Sept. 4, 2008 -- A herculean engineering feat has put an end to a decades-long diplomatic dispute between Italy and Ethiopia over a looted obelisk.
The Axum obelisk, one of Ethiopia's national treasures, has finally returned home after a 70-year stay in Rome.
The event is celebrated today in Axum with song, dance and processions.
"It's the beginning of Ethiopia's rebirth," a spokesperson for the Egyptian government said at the ceremony, in which Ethiopian and Italian authorities signed the official return of the 160-ton granite pillar.
A symbol of national identity to Ethiopians, the 79-foot funerary stele was built 1,700 years ago in Axum. The monument is one of a group of obelisks erected when Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century A.D.
The ruins of the ancient city of Axum mark the location of the Kingdom of Axum, regarded as one of the four great kingdoms of the between the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia.
Some 1,000 years ago, the obelisk collapsed on Ethiopian ground following an earthquake and broke into five fragments.
Troops of the Italian dictator Mussolini, who had invaded Ethiopia in 1935, shipped the fragments to Italy and then reassembled the obelisk in Rome in 1937 as a symbol of fascist power.
For more than six decades, the obelisk stood where Mussolini put it: in front of the Ministry of the Colonies, today the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Today's ceremony comes at the end of a long negotiation process.
Despite a 1947 Peace Treaty which ordained the return of all looted artifacts to Ethiopia, and various agreements that promised to return the monument, the Italian government did not agree to return the obelisk until 2003.
Politics aside, there were technical obstacles to the obelisk's return.
Indeed, it was much easier for Mussolini to carry the obelisk to Italy. At that time, the monument was already in fragments. It was restored in Rome using metal rods embedded in concrete, making it very hard to disassemble.
Italy had transported the monument by ship, but Ethiopia's government required that the stele be returned by plane: the only convenient port lies in Eritrea, which is unfriendly to Ethiopia because of a border war.
Giorgio Croci, an engineer at the University of Rome La Sapienza and an expert in the restoration of historical structures, had the difficult task of reopening the joints and removing the dowels without shattering the stone.
"Dismantling the obelisk was the most difficult part, a very delicate operation. We did not know how the blocks were joined and how resistant they were," Croci told Discovery News.
He inserted jackscrews, about 6 inches long and 12 inches in diameter, along the fissures of three of the original breaks. Acting alternatively vertically and horizontally, the jackscrews gently forced the pieces apart while computers monitored the process.
The obelisk was then dismantled from its position at the heart of a busy intersection at Porta Capena, not far from the Roman Coliseum, while Croci's team began work on the logistical obstacles for its return to Ethiopia.
With each section of the obelisk weighing between 70 and 80 tons, Italian authorities had to find a plane strong enough to hoist it and some other 50 tons of machinery and casing.
Only two planes qualified: the U.S. Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and the Russian Antonov 124. Since all the Galaxy planes were being used in Iraq, the Antonov carried out the task.
In all, it took four million euros and three daredevil flights to return the obelisk and assemble it in an archaeological park in Axum.
"It was thrilling," said Croci. "At the moment of take-off during the first flight, we realized that the information given by the Ethiopian authorities did not correspond to reality. The Axum airstrip was shorter than we knew and a landing in Bengasi, Lybia, was necessary to test the brakes. We finally landed in Ethiopia at sunrise."
To re-build the obelisk, Croci used a 98-foot steel structure. A system of rail and a crane lifted up each block and gently positioned it within the tower for assemblage.
"We are going to keep the obelisk encased in the steel tower until the end of the year, as we need to finish some restoration work around the joint areas....The obelisk is safe for the next millennia," Croci said.
According to Italian Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Alfredo Mantica, the return is a "historic event" which must be seen in the same context of reconciliation as the recently signed five-billion-euro "sorry" pact with Lybia.
"In five days we have put to an end two old stories of the past, opening a new future of cooperation," Mantica said.
Related Links:
Rossella Lorenzi's blog: Archaeorama
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