Lost and found

The recent discovery of the remains of a number of ancient cities in Ethiopia has rekindled debate about the country’s remarkable past. Yves Stranger reports

Ethiopia is a country of legends; a place where adventurous travellers, if they so desire, can ask directions to the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant or the remains of the Queen of Sheba’s palace. You can easily stumble upon ancient gold mines and historic fortifications, and you may even discover a lost city. 

This is exactly what French archaeologists François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar and Bertrand Hirsch did this year, after going in search of the ancient city of Gendebelo. The pair based their explorations on a fragment of the chronicle of the Muslim kingdom of Shoa, which the Italian scholar and Ethiopia expert Enrico Cerulli found in a souk in the walled city of Harar in 1936. This Ajami manuscript – a form of Arabic supplemented with Amharic script – described the legendary city and was being used as packaging for sugar. They also studied the writings of a 16th-century Venetian traveller called Alessandro Zorzi, who wrote of finding a lost city in Ethiopia.Read the rest at the CNN Traveller.