Bet Giyorgis from the air. Perhaps the most beautiful of the monolithic churches, its roof is cut into the shape of a square cross, and visitors enter the church via stairs cut down into the volcanic rock. These stairways deepen into trenches that connect to a tunnel that opens to the base of the church and its entrance.
Monolithic churches were carved out of the ground to which they are still attached. Eight hundred years ago the Ethiopian King Lalibela had a divine vision to carve a new Jerusalem from volcanic stone underneath his place of birth. He hired workmen to chisel this vision out of solid stone, starting out with the surface of the roof at ground level, then carving down the outside of the walls, then tunneled in the windows. Once inside they carved up to the roof, then out and downwards to what would be the ground floor, and then out through the ground level doors. The architectural styles are based on those of more ancient constructed churches, and show shapes of what were wooden pillars and beams, but here they are excavated from solid stone in stone. Earlier churches closer to Aksum are often found carved into remote hillsides to protect them from attack by outsiders. But the earliest churches are found near Aksum, the birthplace of Ethiopian Christianity and the ancient seat of power some two thousand years ago. The Aksumite churches were built of rock and massive wooden beams, and these forms were later copied when the newer churches were carved from solid stone.
- Filename
- STNMTZ_19980601_01E.TIF
- Copyright
- © 1998 George Steinmetz
- Image Size
- 7351x4901 / 103.1MB
- www.georgesteinmetz.com
- Contained in galleries
