Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Historical route: Axum


...
After Gondar, we continued by domestic flight to Axum. None of these flights are longer than 50 minutes, so its really nu fuss apart from getting up early in the morning.
Axum is equally amazing but gives you another atmosphere. This is more ancient. Enormous obelisks and underground tombs that make you wonder how man managed to construct things like this out of hard granite without machines or other modern equipment. It's like Egypt. This place, just like the others we visited are all UNESCO world heritage sites.
AXUM was the capital of the old Abyssinia and ruled the place from 400 BC - 1000 AD! Quite an achievement. They had trading routes with Southern Europe, Alexandria, Byzantium and others during the roman era. Eventually they declined due to religious squabbles and the arabs cutting their trade routes.
Axum of today has a lot to offer for the historically interested tourist. The main attraction is the enormous Obelisks that the old rulers raised. The fallen one on the picture is supposed to be the biggest and heaviest man made structure made from one piece of stone...ever! It's weighing just 520 tonnes and is 33 meters high!
But Axum is not only stones and obelisks...
...

No comments:

Post a Comment