❖ “After surviving 1,500 years of human history in a remote monastery, the Garima Gospels are now facing their most severe threat.“
❖ “The war in Tigray has inflicted more destruction on Ethiopia’s religious and cultural heritage than anything since the invasions of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi.”
After surviving 1,500 years of human history in a remote monastery, the Garima Gospels are now facing their most severe threat.
When a Canadian scholar first glimpsed the ancient Garima Gospels, carried carefully into the sunlight by monks in a mountain monastery in northern Ethiopia, the pages were tattered and crumbling.
“The parchment was so brittle that flakes fell to the ground at every turn,” wrote Michael Gervers, a historian at the University of Toronto, recalling his earliest encounter with the manuscript more than 20 years ago.
Even then he did not fully realize what he was seeing. Some experts now believe it could be the world’s oldest intact version of illuminated Christian scripture. Radiocarbon analysis revealed that its pages date back as early as the fifth century, making it one of the oldest manuscripts of any kind in the world. Its brilliant colours and stunning illustrations make it even more valuable to world culture.
Today, after surviving 1,500 years of human history in a remote monastery, the Garima Gospels are facing their most severe threat.
Historic manuscripts, along with church icons and silver crosses, are among the treasures that have been plundered by Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers, raising global alarm for Tigray’s cultural heritage.
Cut off from the world by military clashes and telecommunications shutdowns, the fate of the Abba Garima monastery and its spectacular Garima Gospels is still unknown. But the area around the monastery is controlled by soldiers who have looted systematically since the start of the war. The fears are growing.
“It is chilling to many of us to think that these Gospels and other ancient artifacts are in the way of danger,” said Suleyman Dost, a professor in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies department at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
“These Gospels are not only among the earliest complete texts of the Christian scripture, but they also provide us with a rare glimpse into the language, religion and history of ancient Ethiopia,” he told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail.
“They are truly part of the world heritage and constitute indispensable sources for scholars of early Christianity, late antique Ethiopia and even early Islam.”
The Garima Gospels, bound and illustrated copies of the Four Gospels of the New Testament written in the classical Ethiopian language Ge’ez, are one of the treasures of the ancient Axumite kingdom, whose heartland is now engulfed by the war zone in Tigray.
“The war threatens countless invaluable remains from this period, including inscriptions, religious buildings and manuscripts that have been diligently preserved in monasteries for centuries,” Prof. Dost said.
The Axumite kingdom, whose territories extended across the Red Sea into modern-day Yemen, was one of the great cultural and economic empires of its time, a crossroads of early civilizations and one of the first states to accept Christianity as state religion, in the early fourth century, before even the Roman Empire. Its capital, Axum, is reputed by tradition to be the home of the Ark of the Covenant – another holy relic whose fate is unknown today.
“It was the one territory which retained its Christianity without external domination and has done so ever since,” Prof. Gervers said.
“It is the oldest free Christian culture in the world. And that culture was centred in what is now Eritrea and Tigray. The world is only at this point coming to recognize the importance of this area.”
The Garima Gospels are older than more famous Western manuscripts such as the Book of Kells, and a closer link to the original Greek gospels. “They are just amazing in their artistic expertise, incomparable even to early Gospel books that we have,” Prof. Gervers told The Globe in an interview. “They are of utmost importance to Christian culture as a whole. Their loss or displacement would be disastrous to the cultural heritage of Judeo-Christianity.”
Prof. Gervers has been documenting Ethiopian art and culture for decades, photographing historic church manuscripts and creating a unique database of about 70,000 digitized images, including the Garima Gospels. With no sign of the Tigray war ending soon, his database is becoming increasingly crucial. “We’re thankful that we were able to document so much of this over the past 30 years,” he said.
Among the most invaluable illustrations in the Garima Gospels, he said, are an unparalleled image of the evangelist Mark, and a rare image of a building that has been identified as the Old Temple in Jerusalem.
The war in Tigray has inflicted more destruction on Ethiopia’s religious and cultural heritage than anything since the invasions of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, who burned churches and manuscripts across the country in the 16th century, Prof. Gervers said.
He and his colleagues are trying to monitor the antiquities markets, in case any looters try to sell the manuscripts. “It would be an offence to Christianity if the Garima Gospels ended up for sale somewhere.” Even worse, soldiers could simply burn the manuscripts “out of spite,” he said. But so far their fate is a mystery. “We haven’t heard a word about it.”
Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian at Jena University in Germany who studies Ethiopian culture and history, said he has received reports of soldiers regularly searching churches and sometimes looting or burning church relics, including rare parchment manuscripts that were written by hand in late antiquity.
But there is still hope, he says. During conflicts of past centuries, the monks of Abba Garima carefully hid the Garima Gospels, possibly in mountain caves. Today there is a chance that the monks may have succeeded in hiding them again.
🔥 Today, in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, large numbers of women and girls are again being subjected to “unimaginable” terror and suffering as a result of pervasive sexual violence
🔥 Civilian casualties continue to mount, regional analysts say. Accumulating evidence suggests war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties. But Abiy’s army, the Eritrean troops he secretly invited into Tigray, and Amhara militia are believed to be the main culprits.
🔥 Prime minister Abiy Ahmed opened the way for victimisation of women with disastrous decision to attack Tigray
🔥 Ethiopia – once Africa’s big success story – is at growing risk of fracture and failure under Abiy Ahmed. The international community should call him personally to account before it’s too late.
🔥 Tigray’s abused, abandoned women cannot do it themselves. Unseen and unheard, they are drowning in a sea of tears.
The use of rape as a weapon of war is as old as warfare itself. In Bosnia in the 1990s, thousands of Muslim women were brutalised by Bosnian Serb forces, who set up “rape camps” as part of a policy of “ethnic cleansing”. In 2001, the UN’s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal redefined mass rape as a crime against humanity. Yet there have been many similar atrocities since then, including in South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Myanmar.
Now the world looks on – or rather, looks away – as it happens again. Today, in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, large numbers of women and girls are again being subjected to “unimaginable” terror and suffering as a result of pervasive sexual violence. The word “unimaginable” is taken from a disturbing new report on Tigray by Parliament’s international development committee – a report largely ignored by the British government and media.
Reporting from Tigray last week, where fighting erupted in November after government-led forces invaded to topple the region’s breakaway leadership, the International Rescue Committee charity warned the crisis was especially affecting women. “Women are having to engage in sexually exploitative relationships, receiving small amounts of money, food and/or shelter to survive and feed their children,” an IRC spokesman said.
“Rape is being used as a weapon of war across the conflict. Multiple displaced people have given eyewitness accounts of mass rape. Women who are assaulted are in need of multiple levels of care, including emergency contraceptives, and drugs to prevent HIV in addition to psychological support. With 71% of hospital and medical facilities damaged and many looted, medical supplies are scarce,” the IRC said.
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, opened the way for this mass victimisation of women with his disastrous decision to attack. Once feted as a peacemaker, he will be remembered as the man who chose brute force to settle a political argument, in one of the world’s most fragile states, in the middle of a global pandemic.
After failing to secure the quick victory he predicted, Abiy has minimised the scale of the emergency. The latest UN assessment tells a different story: 4.5 million people in need of food and assistance, hundreds of thousands displaced, 67,000 refugees sheltering in Sudan, and humanitarian convoys blocked. Opposition parties say more than 50,000 people have died. Amnesty International last week decried a “ferocious tide” of rights violations including “numerous credible reports of women and girls being subjected to sexual violence, including gang rape, by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers”.
Save the Children also sounded the alarm. Thousands of children separated from their families were at daily risk of abuse while living in “unsafe and dire conditions” in informal camps, it said. “Many survivors are too scared to report sexual assault or seek treatment due to stigma and fear of reprisal”.
The worst crimes are often hidden from view, Doctors Without Borders said: “Many of Tigray’s six million people live in mountainous and rural areas where they are all but invisible to the outside world.” Malnutrition was on the rise, especially among children and pregnant women, it said.
The extent of the fighting is unclear, given the government’s internet blackout, reporting restrictions, and unreliable official information. Civilian casualties continue to mount, regional analysts say. Accumulating evidence suggests war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties. But Abiy’s army, the Eritrean troops he secretly invited into Tigray, and Amhara militia are believed to be the main culprits.
His initial bullishness dispelled, Abiy now describes the war he began as “tiresome”, says some reports of atrocities are exaggerated or faked, and has promised investigations. He claims Eritrean soldiers are withdrawing. There’s no doubt opposition forces are also much to blame for continuing carnage and misery. But hopes Abiy will heed appeals to stop fighting and open peace talks were dashed last weekend when Ethiopia’s council of ministers formally designated Tigray’s leadership, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, as a terrorist organisation. The International Crisis Group warns guerrilla warfare could drag on for years.
Anyone expecting decisive international intervention is likely to be disappointed. The African Union has proved ineffective, the UN security council even more so. G7 foreign ministers, meeting in London last week, went out of their way to avoid upsetting Abiy’s government, which they persist in regarding as a strategic ally rather than a problematic actor.
“We condemn the killing of civilians, rape and sexual exploitation, and other forms of gender-based violence,” the G7 communique said. It backed an investigation process, called for a ceasefire and improved humanitarian access, and urged “a clear, inclusive political process in Tigray”.
But direct pressure on Abiy, such as the threat of sanctions and aid cuts, and concerted, collective action to find and prosecute those legally responsible for atrocities and mass rapes were wholly lacking. It was a feeble start for US president Joe Biden’s putative “alliance of democracies” and Boris Johnson’s idea of Britain as a global “force for good”.
Maintaining Ethiopia’s “unity and territorial integrity” appears to be the west’s main concern. Yet under Abiy’s divisive leadership, lethal clashes between the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups are escalating. Political violence affects several regions. A possible war with Egypt looms over Addis Ababa’s new Blue Nile dam. And on 5 June, ill-prepared, boycotted, and un-monitored national elections that Abiy vows to win could drive Ethiopians further apart.
Under Abiy, Ethiopia – once Africa’s big success story – is at growing risk of fracture and failure. The international community should call him personally to account before it’s too late.
Tigray’s abused, abandoned women cannot do it themselves. Unseen and unheard, they are drowning in a sea of tears.
On January 12, 2021, Tghat received information about a massacre in Debre Abay. We published a short article about it here. The massacre took place on 5 and 6 January, in western Tigray, in an area called Debre Abay, named after the famous Debre Abay monastry.
According to our informants, the Ethiopian and Eritrean military first started shelling a small town, called Mai Hrmaz, from far. Houses were destroyed and children killed. When they arrived at the small town, a fight with Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) started which lasted for two days. According to some sources, around 500 Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers were killed in the fight. A reinforcement was then asked and sent to the location, but the fight was already over and TDF forces were not in the area. Then the angry reinforcement force took its revenge on the town’s civilian population by massacring 100 of them, looting shops and houses.
A graphic footage
Yesterday, a graphic footage of a Debre Abay massacre has appeared. The person who sent the footage wrote “this is a video of the Ethiopian military shooting civilians in Deber Abay, Abune Samuel”. We believe it is a footage of the massacre that took place on 5 and 6 January. The footage is extremely graphic and viewer discretion is required.
About 24 violently killed bodies in groups can be seen in the footage. The killed bodies are all men, and almost all of them look young men. In the footage is one wounded young man who appear to have managed to stay alive by pretending dead.
A group of Amharic-speaking people are heard, together with the filming man. The person filming the footage, (from his Amharic accent) likely an Oromo member of the Ethiopian military, says at the start of the footage, upon seeing the not (yet) dead man, “hey, I think it is necessary to get rid of the not yet dead”. The people accompanying him respond with some inaudible utterances. One masculine voice says, among other things, “there is no one that is not dead”.
Upon approaching the wounded and almost dying man, the filming person asks in Amharic “why did you get in, in the first place?” It is not clear what he is referring to when he says ‘get in”. The wounded man utters some weak inaudible things in Tigrinya, among which, he says “I have a house here” in a weak voice. The filming man says “is this who made you get in?” in what seems there is another person to whom he is pointing at. But the wounded man says “yes, that is mine” referring to the house he mentioned. Again, the filming man asks “is this [who made you get in]?”. The wounded man repeats “yes, it is mine” referring to the house he mentioned. Clearly, they don’t understand each other. The filming man asks in Amharic, the wounded man replies in Tigrinya, his responses indicating he does not understand the questions and maybe the language too.
The filming man says “you don’t speak Amharic?” The wounded man replies, in Tigrinya, “one of my houses is this one, the one with the corrugated iron”. A feminine voice from the people accompanying the filming man says “he can speak [Amharic]”. The filming man says “speak up [in Amharic]” followed by an offensive Amharic swear word, literally ” I fuck your mother”. The wounded man utters “ehe”, indicating he does not hear or understand him. The filming man repeats again “speak up [in Amharic]. Son of beach”.
The filming man moves further to film three groups of killed people. One group with two men, the second with four and the third with six men. Three people in some military uniforms are also seen around the end of the footage.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 26, 2021
“During this Pandemic where no race nor religion are spared yet there are humans who aren’t human to do such an act. GOD is watching and none will escape from HIM”
Thank you, CBN for reporting about the unheard cries and unseen tears of Ethiopian Christians. Tragedy is unfolding in northern Ethiopia, yet the world community is doing nothing about it. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International even Open Doors all remain silent because the victims over there are ancient Orthodox Christians – and the perpetrator prime minster claims to be Protestant.
Two important corrections to the EBN news story:
👉 1st: This particular tragedy with over 758 deaths occurred on December 15, not last week. Of course, we don’t know what’s happening since then. Certainly it’s another tragedy that the ancient Christians of Aksum were not able to celebrate at all last week’s Epiphany/Timket – the first time in the 2.000 -years history of Christian Ethiopia.
👉 The 2nd correction: “The Ethiopians claim the Ark was brought to Aksum about 800 years ago”. No we Ethiopians believe that The Ark arrived nearly 3,000 years ago.
Up to two million Ethiopians are facing starvation amid intense fighting between the government and rebel groups in the northern part of that country. Fighting increased in the Tigray region, spurring reports of a bloody massacre at a church in the Ethiopian city of Aksum that killed over 700 people.
For more than 2,000 years, Ethiopians have believed their country holds one of the most sacred relics in all of Judeo-Christian history – the Ark of the Covenant. In the city of Aksum, a special church known as the Church of St. Mary of Zion is where the ark is said to have rested for hundreds of years. Adventurer and Historian Bob Cornuke has explored the region extensively.
“The Ethiopians claim the Ark was brought to Aksum about 800 years ago and placed in this specially-constructed church for safekeeping,” Cornuke told CBN News. “Only one man, known as the guardian, is allowed inside that church to watch over the Ark. So this is a very special and sacred place for Ethiopian Christians.”
Heavy fighting between a regional militia and the Ethiopian Army has been raging in this area since November, and the city of Aksum has been at the center of the conflict. Tragedy struck last week as Ethiopian Christians gathered in Aksum to celebrate one of the most important holidays in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, the annual festival of Timkat.
Cornuke explained, “Timkat is the festival of the Epiphany, and they celebrate it every January with dancing and all-night prayer vigils. But this year things went terribly wrong.”
Up to a thousand worshippers surrounded the ancient church which is said to house the Ark of the Covenant when Ethiopian troops approached and, according to eyewitnesses, opened fire. More than 700 Ethiopian Christians were said to have been killed, though confirmation of the attack has been difficult because the area is closed to journalists.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the broader crisis is huge. “We estimate that 2.3 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in Tigray including 1.3 million children,” Dujarric said. “Localized fighting and insecurity continues.”
“Access to most parts of northwestern and eastern and central Tigray remains constrained due to the ongoing insecurity and bureaucratic hurdles,” Dujarric said.
The fighting has led to a massive wave of refugees fleeing across the nearby border into Sudan. Aid agencies there warn mass starvation is a real factor if the world doesn’t act soon. Incoming refugees report almost daily massacres by both sides as well as mass rapes and other human rights abuses. Humanitarian aid organizations on the ground are calling the situation “urgent.”
Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, called for US engagement in his recent confirmation hearing.
“Ethiopia: I share your deep concerns. We’ve seen a number of deeply, deeply concerning actions taken including atrocities,” Blinken said. “We need to see restoration of communication, we need access for humanitarian assistance in the region, and I worry as well that what started there has the potential to be destabilizing throughout the horn of Africa.”
The Ethiopian government denies the atrocities and both sides are claiming victory in the conflict, but the UN says there is plenty of blame to go around.
Elizabeth Throssell, the spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said, “We have received consistent information pointing to violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by all parties to the conflict – including artillery strikes on populated areas, the deliberate targeting of civilians, extrajudicial killings and widespread looting.”
No matter which side actually wins the conflict, the losers will be the people of this region, as more than 1,000 refugees per day flee into makeshift camps across the Sudanese border, just hoping to survive.
“Abiy seems to have lost control of events. There is anger in Mekelle, where a puppet administration has been installed, about ongoing security issues, including rapes. The threat of rural famine looms large. In the mid-1980s, mass starvation in Ethiopia shocked the world. About 1 million people died. Those horrors were subsequently vanquished by decades of hard work.
To Abiy’s great shame, the spectre of famine now haunts Ethiopia again. The good work of the past is being undone. He should hand back his Nobel peace prize and answer for his actions in Tigray.
Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s long-serving former foreign minister, was one of the foremost African diplomats of his generation. He was gunned down this month in Tigray by the armed forces of a lesser man – Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner. Some suggest it was the Eritrean military, Abiy’s allies, who killed Seyoum, although their presence in Tigray is officially denied. The circumstances of his death remain murky.
As with much of the unreported, unchallenged murder and mayhem currently occurring in northern Ethiopia, murky is what Abiy prefers. When he ordered the army’s assault on the breakaway Tigray region in November, he blocked the internet, shut out aid agencies and banned journalists. It’s a conflict he claims to have won – but the emerging reality is very different. It’s a war fought in the shadows, with the outside world kept in the dark.
After humanitarian workers finally gained limited access this month, it was estimated that 4.5 million of Tigray’s 6 million people need emergency food aid. Hundreds of thousands are said to face starvation. The UN warns that Eritrean refugees in the Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps are in “desperate need of supplies” and harassed by armed gangs. Some are said to have been forcibly, illegally repatriated.
Access continues to be denied to two other camps, Shimelba and Hitsats, which have been set ablaze. Many of the camps’ residents are believed to have fled marauding Eritrean and Amhara militiamen. Satellite images published by UK-based DX Open Network reportedly show damage to 400 structures at Shimelba. Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency, points to “concrete indications of major violations of international law”.
There are persistent, unconfirmed reports of massacres, torture, rapes, abductions, and the looting or destruction of centuries-old manuscripts and artefacts across Tigray. Last week, EEPA, a Belgium-based NGO, described a massacre of 750 people at a cathedral in Aksum that reputedly houses the Ark of the Covenant. Ethiopian troops and Amhara militia are accused of the killings at the Church of St Mary of Zion, part of a UN World Heritage site. The report has not been independently verified.
Despite Abiy’s claims that the war is over and no civilians have been harmed, sporadic fighting continues, an analyst familiar with government thinking said. Thousands of people have died, about 50,000 have fled to Sudan, and many are homeless, sheltering in caves. Intentional artillery attacks have destroyed hospitals and health centres in an echo of the Syrian war, the analyst said.
Meeting this month in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, aid workers complained Ethiopia’s government was still hindering relief efforts and demanded full access. “People are dying of starvation. In Adwa, people are dying while they are sleeping. [It’s] the same in other zones,” a regional administrator, Berhane Gebretsadik, was quoted as saying. But there has been scant response from Addis Ababa.
Official Ethiopian and Eritrean denials that Eritrean forces are operating in Tigray are contradicted by eyewitness accounts. Amid the murk, it seems clear Eritrea’s dictator-president, Isaias Afwerki, has made common cause with Abiy. The two met in Addis Ababa in October, shortly before the war was launched, to discuss the “consolidation of regional cooperation”.
Afwerki is an old enemy who runs a brutally repressive regime. But he shares Abiiy’s hatred of the Tigrayan leadership that dominated the government of former prime minister Meles Zenawi during Ethiopia’s 20-year border war with Eritrea. Abiy, an Oromo from Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, made peace with Eritrea in 2018, ousted his Tigrayan rivals, and has been feuding with them ever since.
Further evidence of secret alliances comes from Somalia. The Somali Guardian reported this month that 2,500 Somali recruits were treated as “cannon fodder” after being sent to a military base in Eritrea for training, then deployed in Tigray with Eritrean forces. Dozens are reported to have been killed.
International scrutiny of Abiy’s Tigray war has been largely lacking. An exception is the EU, which has indefinitely suspended €88m in aid to Addis Ababa. “We receive consistent reports of ethnic-targeted violence, killings, looting, rapes, forceful return of refugees and possible war crimes,” Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, said.
The United Nations and European Union warnings, coupled with the shocking murder of the internationally respected Seyoum Mesfin, may now bring closer scrutiny. I met Seyoum, a co-founder in 1975 of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, in Addis in 2008. He was a master diplomat. According to Alex de Waal, the Africa specialist, Seyoum was a skilled peacemaker in Rwanda and Sudan who “presided over the rehabilitation of Ethiopia’s international standing” after 1991.
Abiy now risks destroying that standing. “The circumstances of Seyoum’s killing aren’t clear. The Ethiopian government is not a reliable source of information. Eritrea – which may well have carried out the assassinations – is remaining silent. The official report that Seyoum and his colleagues ‘refused to surrender’ is opaque,” De Waal wrote.
He noted that the two other elderly Tigrayans killed alongside Seyoum, aged 71, were Abay Tsehaye, who had just had heart surgery, and Asmelash Woldeselassie, who was blind. This trio hardly posed a physical threat to heavily armed troops.
Abiy seems to have lost control of events. There is anger in Mekelle, where a puppet administration has been installed, about ongoing security issues, including rapes. The threat of rural famine looms large. In the mid-1980s, mass starvation in Ethiopia shocked the world. About 1 million people died. Those horrors were subsequently vanquished by decades of hard work.
To Abiy’s great shame, the spectre of famine now haunts Ethiopia again. The good work of the past is being undone. He should hand back his Nobel peace prize and answer for his actions in Tigray.
“Attacks on cultural heritage are devastating in the context of war as they speak of the destruction of the soul of a people, of things which have endured through the ancestors.”
Tigray’s Rich Heritage is ‘highly Endangered’, Experts Warn, as The Conflict Escalates Near Key Cultural Sites
Abuna Yemata Guh Church, Gheralta, Tigray
Abuna Yemata Guh Church, Gheralta, Tigray
It has been hidden from view for thousands of years, and its whereabouts never proved. But if the Ark of the Covenant indeed rests in a chapel in northern Ethiopia, this extraordinary religious treasure could be at grave risk from fighting in the area.
The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, which reputedly houses the ark – a casket of gilded wood containing stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, according to the Bible – was the scene of a recent massacre of 750 people, reports filtering out of the country say.
International experts have raised the alarm over the security of the ark and other religious and cultural artefacts as a result of escalating conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Among those voicing concern are academics from the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies at Hamburg University, who warn that Tigray’s rich cultural heritage is “highly endangered”. In an appeal, they say reports suggest “hostilities are taking place in close proximity to renowned cultural sites”.
They add: “There are reports of looting of manuscripts from Tigrayan churches and monasteries, and warnings that they will … be taken out of Ethiopia to be sold at antiquities markets in other countries.”
The conflict began in early November when Ethiopia’s Nobel peace prize-winning prime minister Abiy Ahmed sent federal forces to attack the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled the country for almost three decades until 2018. Abiy has accused the TPLF, which has its own military, of seeking to destabilise Ethiopia and holding illegitimate elections. Troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s former enemy to the north, have crossed the border to fight alongside Abiy’s forces.
Reliable reports of the fighting and its impact have been scarce due to a communications blackout and lack of humanitarian access, but the UN has warned of mass killings, the displacement of civilians and looting. More than 21,000 people have reportedly fled across the border to Sudan.
Heritage experts readily acknowledge that the humanitarian crisis must take priority over protection of the country’s artefacts and antiquities. But, said Alison Phipps, professor of languages and intercultural studies at Glasgow University, “these are sacred sites and of incalculable value to the history of Christianity and its development in Ethiopia in particular.
“Attacks on cultural heritage are devastating in the context of war as they speak of the destruction of the soul of a people, of things which have endured through the ancestors.”
Catherine D’Andrea, director of the Eastern Tigray archaeological project at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, said the region was “truly blessed with numerous and varied forms of tangible and intangible cultural patrimony”.
They include monumental architecture such as the Unesco world heritage site of Aksum, rock-hewn churches and remains of one of the earliest mosques in Africa, which are at high risk of damage, she said. “In addition, there are less visible cultural treasures, including manuscripts, paintings, oral traditions and artefacts held by churches and monasteries scattered throughout rural areas of Tigray. These tend not to be fully documented, so we can’t even begin to calculate the potential losses if destroyed or pillaged.”
Despite the absence of verifiable information, damage from the conflict to the recently reconstructed 7th-century mosque complex at Negash had been clearly documented, said D’Andrea. “It appears that the structure was shelled and images from within are suggestive of looting.”
At the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, fleeing civilians have said the aim of the attack, in which hundreds of people hiding in the church were brought out and shot, was to remove the ark to Addis Ababa, according to Martin Plaut, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
The ark is believed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians to have been brought to Aksum by Menelik, the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel, after Jerusalem was sacked in 586/587BC and Solomon’s temple destroyed. It has since been guarded by a succession of monks who are forbidden until death to leave the church grounds.
As well as the potential threat to the ark, Eritrean troops were “looting everything they can get their hands on” in the region, Plaut told the Observer. “They’ve also gone through some monasteries and churches, taking Bibles and icons back across the border. It’s absolutely appalling.”
The monastery of Debre Damo, dating from the sixth century and containing painted ceilings and walls, is also reported to have been attacked.
Alessandro Bausi of the Hiob Ludolf Centre said he was “extremely concerned that unique artefacts will be destroyed or lost”. The centre is calling on Ethiopia’s state institutions to do “everything possible to protect the cultural property of Tigray”, and for warring parties “to abstain from attacking the cultural heritage and to respect the integrity of the places, both religious and secular, where this heritage is preserved”.
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