TRABAJOS DE ASESORAMIENTO GEOMECANICO MINA ISCAYCRUZ
INFORME DE MARZO
3.6 Selección del método de minado
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ike a beautiful butterfly preserved in amber, the rites and ceremonies of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church have come down to us intact from the time of the early Christians. For although Ethiopia is poor and remote today, there was a time, almost 2000 years ago, when it commanded a great empire with its capital based in the city of Axum – an empire controlling the southern end of the Red Sea that traded and had influence as far afield as Egypt, Rome, Jerusalem and Persia.Christianity became the official creed of this great Ethiopian state in the early fourth century AD when King Ezana of Axum was converted by missionaries of Athanasius, the Egyptian Coptic Patriarch in Alexandria. Thereafter the new religion spread rapidly in the Axumite realm and early in the sixth century a Graeco-Egyptian traveller, Cosmas Indicopleustes, reported that “everywhere” there were “churches of the Christians” where the Gospel of Christ was proclaimed. In subsequent centuries, after the collapse of Axumite power and the rise of Islam in the region, Christianity retained its grip on the hearts and minds of the people of Ethiopia and was preserved and strengthened there, in retreat from the world, protected by high mountains and an indomitable will to survive.
Other than a few relatively minor incidents (eg penetration of Jesuit priests in the sixteenth century, followed by their expulsion a few decades later), this separation from the currents of global affairs and of religious innovation continued, with very little contact, until well into the nineteenth century. The result, everywhere to be seen today, is the amazing success and vigour with which the Church has retained all the panoply and archaic beauty of rituals, festivals and ceremonies dating back to the very beginning of Christianity – and sometimes before. One mystery is the veneration of a pre-Christian relic – the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant, supposedly lost to history when the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians in the sixth century BC, but believed by Ethiopians to rest now in a small sanctuary chapel annexed to the Cathedral of Saint Mary of Zion in Axum. There is not space in this short article to consider the substantial merits of this extraordinary claim (a subject explored in depth in our book The Sign and The Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant), but it is notable that there are more than 20,000 churches in Ethiopia and that in the Holy of Holies of every one of them there resides a symbolic replica of the Ark of the Covenant known as a tabot. These replicas sometimes take the form of a box, as did the original Ark in the time of Moses, and are sometimes designed in the form of slabs representing contents of the Ark – i.e. the tablets of stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments that the Ark supposedly contained. They are so important that a church with its tabot removed is considered to be deconsecrated until the tabot is returned. Ethiopia’s calendar, in the words of its best-known tourist slogan, boasts “thirteen months of sunshine”. This is because
Archaic ceremonies with incense and prayer sticks summon back the atmosphere of another time.
top left and right: A box symbolising the Ark of the Covenant is carried out in public procession during the Timkat ceremony in Axum. The last resting place of the Ark itself is also believed to be in Axum but the original relic is never brought into public view.
right and bottom right: The liturgy and bibles of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are written in an extinct language known as Ge’ez that is related to ancient Hebrew and which was spoken at the time of the Axumite empire.
Below: Replica of the Ark of the Covenant carried in procession during the Timkat ceremony in Axum. The obelisks to the right of the picture include one standing 70 feet tall and weighing more than 200 tons. They date from the time of the Axumite empire around 2000 years ago.
top left and above:Maskal ceremony, Addis Ababa.
top right: Timkat ceremony, Axum. The waters that the priest is blessing are in an ancient reservoir traditionally associated with the Queen of Sheba. In Ethiopian tradition she was made pregnant by King Solomon in Jerusalem and bore him a son, Menelik, who later stole the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to Ethiopia.
right: Close-up of the sistrum
Left: The liturgy and bibles of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are written in an extinct language known as Ge’ez that is related to ancient Hebrew and which was spoken at the time of the Axumite empire.
All other images: Elaborate crosses are a feature of the processions.the calendar is linked to the roots of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and preserves a system that was used by the ancient Egyptians whereby the year is divided into twelve months of thirty days each and one extra short month of five days (or six days in the case of leap years). For reasons too technical to go into here, the Ethiopian calendar is also seven years and eight months behind the Gregorian calendar used in the West – so in Ethiopia the 21st Century has not yet dawned! Because of these calendrical differences, Ethiopian Christmas – Genna – is not celebrated on 25th December as it is
elsewhere in the Christian world, but on 7th January. The
next big festival, accompanied by glorious pageantry and processions in which replicas of the Ark of the Covenant are carried out, is Timkat (Epiphany), which takes place on 19th January. Ethiopian Easter (Fasika) falls at variable
dates around the end of April and the beginning of May. The spectacular Maskal ceremony on 27th September
commemorates the “Finding of the True Cross” by St Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, in 326 AD. To travel in this remarkable country is, therefore, in every sense a journey back in time – most notably so in the power of the faith expressed by the priests and the tens of thousands of pilgrims who still gather all over Ethiopia every year to celebrate these ancient festivals. There is passion and intense belief here, an austere commitment to prayer and meditation, an adherence to the old ways, and a stubborn resistance to the fads and fashions of the modern world, that is resolutely beautiful and utterly at peace with itself. Santha Faiia used a Nikon FE2 and FM2 for the images in this article. +