Ethiopia: Axum, the Cradle of Ancient Civilization

Chapter 6: Axum, Cradle of Ancient Civilization

After days of winding mountain roads, rugged landscapes, and stone castles that felt pulled straight out of legend, we finally reached Axum. This wasn’t just another stop on our Ethiopian journey—it felt like stepping directly into the heartbeat of history. Ethiopia calls itself the Land of Origins, and in Axum, I understood why.

With more than 2,500 years of history, Axum was once the capital of an empire that traded with Rome, India, and Arabia. Its name alone carries the weight of myth, faith, and mystery. Most famously, Axum is believed to guard one of the greatest treasures in religious history: the Ark of the Covenant.

The Church of St. Mary of Zion

The Stelae of Axum

Our first stop was the Stelae Fields, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These towering granite obelisks are unlike anything I’ve seen before. Some stretch nearly 20 meters high, carved from a single piece of stone, their faces etched with windows and doors as though they were stone skyscrapers from another age.

But oddly enough, it wasn’t the proud standing stelae that left me most in awe—it was the one lying flat on the ground. Seeing its detailed carvings up close made me wonder how on earth such massive stones were transported, raised, and precisely shaped thousands of years ago.

Walking through the field, I had to remind myself that this was once a cemetery. We saw tombs from the 3rd and 4th centuries, including the Tomb of the False Door, believed to belong to an unknown Aksumite king. Even in their silence, these monuments spoke volumes about the engineering genius and spiritual devotion of the Axumite Empire.

The nearby Archaeological Museum gave us a fuller picture—artifacts from the pre-Axumite, Aksumite, and post-Aksumite eras lined its displays. Tools, pottery, inscriptions… each piece stitched together fragments of an empire that once commanded the world’s attention.

The Church of Saint Mary of Zion

But what I was most eager to see was the Church of Saint Mary of Zion, the holiest site in Ethiopian Christianity. We didn’t go immediately; a funeral was taking place, and I was struck by how the entire block filled with mourners. The air was heavy with chanting and grief—a reminder of how deeply faith runs in daily life here.

When we finally stood before the church complex, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe. According to Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, this is where the Ark of the Covenant rests, guarded by a single monk who dedicates his entire life to it. No one else may see it, not even emperors. Whether or not the Ark truly lies inside, the devotion surrounding it is real—and you can feel it in the stones beneath your feet.

In front of the new church lie the visible foundations of the original church, a reminder that faith has been rooted here for centuries. Today the complex is made up of three distinct buildings: the first crowned with a shimmering golden dome, the middle chapel said to house the Ark of the Covenant, and a third building that serves as a monastery. Together, they form a living monument to Ethiopia’s spiritual heart.

Inside the Church

Stepping into the church itself was another revelation. The space felt light and airy, filled with the glow of murals and religious paintings. Saints and angels gazed down from the walls, their faces painted in vibrant colors that seemed to carry both history and holiness.

A priest welcomed us and, with great care, showed us an ancient book of Mary. Its pages were made of goat skin, each one hand-painted with passages in Ge’ez and luminous images of biblical stories. The reds, blues, and golds still shone brightly, as if untouched by time.

Holding it felt intimate—like being invited into the very soul of Ethiopian Christianity. It wasn’t just history on display; it was faith, alive and breathing, handed from one generation to the next.

Nearby, another small museum displayed sacred relics—crosses, manuscripts, and crowns—that carried the fingerprints of centuries of devotion. To stand among them was to stand in the presence of an unbroken spiritual lineage.

Kings, Inscriptions, and the Dawn of Christianity

A little outside the city, we visited the tombs of King Kaleb and his son Gebre Meskel from the 6th century. Their underground chambers, long since looted, still whispered of power and reverence.

Then came one of my unexpected finds: the Ezana Inscriptions. These stone tablets are written in three languages—Ge’ez, Sabaean, and Greek—and they record King Ezana’s conversion to Christianity in the 4th century. It was under his reign that Ethiopia became one of the very first nations in the world to embrace Christianity as a state religion—long before much of Europe. To see this stone was to see the very roots of faith itself.

The Queen of Sheba’s Shadow

No journey to Axum would be complete without stepping into legend. In a quiet part of the city lies the ruins of Queen Sheba’s palace stretch across the ground—crumbled walls and scattered stones that spark the imagination.

According to tradition, Sheba raised her son Menelik I here after her famous visit to King Solomon in Jerusalem. It was Menelik, the story goes, who later brought the Ark of the Covenant to Axum. Whether fact or legend, it ties this city not only to Ethiopia’s story, but to the sacred narrative of the world.

As we left Axum, I carried with me more than just photographs. I carried the sense that this wasn’t simply a place frozen in the past—it’s a living memory, pulsing with faith, history and legends. In Ethiopia, the Land of Origins, Axum feels like the very cradle where so much of human story — empire, religion, myth—was first written