Hawulti monument

Country: Eritrea

District: Southern Region

Category: Ancient Rock Workes

Site History: 4th Century AD

Oldest Culture: Kingdom of Aksum

Later Cultures: Kingdom of Aksum

Site Features: Aksumite Kingdom Monuments

Hawulti is a pre-Aksumite obelisk located in Matara, Eritrea. The
monument contains the oldest known example of the ancient Ge'ez
text.
A disk and moon are found at the head of the 5.5-meter (18-foot) tall
Hawulti monument, which Ullendorff believes were "no doubt meant to
place the stele under the protection of the gods, possibly of ams, the
Sun goddess, and of Sin, the Moon goddess." Ullendorff was persuaded
that the monument belonged "to the early part of the fourth century
A.D." by these pre-Christian symbolism as well as paleographical details
like the absence of vowel marks in the Ge'ez script.

The scripts found are translated by ullendorf as This is the

obelisk which had (causative) made
'Agaz for his fathers who have carried off the youth of 'W` 'LF
as well as of SBL.
 There are various places where his translation and Enno
Littmann diverge. First, despite the absence of any canals or
ditches in the region, Littmann thought the third line related
to the digging of adjacent canals (his translation, "zog die
Kannaele von 'Aw'a"); Ullendorff contends that the word shb
in the inscription should be interpreted as "to pull along, to
capture." Second, he thought the nouns — "W," "LF," and
"SBL" — were placenames, and this belief was based on
conversations with local informants. : the earlier name of
Baraknaha, the site of a 12th-century church 17 kilometers
from Matara, had been subli, and the equally well-
known Orthodox church at Gunda Gunde, 22 kilometers
from Matara, had once been known as Aw`a 'ilfi.

The Hawulti had previously been fallen over and split in two when
Littmann, the expedition's leader, discovered it. The monument was
damaged, but the Italian colonial authority had it fixed with two iron
bars and placed upright in what was believed to be its rightful place.
However, the exact site of the monument's original placement is
unknown.
The Hawulti was toppled and damage by Ethiopian troops in the
short occupation of southern Eritrea during the Eritrean-Ethiopian
War. It has since been repaired by the National Museum of
Eritrea.