Posted on 07.03.2012, and on 02.01.2014
Inscribed in 1979 among UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Fasil Ghebbi is a fortress-enclosure in Gondar, a city nicknamed The Camelot of Africa, and located in southwest of the Simien Mountains, on the northern plateau of Tana, at 2.133m above sea level. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was the residence of the Ethiopian emperor Fasilides and his successors. Surrounded by a 900m-long wall, the city contains palaces, churches, monasteries and unique public and private buildings marked by Hindu, Nubian and Arab influences, subsequently transformed by the Baroque style brought to Gondar by the Jesuit missionaries. The complex is enclosed by a curtain wall which is pierced by twelve gates.
In the first postcard is the bathing palace, a ceremonial bathing place of emperor Fasilides. Some details about the Ethiopian Church are absolutely necessary. Christianity reached in Ethiopia very early (42-52 AD), brought by Philip the Evangelist, and in the 4th century, under king Ezana of the Axumite Kingdom, Orthodox Christianity became the established church through the efforts of a Syrian Greek named Frumentius (known in Ethiopia as Abba Selama), the first Bishop of the country. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is part of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, i.e. the Churchs which haven't recognized the Council of Chalcedon (451), where Monophysitism (belief in the one single unified Nature of Christ) was condemned as heresy.
The bathing palace is a two-storeyed battlemented structure situated within and on one side of a rectangular pool of water, which was supplied by a canal from the nearby river. The bathing pavilion itself stands on pier arches, and contains several rooms reached by a stone bridge. The picture was taken during Timkat (baptism), the Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of Epiphany, because during the rest of the year the pool is empty. Timket it’s celebrated on January 19 (on 20, on the leap years), corresponding to the 10th day of Terr following the Ethiopian calendar. During the ceremonies the tabot, a model of the Ark of the Covenant, rarely seen by the laity, is wrapped in rich cloth and born in procession on the head of the priest. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated early in the morning (around 2 a.m.) near the pool, and the water is blessed and sprinkled on the participants, some of whom enter the water, symbolically renewing their baptismal vows. By noon the tabot is escorted back to its church in colorful procession, after that everyone goes home for festing.
The main castle of the complex, a three sections (two stories) castle with square plan, surrounded by later fortresses, was built in the late 1630s and early 1640s on the orders of Fasilidas, and is the most magnificent and elegant building of Gondar. With its huge towers and looming battlemented walls, it resembles a piece of medieval Europe transposed to Ethiopia. It seams that Fasiladas was also responsible for the building of a number of other structures, perhaps the oldest of which is the Enqulal Gemb (Egg Castle), so named on account of its egg-shaped domed roof.
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