https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0479-4808
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ABSTRACT
In this article, we attempt to understand the persistence of the ‘great tradition’ in describing what the state means to Ethiopians. We do this by examining stories about history, told by and about Ethiopia’s architecture. Within these stories we find two ideas in apparent tension. One is an attachment to state history as exceptional, unified and ordained by God. This is told through architectural continuities reaching back to the pre-Christian Aksumite aesthetic that continuously underwrites the notion of a teleological progression of the state; and in current nostalgia for the assertive certainty of exceptionalism expressed in ancient architecture. The other is an acknowledgement of hybridity and disruption. This is expressed in innovative architectural aesthetics and techniques; and in the ways that state buildings have been made to carry the marks of dramatically different types of regime, particularly in the last 50 years. Drawing on the sem-ena-werq (ሰም እና ወርቅ or ‘wax and gold’) tradition we show how these stories-in-tension describe ambiguities within the great tradition, a story of confidence and exceptionalism, but also one that is disturbed and shaped by rupture and compromise.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dawit Yekoyesew and Addisu Meseret Tadesse for their support with fieldwork; and Antara Datta, the reviewers and editors at JEAS for many helpful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Such readings are carried explicitly or implicitly in most historical accounts of Ethiopia. For example: Markakis, Ethiopia; Bahru, History of Modern Ethiopia; Marcus, History of Ethiopia; Henze, Layers of Time.
2 Budge, The Queen of Sheba; Marzagora, “History in Twentieth-Century Ethiopia”.
3 Vaughn, Ethnicity and Power; Abbink, “Ethnic-based Federalism”; Clapham, “Rewriting Ethiopian History”; Toggia, “History Writing”. There are over 80 ethnic groups in Ethiopia; three-quarters of Ethiopians belong to the Oromo, Amhara, Somali or Tigrayan groups. The Amhara, although not the largest group, has been historically dominant.
4 Ibid., 426.
5 Sorenson, Imagining Ethiopia, 38–40.
6 Marzagora, “History in Twentieth-Century Ethiopia”.
7 Triulzi, “Battling with the Past”.
8 Clapham, “Rewriting Ethiopian History”: 37.
9 As David Milne argues: “Because of this intimate connection between architecture and the state's order architects have themselves argued that in the buildings of past ages we have the most reliable guides to the ‘life’ of each civilisation.” Milne, “Architecture”, 131.
10 Phillipson, Ancient Ethiopia; Henze, Layers of Time.
11 Phillipson, Ancient Ethiopia; Finneran, “Built by Angels?”.
12 Marcus, History of Ethiopia; McClellan, “Articulating Economic Modernization”.
13 Pankhust, “Menelik”; Ashenafi, “Archaeology, Politics and Nationalism”.
14 Levin, “Haile Selassie’s Imperial Modernity”; Markakis and Beyene, “Representative Institutions in Ethiopia”.
15 Donham, Marxist Modern.
16 Biruk, “Urban Layers”.
17 Fuller, “Building Power”; Rifkind, “Architecture and Urbanism”.
18 This approach takes up Yusuf’s approach to history and storymaking, Yusuf, “Politics and Historying”. It contributes to an emerging literature on politics and architecture in Africa: Tomkinson et al., “Architecture and Politics”; Daniel, “Pan-Africanism”; Gallagher et al., “State Aesthetics”; Batsani-Ncube, “Whose Building?”.
19 Shenk, “Church and State”.
20 Mohammed, Understanding; Mohammed, “Whose Meaning?”.
21 Triulzi, “Battling with the Past”.
22 Levine, Wax and Gold.
23 Daniel, “Pan-Africanism”.
24 Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition.
25 Dinkinesh is the name given to a 3.2 million-year-old female Australopithecus afarensis hominid found in the Afar region in 1974. Bahru, History of Modern Ethiopia; Marcus, History of Ethiopia.
26 Cartwright, “Kingdom of Axum”.
27 Atnatewos et al., “State-Building in Ethiopia”.
28 Clapham, “Rewriting Ethiopian History”; Toggia, “History Writing”. Bahru writes that history has emerged within a ‘restrictive culture … delineated by Solomonic legitimacy and Shawan hegemony, cultural as well as political … Ethiopian history could only be the story of the Semitic north, with the peoples of the south as objects rather than subjects of history’. Bahru, Society and State, 37.
29 Daniel and Tekletsadik, “Ethiopian Qine”.
30 Bloom, “The Ethiopic Writing System”, 30.
31 Mohammed, Understanding, 3.
32 Levine, Wax and Gold, 5. The analogy does not draw on the ‘lost-wax’ method used by metal workers where wax is used to create a mould for making golden objects.
33 Mohammed, Understanding: 1.
34 Ibid., 3.
35 Messay, Survival and Modernization; Mohammed, Understanding.
36 Messay, Survival and Modernization, 183.
37 Mohammed, Understanding, 37.
38 Messay, Survival and Modernization, 118–82.
39 Ibid., 183.
40 Levine, Wax and Gold., 8–9.
41 Ibid., 9.
42 Messay, Survival and Modernization, 181.
43 Mohammed, Understanding, 180.
44 Ibid.
45 Marzagora, “History”, 428.
46 Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples, 30–31.
47 Marcus History of Ethiopia, 18.
48 Lyons, “Power in Rural Hinterlands”.
49 Henze, Layers of Time, 35.
50 Pankhurst, “Foundation of Addis Ababa”, 46.
51 Salvo, Churches of Ethiopia, 59.
52 Salvo, Churches of Ethiopia.
53 Pankhurst, “Foundation of Addis Ababa”, 50.
54 Lindahl, Architectural History of Ethiopia, 54.
55 Salvo, Churches of Ethiopia, 73.
56 Henze, Layers of Time: 41.
57 Heldman, “Architectural Symbolism”.
58 Finneran, “Built by Angels?”; Bidder, “Lalibela”.
59 Lindahl, Architectural History of Ethiopia, 68–80.
60 One example is the use of the images on the tops of Ethiopia’s Habesha beer.
61 Levine, The Greater Ethiopia.
62 Mann, “Autonomous power”.
63 Horvath, “Wandering Capitals”.
64 Ibid.
65 Marcus, History of Ethiopia; McClellan, “Articulating Economic Modernization”.
66 Trimingham, “Islam in Ethiopia”, 104.
67 Bahru, History of Modern Ethiopia.
68 Mohammed, Understanding.
69 This follows Bartelson’s argument about the state itself: Bartelson, The Critique.
70 The research was done before ethnic tension gave way to violent conflict in Ethiopia.
71 Although Daniel writes about how the Ethiopian state is perceived differently – but as intensely – from peripheral rural parts of the country: Daniel, The Everyday State.
72 Biruk, “Urban Layers”, 4.
73 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
74 FGD senior high school students, 27 February 2020.
75 FGD schoolteachers, 19 February 2020.
76 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
77 FGD students, 4 February 2020.
78 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
79 FGD government employees, 21 February 2020.
80 FGD construction workers, 25 February 2020.
81 FGD elders, 16 February 2020.
82 FGD people out of work, 17 February 2020.
83 FGD construction workers, 25 February 2020.
84 FGD students, 4 February 2020.
85 Ibid.
86 FGD religious followers, 10 February 2020.
87 FGD students, 4 February 2020.
88 FGD government employees, 12 February 2020.
89 FGD students, 4 February 2020.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 FGD government employees, 12 February 2020.
93 Ibid.
94 FGD youth association, 16 February 2020.
95 FGD religious followers, 10 February 2020.
96 FGD people out of work, 17 February 2020.
97 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
98 Not all new buildings are dreary and shoddy. For example, the new Bole Airport was admired (Tomkinson and Dawit, “Africa’s International Relations”). More broadly many people pointed out the difference between public and private buildings, the latter were thought to be superior in quality (FGD construction workers, 25 February 2020).
99 FGD government employees, 21 February 2020.
100 FGD university students, 24 February 2020. The campus is built on the site of Haile Selassie’s original palace and includes buildings gifted to successive regimes by their respective Cold War sponsors (the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library by the US to Haile Selassie; and its neighbouring Social Sciences Building by the GDR to the Derg).
101 FGD schoolteachers, 19 February 2020.
102 FGD government employees, 21 February 2020.
103 FGD university students, 24 February 2020.
104 Ibid.
105 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
106 FGD elders, 16 February 2020.
107 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
108 FGD university students, 24 February 2020.
109 FGD elders, 16 February 2020.
110 FGD government employees, 21 February 2020.
111 FGD university professors, 20 February 2020.
112 Ashenafi, “Archaeology, Politics and Nationalism”.