In the 1960s, one of our first projects ever undertaken was at Lalibela. A team of Italian conservators documented the churches, undertook stabilization efforts, and worked to bring international attention to the importance and fragility of these extraordinary structures.
Lalibela (Amharic: áˆáˆŠá áˆ) is a town in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. Located in the Lasta district and North Wollo Zone, it is a tourist site for its famous rock-cut monolithic churches. The whole of Lalibela is a large and important site for the antiquity, medieval, and post-medieval civilization of Ethiopia.[1] To Christians, Lalibela is one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, and a center of pilgrimage.
During the reign of Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, a member of the Zagwe dynasty who ruled Ethiopia in the late 12th century and early 13th century, the current town of Lalibela was known as Roha. The saint-king was named because a swarm of bees is said to have surrounded him at his birth, which his mother took as a sign of his future reign as emperor of Ethiopia. The names of several places in the modern town and the general layout of the rock-cut churches themselves are said to mimic names and patterns observed by Lalibela during the time he spent as a youth in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
This rural town is known around the world for its churches carved from within the earth from "living rock," which play an important part in the history of rock-cut architecture. Though the dating of the churches is not well established, most are thought to have been built during the reign of Lalibela, namely during the 12th and 13th centuries. Unesco identifies 11 churches,[1] assembled in four groups:
Ethiopian Architect Bayenew Melaku is a lecturer in the CUAH (chair of Conservation of Urban and Architectural Heritage) in EiABC (Ethiopian Institute of Architecture Building Construction and City Development) at Addis Ababa University. His research under the direction of Professor Fasil Giorghis will be incorporated into the curriculum on conservation and the development of databases for teaching.
Bayenew is research coordinator and chief site Architect in the conservation of the historic Menilik II Mausoleum Taaka Nagast Baata Lemariam Church in the Imperial Compound in Addis Ababa. He also coordinates and supervises the architectural conservation of the Church of Dabra Mihret St. Michael in Ankober, and was part of the conservation team of the World Heritage archeological site in Aksum. The Addis Ababa diocese has assigned him to document highly deteriorated churches found in and around Addis Ababa.
He is interested in the Architectural and Cultural values of rock-cut churches since these values and the ancient technology of the craft are vanishing due to rapid urbanization and the transformation of the urban landscape. Bayenew has been working with Professor Michael Gervers as an Architect on expeditions to northern Ethiopia. He has produced measured drawings, 3D visualization and animations, and is involved in the post-production of video interviews and recorded documents.
Blen is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford. She has a BSc in Architecture and an MSc in Archaeological Material Sciences. She is interested in studying the deterioration of heritage buildings in the natural environment. Her Ph.D. research focuses on developing a methodology to diagnose deterioration of rock-cut heritage sites using non-destructive and laboratory techniques. She is currently studying the deterioration of a group of rock-hewn churches at the UNESCO world heritage site in Lalibela (Ethiopia), and hopes that the results of her research will improve the techniques currently being used to monitor and preserve rock-cut heritage sites.
People have carved churches out of solid rock since at least the 11th century, but until recently, scholars thought the practice had died out. Enter Michael Gervers, a professor in the department of historical and cultural studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough and expert on Ethiopian history. While travelling throughout rural Ethiopia to digitize ecclesiastical manuscripts, he encountered hundreds of rock-cut churches, some carved not just within the past 500 years, but within the past two decades.
Since most of the modern rock-cut churches are being made in rural areas, the only way to find out more is to visit them. Often this involves travelling from village to village, and, once there, asking the craftsmen if they know of others that are being built, notes Gervers.
These hundreds of rock-hewn churches demonstrate the finest qualitiesof worked stone anywhere in the world, along with other such churchesin France, Italy and southeastern Turkey, says Gervers. He has alsoseen many of the latter, and excavated one in France. UNESCO has namedthe grouping of 12 rock-cut and monolithic churches in the Ethiopianhighlands, in the town of Lalibela, as the eighth-most historicallysignificant site in the world.
And yet these churches and their contents are threatened from variousquarters: the effects of age and the earthquake-prone landmass,political instability, and the ever-present vermin. Ethiopia hasinsufficient means to maintain, let alone restore, these rock-cutwonders.
These two kings were succeeded by LÄlibalÄ , whose reign in the late 12th/early 13th century is better documented. According to two land grants preserved in the Gospels of Dabra LibÄnos church, King LÄlibalÄ was already reigning in the year 1204 and was still in power in the year 1225 when he made a donation to the church of Beta Mehdane Alam. Other internal manuscripts written long after his reign push his ascendance back to the year 1185 and state that he completed his rock-hewn churches in 120814.
These two kings were succeeded by L\u0101libal\u0101 , whose reign in the late 12th/early 13th century is better documented. According to two land grants preserved in the Gospels of Dabra Lib\u0101nos church, King L\u0101libal\u0101 was already reigning in the year 1204 and was still in power in the year 1225 when he made a donation to the church of Beta Mehdane Alam. Other internal manuscripts written long after his reign push his ascendance back to the year 1185 and state that he completed his rock-hewn churches in 120814.
The architectural tradition of creating rock-cut structures is an ancient one in the northern horn of Africa. The oldest of such structures date back to the icon rock-cut Aksumite \u2018tomb of the brick arches\u2019 dated to the 4th century during the pre-Christian era, and the 6th century funerary rock-cut churches and chapels that were set ontop of rock-cut tombs of Christian monarchs near the town of Degum (modern eastern Tigray).21
Rock-hewn churches ontop of similarly constructed tombs increased in elaboration during the post-Aksumite era, with the construction of the church of Beraqit, and the cross-in-square churches of Abraha-wa-Atsbaha, Tcherqos Wukro, and Mika\u2019el Amba that were carved during the 8th-10th century. By the 12th and 13th century, lone-standing rock-hewn churches that served solely as monastic institutions (without funerary associations) were constructed, these include the Maryam wurko and Debra Tsion churches. All of these rock-cut churches retain classical Aksumite architectural features and spatial design.22
Based on architectural styles and liturgical changes, some scholars propose the following chronology in completion of construction; the churches of Beta Danagel, Beta Marqorewos, Beta Gabreal-Rufael, Beta Marsqal and Beta Lehem (as well as Washa Mika\u2019el) were carved from much older structures that were later transformed into churches in the 13th century, while the monolithic rock-cut churches of Beta Maryam, Beta Madhane Alam, Beta Libanos and Beta Amanuel were likely created during the 13th century.37
In early November, Gervers released some of his findings to the world when he published interviews with craftsmen, priests and parishioners, as well as images of the Ethiopian rock-cut churches he's seen, on the university's website. The web resource is expected to eventually contain hundreds of photographs, transcripts and hours of video interviews about the practice.
Some of the most famous examples of monolithic churches carved from rock exist in Lalibela, a town in a mountainous region of northern Ethiopia where a complex of rock-cut churches have been designated a UNESCO world heritage site.
Lalibela is famous for its extraordinary group of monolithic rock-cut churches - but when were they constructed and who designed and built them? Oral tradition attributes the building of the churches to King Lalibela at the end of the twelfth century, but is there any real evidence for this? David Buxton, and later Michael Gervers, thought that some of the work must have extended in to the fourteenth century from the different styles of decoration. Recently David Phillipson has suggested, based largely on his interpretation of the archaeological evidence, that the site was built in three phases with the earliest phase possibly dating from the seventh to eighth century. Neither Claude Lepage or Jacques Mercier agree with these theories. They believe that the site was planned and excavated during the time of King Lalibela, although the function of many of the buildings has changed over the years.
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