Obelisk of Axum

The Obelisk of Axum is a 4th-century AD, 24-metre-tall granite stele/obelisk, weighing one hundred sixty tonnes, within the town of Axum in Ethiopia. It is ornamented with two fake doors at the base and capabilities decorations similar to windows on all aspects. The obelisk leads to a semi-round pinnacle component, which was once enclosed by means of metal frames. The obelisk well termed a "stele" or, inside the neighborhood Afro-Asiatic languages, hawelt/hawelti is discovered together with many other stelae inside the metropolis of Axum in cutting-edge-day Ethiopia.

The stelae have been probable carved and erected at some point of the 4th century AD by way of subjects of the Kingdom of Aksum, an historic Ethiopian civilization. Erection of stelae in Axum became a very old exercise, possibly borrowed from the Kushitic kingdom of Meroe. Their characteristic is supposed to be that of "markers" for underground burial chambers. The largest of the grave markers have been for royal burial chambers and have been adorned with multi-story fake home windows and false doors, while lesser nobility could have smaller, much less embellished ones. While there are only a few big ones standing, there are hundreds of smaller ones in numerous "stelae fields".