UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
modest size, Dongour does not seem to have been a royal residence. It
was more probably inhabited by some leading citizen.
Another outstanding building, the remains of which are attributed by
tradition to Kaleb and his son Guebra-Masqal, once stood on a hill to the
north-east of Aksum. A pair of what might be called chapels were raised
over crypts consisting of several vaults built of and covered by stone flags:
there are fivevaults in the crypt of Guebra-Masqal to the south, and three
in that of Kaleb to the north. The upper part of the building is relatively
recent and indeed shows signs of having been frequently altered. There is
reason to think that the crypts are older, and that the vaults were brought
back into use in about the seventh or eighth century. The flight of steps
leading to Kaleb's tomb has large polygonal blocks of stone reminiscent
of certain north Syrian buildings of the second or third century. The
monument was surrounded by a large necropolis, and several shaft tombs
have lately been discovered nearby. There are others some distance away
towards the east.
At Bazen, to the east of the town, some oven-type tombs are hollowed
out of the rocky hillside. Some have a shaft, and vaults on each side at
the bottom. The same sector contains a multiple tomb with a stairway of
seventeen steps, also hollowed out of the rock, and dominated by a stele
which in ancient times did not stand alone, since an English traveller at
the beginning of the nineteenth century tells of having seen fourteen fallen
'obelisks' here.
The ancient city covered the area between the giant stelae and the
Dongour site, and ruins lie everywhere under the surface. Here and there,
outcrops of walls point to the existence of Aksumite buildings. When
excavations can be undertaken in the places traditionally called Addi-Kiltè
and Tchaanadoug, they will bring to light a vast stretch of Aksum's past.
Adulis
There are few remains on the surface of this site, which is not on the
coast but about 4 kilometres inland. Rock, sand and vegetation cover a considerable
expanse of ruins, however. As far as can be judged from the
evidence above ground, they lie within a rectangle roughly 500 metres long
and 400 wide. In some places, heaps of debris show where various archaeological
expeditions have been at work. Towards the north-east the ground
is scattered with fragments of pillars and large quantities of shards. In
1868 a British expeditionary force which landed nearby dug up some
remains of buildings, but of the work undertaken since little remains apart
from the walls uncovered by Paribeni's mission in 1906, and those found
in 1961-2 by the mission of the Ethiopian Institute of Archaeology.
At the beginning of 1906, Sundstrom, a Swede, discovered a large edifice
in the northern sector, and shortly afterwards Paribeni uncovered two
smaller ruins, to the east and the west. All these ruins consist of the tiered
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