HORSE SHOE ARCHES IN ANCIENT ETHIOPIA
The Aksumite kingdom controlled the northern part of Ethiopia, modern Tigray and Eritrea, together with several peripheral regions including parts of the present day Yemen and Sudan, for some seven hundred years from the beginning of our era. The kingdom, centered at the eponymous capital, Aksum, an inland city situated in the Ethiopian highlands between the Mareb and Takaze rivers at about 2100 m above sea level, also extended to the Red Sea coast, where it had wide trade and diplomatic contacts through its port of Adulis. Extremely little information is available about the history and civilisation of Aksum; but the publication of the excavation report (Munro Hay 1989) 1 provides a rather fuller account of the development of Africa's least known ancient civilisation. During the excavations there were many surprises. Large tombs and other structures were found below the remarkable granite stelae for which Aksum is perhaps best known. The architectural variety of the tombs, combined with the enormous size of the stones used for the stelae, (the largest of which measured some 33 m in height, with a base measuring c. 4 x 2 'A m) revealed that