Qualla: Axum https://qualla.com/axum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Axum https://qualla.com/axum Axum: Introduction https://qualla.com/axum/ Photo credit Daniel Havell / After Henry Salt, Public domain. The Great Stele of Axum weighed more than five hundred tonnes when it was quarried, dressed, and somehow raised upright from a single piece of solid granite. It stood over thirty-three metres tall - the largest monolith ever erected by human hands - before it toppled, sometime in the fourth century AD, and shattered into the fragments that still lie on the ground today. No one knows exactly how the Aksumites moved it. No one is entirely sure why they carved it. What the stelae make unmistakable is that the kingdom that rose here on the Tigrayan plateau considered itself the equal of Rome.

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Image: Daniel Havell / After Henry Salt | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/sfe8-axum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Axum: An Equal of Empires https://qualla.com/axum/ Photo credit Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. For nearly eight centuries, Aksum sat in the conversation of the ancient world alongside Rome, Persia, and China. Caravans crossed the Red Sea loaded with ivory, gold, and obsidian; coins struck in the city's mints circulated from Egypt to South Asia. The Ezana Stele still stands...

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Image: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/sfe8-axum-an-equal-of-empires.mp3 0:06 2 full Axum: Granite Carved from the Sky https://qualla.com/axum/ Photo credit A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest, CC BY 2.0. The stelae are monolithic - each carved from a single block of granite quarried roughly four kilometres away. Their faces are dressed with false windows, false doors, and bands that imitate timber beams, as if the Aksumites had translated the houses of the living into housing for...

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Image: A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/sfe8-axum-granite-carved-from-the-sky.mp3 0:06 3 full Axum: The Ark and the Fig Tree https://qualla.com/axum/ Photo credit Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ethiopian Orthodox tradition teaches that the Ark of the Covenant rests here, inside the Chapel of the Tablet at the Cathedral of St Mary of Zion. Only one monk - a guardian chosen for life - is permitted to see it. Pilgrims accept this with the same unquestioning certainty that ...

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Image: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/sfe8-axum-the-ark-and-the-fig-tree.mp3 0:06 4 full Axum: The Quieter City https://qualla.com/axum/ Photo credit A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest, CC BY 2.0. Axum today is a Tigrayan town of around 56,000, its cobbled side streets shaded by flame trees, its bajaj rickshaws whining between the Northern Stelae Field and the main road. It is cleaner than many Ethiopian towns, and quieter - the tourist pressure that once filled the Yeha H...

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Image: A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/sfe8-axum-the-quieter-city.mp3 0:06 5 full Axum: Across the Highlands https://qualla.com/axum/ Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. Axum sits at 2,130 metres in the Tigray highlands, just south of the Eritrean border it shares through the Tigrinya language. The Yohannes IV Airport, named for the nineteenth-century Ethiopian emperor, handles flights from Addis Ababa; the road from Gondar through Debarik climbs...

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Image: A.Savin | FAL

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/e/8/axum-wk/sfe8-axum-across-the-highlands.mp3 0:06 6 full