Ongoing conflict in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region is devastating many lives, with reports of civilians being killed and an estimated 2.2 million people displaced. As well as the heavy human toll, armed conflict often leads to the damage and destruction of cultural heritage, including places of worship. Tigray’s rich cultural heritage includes the rock-hewn churches that make up the ‘Sacred Landscapes of Tigray’, submitted to the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2018. Many of them are already in need of conservation, and dangerous conflict threatens the sites themselves, the possibility of continuing conservation work, and potential future income from tourist visits to the churches.
The wall-paintings in Tigray’s rock-hewn churches – and in others elsewhere in the country, such as the famous churches at Lalibela – are an important part of Ethiopia’s unique ecclesiastical artistic heritage, which also encompasses some of the world’s most ancient illuminated gospels, icons, and crosses. These arts are the products of a long Christian tradition that dates back to the 4th century AD, when Ezana, King of Aksum, the powerful and well-connected empire that flourished between the 1st and 7th centuries AD approximately, was converted to Christianity by his scribe Frumentius. According to the historian Rufinus, this Frumentius was one of two Syrian brothers who were spared death and brought to the court after a trading vessel on which they were travelling stopped at one of Ethiopia’s Red Sea ports. In time, Frumentius became Ethiopia’s first bishop, laying the foundations of the country’s enduring Orthodox faith.
It is the long-held religious practices of the Ethiopian Orthodox church that underpin the country’s Christian artistic traditions, but the techniques and stylistic developments exhibited by such works reflect a confluence of earlier traditions – notably from the Aksumite empire – and influences from far beyond Ethiopia’s borders, including ancient Rome, Coptic Egypt, Renaissance Italy, India, and the Arab world, testifying to extensive and long-lasting networks of trade and cultural exchange.
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