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Jerusalem, 1884 — Rosette Shapira must have felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding when  three men, including the British consul to Jerusalem, arrived at the door of her home. After they entered, they sat opposite her and uttered those devastating words — her husband, Wilhelm Moses Shapira, was dead. He had killed himself with a gun in a rented guesthouse room near the Maas River wharf in Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2,000 miles away. Her life, and the lives of her daughters Augusta and Maria, would never be the same again.

Only days earlier, the office staff for the guesthouse began to wonder when they saw no sign of Moses leaving his room more than two days ago. A knock and shout from outside the locked door of his room yielded no sound. Soon, the police were at the door. Experiencing the same result, they broke into the room. What they found was everyone’s worst case scenario — Shapira was dead. He had apparently shot himself with a gun, leaving in the room his possessions, including a case that contained brochures, manuscripts, and letters. His body was taken and buried in an unmarked Rotterdam grave, far from his family home in Jerusalem. To this day, no one knows for certain where his body lies. It was a tragic and ignoble end to a life that mattered dearly to family and friends. 

A Forgery

Moses (pictured left) Shapira’s journey to this tragic end actually began almost six years earlier, when he owned and managed what was considered to be “the best tourist shop in Jerusalem’s Old City” on Christian Street, not far from the historic Jaffa Gate. There, he sold books and a variety of other souvenir items popular to tourists. But his most passionate occupation was that of antiquities dealer, servicing, among other things, as a correspondent to the British Museum. Ancient manuscripts were his specialty, and over the years he had developed a body of knowledge and contacts that positioned him to be ‘in the right place at the right time’ when ancient artifacts and historic and ancient documents found their way into his sphere. His travels in the desert and elsewhere afforded him the opportunity to amass a significant collection of Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts, some of which he sold to the Royal Museum at Berlin, as well as to the British Museum. But none of his collections could possibly shine a light to what came his way in 1878, when Bedouins had discovered, in a cave high above the Wadi Mujib east of the Dead Sea, a bundle wrapped in linen. The bundle contained sixteen blackened leather strips, ranging from 3 to 4 inches in width, with varying lengths. The backside of the strips was coated with an asphalt/bitumin resin. But on the front side of the darkened strips, to Shapira’s astonishment, were barely legible written characters. Shapira knew enough to recognize it as a form of paleo-Hebrew. Knowing the relative antiquity of paleo-Hebrew script, could these be authentic documents, written by one or more unknown scribes, perhaps even well before Herodian times?

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The Wadi Mujib, in Jordan. F.Higer, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Wikimedia Commons

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In his excitement he began to examine the strips on his own, preparing a transcription from whatever he could distinguish from leather surfaces that appeared to reflect the ravages of perhaps thousands of years. The strips appeared to document three incomplete manuscripts of a version of Deuteronomy, specifically the last speech of Moses to the Hebrews as they sojourned in the land of Moab, before his death. It contained a travelogue of the journey of the Hebrews in the wilderness, a somewhat different version of the Ten Commandments, and a series of blessings and cursings based on the commandments. One document was almost complete, another less complete, and a third represented only by a fragment. But he knew his initial transcription attempts would not be enough. The effort was a struggle. This was a job for an expert. In September, 1878, he sent his transcription to Konstantine Schlottman, a German scholar and friend, who in turn recruited the efforts of Franz Delitzsch, another German scholar. After examination, both strongly rejected the transcription as indicating the ancient documents had to be a forgery — the transcription, they maintained, deviated too radically from the traditional text of the Bible and what scholarship generally agreed was consistent with authentic scripture. Disappointed in Schlottmann and Delitzch’s determination, Shapira, still personally hopeful that the ancient strips were authentic, secured them away for a time in a vault at the Bergheim and Company Bank in Jerusalem and turned his attention back to other matters of his business.

………That is, until he got his hands on a book entitled Introduction to the Old Testament by another German scholar, Friedrich Bleek. The contents of the book convinced Shapira that the arguments that Schlottmann and Delitzsch used to refute his transcription could not be inarguably supported, and he decided to remove the strips from the vault and resurrect his efforts to seek scholarly examination and hopeful confirmation of the authenticity of the discovery. His strategy — to secure the services of other scholars in Germany and England, this time by bringing the actual documents, the strips, with him for their examination and study. If authenticated, his plan was to sell them to the British Museum for a handsome sum of, according to some newspaper accounts, as much as one million pounds, a value he felt well matched the value of the documents, which he hoped would bring financial independence to him and his family. 

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Lithograph of one of the Shapira Scroll fragments, Frederick Dangerfield for Christian David Ginsburg. Christian David Ginsburg, Public Domain

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Two photographs of Shapira scroll ‘Fragment E’, columns 1–2, and one other fragment. In the top image, Fragment E is folded in half, with column 4 (verso) partially visible behind column 1 (recto). The image of the other fragment is cropped at the bottom. Idan Dershowitz, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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Shapira Strips, 1883, Scientific American. Scientific American, October 27, 1883, Public Domain

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Examination resumed first with two German scholars, Hermann Guthe and Eduard Meyer, who carefully studied the strips and produced a transcript and evaluation. They leaned at first toward a determination of authenticity, but while they were finishing their work for publication, Karl Lepsius, head of the Royal Library at Berlin, convened another group of prominent scholars, consisting of professors Dillmann, Sachau, Schrader, Erman, and Steinschneider. Although these experts spent only a limited amount of time with the manuscripts, they quickly concluded that they were forgeries. They were impressed with them, however. They offered to purchase them, albeit at a lower price than Shapira was prepared to accept. These manuscripts, they maintained, were so cleverly forged they would be worth owning as an example of such outstanding effort.

Undaunted, Shapira went on to England, where, facilitated by Sir Walter Besant, secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund, he secured the efforts of Christian David Ginsburg, one of the world’s leading authorities on Hebrew manuscripts. Ginsburg would spend weeks studying the manuscripts, including transcribing what he could successfully discern and decipher from the alleged ancient manuscript characters. Given the condition of the strips, the task was not easy. While he worked, regular updates of his progress were published in the Athenæum, a popular  British literary magazine published in London at the time. While Ginsburg continued his examination, he expressed no clear opinion. That would wait for completion of his work. Some scholars, however, based mostly upon their reading of the continuing news and the reports in the Athenæum, expressed skepticism. Nonetheless, the excitement and news of Shapira’s manuscripts splashed across British newspaper venues. In addition, two fragments of the manuscripts were placed on display for the general public in the British Museum, drawing crowds. Even Prime Minister William Gladstone, who took a special interest in things biblical and the scholarly work of Ginsburg, visited the display and engaged in personal conversation with Ginsburg and Shapira about the manuscripts. It seemed, finally, Shapira’s manuscripts were gaining the positive traction he so longingly desired — at least from the public.

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Facsimile of some of the Shapira scroll, as published in The Athenaeum, September 8, 1883, after Ginsburg. Ginsburg, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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The Crash

But the new high Shapira was experiencing would not last long. Charles Clermont-Ganneau, a world-renowned French orientalist and archaeologist, heard news of the leather strips coming out of England. He was known for his skill in detecting forgeries, and was in fact instrumental in debunking ancient Moabite pottery artifacts years before, an affair in which Shapira himself was deeply involved as a dealer. Clermont-Ganneau, even from afar, already harbored suspicions about the authenticity of Shapira’s leather strips, and wanted to see them for himself. With a mandate from the French minister of public instruction, he was sent on his way to England to examine for himself what the British hype was all about. On arrival, he was given access to view and study fragments of the strips, but under very limited access and time constraints, while Ginsburg continued with his more in-depth examination.

Even with the limitations, however, it did not take long for Clermont-Ganneau to come to his conclusions. Though he was expressly permitted to publicize his finding only after Ginsburg had a chance to publish his report, Clermont-Ganneau forged ahead prematurely and announced his thoughts to the press: The manuscripts were forgeries.

Although he noted various reasons supporting his conclusion, his most cited argument was that someone, perhaps Shapira himself, had cut off the bottom blank margin of an old Torah scroll, perhaps several centuries old, creating strips upon which he (or someone) inscribed characters very much like those found on the Moabite stone and Siloam Inscription. Moreover, shortly following Clermont-Ganneau’s pronouncement, Ginsburg published his report. He agreed with Clermont-Ganneau. The manuscripts were forgeries. The scholarly consensus fell in favor of the forgery assessment.

For Shapira, it was like his world had come crashing down. With this news out to the world, he must have thought he was ruined, branded perhaps forever as a forger. Even so, still clinging to his conviction that the inscribed leather strips were authentic, he left the manuscripts behind at the British Museum and traveled on to other points in Europe. He continued with some business dealings, but ended up ultimately in Rotterdam in early March, 1884, where he presumably took his own life in a guesthouse room near the Maas River.

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Illustration used by Clermont-Ganneau to demonstrate the cutting of the Torah scroll to create the Shapira strips. Clermont-Ganneau, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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A Forgery? The Case for Re-examination

Scrolls in the Desert

New discoveries can often shift the ground upon which prevailing scholarship stands. One could argue that this is what happened when, between November 1946 and February 1947, Bedouin shepherds discovered seven ancient scrolls/fragments contained in ceramic jars in caves near the ancient site of Khirbet Qumran, 1.5 miles from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Known today in the popular literature as the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were the first of subsequent ancient scroll and fragment discoveries in the Dead Sea area, attesting to the continuing ancient Hebrew practice of documenting sacred texts containing beliefs and histories on leather parchment and papyrus — and, given the dating of the finds, that such material could actually survive at least 2,000 years in the Dead Sea area.

This is important for these purposes because one of the salient early arguments among the 19th century scholars against the authenticity of Shapira’s manuscripts was that leather documents were unlikely to survive for 2,000 or more years in the environment in which they were allegedly found — in this case, caves above the Wadi Mujib, not far east from the Dead Sea.

What is more, the Shapira manuscript strips were alleged to have been found wrapped in cloth and treated on the exterior with a pitch/asphalt/wax/bitumin resin coating, not unlike the state and treatment of at least some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found, here again, by Bedouin shepherds in a high desert cave not far from the Dead Sea. Could it be that, as a clever forger, Shapira simply possessed an uncanny, almost “prophetic” sense for fabricating circumstances so serendipitously similar to those characterizing the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a series of events that occurred more than 65 years later? Some noted scholars have suggested that this would not have been probable.

Menahem Mansoor, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote about the circumstances, and much more, related to the Shapira manuscripts: “Neither the internal nor the external evidence, so far as yet published, supports the idea of a forgery.”* His assessment was published in 1958, after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Add to this the comments made by John Allegro, one member of the initial select team of scholars assigned to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, wherein he stated that the Shapira manuscripts “may have been one of the most important archaeological findings of all time”.** Though Allegro’s scholarship and reputation were certainly not without controversy, it goes without saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls clearly had an impact on how he viewed the Shapira scrolls in 1965, when his book, The Shapira Affair, was published.

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View of the caves location near Qumran, where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

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Two scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls lie at their location in the Qumran Caves before being removed for scholarly examination by archaeologists. Abraham Meir Habermann, 1901–1980, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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One of the original Dead Sea Scrolls before being unraveled by scholars. Abraham Meir Habermann, 1901-1980, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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Add to this another prominent charge levied by scholars, led first and foremost by Clermont-Ganneau himself upon completing his initial cursory examination of the Shapira strips — in short, that Shapira’s leather strips were actually cut from the bottom blank margin of a Torah scroll and then used as the support medium upon which the paleo-Hebrew characters were written, or forged. The subject scroll may have eventually ended up in the Sutro Library in San Francisco, where today rests a Torah scroll that has been clearly intentionally cut off at its bottom margin. This, says investigative journalist Chanan Tigay in his recent book, The Lost Book of Moses, could be a candidate for the scroll. However, Idan Dershowitz, who is currently Chair of Hebrew Bible and Its Exegesis at the University of Potsdam and Faculty Member at Harvard University, has now suggested in a recent paper, The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments, that the Torah scroll could as likely have been cut along the top edge of the bottom margin to remove clearly evident extensive water damage that effected the bottom of the scroll. Nonetheless, the cut Torah scroll argument has remained one of the pillars upon which scholars have rested their verdict for more than a century.

Enter here also the Dead Sea Leviticus scroll 11QpaleoLev, a leather parchment scroll which, like the Shapira scroll, was inscribed in paleo-Hebrew. It was discovered in “Qumran Cave 11,” about one mile north of Khirbet Qumran in January of 1956 by local Bedouin of the Taʿamireh clan. This scroll spreads lengthwise in an arc-like fashion. In like manner, the Shapira leather strips, also allegedly found by local Bedouins in a cave not far from the Dead Sea, spread lengthwise in an arc — not a characteristic that would likely be attributed to leather strips that were fraudulently cut from the bottom margin of a Torah scroll, which exhibits no such curvature.***

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Fragment E, prepared by Dangerfield Lithography (London, 1883), in consultation with Ginsburg. From Dershowitz, Idan (2021). The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Idan Dershowitz, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll (11QpaleoLev), discovered in Cave 11 near Qumran. [Like the Paleo-Hebrew Shapira scroll, also made of leather and in an arc-like shape.]  Shai Halevi on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

Script and Content

A major line of reasoning for characterizing the Shapira manuscripts as forgeries revolves around the script and subject matter content. To this day, there are prominent scholars of the field who continue to maintain rejection based on these grounds. One notable example is André Lemaire, a well-known and highly regarded French epigrapher, historian and philologist, who has voiced his support for the results of, among other things, Ginsburg’s examination regarding the external and internal (language, paleography and grammar) criteria cited to justify rejection of Shapira’s strips. Lemaire’s argument, however, is based on his examination of Ginsburg’s facsimile of the original manuscripts, not the original strips themselves. Idan Dershowitz has now suggested in his recent paper (noted above) that Lemair’s argument falls flat on the basis of “a fundamental methodological problem with the entire enterprise of epigraphic analysis in this particular case: The fragments are no longer extant.” In his paper, Dershowitz argues in detail why Lemaire’s analysis is faulty in that it relies on 19th century drawings, not the original manuscripts, that are “demonstrably unreliable” for accurately depicting the paleography of the manuscripts.****

Another chief argument among scholars against the authenticity of the Shapira manuscripts revolved around how radically the content of the account departed from the Masoretic text and the generally accepted canon of Deuteronomy. Scholarly tradition holds that the original ‘writings of Moses’ that constituted the core of Deuteronomy were later supplemented/changed in antiquity (for example, the Deuteronomic law codes) to create what is today the accepted canon of Deuteronomy. Others, like Jonathan Klawans, Professor of Religion at Boston University most recently, have argued that the manuscript content reflects Shapira’s Jewish-Christian beliefs and thus a ‘Christianizing tendency’ in its fabrication. Dershowitz, however, presents a starkly different view based on his extensive study and analysis as related in his recent monograph, The Valediction of Moses. In this study, Dershowitz concludes that “the text contained in Shapira’s fragments is either a direct ancestor of the biblical book of Deuteronomy or a close relative of such an ancestor…….[it] preserves an earlier and dramatically different literary structure for the entire work — one that lacked the Deuteronomic law code altogether.”**** In short, according to Dershowitz and others who hold a similar view, Shapira’s scrolls reflect what scholars have suggested the original ‘writing of Moses’ would have looked like based on source-critical analysis — an analysis that was not available during the time of Shapira. Both Dershowitz’s article and book were featured through lavishly illustrated coverage by the New York Times on March 10, 2021—causing academic waves around the world with calls both for and against reassessing the Shapira case.***** 

Finally, one puzzling conundrum lies in the question as to why Shapira, a Hebrew scholar in his own right, though not a credentialed expert, spent time and energy attempting to understand and decipher the text on the strips. Among his papers were some ruled sheets and notes of his early attempts at transcription, indicating his struggle to understand and decipher what he was looking at. If he was the forger, why would he do this? Dershowitz makes this same observation in his paper. 

Is the Scroll Extant?

All of the arguments for and against the Shapira scrolls notwithstanding, none of them can be ultimately convincing unless the original leather strips can be re-examined, using the latest scientific techniques and procedures, including dating, scanning and digital imaging, as well as application of any advancements in the knowledge of paleography and epigraphy. Certainly, with the strips finally back in hand, the side-by-side comparison with relevant Dead Sea Scrolls using current knowledge and a multi-disciplinary international team of experts would go a long way toward placing a final lid on the case.

But where are the original manuscripts today?

After the fateful announcements of forgery in London and elsewhere, Shapira departed from London to points in Europe, but left his now discredited strips behind with the British Museum. In any case, they were not among the things he left behind in the Rotterdam guesthouse room where he died. For many years it was thought the scrolls were likely destroyed in a fire near London at the home of Sir Charles Nicholson. But the latest attestation is that they were acquired by a one Dr. Philip Brookes Mason of Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in 1889. He died in 1903. Were the strips among the holdings of his estate upon his death? Or did they move on yet again before that date?

“We have a good chance of recovering the scrolls, or portions thereof,” says Dr. James Tabor, a well-known Biblical scholar and Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “There is a small private group of very initiated “Shapira researchers” who are in close touch and sharing information and ideas……..there are leads not only in the U.K. but also on the Continent, involving wills, estates, libraries, and other archives. I don’t think they were discarded and it is likely whoever has them is not aware of their value.”

The unwritten stories of priceless artifacts and art lost to the world, still languishing in oblivion in private attics or basements, would fill a book.

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The best account of the entire Shapira story, from start to finish, was published by author and researcher Ross K. Nichols, just two weeks before Dershowitz published his own academic analysis. Nichols also includes a transcription and translation, as well as the arguments for revisiting the issue of their authenticity. He presents a meticulously researched, in-depth account of their discovery, as well as their examination by 19th century scholars, including a presentation of the arguments both for and against their authenticity. Entitled The Moses Scroll, the book is highly readable and engaging for scholars and non-scholars alike.  Nichols has also begun a regular blog on all the latest Shapira discussions and issues.

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*“The Case of Shapira’s Dead Sea (Deuteronomy) Scrolls of 1883.” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (1958), p. 225 

** Allegro, John Marco. The Shapira Affair. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1965

*** Shlomo Guil (2017) The Shapira Scroll was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 149:1, 6-27, DOI: 10.1080/00310328.2016.1185895

****Idan Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaw-2021-0001

*****see https://jamestabor.com/a-shapira-bombshell-has-just-exploded-idan-dershowitzs-research-and-the-case-for-authenticity/

Cover Image, Top Left: The Wadi Mujib, in Jordan. F.Higer, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Wikimedia Commons

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In this second installment of the Popular Archaeology Anniversary Issue, author and teacher Richard Marranca interviews Dr. Kara Cooney, the popular American Egyptologist perhaps best known for hosting television shows and authoring popular-press books on ancient Egypt. Among her books are When Women Ruled the World, The Woman Who Would Be King and, to be released in November, 2021, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Most significant, however, is her role as a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Her current research focuses on ancient coffin reuse, most specifically that of Egypt’s 21st Dynasty. Generally, her research addresses the socioeconomic and political turmoil of this period, and how this was reflected in ancient Egyptian funerary and burial practices.

RM: Can we begin with your origin story? What are some things that led to your being an Egyptologist?

KC:  If I had been a first-generation immigrant, I don’t think I would have had that opportunity because their parents focused on getting a trade and contributing to the family. None of this silly philosophical stuff, right? So, I might be encouraged to do something else. If I were born a man, I think I would also have been encouraged by my family or society to do something else. My brother has very academic interests and yet he went to law school. He felt he needed to go to law school. And so my being a woman allows me to — allows myself to be — less practical than some of the men in my socioeconomic class. I mean it when I say I am an upper middle class white chick. That’s important, the female part is important because that allows me to follow my heart and continue on with this study.

The second part is the more personal one. Why Egypt? I have no answer for you. And it is the question that I am asked in every interview. It is the question I am asked at every talk. How did you get involved in Egyptology? What is it about ancient Egypt? And I say, this is the one question that an Egyptologist would never ask another. It would be a kind of heresy to ask another Egyptologist this because we know there is no answer. We don’t ask it because we don’t, we’re confused about it ourselves. I am confused about my own interest. Why am I am drawn to learn about these ancient people of so many thousands of years ago and why do they never bore me (laughter) and why do I continue to be interested in these people? I don’t know the answer! It’s a mystery to me as well as it is to everybody else. I know people look at me and they’re like “What the hell is going on here? Why is this woman from Texas interested in ancient Egypt and so passionate, so interested?” There must be some weird thing or connection, but about that I have no answer. When I was seven years old, I remember my mother brought back from the British Museum books about Vikings, Romans, Egyptians and medieval Europe—and Egypt was my favorite. I don’t know why. I’ve always loved everything about it. I’ve always loved this idea of time travel. I don’t know why. And my interest is, as you can tell, quite passionate and I don’t know why. So that’s just a weird little thing and again, all Egyptologists share this. There aren’t many people crazy enough or socially entitled enough to be able to follow their interests to the level that we have in order to end up teaching, forming young minds, doing research, etc. I realize every day how lucky I am to be able to do this. It is quite a blessing. It’s amazing.

RM:  Do you have any favorite archaeologists from long ago or closer to the present who were sort of dashing and romantic figures?

KC: Some people are drawn to Egyptology because of Margaret Murray or Flinders Petrie and they delve into the biographies of them. That wasn’t my gateway drug (laughter). I was more interested in the ancient Egyptians as I could find them in the ancient texts and in daily life, the way people behaved. I am happiest watching people try to spin their wool and people dressed up and speaking with their accents, trying to make mead or something. And with my graduate students, we do the same thing. We’ve done a lot of experiments on how Egyptian glue actually flows onto a piece of wood and how you apply it and what varnish is like and how you apply that. The practical aspects of life in the ancient world are more interesting to me than anything else. What it was like in the past draws me. But I’m not a dirt archaeologist, so I don’t romanticize about that part of life necessarily. I kind of treat it as a time machine of the mind where I fantasize about what it could have potentially been like to be in the ancient world.

RM: I recently showed an episode of your program, Out of Egypt, to my classes. It’s a fascinating broad approach, a true adventure that the viewer partakes. One of the things you show is how cities and civilization breed armies and large-scale violence.

KC: Essentially, complexity begets complexity; you don’t get complex violence until you have complex human systems. A bunch of roving hunter-gatherer bands, while quite violent, can’t compete in terms of the scale of that violence or the complexity of that violence. So, real war begins with agriculture. Agriculture demands settling down to form complex systems of government, with taxation, bureaucracy, stored wealth, redistributed wealth. Some people have much, some people very little, but it takes an army to protect it. If we asked anybody on the street, would you rather go back to live a hunter-gatherer existence or stay in the city?  I think there would be many people who see the hunter-gatherer existence as a peaceful time, but the opposite is true. Hunter-gatherers killed more of their men, percentage wise, than any complex society. To get out of those cycles of violence, we gave up many freedoms with our move to settled society; women especially gave up many freedoms to be a part of this complex system that demanded warfare, taxation, etc. But I think human beings repeatedly left the hunter-gatherer existence around the planet, settling down, because they wanted to avoid the constant and brutal violence that could kill 30% of your male population in a given season.

RM: What were some of the high points for you in creating Out of Egypt?

KC: My favorite part was allowing myself not to be an expert, to be an intelligent questioner, to puzzle through larger questions. It’s a rare thing that an academic cannot be the expert and instead be the one who’s learning. So in a sense, I got to be a student again. And for most of the sites visited, we brought in an expert who knew all about the site and then I could just pepper that person with questions and learn as much as I wanted; it was such a privilege to be able to learn from such extraordinary people in such extraordinary places. The place that pops out the most, that I really remember and would love to visit again, was Sri Lanka—the island that time forgot. Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists all mixed up into one place. The majority are Buddhists. The Hindu temples are pretty extraordinary in their own way. To see the way these people have been through a civil war, through bombings and revolutionary attacks and how they’ve come to a peaceful place to live with each other, is extraordinary. To see all of these different rituals and rites coexisting is something to see. I remember a Christian couple in the Buddhist temple dedicated to the tooth of the Buddha, and I said, “Well you’re not Buddhist.” They said, “It doesn’t matter. We’re here to ask for blessings from the Buddha.” So, there was a lot of crossover as well. There was also a lot of old religion, magical shamanist religion, that had nothing to do with Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

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Pagoda temple in Sri Lanka. Kalyanayahaluwo, Pixabay

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I remember visiting the Temple of Cursing. You could curse somebody with hot chili peppers and grind it up and curse your enemies and that was a shamanist kind of practice. And there was a practice with a devil—also a very old shamanist practice, of inviting him (who is giving you sickness or giving you poor circumstances in your life) into your space through this Dance of Devils and then feeding them and appeasing them. It was a beautiful thing; having grown up with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, it was completely strange to invite a devil in and give him an offering in order to leave you in peace, but it makes perfect sense. And this is something that everybody participates in as well. Whether you’re Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu, it seems the lines are very blurred, so I love that. 

RM: In many places that you present in that documentary, there are archetypal shapes, such as pyramids and circles. What does it mean? I’m also reminded of something Carl G. Jung might ask: how does the pyramid live in us?

KC: That’s the great thing about Out or Egypt—that I was able to ask these big questions and get scientific answers. It’s something that Erich von Däniken and John Anthony West often apply a more supernatural reasoning to. So, I can take aliens out of the equation, but I can bring the aliens back in, which was great. I mean in a sense, you stand in front of those pyramids and you think, my god, look at that. You can’t believe that it’s human hands, that human effort built this mountain of stone. It seems impossible and that’s exactly what the ancient Egyptians would have wanted you to believe. Every time we assign supernatural responsibility to the pyramids, whether it be aliens or something else, we are falling into an authoritarian trap, the propaganda trap. Their purpose in Mesoamerica or Egypt or Dubai was to show power, to show the ability to construct something that seems impossible, like the tallest building on the planet. It is also a way of proving to the people in material form that that community is at the pinnacle of a pyramidal society. And it works again and again and again—that we believe that the leader has some sort of spiritual otherworldly non-human power—and that to me is the key to nature. The fact that they are all pyramidal is obvious. You don’t have wheels to construct it, so to build a tall structure, you build it wide at the base, narrow at the top. And I am not the first to say something like that. Many engineers have said that. The pyramidal structure just happened because that’s how you build large buildings in pre-modern times. But the mountains of stone—independent of one another in Mesoamerica, in South America, in Europe, in Egypt, in China, in Indonesia, all over the planet—were there to create a political-supernatural link that cannot be denied. It creates unassailable leaders to whom you cannot say no, whom you must follow. And it worked again and again and again. And amazingly, even when the leaders are dead and gone and the pyramids are either covered with vegetation or sand and fallen into disrepair, people still look at them and say that they were built by other-worldly supernatural beings, and this still continues to work upon us today.

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Pyramids of Egypt. The Digital Artist, Pixabay

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Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Wallerssk, Pixabay

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In Out of Egypt, I like taking the political tack. And I think I should have gone further with it. I think I have solidified my ideas over the years, and I was only just forming those ideas when I did that show. Today, I think I would have gone further in the political realm of things.

RM: We visited some of the places presented in your program, which added so much to my understanding, plus it continued the adventure. You presented the vast creativity of civilization as well as its dark side.

CK: The city offers civilization, but at a price – perhaps more for women than men. But there were exceptions, which is what my book, When Women Ruled the World,  focuses on.

Ancient Women & Power

RM:  Your books and courses have a lot to do with powerful women in ancient times. In Athens or Rome, there would be a problem with a woman looking to gain political power. In the case of Rome, it was also the fear of a distant, foreign power who seduced Caesar and Antony. Didn’t the Romans say the most horrible things about Cleopatra?

KC:  Yes, for sure. I teach a class at UCLA called Women in Power in the Ancient World, and this is one of the reasons I can write this book so quickly. I have been thinking about it for the last four or five years. I’ve taught this class four times; we spend half of the class on Egypt because half the ancient female rulers were Egyptian—which is stunning in and of itself, but then we spend a week on Greece, a week on Rome, a week on China, a week on the Levant and Mesopotamia—and compare systems of power and female rule within those systems of power. It becomes ever so useful to see these patterns and it becomes a class on ancient power systems as big history, if you like.

Every class I start with a map of the Levant, a map of Mesopotamia, a map of Egypt, a map of Greece, a map of Rome, whatever. And I say, okay, will this place allow easy unification and easy communication like Egypt, which is the first regional state in the ancient world, or will this place, with its geography, lend itself more to constant competition, constant warfare? And if it’s the latter, and most places are the latter, then you see female power in a more limited way. Or in the case of ancient Greece – holy god! Can this place ever unify? Everyone was like, No! (laughter). How could they communicate with each other? Well, by sea. How are they going to get money? Well, by trade and shipping, mostly, and farming and animal husbandry sometimes.

And you know, Greece has an extraordinarily competitive decentralized type of system, which in Athens takes the primal form of a democratic peace effort, with only male citizens allowed in the game; if one man falls, another will take his place. And women are kept shut up in the home. There is no power for women in ancient Greece. I spend only half a week on women in Greece in my class because once we’ve discussed the system and I’ve given them two examples, we’re done. There is no power for women in this system. Rome is a little bit different because the woman is a representative of her family and can act as such, so you do see powerful women coming to the fore as representatives of a patriarchal system in times of great crisis.

But once you get this imperial hereditary monarchy in Rome, with the principate, a noblewoman can take power in the way that a woman took power in Egypt. You see Roman women taking power as the mother of the next emperor, or as a sister or wife of the emperor. The emperor system in Rome is so fraught and these emperors are killed more often than dying naturally. You can look it all up on Google. It’s great fun (laughter)—reasons for the deaths of the Roman emperors. You can spend a whole day going down that rabbit hole. But if you understand how contentious and uncertain the imperial Roman system of monarchy was, then it’s clear why women had so little chance for leadership there in any systematic way. But in the Eastern Roman Empire, as we move into the Byzantine system, we see that in Constantinople female rule was strong because it was supporting a stronger hereditary dynasty. And then I come to this conclusion again that the more unequal the social situation, the more a woman can step into power. Fittingly, the more pyramidal the social structure is, the more women can step into power.

And I ask myself if this is something that humans understand on a gut level: women who step into power like Indira Gandhi act as a representative of the patriarchy in a highly unequal situation in a time of crisis, often after there’s been an assassination. Given that, do we instinctively perceive female power as reflective of inequality, authoritarianism, unequal social systems? These women are allowed to work on behalf of their families and don’t fit the larger group of humanity. Is this one of the reasons we’re hostile towards female power? This is a puzzle I’m still trying to figure out. Our hostility towards female power, the biological sources, the social sources—these are areas of importance.

RM: I can see how getting into one specific area leads to others. Can you talk about Hatshepsut and the various positions she had in life? God’s Wife, queen, pharaoh herself? What did she achieve? What was she like as a real person?

KC:  Ancient Egypt is extraordinarily frustrating to try to pin down what someone was really like. In the same way that I presented you with those maps of ancient Greece and Rome or ancient Egypt on the other side, the more decentralized and competitive a place is, the more we can potentially learn about an individual person from the political competition, because one either has to expose their personality to people to get their vote and their support or because there were political takedowns where tidbits of their life or personality were revealed to us in the historical record, letters and more. We know about the personality of Julius Cesar or Cleopatra because the Romans wrote about them, or about Solon as an example of a Greek leader. But in an authoritarian regime, this is buttoned down. You do not have people talking about the personality of their leader. The means of communication that are left to archaeologists are sacred temple spaces where everything is idealized.

For Hatshepsut’s reign, most of my evidence, if not all of it, comes from an ideological context – temples and tombs. I don’t have diaries. I don’t have letters. Now in temples or tombs, would I expect to find personal information – people revealing their innermost thoughts about what Hatshepsut was really like? No. So I can’t, unfortunately, tell you what her personality was like, or how she was perceived or accepted or not accepted. I have no idea, which is really frustrating, but if we then take a step back we can say, okay, what can we talk about? I can tell you that from a very young age, probably from the reign of her father, Thutmose I, she inhabited the most sacred priestess position, God’s Wife of Amun.

The details of her duties were shielded from us as well because this was a highly exclusive religion. We are not meant to know what mysteries were happening inside of these sacred enclosed spaces. This is something that is meant to be shielded from our eyes. So even here, where the temple might produce something, we’re almost at a loss of what’s actually going on. But using all we can from the Gods Wives of Amun, from the titles, even if they don’t explicitly tell us what mysteries were performed, the God’s Wife of Amun was meant to be a wife to the gods and it was meant to have a sexual component. It was meant to awaken the god through sexuality, to give him a rebirth through sexuality. One of the other titles of the God’s Wife of Amun was the God’s Hand; this was meant to masturbate so that he could recreate himself into existence every day. You just got back from India, so I don’t need to tell you about the lingam stone and how it represents creation. It’s there as well and sexual intercourse is there on the temple walls.

In Egypt, it’s less overt, but the notion that the god must sexually recreate himself in the depth of the temple every night to be recreated every morning is something the Egyptians clung to and their temples were built to facilitate this daily or seasonal rebirth. And so, the God’s Wife of Amun was very powerful. Hatshepsut knew mysteries that we will never know. She was initiated into unwritten mysteries about the rebirth of the gods, the creative god incarnate that we will never be able to do more than just touch. And she would have been there with eyes closed touching those most sacred mysteries to make sure that the world continued going as it should, that the sun rises and sets and the Nile floods its banks as it should. And whether or not she saw herself as an integral cog in this, she took her position very seriously and that title – the God’s Wife of Amun – was the one she used most when she took over the regency, ruling on behalf of her young nephew Thutmose III. This was after the death of her husband Thutmose II. She knew her power had a foundation in ideology too.

Now, I skipped over her queenship; she was daughter of the king and God’s Wife of Amun in the reign of her father. And when her father died, she was married to her half-brother Thutmose II, who by all accounts and from the mummy that we have preserved, was a sickly youth who died after three years of reign. And for him Hatshepsut acted as chief queen. This would have been a woman walking through the palace and temples with eyes raised looking at everybody in the eyes expecting servility. She would have an authority to her – an authority that maybe the new king Thutmose II didn’t even have because he didn’t expect to be king. He had older brothers who died before him. This kingship was probably a surprise to him as much as anybody else. When he died after such a short reign, she was left holding the bag of a family dynasty that was only nascent, begun by her father Thutmose I.

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Thutmose III and Hatshepsut from the Red Chapel at Karnak. Markh, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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The Temple of Hatshepsut. Dezalb, Pixabay

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Before Thutmose I, there was Amenhotep I, a childless king. If they had allowed the kingship to go to a different family with the death of Thutmose II, then Thutmose’s line would have been two kings and done. Hatshepsut, with the help of her courtiers and priests and elites, stepped into this breach, this vacuum of power, and made sure that the kingship continued to another Thutmose. So, Hatshepsut had an extended regency for seven years, ruling on behalf of her young nephew, before she just took the whole thing and became king in her own right. Why and how she did that is probably the most frustrating part of the story because we don’t have the details preserved. She only reveals that she is doing what her father, Amun, asked her to do by becoming king. But something must have happened to demand that she grab power and formalize it by becoming king herself.

RM:  An amazing story and history. It makes me think that Pres. Donald Trump was sort of like Thutmose III. Trump tried to erase Pres. Barack Obama’s legacy the way that Hatshepsut’s nephew tried to erase her when he becomes king. 

KC:  I don’t think that’s unusual. Let me put it this way. You either follow a good leader or a bad leader. If you follow a bad leader, then all you do is say, look what he’s done. It’s bad. Look what he’s done. If you follow a good leader, then you take credit for it. Trump was in an interesting position where he followed a very good leader when the economy rebounded and rule of law was returned in banking, etc.

But the propaganda was that he was a very bad leader. So Trump can take credit for things that are happening; he can say he did it, even though it was a legacy of Obama’s rule. Trump can claim, “Thank god I’m here and look at the bad things Obama did.” So there was a strange revision of history to Trump’s presidency. And while demonizing Obama, using a fictional account of his presidency, Trump took credit for the good things very cleverly. And it seems that most of his base goes along with this propaganda. So, Trump vilifies the black president that went before him. But this is a different discussion (laughter).

RM: The discussion of power takes us deep into the mind, in that labyrinth, into so many layers of society. Success is another loaded term too.

Success is a tricky thing and I’ve thought about this a lot and I write about this and I talked about this in the One Day University lecture that you attended. Success is abstract. It’s a very bland sort of thing. Success is not very sexy. There’s no salacious story. There is no fodder for the journalists, no big story. I spoke about this with my husband recently, who said, “Jerry Brown sure is under-appreciated.” People don’t talk about success the way they talk about failure. Anyway, in the ancient world, success is something that easily can be transferred from one ruler to another without people really noticing. It’s what they expect. It’s what they want; it’s what is assumed a ruler is going to strive for. So, Thutmose III and Amenhotep II can take credit for Hatshepsut’s achievements, saying, more or less: “We did this.” It’s easy for the people then to say, “Okay, thanks! Of course.”

On the other hand, failure is very idiosyncratic, very specific to one circumstance, one person, one time. It’s harder to transgress, nor would you want to. Cautionary tales are born; there is Cleopatra and the asp and the pearl earring dissolved in the vinegar. Stories like that recur which are more useful to transmit.

RM: It’s interesting to talk about how power operates. I bet most people don’t know that Jerry Brown actually did a great job as governor with little fanfare. Or the quality of life in Scandinavia and elsewhere, again with little fanfare and propaganda involved.

KC:  Where’s the interest and scandal? Well, success is an interesting thing to think about. But success is not all it’s cracked up to be. Obama’s most idiosyncratic—the most identifiable part of his administration—was his African American background. And that’s the part that I think people cling to, whether they want to talk about it openly or not. He put himself out there in terms of racial politics. Also, he played it all without scandal, as he himself would proudly say.

RM: Was there any scandal with Senenmut? He exemplified the ancient Egyptian system with bureaucratic patronage. Does your gut instinct plus the evidence and that sexual cartoon prove anything about a relationship with Hatshepsut? Or was her private life really just totally invisible and we’ll never know anything?

KC:  I think unfortunately the latter. I think her private life is totally invisible and we’ll never know anything. As frustrating as that is, I think it’s the truth. She certainly would have had lovers. Why not? But why would we know about them? There is absolutely no reason why we would have access to that kind of information. And so Senenmut is misread as her lover, and it’s kind of ridiculous – like he’s the only candidate. The reason I think Senenmut and Hatshepsut are so close is that he needed her and she needed him politically. I don’t think that there is any evidence – at all – that suggests a sexual relationship there. There is ample evidence for a power relationship. And that one graffito that you’re mentioning says more about Egyptologists than it does about Hatshepsut. There is nothing in that graffito that links it to Senenmut and Hatshepsut. Nothing. Not a name, not a title, not the way it’s drawn, no markers of kingship. Absolutely nothing links it to Hatshepsut and Senenmut. And yet, Egyptologists have gone crazy saying that this is evidence of their affair and what the Egyptians thought about it. But there’s nothing there but a scribe’s interest in and ability to draw a sexual scene. I don’t think we’ll ever really know. I am sure that Hatshepsut had an interesting sexual identity. What it was, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get to it. Frustrating, yes, but I think that’s how it is with an authoritarian regime.

RM: What about the powers of the goddess and her influences. Isis, for example, is an amazing goddess, and everyone is fascinated by the Isis and Osiris story, as it says so much about Egyptian beliefs. Going all the way back to Paleolithic culture and after, there are amazing fertility figures, cave art, energetic symbols on goddesses. So, what’s the goddess code or imagery in ancient Egypt?

KC: There is typical stuff and indeed the Egyptian goddesses are quite interchangeable, almost like they’re one being, which is strange and interesting. Students who can’t read hieroglyphs will look at images of Hathor or Isis and say, “Well which is it?” And I point out that you can’t tell from what she is wearing. They both wear more or less the same thing and show themselves with the cow’s horns, with the sign in between. You have to read the text to know. And they also act very similar. So, they’re all magicians. They’re soft and kind, and they are tough and vicious sometimes. 

The Egyptians celebrated feminine power with all of its hormonal craziness. When a woman becomes incensed and angry on behalf of her son, father or family and she goes out on a rampage to destroy, the Egyptians saw that as one of the most important things to protect the king or the sun god himself. They didn’t shy away from it. In fact, they thought of it as something to honor, to celebrate and learn to appease, to control.

I’m reading a book called Moody Bitches by Julie Holland, which is essentially telling women that your hormones and your sensitivity is your greatest asset. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re just PMS-ing and you’re imagining things. Holland says you’re seeing more clearly during those times potentially than at any other. And the Egyptians understood that as well. They understood that sensitive female power and that they have more than men – the ability to see if someone’s going to screw you over, that female intuition, that sensitivity to facial features and mannerism. Their anger and emotionality is one of the most important protective features of the family and the child. And the Egyptians had a very important festival of drunkenness which involved sexuality, drinking and temple activity in the wee hours of the night where everyone could see the goddess and connect with her through this ritual. And so again, that female, mercurial nature was something that was celebrated, honored, included.

RM: Does goddess culture and women in power work elsewhere to better the position of women? Just because Victoria was Queen of England doesn’t mean the position of regular women was better.

KC:  I agree with that, yes.

Life, Death, Mummies

RM: I know you have a fascination for mummies and have studied hundreds of them, including coffins and coffin reuse. Is there a message in that?

KC: Much. Yes, we can worry about dying, but you know, I see my son—he’s going to live forever! He’s going to live for a hundred years. Maybe global warming will get him. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get to live for a hundred years. And I worry about my health and it’s a constant thing that I think about, but I’m not in pain constantly. I don’t have parasites coursing through my body enough to count my mitochondria (laughter). It’s a very clean existence that we live and I think we forget what real humanity is and was. You know that in the First World where we can shield ourselves so carefully and so cleanly, we forget what a struggle most people deal with.

What about the people that get strung out on opioids? What the hell else are they to do? The poor of this country with no safety net. I think it’s easy to forget what that’s like. And in a way, I’ll make a political statement here, too, because it’s more in our view than ever before. I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but in Los Angeles, homelessness is an epidemic and it is a very visible thing. And in a sense, I don’t have to close my eyes in my time machine and imagine what it was like to be an ancient person. I can go out to the streets in Los Angeles and look at somebody who has been homeless for ten years and there I have antiquity in front of me, in a sense. I have a person who is living a very hard-scrabble existence trying to survive day-to-day, living in a very uncomfortable set of circumstances, ignoring his health and looking very old before he should. This is something that I can go out and see in my own very wealthy Los Angeles cityscape quite easily; there in a way I have that humanity presented before me and that’s something I think we divorce ourselves from way too easily.

RM: Yes, for sure about patterns of wealth and poverty and total depredation continuing. C. G. Jung said that modern humans are ancient, medieval and modern at the same time. Speaking of the ancient-modern nexus, at One Day University you mentioned something most of us never realized – people are mummified today.

KC: We don’t even know why we do it, but we want that body preserved. We want it to be something we look at and we’re not facing death as overtly as if the body were decomposing in front of us. So we pump these bodies full of plastic, but there’s no real difference. Right? If people in the future look at our remains, they’ll say, “Oh look! You know Americans of the 21^st Century were still mummifying the dead.”

Also, more people are cremated now than ever before. But we’re still mummifying and that is because of display. When you mummify a body, generally, it’s because you’re going to have the casket displayed in the funeral home. And so the display is essential and mummification is part of the display. And it’s no different from the ancient Egyptians. They needed to show that body to an audience. So when you see original activity, most Egyptologists and I dare say most archaeologists have been inclined to look at this ritual in a religious lens, thinking people did this because they believed that this would happen and they believed that that would happen.

And they forget that people did rituals because they wanted to compete with other families. They wanted to have a certain socioeconomic status. They wanted to show off. And they wanted to have a display in front of a large audience that gave their family a tremendous amount of power. I always hold to the old adage: the dead do not bury themselves.

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Detail of the Papyrus of Hunefer, from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer. The centerpiece of the upper scene is the mummy of Hunefer, shown supported by the god Anubis (or a priest wearing a jackal mask). Hunefer’s wife and daughter mourn, and three priests perform rituals. The two priests with white sashes are carrying out the Opening of the Mouth ritual. The white building at the right is a representation of the tomb, complete with portal doorway and small pyramid. Both these features can be seen in real tombs of this date from Thebes. To the left of the tomb is a picture of the stela which would have stood to one side of the tomb entrance. Following the normal conventions of Egyptian art, it is shown much larger than normal size, in order that its content (the deceased worshipping Osiris, together with a standard offering formula) is absolutely legible. At the right of the lower scene is a table bearing the various implements needed for the Opening of the Mouth ritual. At the left is shown a ritual, where the foreleg of a calf, cut off while the animal is alive, is offered. The animal was then sacrificed. The calf is shown together with its mother, who might be interpreted as showing signs of distress. Date: 1275 BC. Text and image from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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This is a reflection of the families who are doing the burials rather than the dead. And I’m working on that in my next book, with chapter 1 including a queen who benefitted from sacrificial burials. People killed to accompany her in burial. And I could just talk about that or I could talk about the fact that she buried her dead husband with the same sacrificial victims, but she was there when her son was too young to rule on his own, ordering who would die and who would live and standing there watching as the courtiers that she grew up with are dispatched before her very eyes.

RM: She’s an Egyptian Queen from when?

KC:  The first dynasty.

RM: Was that around the time of those sacrificial burials at Ur in Mesopotamia?

KC: It is. It’s an interesting thing that the beginnings of kingship often are accompanied, not just in Egypt or Mesopotamia, with sacrificial burial. And when kingship is established the sacrificial burials often end. Only in highly competitive societies do you see the sacrificial burials continuing. It’s a very cruel practice. It’s also a very socially expensive practice and something that your courtiers are going to rebel against eventually and find ways around it.

RM: How were they dispatched?

KC: With great trauma. They used a kind of bludgeon to the back of the head and the people were probably drugged or drunk and then they just slugged them in the back of the head with a blunt object; they probably dropped where they stood. In ancient Egypt, there is no evidence of any trauma. And Flinders Petrie discovered most of these bodies at the end of the 19^th century and didn’t do what would be a modern scientific forensic analysis, it’s true. And only the skulls remain. They didn’t keep the entire body.

But new sacrificial victims have been found around the enclosure of Abydos by Laurel Bestock, among others. I don’t know of any evidence of trauma, like blunt force or if you could see strangulation on the body. It’s quite possible that these people were strangled or poisoned and that it didn’t leave any evidence on the body itself. There could have been a quieter form of death as opposed to what the Egyptians would have done to an enemy, which was blunt force trauma that was used in war. You hold the enemy by the hair and you dispatch them with a blow to the head.

RM: This reminds me of the bog bodies in Northern Europe. The sacrifices got a knock on the head and more.

KC: They still have the strangulation ties around the neck as well.

RM:  And the Peruvian mummy bundles. I think some of them died of the cold and/or poison.

KC: Yes, I think you’re right. I would have to check on the Peruvian mummy bundles, but I think there was poison involved, particularly of the children. Finding cause of death in a mummy is not as easy as one would expect. And with skeletal material, which is what you have preserved for Dynasty I, of course, it’s even harder. We have Tutankhamen’s body, but do we know how he died? By no means. And people will continue to argue about that for some time. In my opinion, it’s the wrong thing to ask for Tutankhamen.

For the sacrificial burials I would like to know because you get a better understanding of how the ritual would have worked. But I have to assume in rituals of the first dynasty that courtiers would have all stood in a funeral enclosure or out on the necropolis grounds, watching their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers killed before their eyes. And the mourning would have been heightened because of it. So, the king would have gone into burial with all of the power of that mourning, of that loss. The greater the lament, the more powerful the transformation in the next world. Stature added impetus to kill them. Also, it kept society controlled when you’re establishing kingship for the first time.

RM: As usual, a ritual works on many levels.

KC: Yes, for sure.

RM: I know you have to get going. If you have a few minutes, I wanted to ask you a few scattered questions. I recently watched one of John Romer’s older programs that focused on the dangers to archaeological sights. Is this a worry? Can you comment on the overall picture?

KC: Of course, I worry about Egyptian archaeology. I think archaeology is under threat everywhere right now. I think that whatever country you look at, whether in the west or in the east or in the Middle East, there is the threat of anti-intellectualism and there is a push against academics. And there is the possibility of seeing archaeology as frivolous, unnecessary and a waste of resources rather than seeing it as the best means of understanding human patterns, cycles of crisis and prosperity and human reaction to those cycles of crisis and prosperity.

RM: What is the message and wisdom that archaeology and related studies have for people today?

KC: We can learn so much from what we have already done, using them as cautionary tales. Using it as building blocks, using it to help us do better. And archaeology is one of the best tools that we have moving towards potential apocalypse of global climate change. People have gone through it before. I’ve studied the Bronze Age collapse, and the massive crisis that occurred because of climate change, maybe not human induced climate change, but because of climate change around 1200 BCE and what happened. How did government fail? What states collapsed? What did people do? What were the reactions? These are useful things to know going forward because we will go through this again. In many parts of this globe, people are already going though this. There are many places that are dealing with apocalypse in the here and now and archaeology can help us to understand these patterns.

Egyptology has one of the most colonial archaeological histories on the planet. 

For pure archaeological work there is not a lot of money. There’s not a lot of return on your investment. And so what you end up having is a colonial science where a lot of non-Egyptians come into Egypt to do work; that creates tensions and problems. The more sensitive we can be to Egyptian ways of doing things, the better we can be. For example, I applied for and got the grant from the American Research Center in Egypt for US AID funds and in that $70,000 grant, I asked for $25,000 to go directly to the Egyptian Museum to help with the registrar and other costs that they may have. And the next grant I do, I will do the same thing. And if we can move money towards Egyptian institutions that have so very little, then the institutions will be better for it.

Every photo that I take of objects in the Cairo museum, I gladly give with no copyright restrictions to the Egyptian Museum. They can do whatever they want with those images and I am happy to do so because I know that their embarrassment of riches is a blessing, but it is also a responsibility and a weight that is difficult to deal with and I try to make my contribution as best I can. I see other archaeologists and historians doing the same. So, the more we can cooperate and help, the better, but with the understanding that we’re working in their country and we should abide by their rules and their cultural ways.

RM: Yes, for sure. You brought up the environmental qualities of studying archaeology; it makes me think we need a required class on archaeology, history and climate change.

KC: I’m reading about the ‘70s. Just the ‘70s is incredibly useful. All of the revolutionary thinking, all of the bombs, the schism between society on the left and right, the idea of these dirty hippies on one side and intellectuals and on the other side, the rise of the republican right. You know, it’s a useful thing to look back to see how we as a country cycled through that; now, the next schism between right and left is so much more destructive. History is our best tool for understanding the future.

RM: I know you have head out. That means time for the mummy movie question: do you have a favorite movie that depicts ancient Egypt?

KC: I showed my son Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time—and wow did he love it! I hadn’t seen it in ten years. And all the Egyptian stuff is wrong but cool; it’s such a good movie and if I have to pick any movie about Egypt, it has to be Raiders of the Lost Ark. Is it authentic? No, but it doesn’t need to be. Julian can’t wait to see the second one. I keep trying to tell him it’s not as good.

RM: Great to relive these programs with your son. Thanks so much for your time, expertise and for keeping the adventure alive.

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For the first installment of this interview, see Tutankhamun, Nefertiti, and Akhenaten, published in the Anniversary Issue of Popular Archaeology.

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Kara Cooney’s latest book, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World, will be released November 2, 2021. Interested readers may purchase the book by pre-order at this site.

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About the interviewer

As a child, Richard Marranca was given books on history, myth and religion that ignited his interests. When he was seven, he went with his mom, grandmother and aunt to Italy and Switzerland – a trip that lasted a lifetime. During his doctoral studies at New York University, he spent a semester in Greece with a side project in Egypt. Around the midpoint of his career, he also was awarded a Fulbright to teach at LMU Munich (and for two years was president of NJ Fulbright chapter), as well as six NEH summer seminars, including Andean Worlds in Peru/Bolivia; Concord MA; and High Plains Indians of Nebraska.

For Richard, teaching and writing go together; he teaches a variety of humanities and English courses. His most recent publications include stories in Coneflower Café, The Raven’s Perch and Months to Years Magazine; interviews in Popular Archaeology and Minerva; and poetry in the Paterson Literary Review. His manuscript, Speaking of the Dead, has been accepted for publication by Blydyn Square Books in NJ.

The latest project: His wife Renah, daughter Hera and Richard create videos, the latest being Childe Hera’s World on YouTube; so far it’s mostly travel videos, but this year the highlight was Coronavirus, A Child’s View.

Richard wishes to thank his wife Renah and Bridget Briant for their help with this interview.

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Cover Image, Top Left: By Jaredgrafik, Pixabay

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Much of Ethiopia’s rich cultural-social heritage lies within the history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC). After the decline of the Aksumite Empire (650CE/AD), the Zagwe dynasty (Circa 1000 – 1270 CE/AD) arose, establishing its capital in Lalibela-Lasta. This capital, founded as a monastic kingdom, served as a historical bridge between the ancient and modern era. As a platform for understanding Ethiopia’s historicity, Lalibela encompasses and builds upon religious and cultural adaptations and identity-formation yet to be fully researched.  One must not approach Lalibela or surrounding churches from the standpoint of an archaeologist or architect. Lalibela must be seen through pilgrim eyes.

As the nexus of human origins, Ethiopia constitutes a Holy Land in its own right, a sacred landscape rooted in humanity’s very creation. Ethiopia’s unbroken chain of history, reaching back to the foundations of civilizations and beyond, reflects one of humanity’s most significant chronicles of identity.  It is this brilliant, yet underrepresented narrative, which continues to inform Ethiopia’s unique ethos and self identity, steeped in its own majestic, millennia-old mythos.

Multiple indigenous cultures and societies have shaped this land, weaving a vibrant tapestry of histories, cultures, languages, and religious identities that continue to breathe life into all humankind.  Ethiopia also contains some of the most cherished cultural, historical, and archaeological sites in Africa, each serving as an integral cornerstone, undergirding age-old civilizations. At the core of much of this rich cultural, spiritual, and social-heritage mosaic is the history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) whose Aksumite religious antecedents extend to the early Judaic-Christian and Hebraic periods, to which it owes many of its religious and historical foundations.

Historical Background

Historical references to the regions of Ethiopia and the Horn are found in some of the earliest Egyptian records and images. Additionally, biblical and Greek literature present Ethiopia as a land of Eden, and the summer abode of the gods, respectively. Both Sargon II and Sennacherib mention Ethiopia (Meluhha) as the destination of those fleeing the destruction of the Assyrian invasions of Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Eastern Levant, in the 6^th and 5^th centuries CE/BC (Prichard, 1958, Orlinsky, 1956).  Accounts also mention the military might of the Ethiopians, having an army “beyond counting.”

Archaeological evidence, written accounts, and local inscriptions indicate the rise of an Ethio-Sabaean culture in Ethiopia around the end of the 10th or early part of the 9th centuries BC.  The indigenization of these various communities eventually developed into the kingdom of D’mt, with its capital and main temple at Yeha (Sergew, 1972). Current archaeological excavations reveal an administrative structure of great architectural and societal complexity associated with this site. The D’mt Kingdom began its decline around the end of the 4^th into the 3^rd century BC/BCE, and was succeeded by the emergence of Aksum as the dominant city-state.

During the first seven centuries AD/CE, Aksum, the ancient Ethiopian capital of the future Christian Aksumite Empire, thrived upon trade with the Mediterranean cities of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria. Situated within the highlands of the northern region of what is now Tigrai, the powerful center of the Aksumite Kingdom grew to dominate both sides of the southern Red Sea, regions in Sudan, including the northern capital of Meroe, and traded with ports across the Indian Ocean and down along the Swahili coast, functioning as an important commercial and military partner with the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empires (Sergew, 1972).   

As one of the largest and longest-lived African Empires, Aksum holds a unique place in the history of world civilizations. The introduction of Christianity in the mid-fourth century AD/CE by Ethiopia’s first Bishop, Frumentius, and King Ezana proved to be a pivotal historical juncture (Sergew, 1972).  To this day, Aksum serves as the focal-point for Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and stands as a symbol of Ethiopia’s vibrant cultural continuity into modern history.

The development of Ge`ez as a language, with first unvocalized and then vocalized or Ethiopic, script, has left a unique written chronicle, both pre-Christian and Christian, retaining traditions and a liturgy of world importance and significance. Additionally, early manuscripts mention Aksum hosting the first Muslim communities fleeing persecution in Mecca. Many Islamic architectural and cultural elements remain across Ethiopia as witness to these broader regional influences in the 7th -11th centuries. These constitute a rich selection of heritage sites and cultures in their own right (Girma, 1997; Dagnachew, 2003).

It is not only these churches, monasteries, mosques, and holy sites, however, which constitute truly unique heritage assets. Their contents, including artifacts as old as the structures themselves: manuscripts, varieties of liturgical objects, such as icons and crosses, Qur’ans, crowns, liturgical fans, vestments, drums, lyres, sistra, etc., must also be considered. Ethiopia thus contains important historical, cultural, religious, and heritage-based sites, and a multitude of archaeological remains illustrative of the development and blossoming of major albeit underrepresented African civilizations.

Of special note are the Aksumite and Post-Aksumite rock-hewn churches located across the landscapes of Gheralta, Tembian, and regions in North Wollo. With the decline of Aksumite hegemony, population movements led settled communities to migrate progressively south, progressively inland, where they became increasingly more isolated. In the early Ethiopia medieval periods, the Zagwe dynasty (Circa 1000 – 1270 CE/AD) established its capital in Lalibela-Lasta, initiating this progressive movement of capitals southwards. The dynasty and structures of Lalibela, however, represent a particular uniqueness, serving as a historical bridge between the ancient and the modern. As a platform for understanding Ethiopia’s historicity and the uninterrupted continuity of Ethiopianness, Lalibela encompasses and builds upon religious and cultural adaptations, innovations, and the transmission of knowledge in ways yet to be fully appreciated, researched, or understood. 

Construction out of Chaos 

In 1520, one of the first outsiders to visit and record the church complexes of Lalibela, Chaplain Fransico Alverez of the Portuguese Embassy, viewed them two and a half centuries after they had been abandoned (Alvarez, 1881).  Even in that state, however, these surreal edifices inspired him to wax eloquent on the grandeur and uniqueness of churches and other structures hewn completely out of living rock. But then he hesitated, concerned that if he continued in his descriptions, his readers might begin to disbelieve him. Such reticence, or perhaps a lack of  context with which to accurately expound the wonders of the Lalibela complex and surrounding churches, continues to this day.

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Fig. 1 – Beta Giorgyis – The Church of St. George in Lalibela. (Photo SCW)

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Prior to my first visit to Lalibela, I read various accounts: Alverez, 18th and 19th century visitors, and contemporary travelers and scholars. But it wasn’t until I stood atop the unworked bedrock peering into the carved out cavity and beheld the standing structures for myself that I apprehended what constrained previous writers. Incongruous was the first word that came to mind. That early medieval churches, literally chiseled free from stone, both inside and out, would be situated on a remote hillside in the central highlands of Ethiopia, made little sense.

Monumental hewn structures are not unique to Lalibela. Abu Simbal, the Valley of the Kings, among many other carved sites across Egypt, plus Cappadocia in Turkey, Petra in Jordan, and structures in India, are tied to trade networks, or located at crossroads or borders, and were specifically designed and situated to impress. Lalibela, however, fits none of these parameters. Something genuinely different was at play here. Its structures, and therefore its history, transcend the physical. These remain living, vibrant, churches, functioning within a pilgrim ethos still founded in the early medieval worldview. Something much deeper, more visceral, requires the story to be told in a radically different way.

For a thousand years, Lalibela has stood sentinel, overlooking an expansive valley to nowhere. Why? A mystery.  As an archaeologist visiting a site for the first time, I examine the overall environment, the geology, the topography, the vegetation. Like reading an ancient crime scene, I look for the small clues, indications of humanity’s mark upon his or her landscape.

Like a sleuth, I tracked the slopes and bedrock overlooking the churches, the hewn river valleys, the two breast-shaped hills, Mount Tabor and the Mount of Olives, sites named after biblical locations thousands of kilometers to the north.  Having traipsed the hills of Jerusalem and Israel for close to a decade, I was at first surprised at Lalibela’s smallness, its compactness.

Soon, however, clues emerged. Remnants of tombs carved atop the bedrock, foundation trenches of free-standing, stone-built structures, notches cut in the sides of the deep cut trenches, even a smoothed surface along a cliff-face that may have held a painted icon or an inscription, required a good deal more soil atop the bedrock back in antiquity. The Lalibela of today is not the Lalibela of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Scoured through centuries, the original vibrancy had long ago eroded away. Today’s remnants comprise the revitalized relics of a long-past dynasty.

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Fig. 2 – Eroded surface above the Dual Chapels of Sinai and Golgotha, showing evidence of tombs and foundation trenches from the earliest phases of occupation in Lalibela. (Photo SCW)

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A Second Look

Since the collapse of the Aksumite Empire circa CE/AD 650, nearly four hundred silent years had limped by before the rise of the Zagwe dynasty. During this interval, no central capital, no nexus for defining “Ethiopianness” emerged. The hidden rock-hewn churches that dot the landscape of Tigrai and south into Gheralta and Tembien, retain impressive masterpieces of early ecclesiastical art and architecture, but a large, central, settled community has yet to be discovered. Previous research attributed this to the pressures of Islam, the newly dominant religion of Arabia and the Red Sea trade routes. Was Lalibela therefore all about security? The Lalibela-Lasta context failed to fit so simple or pedestrian an answer.

Contextual Framing 

For my dissertation in Jordan, I researched the late Roman/early Byzantine rural structures, monasteries, and remote military outposts of the Jordanian desert from the reign of Diocletian (AD 296-304) to the eventual dominance of Constantine the Great (AD 308-330) as a newly-Christian Emperor (Walker, 2004). Such a major shift in the Eastern Mediterranean ushered in the emergence of a politically, newly powerful, Christianity.

With the evolution of a new ecclesiastical architecture came a new triumphalism. Adorning the highest cupulas of the grandest churches of the Byzantine Empire, icons flaunted Christ as Pantocrator – The Divine, undisputed champion, ruler of the universe. As an added measure of subjugation, the Hebraic terms, Yahweh Sabaoth – Lord of Hosts, and El Shaddai – Lord God Almighty, were pirated and ascribed to this Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, as evidence that this new God of gods, had become the ultimate conqueror.

From Christianity’s humble origins as a peasant fellowship of fishermen along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, through three hundred years as a persecuted sect, Christendom burst forth as the state religion of one of the most powerful empires of its day. Many saw this as evidence that such a feat was ordained by God.

Christendom’s newly acquired dominance along with the subsequent, often politically motivated church councils, starting with that of Nicea (325 AD), ignited the counter-measure: the monastic movement in the deserts of Judea, Jordan, Syria, the Negev, the Sinai, and Egypt.  Additionally, the Ethiopian church had maintained a presence in Jerusalem from the beginning, attending the church councils, through to the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), where it disavowed the monophysite heresy, but maintained the miaphysite doctrine (Tewahedo), “One nature of God the Word incarnate” (Melaju, 2008).

The continuity of this history is illustrated not only by the intimate knowledge the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had of church history, but because it was integral in helping to write it.  Mosaics in various 5^th and 6^th century Byzantine churches across Jordan, including Mt. Nebo and Petra, depict Ethiopians, evidence that communication between the two branches of Christianity were commonplace.

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Fig. 3- Mosaic in Mt. Nebo, Jordan, depicting Ethiopian person with an ostrich, zebra, and giraffe, shown as a “camel-leopard” as it was known. (Photo SCW)

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The word ‘monk’ comes from the Greek root mono, for “one who lives alone.”  Monasticism remains the ultimate test of faithfulness to the call of discipleship. Allaying physical distractions tempered through the mortification of the flesh, prepared one for the daunting demands of spiritual discipline. What better way to be tested and proven faithful than to emulate Christ who withdrew to a deserted place for fasting and praying?

There is a deeply incarnational dimension to communing one-on-one with the Divine. Regardless of one’s faith-walk, isolation and reflection produce their own measure of spiritual reward. As opposed to the blatant political and economic messages broadcast by the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or the earlier structures of Abu Simbal and Petra, it became increasingly clear that Lalibela-Lasta had been founded, inspired by an overarching need to dwell as a remote, monastic kingdom.

Lead me to the Rock . . . 

Returning, I poured over the maps. And then, there it was. The massif of Mt. Lasta upon which the Lalibela complex is built, is situated just south of Mt. Abuna Yusef. At 4190 meters above sea level, it is the highest mountain in the region and only 430 meters lower than Ethiopia’s highest peak, Ras Dashen. A series of watersheds cuts the highlands of Ethiopia into four quadrants. Lalibela is situated just north-west of the convergence of the main mountain ridges that divides this rugged land. The Priest-Kings of the Zagwe Dynasty chose this isolation, purposely, as an island situated within an ocean of basaltic mountains. As near the center of that convergence as geographically possible, as far away from the corruption of the world, upon the farthest edge of Christendom, at the headwaters of the Tecazze River, the first Priest-Kings of the Zagwe Dynasty founded their monastic capital.

One must not, therefore, approach the Lalibela complex or surrounding churches from the standpoint simply of an archaeologist, historian, architect, or tourist. Lalibela must be seen through pilgrims’ eyes. These stone-hewn structures now retain the skeletal framework of their truer, more spiritual story. I have revisited Lalibela multiple times, seeking the greater contexts of Ethiopia’s previous identity formation in relation to the Aksumite Empire, and the direct connection this “Ethiopian Jerusalem” holds with the Jerusalem of Gold. Especially today, one must sit at the feet of ages past in order to grasp the broader medieval pilgrimage ethos surrounding the collapse of the corrupt, despotic Crusader Kingdoms in the Eastern Levant. 

Seeing through pilgrims’ eyes unlocks this most extraordinary of sites to new avenues of comprehension. It creates a means of embracing the essence of the Lalibela-Lasta complex, that of greater Ethiopia, and ultimately, the whole of Africa. It illustrates just how significant and splendid these structures are, not simply as artifacts of devotion, but even more, as icons of faith, edifices of an eternal, yet grounded hope, amidst the darkness of Western Christendom’s early-medieval decay. It is within this light that the earlier churches and those of Lalibela need to be experienced.

From this elevated standpoint, the Lalibela-Lasta churches brilliantly epitomize the initial resurrection of a post-Crusader, Ethiopian kingdom of faith, that shone beyond the shadows of defeat in the Eastern Mediterranean and across North Africa. This sacred space specifically was designed to be a beacon for the many Christian-African kingdoms of the interior, even at times, casting its light upon the dim shores of Europe, stumbling in the pre-Renaissance era. Lalibela’s essence hearkens back to our origins. It remains a message across the centuries, calling all of us home to rest in the embrace of our common mother, Africa.

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Fig. 4 – Relief Map of Ethiopia and Eretria – Note the division of Ethiopia’s highlands into distinct quadrants and watersheds, with Lalibela situated centrally.

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Geology, Jewels, and a Miracle

The structures of Lalibela are constructed within a finger of tuff, a soft volcanic stone, which juts out into the valley. Tuff, as a softer stone made more of compacted volcanic ashes, absorbs water. When it is first exposed, one can easily carve and shape the stone with basic iron tools.  I have seen masons and quarrymen dig out huge boulders of tuff and, with hammer and chisel, knock out building blocks, level, square, uniform, in minutes. And then a miracle happens. Once the stone is doused with water and exposed to air, it hardens to near concrete.

Tradition holds that after his 14-year sojourn in Jerusalem and the Holy Lands, King Lalibela received a vision. He was to build a new Jerusalem for a new priesthood serving a new chosen people of God. Visualizing Lalibela within its broader geological location, one grasps the perception of the miraculous. Consider that the site upon which the churches of Lalibela are built is less than two square kilometers of tuff in a region where, for literally hundreds of thousands of square kilometers to the north, and in an east-westerly direction, there is none (Morton, 1978, Williams, 2016). For those spiritually inclined, it is as if when God was crafting the world from time immemorial, he secreted away an infinitesimal nugget of constructional tuff in this land of ever-present, uplifted, hard basalt, for just such a time as this.

From this reddish-gray stone, King Lalibela hews a precious jewel, one of the truly magnificent world masterpieces of religious art. But it is not simply the structures themselves which speak of this brilliance. The churches, as wonderful as each are, are more than simply ecclesiastical edifices. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Like all true art, Lalibela contains an astounding, hidden magic.

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Fig. 5 – An original stone from the initial carving out of the structures, kept in a pile beside the church of Beta Giyorgis. Note the chisel marks indicating the types of tools and force used to excavate. The fact such stones were retained on site indicates they were likely considered part of the sacredness of the “work is prayer” adage. (Photo SCW)

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. . . To the Rock that is Higher Than I

In order to gain a deeper understanding of why the Lalibela complex is such a sacred space, one must grasp the ascetic world view within a monastic mental landscape. The most ancient traditions related to the birth of Jesus place it in a cave dwelling adjacent to the house of Joseph’s family in Bethlehem (Murphey-O’Conner, 1992). The fanciful stories of a wooden manger in a wooden stable behind an inn are fabrications of Renaissance artists. Given Christ’s nativity occurs in a cave, this holds special emphasis within ancient monasticism. And then there is the burial after the crucifixion, also within a cave, that completes the incarnational circle to the monastic narrative. Living one’s life in a cave is as close as one can get to living as Christ. And thus, a monastic church in a cave or a church carved out of rock is the epitome of the dwelling of God with man, or the Beta Emmanuel (Hirscfeld, 1999).

The dominant focus on the Lalibela churches and complexes continues to be architectural and art history-based. Subsequently, a critical factor for adequately and accurately expounding the wonders of the Lalibela complex and surrounding churches remains unexplored. By continually ignoring the broader political, social, and cultural formations of the Zagwe Dynasty, scholars have limited the lexicon for creating the richer narrative of Lalibela-Lasta’s far deeper significance.

The era of the Zagwe Dynasty is one of the most impressive periods of Ethiopia’s history (Pankhurst, 1990, Phillipson, 2009, 2012). It is incumbent upon us to endeavor to rediscover, through research of the significant data-sets, the sociological and broader cultural frameworks preceding and leading up to, the rise of the Zagwe dynasty. Further research is required to capture the message within the Lalibela heritage sites beyond merely its architectural significance.

Lasta-Lalibela heritage stands as a uniting historical monument to Ethiopia’s shared historical experience. As contemporary Ethiopia undergoes shifts of cultural and societal identity across ethno-national and linguistic lines, these heritages retain prominent historical value to enable the building of comprehensive, mutual understanding. Lalibela-Lasta represents the continual adaptation of ascribed identities across generations and landscapes. The cumulative transference of societal knowledge, variable skill-sets, practices, cultural material, along with the geographical location of these structures and associated sites, build upon, and enhance community well-being, religious expression, and societal identifiers for each new generation.

Historical Framework of Lalibela-Lasta 

Years before ascending the throne, two years after the defeat of the Crusaders in Jerusalem in 1187 by the Ayyubid dynasty, King Lalibela visited Egypt and the Holy Land. While there, he was invited for an audience with the conqueror, Salah ad-Din (Saladin). Because the Coptic Church in Alexandria was responsible for providing the Mutran (Metropolitan) for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Salah ad-Din viewed King Lalibela as under his protection and neutral in the previous Crusader conflicts. Thus, Ethiopian and Coptic Christians were again given access to, and in some instances control of, the holy sites, a privilege denied them under the Crusaders. A Metropolitan (Mutran), as overseer of an ecclesiastical community or See, serves as the primary representative of a patriarch. Under agreement, the Coptic Alexandrian Church sent a Mutran from Egypt and the Ethiopian church would not select its own bishops or Patriarch. It is conjectured that under the Zagwe dynasty, the Priest-Kings broke with this tradition.

A brilliant example of the confluence of these two worlds, Crusader and Ethiopian, is depicted as graffiti in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. As one enters the sanctuary, on one of the limestone pillars, off to the far left, are the sketched images of crusader helmets and coats of arms. Two beautiful, regal African faces, in profile, grace this pillar. Staring into that face, one can easily imagine one to be King Lalibela on his sojourn. Of course, King Lalibela was no Crusader, but it is within this frame of reference, this seeking a common good for humanity and living within the core of the Christian and monastic mandate to love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute, that we must understand his majesty. Upon this mountain, called Roha in antiquity, translated from the Ge’ez as “pure or clean,” a new focal point emerges of a new dynasty of these priest-kings, or in the local parlance, Presbyter Jan-hoy.

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Fig. 6 – Graffiti in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, depicting an African face in profile, atop a Crusader helmet. (Photo SCW)

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Finding Our Way 

Pilgrimage is designed to set us right, to level the playing field. And Lalibela is one of the most profound places wherein one can be set right. But it takes work. It requires a different set of eyes, spiritual eyes, to see the beauty and wonder of not simply the stone churches, but hopefully, to apprehend the hidden, beating heart of devotion of the ancient, dynamic, living Ethiopic church that forged this icon of faith out of living rock.

In the hectic pantomime of modern Christianity, most have forsaken the practice of pilgrimage. Yet, pilgrimage or sojourning as a spiritual exercise, is a searching for the fingerprint of God. The essential element of pilgrimage is, as the word implies, leaving the security of home and seeking for that which is other. It is an intention of a destination, not simply to a sacred place, but more importantly, to dwell securely within a sacred space (Hirschfeld, 1992, Tsafrir, 1988). For the wearied wayfarer among Ethiopia’s and Africa’s early medieval Christian populace, the churches of Lalibela served and still serve as just such a space.

One major aspect of pilgrimage relates to manual labor as a form of prayer. Indeed, one finds the statement, “work is prayer” among many of the guiding principles of monastic orders. Is it any wonder then we see varying influences within the architecture and decoration in the various structures, especially in windows and cross forms? The retention of Aksumite ecclesiastical architecture, however, remains obvious throughout the Lalibela complex and earlier churches. It can be conjectured that many of these stone churches represent actual, contemporary structures which were subsequently destroyed in the religious wars of 1528-1543. Of these stone-hewn churches, architectural form supersedes function, even within many representational constructed elements. Wooden frames of windows and doors, currently found in the built churches such as Debre Damo and Yimerhane Kirstos, are exquisitely retained in stone in the Lalibela churches

Transcendence 

Being religious, however, is not a requisite to appreciating or even experiencing things spiritual. The path an early-medieval pilgrim followed through the various churches illustrates how perfectly King Lalibela incorporated spiritual geography and embodied the deepest elements of the ancient pilgrimage ethos. In Zorzi’s accounts of travelers to Ethiopia in the mid-1440s, he records, “From Asquaga (modern Woldia) to Urvuar (often associated with Lalibela), and there is a king in the said great city, where are 12 churches of canons and a bishop, and the tomb of a holy king that works miracles, and has the name of Lalivela (sic); whither go very many pilgrims from all the lands.” (Crawford, 1956). But new research indicates the actual site of Urvuar to be ruins south of Istayish, serving as the administrative site to Lalibela 25 kms to the north.

The Beta Giyorgis complex, the lowest point geographically, was probably the last of the churches to be hewn. It is situated on a knoll of tuff that descends south of the main hillsides housing the other two, larger complexes. Three carved ravines designed to funnel off water, create an “island” or “mountain peak” amidst a broader ocean of stone. The eastern channel, named Gadet, meaning ‘the boundary marker between two lands’, is linked by a channel to the western gorge, referred to as the River Jordan.

In medieval times, pilgrims would initiate their pilgrimage via one of two paths at this lowest point, at the outflow of the Gadet as it runs into the south-western ravine. Via this deep cut in the bedrock, one enters Beta Giyorgis or St. George’s church within its original design.  Up slope and to the west from the Gadet is a holy water site named after the dragon-slaying, mega-martyr, St. George or Beta Giyorgis, where pilgrims in need of physical, mental, or spiritual healing, or those seeking absolution for sins past, could be cleansed and begin anew – a regenesis of sorts, toward a renewed identity.

The Churches 

Though dedicated to St. George, local traditions also state its architectural elements tie Beta Giyorgis to Noah’s Ark. Noah is often painted as a portrait of faith, because, as we find in Hebrews 11, Noah heeds God’s warning, believing something that had never before been seen. And thus, he and his family represent earth’s sole human survivors and heirs of righteousness.

Further, in the Epistles of Peter, Noah is held as an example of one whose faith saved not only his family, but also the whole of humanity. The spiritual geography of Beta Giyorgis serves as a rock-hewn ark secured to its own Mt. Ararat, with the priest-kings of the Zagwe Dynasty representing the faithful Noah, saving the broader Ethiopian communities, and consequently, humanity, from a deluge of sinfulness drowning the world as subsequent Crusades and other religious wars raged on further north.

Within the enclosure, to the northeast, as the craftsmen carved down, they hit the base rock of basalt. Too hard to hew, it was left and aptly named, Mt. Ararat, after the resting place of the original ark.  And just as Noah’s ark had three levels and a roof, so does Beta Giyorgis, with open windows only on the upper-most level. To enter, one must ascend the seven hewn steps leading into the closed confines, the sacred security of this ark of stone. Each ascending step is higher and narrower than its predecessor, symbolizing the seven heavens, illustrating how each stride in the walk of faith requires more effort, less self-assurance, in obtaining salvation and the righteousness which comes by grace alone. Viewed from above, the series of three foundation steps which encircle the entire building give it the illusion that the last waves of the flood still lap at the now-grounded ark.

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Fig. 7 – The narrowing, ascending steps to Beta Giyorgis. (Photo SCW)

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The Church structure is said to also represent the Arc of the Covenant, containing the Decalogue or ten commandments. In the Chapel of Beta Gabriel, a wooden arc, in the exact style of Beta Giyorgis, beautifully retains that tradition in miniature.

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Fig. 8 – Miniature wooden Arc of the Covenant showing similarities to Beta Giyorgis Church. (Photo SCW)

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The floral motif atop each window could be taken as the olive branch brought back by the dove, or more likely, the vine that Noah planted post-flood and from which he made the first wine. Wine, of course, becomes the essential element of the holy sacrament representing the blood of Christ. Twelve windows, three on each branch of its cruciform shape, can be any of a number of elements, but are most likely for the twelve apostles, sent to spread the good news to the four corners of the world. The roof is carved with a cross within a cross within a cross, creating a Trinitarian unity of the central symbol of Christianity.

Saved from the condemnation of the flood, one exits the ark, and ascends, up across the hand-hewn trough linking Gadet and the Jordan. It is unknown what features, in medieval times, existed upon what is now the walkway and parking lot. Further research may illuminate a passageway demarcating a causeway into the new promised land upslope. Remnants of large hewn ashlar stones demarcate a path that may represent the way through one’s own wilderness wanderings from the realm of the Old Testament into the world of the New.

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Fig. 9 – Built pathway from Beta Giyorgis leading to the narrow alley to the Tomb of Adam – (Photo SCW)

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Orthodox icons of the crucifixion usually depict the cross, planted atop Calvary or Golgotha, the place of the skull. Traditionally, the place where the cross of Christ was fixed to the Earth has been interpreted as the original burial spot of Adam, as represented by a skull and long bones.  The ascent, leading to the Tomb of Adam, takes one further up to a narrow, deeply carved alley with the closed-in feel of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Steep steps lead up through the doorway into an enclosure, creating the impression of being enclosed within one’s tomb. Like the confined chapels within Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher, these spaces allowed a pilgrim to individually own that she or he is, like the original sinner, Adam, dead in sin ( I Cor 15:21 – “For since by (one) man came death, by (one) man came also the resurrection of the dead”). 

From a low door, petitioning humility, one emerges from that tomb, to arrive at the twin chapels of Sinai, also referred to in the literature as Beta Mika’el, representing the giving of the Mosaic law, and Golgotha, where grace and forgiveness were bestowed upon humanity.

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Fig. 10 – Site of the Tomb of Adam looking down, with the dual chapels of Sinai (Beta Mika’el) on the far end, and Beta Golgotha, closer.  Note the original door to Sinai (indicated by the top arrow) is rarely utilized today.  It should be noted that entrance into Golgotha is only accessible through the Sinai chapel, possibly indicating that salvation comes only by passing through the law into grace. (Jn. 1:17- “Since though the law was given to Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.” Jerusalem Bible, 1966).  (Photo SCW)

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These dual churches, representing the old and new covenants, tie the Hebraic or Judaic heritage of the earliest representations of the living church to this modern living Ethiopic heritage and traditions. One of the verses often quoted in regard to this long historicity and connectivity to the promises of God through King David, is Psalm 68:31: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God” (KJV). This entire complex reverberates with the sense that these structures are designed to boldly claim that promise fulfilled. In a sense, these structures illustrate that the Gospel has indeed been preached to the ends of the earth.

The first structure, known as Beta Mika’el, or alternatively, as Mt. Sinai, represents the giving of the law. Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the law, proves our need of salvation. Access to the sanctuaries of Mt. Sinai and then Golgotha, originally required one to nearly circumambulate the building, to the far end, and then negotiate narrow steps to traverse the slender path along the exterior wall. Just as the Children of Israel wandered for forty years, and Jesus fasted for forty days in the wilderness, this path requires of a pilgrim time to prepare for entrance into these two sanctuaries. The eastern door, now rarely used, would have ushered a penitent into the closed confines of Sinai, which contains solid pillars and an aura of heaviness.  With high, small windows, condemnation is palpable. Highly-stylized “angels’ eyes” stare, unblinkingly from every corner of each capital.

The second chapel, Golgotha, represents the giving of grace which now covers the debt of humanity’s sin. Beta Golgotha, off-limits to women, hides secrets. It is the only church with life-size relief statuary incorporated in the walls. There is argument as to whether the statuary are original, or later additions. Evidence for the argument that they are original, are similar pillar capitals, as well as a similar feature of a standing cleric, found in Kankanet Mika’el, far up slope from the main Lalibela complexes, on the way to the Hudad Plateau.

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Fig. 11- Relief statue in the chapel of Beta Golgotha – The sheen upon the stone comes from  centuries of pilgrims venerating the image in prayers and petitions.

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The back part of the nave houses what is known as the Sellassie Chapel (Phillipson, 2009, Merceier, 2012). Normally a thick curtain covers the entrance to this chamber, protecting, as far as it is known, the only chapel in Christendom with three separate altars, one for each member of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Typical Ethiopic icons of the Trinity represent three sagacious, identical depictions of the one nature of the triune God. All equally share that single nature of Godhead from before creation, all eternally, self-existing. This triunity strongly exemplifies the miaphysite concept of God being of a single nature, rather than the dual nature doctrine – diaphysite – of other Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformed/Protestant traditions (Melaku, 2008). 

The long Ethiopic presence in Jerusalem, especially as it relates to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, has forged a deep link to the Holy Land and its spiritual history. Immediately after the Ayyubid re-conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, the Ethiopic church served as primary custodian of these holy sites. It is not unlikely that King Lalibela would have been intimately engaged in that administration. By recreating a tomb of Christ in Ethiopia, King Lalibela may have selected this back chapel as his final resting place, complete with a depiction of a resting or prone Christ, perhaps illustrating in stone, the incarnational aspects of the unified salvific work of both a human and divine nature, central to the belief of the Tewahedo or the miaphysite doctrine.

Having immersed oneself within the covenants of law and grace in Sinai and Golgotha, one then ascends a series of steps and navigates winding carved corridors, further upslope, to the large open area containing Beta Maryiam, the Church of Mary. Flanking this sanctuary are two smaller chapels, the chapel of the finding of the true cross (Beta Masqal) to the north, and the chapel of the 40 virgin martyrs (Beta Danagel) to the south.

Beta Maryiam is the only church that boasts an interior of colorful decorations and painted fresco icons. In the same way that St. Mary served as the vessel for incarnationally carrying Christ, so we as pilgrims, by entering this sacred space, partake in that incarnation and, as the true church, become the physical representation of Christ to the world. The open courtyard proffers the first place that pilgrims might celebrate communally. It is here the festival of incarnation at nativity, Ethiopian Genna, takes place each year. Multiple narratives coalesce within this complex. In a spiritual sense, the whole of the gospel abides herein: The Magnificat of Mary, the nativity, the incarnational ministry of Christ, the crucifixion, the faithfulness of martyrs.

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Fig. 12 – Interior of Beta Mariyam – The carved and painted designs retain the physical representations of the wood-carved, painted interiors of churches such as Yimerhane Kirstos, which predate the Lalibela churches. (Photo SCW)

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To the north lies a carved pool containing holy water where tradition states that barren women might be submerged and obtain fertility. The secret, hidden hope of barren women, also finds a place among the grandeur of this story. Just as God, through Mary, bestowed a physical child to Mary, and thus to the world, so He did for Sarai-Sarah, Revkah-Rebekah, Hanna, and the multiple nameless women who, through tears and social pain, found favor in a God who holds women in the highest esteem.

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Fig. 13 – The submersion pool with Beta Mariyam in the background.  The baptistery steps are to the left.  In the Early medieval periods, the reverse swastika motif was commonly associated with the tree of life, and can be seen represented in cultural material from Phoenician, Assyrian, and Indian cultural contexts. (Photo SCW)

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One final step, however, is required to usher the pilgrim into eternal, spiritual life. Through a constricting corridor within the imposing cliff face, like a passage through death into heavenly life, pilgrims lastly enter the large open space that houses Bete Medhane Alem, or Savior of the World Church. As the largest church, this would have served as the culmination, the high point of pilgrimage. The open area provided ample space for pilgrims to communally celebrate their renewed salvation. Inside, no imposing icon of Christ as Pantocrator looks down upon a sinful humanity. Here, it is the child-Christ, held by Mariyam, who reigns. From an Ethiopic (EOTC) perspective, this is the deity the world needs today, not the crusade-bent, angry god of so much of western Christendom. 

Having completed our pilgrimage, the steps to the north allow one to ascend further, where, with an added hope, pilgrims look uphill, to the symbolic Mount of Olives, from which Christ ascended, and upon which he will return as Savior of the World.

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Fig. 14 – The Mt. of Olives viewed from the Medhane Alem church, finalizing the pilgrimage experience. (Photo SCW)

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Much more can, and should be said about this masterpiece of ecclesiastical architecture, part of this broader narrative within Ethiopian Christianity. The administrative complex further southeast, along with Mt. Tabor commemorating Christ’s transfiguration, contain multiple mysteries in their own right, yet have not been part of the broader discussion of this paper.

Here, it is Ethiopia’s narrative that must prevail. The living church of the EOTC community constitutes the primary custodian of the centuries-old heritage, and it is, therefore, their story to tell. Often, the parochial, colloquial imposition of outside academic, disengaged, world views have dominated the retelling of what is Africa. That must change. In much of the literature about Lalibela and the larger Ethiopic Tewahedo church traditions as a whole, a subtle, or occasionally overt sentiment persists that these traditions are somehow failed attempts at emulating “our more enlightened, more scholarly and sophisticated” western churches, or post-Christian world. 

Often academia or scholars seek for minutia, or the mere stones and bones of an ancient tradition. Care is required lest we assume, because Western sacred sanctuaries have been reduced to museums or pubs, that Lalibela could be similarly defined. Continuing research sings a dynamically different story, however.

For now, our goal and honor remains to work with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church to train local clergy and heritage management experts and equip them to discover and discern even more of Lalibela’s enchantment. Thus might these sanctuaries and adjacent settlements reverberate with further sacredness within their deeper, intended spirituality.  Through continual co-research, it is hoped that more of the hidden messages are revealed as these Lalibela-Lasta complexes and communities still whisper secrets left nearly a thousand years ago.

Qidus, Sanctus, Holy

Like the first outsiders, however, I too must admit to only touching the surface of this mystical Holy Land. One final discovery, however, came to light while researching Ethiopic crosses. When one views the greater whole of the entire ecclesiastical complex of Lalibela, it becomes clear that the actual layout is designed to serve as more than a simple pathway for pilgrimage. The churches, chapels, and tunnels of Lalibela are themselves actually a magnificent, carved, monumental icon of the crucifixion.

Like the Ethiopian hand cross that every priest and monk carries, the bottom of the cross represents the square arc of the covenant. Other traditions relate that it represents the four corners of the world. Connecting the arc and the cross is the handle, representing the passageway to the foot of the cross, planted upon the tomb of Adam. In rare examples, the handle depicts Adam, rooted in his grave, with a shoot from the Tree of Paradise becoming the timber for the crossbeam for the crucifix. This apocryphal story is found in many older traditions, including a thread about King Solomon’s building of the Temple. The four branches of the cross emanating from the center, like the Jerusalem cross, comprise the core of the standard hand cross (Korabiewics, Waclaw, et al 1973).

As part of my research, I have come to the conclusion that every church or chapel in this complex represents an element of Christ’s sacrifice. The dual sanctuaries of Mt. Sinai (Beta Mika’el) and Golgotha comprise the two wounds of Christ’s feet. The Chapels of the Finding of the True Cross and the 40 Martyrs represent the nail-wounds in his hands. Beta Maryiam, the central place for incarnation, fully and beautifully represents the spear to his heart. For some, this similarly represents that Mary, Queen of Heaven and Co-Redemptrix, had her heart pierced as well. In the Middle Ages in Europe, the concept that St. Mary participated as an agent of redemption or salvation for humanity was promoted by the early Franciscans as a doctrine. It is not known to what extent this idea was present within the Zagwe dynasty, if at all. The Bete Medhane Alem, as the culminating sanctuary, honors the Savior of the World, and brilliantly represents his crown of thorns.

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Fig. 15 – Ethiopian hand-cross depicting Adam holding up the cross. The bottom is the Arc of the Covenant and each branch of the cross illustrates a wound, with Mary and Christ in the center (Photo SCW). A map of the Ecclesiastical structures illustrating the natural layout of the various sanctuaries (after Phillipson – 2009).

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As a sacred space, therefore, Lalibela-Lasta continues sharing the dividends of its spiritual economy, bestowing hope and identity to a nation so rich in heritage, but for so long hidden from the outside world.

Cover Image, Top Left: Bete Giyorgis (Church of St. George), Lalibela, Ethiopia.  Bernard Gagnon, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons

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Author details: swalkercisuog@gmail.com -ET:  +251-966262008  US 425-772-9123

Keywords  – Ethiopia; Lalibela; King Lalibela; Lasta; Ethiopianhistory; Zagwe ethiopianorthodoxtewahedochurch; EOTC; stonechurch; pilgrim; urvuar

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