Lalibela

In the Ethiopian highlands, under the Zagwe kings, eleven churches were carved down into solid rock. King Lalibela is said to have wanted a new Jerusalem. They are still used for worship.

Date: About 1137 to 1270VIII · Medieval networks and empires
Place: Lalibela · Yemrehanna KrestosAfrica
Laid out as: A beliefA faith or a way of thinking, from its central idea outwards to its practice and its spread.
Lessons: 5 planned, none written yet
Image: Bernard Gagnon, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Themes: Religion, belief and myth
Art, architecture and design
Transport, towns and building works

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

IThe Zagwe kings
IICarving down, not building up
IIIBete Giyorgis
IVA new Jerusalem
VPilgrims today

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

Lalibela
Masqal Kibra

Objects

Bete Giyorgis
Processional crosses

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestry Our species and the Old Stone Age Farming and the New Stone Age First cities and the Bronze Age The Iron Age and growing states The classical world After the empires Medieval networks and empires Oceans crossed Revolutions and the first factories Industry, empire and world war The world since 1945

1137 to 1270. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?