Ethiopia, Axum, Returned and Re-erected Stele በ paulineandjohng2008

Adapted from Wikipedia. The Obelisk of Axum, also called the Rome Stele is a 1,700-year-old, 24-metres tall granite obelisk weighing 160 tonnes. It is decorated with two false doors at the base, and decorations resembling windows on all sides and ends in a semicircular top part, which used to be enclosed by metal frames. It was found by Italians soldiers at the end of 1935, after the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, and in 1937 it was looted and moved to Rome by the Fascist regime, which wanted to commemorate the conquest of Ethiopia. The stele had fallen in the 4th Century and had broken into five pieces which were carried by truck along the tortuous route between Axum and the port of Massawa. Arriving in Naples in March 1937 it was transported to Rome, where it was reassembled and erected on October 28, 1937 in Porta Capena Square. In a 1947 UN agreement, Italy agreed to return the stele to Ethiopia but little action was taken to return it for more than 50 years. After the fall of the Mengistu regime, the new Ethiopian government asked anew for the return of the stele, finding a positive answer from the then president of the Italian republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, in April 1997. The first steps in dismantling it were taken in November 2003, with the intent to ship the stele back to Ethiopia in March 2004. However, the repatriation project encountered a series of obstacles: the runway at Axum Airport was considered too short for a cargo plane carrying even one of the thirds into which the stele had been cut; the roads and bridges between Addis Ababa and Axum were thought to be not up to the task of road transport; and access through the, by now, Eritrean port of Massawa was impossible due to the strained state of relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The runway at Axum airport was upgraded especially to facilitate the return of the stele. The dismantled stele remained sitting in a warehouse near Rome's Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, until 19 April 2005 when the middle piece was repatriated by use of an Antonov An-124, amidst much local celebration. The second piece was returned on 22 April 2005, with the final piece returned on 25 April 2005. The stele remained in storage while Ethiopia decided how to reconstruct it without disturbing other ancient treasures still in the area and by March 2007 the foundation had been poured for the re-erection of the stele near King Ezana's Stele. Reassembly began in June 2008, with a team chosen by UNESCO and lead by engineer Giorgio Croci (who had also surveyed its dismantling in 2003) and the monument was resurrected in its original home and unveiled on 4 September 2008.[2] When it was reassembled in 1937 three steel bars were inserted per section, however this caused the Obelisk to be hit and damaged by a thunderbolt during a violent thunderstorm over Rome, on 27 May 2002. In the new reconstruction the three sections are fixed together by a total of eight Kevlar bars: four between the first and second and four between the second and third sections. This arrangement guarantees structural resistance during earthquakes and avoids the use of steel, so as not to again make the stele a magnet for lightning and also to avoid rust. See: <a href="http://www.esteri.it/mae/doc/AXUM.pdf" rel="nofollow">www.esteri.it/mae/doc/AXUM.pdf</a>