Ethiopia’s Axum obelisk to be restored by year end

Ethiopia’s famed Axum obelisk, returned to the country in April after being looted by fascist Italy nearly 70 years ago, will be re-erected by the end of 2006, the United Nations said Tuesday.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is overseeing the operation, said the obelisk would be fully restored and replaced on its original site in northern Ethiopia by December.

"The re-installation of the stela will start as soon as the rainy season is over, around October, and should be finalized by December 2006," UNESCO’s World Heritage director Francesco Badarin said.

The three pieces of the 150-tonne stela will be re-erected at a cost of four million dollars (3.4 million euros) to be paid by Italy, whose soldiers stole the artefact in 1937 during their occupation of Ethiopia, he said.

"This is the most complex and unprecedented (process) UNESCO has ever undertaken," Badarin told reporters. "We have done restoration in many parts of the world, but (this) will be the first of its kind.

"We want to make it clear the re-erection is not an easy task," he said. "It is not a simple stone, it is an age-old obelisk which needs care and patience."

Italian soldiers carted away the 24-meter (78-foot), third-century BC granite funeral stela on the orders of then-dictator Benito Mussolini 69 years ago during his attempt to colonize Ethiopia.

Despite a 1947 agreement that called for its return, the obelisk had remained in Italy standing outside the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, much to the anger of Ethiopia.

Its return was finally agreed upon in talks in Italy in November 2004 between Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but its arrival was then announced and delayed several times.

The last of the three pieces arrived in Axum on April 25 to great rejoicing among Ethiopians, who regard the obelisk as a national treasure.

Axum, which dates to 100 BC and was added to the UN’s World Heritage List in 1980, was the capital of the Axumite kingdom that flourished as a major trading center from the fifth century BC to the 10th century AD.

At its height, the kingdom, ruled by kings who traced their lineage back to the time of David, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, extended across areas of what are today Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.