (1907: 464) was puzzled by the lack of doors and 
windows in walls he was able to clear up to a height of 3.40m. He concluded that they 
must only represent foundations, and this was in a measure true, since the buildings rose 
on podia as indicated by the excavations at Matara and Aksum. Among the structures 
which Paribeni cleared was one which he called the Ara del Sole, Altar of the Sun, 
because of a number of designs which he interpreted as hills and sun-discs carved on 
bluish marble plaques destined for fixing to the walls. A church had been built on top of 
the original podium, but the latter conformed in all other ways to the usual Aksumite 
style.  

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A second type of architecture, though similar in most essentials to that already described, 
employed wooden beams as a strengthening element within the walls. A square 
horizontal beam set in the wall supported rounded cross- members embedded in the 
stonework and forming ties across the width of the walls. The ends of these cross-
members projected from the external wall (and were sometimes visible internally as well) 
in rows, forming the characteristic `monkey-heads' often seen fossilised in stone in other 
examples of Ethiopian architecture. Doors and windows were constructed by a similar 
method, the openings being framed on all four sides and linked by cross members 
through the thickness of the walls; but the `monkey-heads' are square. Most of these 
features were carved in granite on the decorated stelae, and some can still be seen in the 
surviving ancient rock-cut or built churches of Tigray and Lalibela (Buxton and 
Matthews 1974; Plant 1985; Gerster 1970). The framed doors and windows appear as a 
repeated motif in some of these later structures, and have been dubbed the `Aksumite 
frieze', since they appear on the decorated stelae there (Plant 1985: 17, 20). However, the 
simple lintel was also known and employed, for example over the doorway of the East 
Tomb at Aksum and over a window at Enda Sem`on (Munro-Hay 1989).  
Illustration 21. The lower part of the still-standing decorated stele at Aksum, showing the 
imitation in stone of wooden architectural elements.  
Illustration 22. Apparently created long after the Aksumite period, the churches of 
Lalibela still employed the same general style of architecture, including imitation beam-
ends in stone.  
It is possible that the original inspiration for the design of the decorated stelae came from 
the South Arabian mud-brick multi- storey palaces familiar to the Aksumites from their 
involvements in that country, rather than from Ethiopian examples. On some of the 
Aksumite podia there could conceivably have been erected high tower- like structures of 
mud-brick around a wooden frame, such as that found at Mashgha in the Hadhramawt 
(Breton et al. 1980: pls. VIII, X) looking rather like the great stelae. But no evidence for 
such Yemeni-style buildings actually survives in Ethiopia, nor is there any archaeological 
indication there for mud-brick architecture. Alternatively, and more probably, the stelae 
could have been exaggerated designs based on the Aksumite palaces; and here there is 
archaeological support, since the structure called the `IW Building' partly cleared by the 
excava tions of Neville Chittick (Munro-Hay 1989), included just such wood-reinforced 
walls. Though the load-bearing strength of the rough stone and mud mortared walls is 
apparently very considerable, it seems most likely that these buildings would have been 
in reality limited to only two storeys above the podia. Evidence that the pavilions and 
some of these outer ranges were more than one storey high is provided by the occasional 
staircases which have been found. The central pavilions of Aksumite palaces were 
completely surrounded by ranges of subsidiary structures, pierced here and there by 
gateways and doors. Each ensemble must have formed very much the sort of thing 
mentioned by the sixth-century merchant Kosmas, who speaks of the `four-towered 
palace of the king of Ethiopia' (Wolska-Conus 1973). The recessed central parts of each 
facade may have reached a storey less in height than the corner salients, giving the 
impression of towers (as shown on the reconstructions). Kobishchanov's eight-storied 

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