The Missing Tower at the Entoto Royal Citadel, in Three Photographs
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The Missing Tower At the Entoto Royal Citadel, in three photographs from 1897 as published in two French contemporary travel logs, hints at the fate of two structures Charles Michel, Mission de Bonchamps, Vers Fachoda, à la rencontre de la mission Marchand à travers l'Éthiopie, Paris, 1900, p 237 1 Introduction Adwa hills, Tigray, Ethiopia, February 1896. A colonial power, freshly reunited Savoia's Italy and an Imperial African dynasty, also in the process of reuniting a vast Country, prepare to clash. The prodromes included a rather ignorant, offensive attempt on the part of the Italians to acquire Ethiopia as a protectorate via treachery: the French and Amharic versions of a peace treaty in Wechale, after initial skirmishes and the “buying” of the Assab port, used by the Savoia to gradually invade Eritrea -integral part of the Ethiopian Empire since immemorial- differed substantially. 1 The Amharic version read Ethiopia could use the services of Italy in foreign relationships, the French one stated Emperor Minilik, then King of Shoa, had to pass via Italy, reducing him to a subjected ruler. At Adwa, the two camps had similar numbers of antiquated Remington rifles, but the Italians left their tents without the optic signals, and had a badly prepared battlefield map1, so a column was well ahead of the other four, on the day of confrontation, March 2nd. Prepared Ethiopians easily surrounded the lost main column immediately, and concluded in about seven hours a complete, resounding victory that included the killing or capturing of all five Generals, the killing of over six thousand and the imprisonment of about three thousand enemies. They treated the latter as special guests, a few selected chose to remain as Minilik's engineers and helps, as the Ethiopians in the following Addis Ababa treaty implicitly accepted Eritrea as an Italian colony. The Emperor was wise enough to realize his limits, and avoid provoking an industrial, though characteristically disorganized Nation, by following the fleeing troops to Massawa. Immediately, within that very month, the unexpected total reversal of the fortunes of a colonial power lead to the fall of an Italian government, easily -till now- brought to pieces by weak politics and the squabbles of a limited elite, but also to the complete, extremely rare change of an old ruling Piedmontese class to include other ethnicities -something only major external factors could have fostered2- and, within the year, to the start or the planning of a few major official visit by European missions to Minilik. 2 Visitors in Entoto: the Pentagon Among visitors to Ethiopia just after Adwa, three missions reached Entoto, the ridge above present day Ethiopia's capital city. Entoto had been the siege of Government, until around 1887, when Minilik started building in Addis Ababa, nearer the hot springs of Filwuha and Taitu, his consort in particular spurned the rivaling Sires of the newly unified land to build, likely to let each engage in less divisive, dangerous and more unifying activities, as internal peace finally prevailed in the Empire. Minilik had selected Entoto for his moving camp3 on January 29th 1881, days after his men, while he was just north and below it, in Sululta, found massive ruins there. “The almighty allowed us to recover the concrete vestiges of the Town of David. As this discovery has been made in our times, it is convenient that we rebuild the city” commented Minilik according to his chronicler, Gebre Selasie W/Aregay4. According to Pere Ferdinand, it only took less than two weeks to move the original Entoto camp from the last southeastern propage of Mount Wechacha, where his grandfather Sahle Selassie regularly camped5. About thirty years ago Anfray, of Addis Ababa University evaluated that area, a medieval site. Subsequently, Minilik’s clergy and hagiographers built what is by now a part of Ethiopian myth. The Dersana Raguel, “Tale of Raguel” - an Archangel in the Orthodox faith, recounts how Emperor Dawit, alternatively indicated as Emperor Dawit I, 1386-1402 or Dawit II/Lebna Dengel, 1509-1540, had an inspired dream about his town, abandoned and covered by tree growth, inhabited by fiery beasts, until a splendid successor would restore it, 350 years or some fifteen generations later6. One of the colourful, elegant paintings on the sancta sanctorum walls in the Church he erected in the midst of the found ruins, in 1885/6, depicts Dawit's dream, duly next to Minilik's apotheosis. 2 The first existing photo of those coveted ruins is by Sylvain Vigneras, published in his 1897 “Une mission Francaise en Ethiopie”. The printed cliché, available online, shows them dominating the hill next to Beta Raguel, exactly where the now so called “Pentagon” stands. “Église de Raghuel et ruines de l'ancienne Entotto” Sylvain Vignéras, Une mission française en Abyssinie, 1897, p 139 I have claimed the Entoto Pentagon is a massive one hectare medieval fort, antecedent to modern cannons, pre ca. 1540 CE stellar style, with protruding towers and a classic two tiered structure, as the two “parapets” mentioned by Gleichen also indicate. The parapets conceal a number of internal bastions and division walls. I attribute it, on the escort of chroniclers mentioning grand construction works in Entoto in 1515 to Emperor Dawit II, not to the first7. Its clear influences of Iberian origin could also be more compatible with that period, though fortress makers and military advisers from Europe where in high demand at the Solomonic court, much like artists and architects, since Emperor Wedem Arad's thirty strong mission to the old continent, in 13068. I leave the still scanty study and necessary description of the Pentagon to further, much needed archaeological investigations, to concentrate on its major missing tower. Some photoes here under help clarify the context in which it stood. The Pentagon still exists in its near entirety, unexpected proof of ancient Ethiopian military might, chronologically the last of a set of recovered forts, Churches, villages and towns, tangible signs of an age of rather forgotten splendor. Unless studies and protective actions happen soon, I have indications it will be imminently disfigured by the development of tourist lodges within its perimeter, by well connected investors, ignorant of its chief value to their own developments. 3 The Southern western ramparts, the first shown, against the sky in the Vigneras photo above Two of the other South towers shows clearly a two-tiered structure: 1- the SW corner, 360cm tall in all 4 2- A South central tower, surrounded by rubbish from the recently abandoned police station above Under it -reading the Fra Mauro map, possibly five to eight miles away- was Barara, the capital city, lying in north west Addis Ababa adjacent to Mt Wechacha, and was also utterly destroyed during the winning campaign of Mohamed ibn Ibrahim “the conqueror” of Adal in 1530, like all other major settlements and Churches of the Solomonic fief in Central Shoa9. An impressive ornament on this decorated inner west wall was a little heart, likely attached to it as an applique 5 Left: an inner bastion, eastern ramparts, near symmetric to the missing tower, next to an L shaped fascist caserne Structures and building materials of the two, fascist L shaped fortino section and bastion, are easily distinguishable 6 The Pentagon in a 2003 DigitalGlobe Quickbird satellite view, from Googleearth. Note the rectangular small structure. This image and visits reveal the presence of eleven towers. Five smaller ones indicate the elongated Entoto Pentagon's corners, while six, three on the south wall, two on the north walls and one only on the east rampart complete an incomplete tower count. Simmetricity would require the presence of another tower on the west side. I long wondered how, and why the west wall appears undefended, incapable of finding more structures on that side, until seeing this second picture by Charles Michel, a member of the mission dispatched to encounter a similar expedition, the Marchand mission. Approaching two photoes by Charles Michel and the one by Sylvain Vigneras to present day satellite views it is evident that the west tower was the biggest of twelve, massive, dominating an impressive trench, described by Windsor Royal Family member Count Albert Gleichen in his visit to the Entoto Royal Citadel, that very 1897. He left us no photoes of he ruins, to the best of my knowledge. He describes the Pentagon as an “exceedingly strong fortress”. Note he was a military adviser. « Of the old capital of Entotto only a few huts are left, beside the ruins of what must have been an exceedingly strong fortress. Some broken walls are still in existence, and the remains of a large round stone tower dominate the height; but the most extraordinary portion of the fortress is the deep ditch cut in the solid rock. Quite 12 feet deep and 18 feet broad is it ; the labour of hewing it out must have been immense, for the rock is not a soft one, and infinite labour of slaves or prisoners must have been spent in its construction. The ditch almost surrounds the fortress and must have formed a complete defence in itself, beside the two parapets, one above the other, which command it throughout. » Count Gleichen, With the mission to Menelik, London, 1898, pages 210-211. Lord Albert Edward Gleichen 7 Major Powell Cotton described the fort as impermeable unless attacked by modern heavy fire arms, and the trench as twenty feet tall and wide, in his 1903 recount of his ivory hunting expeditions. Cesare Nerazzini describes a fort in Entoto, on the way to the Gojjam pass from Mininilik's residence, in a specific locality called 'Docondor' or 'The Elephant'10, I have no doubt all three descriptions refer to the same structure, the massive Entoto Pentagon.