njectured that the seat of government was
transferred to Axum from Jeha, which he identified with the ancient Ava;
and according to a document quoted by Achille Raffray the third Christian
monarch transferred it from Axum to Lalibela. This second transference
probably took place very much later; in spite of it, the custom of crowning
Abyssinian kings at Axum continued, and King John was crowned there as late
as 1871 or 1872. A. B. Wylde conjectures that it had become unsuitable for
a royal seat by having acquired the status of a sacred city, and thus
affording sanctuary to criminals and political offenders within the chief
church and a considerable area round it, where there are various houses in
which such persons can be lodged and entertained. This same sanctity makes
it serve as a depository for goods of all sorts in times of danger, the
chief church forming a sort of bank. The present town, containing less than
a thousand houses, is supposed to occupy only a small portion of the area
covered by the ancient city; it lies in a kloof or valley, but the old town
must have been built on the western ridge rather than in the valley, as the
traces of well-dressed stones are more numerous there than elsewhere.

Most of the antiquities of Axum still await excavation; those that have
been described consist mainly of obelisks, of which about fifty are still
standing, while many more are fallen. They form a consecutive series from
rude unhewn stones to highly finished obelisks, of which the tallest still
erect is 60 ft. in height, with 8 ft. 7 in. extreme front width; others
that are fallen may have been taller. The highly finished monoliths are all
representations of a many-storeyed castle, with an altar at the base of
each. They appear to be connected with Semitic sun-worship, and are
assigned by Bent to the same period as the temple at Baalbek, though some
antiquarians would place them much earlier; the representation of a castle
in a single stone seems to bear some relation to the idea worked out in the
monolith churches of Lalibela described by Raffray. The fall of many of the
monuments, according to Bent, was caused by the washing away of the
foundations by the stream called Mai Shum, and indeed the native tradition
states that "Gudert, queen of the Amhara," when she visited Axum, destroyed
the chief obelisk in this way by digging a trench from the river to its
foundation. Others attribute it to religious fanaticism, or to th