Hawulti Obelisk (Metera)

Hawulti is a pre-Aksumite obelisk located in Matara, Eritrea. The monument bears the oldest known example of the ancient Geʽez script. It is a stele, a standing stone slab taller than it is wide, a form that ancient societies commonly raised as a monument and often marked with text, ornament, or both.

The Hawulti is 5.5 metres (18 ft) high and has a disk and crescent at the top. Edward Ullendorff believes these symbols were meant to place the stele under the protection of the gods, probably Šams, the Sun goddess, and Sin, the Moon god. These pre-Christian symbols, together with features of the script such as the lack of vowel marks, convinced him that the monument dates to the early part of the fourth century A.D.

Ullendorff translated the inscription as saying that this is the obelisk which ʾAgaz had made for his fathers, who have carried off the youth of ʾwʿ ʾlf as well as of ṣbl. His reading differs from that of Enno Littmann at several points. Littmann took the third line to refer to the digging of canals nearby, although the area shows no sign of canals or ditches. Ullendorff argues that the verb s-ḥ-b should be translated as to drag along or to capture.

Ullendorff also reads the nouns ʾwʿ, ʾlf and ṣbl as placenames, and based on discussions with local informants he identified them with nearby communities. The earlier name of Baraknaha, the site of a 12th-century Orthodox Tewahedo church 17 kilometres (11 mi) from Maṭara, had been Ṣubli, and the church at Gunda Gunde Monastery had once been known as ʾAwʿa ʾilfi.

When Littmann, leader of the Deutsche Aksum-Expedition, found the Hawulti, it had been pushed over and broken in half in the distant past. The Italian colonial government repaired it with two iron bars and set it upright in what was thought to be its proper position, but this was not accurate. Ethiopian troops toppled and damaged it during their short occupation of southern Eritrea in the Eritrean–Ethiopian War, and it has since been repaired by the National Museum of Eritrea.

The Hawulti monument is 5.5 metres (18 ft) high, with a disk and crescent at the top; Edward Ullendorff believes these symbols "no doubt meant to place the stele under the protection of the gods, probably of Šams, the Sun goddess, and of Sin, the Moon god". These pre-Christian symbols, as well as paleographical characteristics such as the lack of vowel marks in the Geʽez script, convinced Ullendorff that the monument dated "to the early part of the fourth century A.D."

Ullendorff translated the inscription as follows:

This is the obelisk which had (caus) made

ʾAgaz for his fathers who have

carried off the youth of ʾwʿ

ʾlf as well as of ṣbl.

His translation differs from Enno Littmann at several points. First, Littmann believed the third line referred to the digging of canals nearby (his translation, "zog die Kannaele von ʾAwʿa") despite the lack of any signs of canals or ditches in the area; Ullendorff argues that the triliteral verb s-ḥ-b in the inscription should be translated as "to drag along, to capture". Second, he believed the nouns ʾwʿ, ʾlf, and ṣbl were placenames, and based on discussions with local informants, Ullendorff identified them with nearby communities: the earlier name of Baraknaha, the site of a 12th-century Orthodox Tewahedo church 17 kilometres (11 mi) from Maṭara in Eritrea, had been Ṣubli, and the equally well-known church at Gunda Gunde Monastery, 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph) from Maṭara, had once been known as ʾAwʿa ʾilfi.