April 29, 2005
The last-but-one resting place
We ended up getting held up in Axum for a couple of days, thanks largely to Ethiopian Airlines (read all about it on Amber's blog).
The only positive thing to come out of it all was that we had a chance to go down to the obelisk field one last time to see the current resting place of the returned obelisk. The three pieces are being kept behind barbed wire on the ground in front of the northern stellae field. Two days after the big return, crowds were still gathering to have a look. To answer one question from Yacob, it looks like the graffiti scrawled on the bottom of the obelisk in Rome has now been cleaned off.
The original plan was to keep the obelisk pieces in their current location until after the rains ahead of a panned re-erection in September or October. However, a spanner has been thrown into the works.
On the day of the arrival of the third piece (on April 25) UNESCO announced that is had discovered a huge network of ancient tombs under the obelisk field. A string of experts went on to warn that re-erecting the obelisk in its former position could damage this newly-discovered site.
So it is good and bad news for Axum. One one hand, the town could soon have a new tourist attraction - a network of tombs containing all sorts of treasures. On the other, it may have to wait a bit longer to see its obelisk standing tall again.
Posted by aheavens at April 29, 2005 7:13 AM