Between story and history

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has nine major and nine minor feasts. Meskel is the first of the minor feasts, and the liturgical calendar marks Meskerem 17, the day Queen Helena found the True Cross in Jerusalem. The Church holds that even several years after the crucifixion of Christ, many people were healed of diseases and other ailments simply by caressing the cross, and many were converted as a result. The Jews, who were worried about this phenomenon, had the cross buried in a rubbish site. The Christians knew where the cross was buried, but were not allowed to remove it. During the Kitos war, which the Church calls “the Kitos invasion”, all the Christians were forced to flee Jerusalem.

The rubbish dumping site became like a hill, and the cross remained hidden for three hundred years. It was then that the Queen, identified by the Church only as “the mother of Emperor Constantin”, went to Jerusalem to look for the cross. But Jerusalem had been significantly altered by its various conquerors, and no one could remember where the Cross was buried. The Queen had several sites dug out in vain. Seeing her pain, a wise old man named Kiryakos advised her to have a hill of frankincense piled up and set fire to it. He said the smoke, upon returning to the ground, will point her to where the cross is buried. She did as advised, and it was as if, the Church writes, “a finger were pointing the exact location of its burial”.

Ethiopians were not entirely satisfied with this skeleton of a story. So, they added that Queen Helena is, in fact, named Eleni and the cross itself is in Amba Gishen, a mountain in Southern Wollo. A place where, as history’s irony would have it, for centuries, according to royal practice, the brothers and close male relatives of reigning Ethiopian Emperors would be banished until they were called back to succeed the Emperor or for another mission (often they died there).

As most Ethiopian legends go, historical facts are only partially helpful. That there was a Roman Queen called Helena, wife of Constantius, a co-emperor, from 293 to 306 AD is a fact. As co-Emperor, he had the rank of deputy Emperor but could still use the title Caesar. His only distinguishing feature seems to be that he was known as Constantius the Pale, making one wonder if previous Emperors were dark-skinned. But the couple indeed gave birth to Constantine the Great, the founder of the Constantine Dynasty.

It is also true that between 30 AD (believed to be date of Ascension of Christ) and the Kitos war which broke out in 115 AD, Jews living under the Roman Empire persecuted Christians; although the real “schism” between the two religions did not happen until 50 AD when the Apostles held the first Christian council (ironically named Council of Jerusalem). The Kitos War, which is effectively a revolt of the Jews against the Roman Empire, is also an event that did happen. It lasted two years and ended (ironically?) with the crucifixion of the first Jewish Christian Bishop Simeon of Jerusalem. The year 117 AD also represents “the most successful expansion of the Roman Empire” led by General Trajan.

Jerusalem was left in ruins and in 130 AD became a city rebuilt to honor a Roman Goddess. It was not exactly three hundred years between the Kitos War and the enthronement of Queen Helena’s husband in 293 AD. It is, in fact, only half as long, but the Church’s estimation of Queen Helena’s travel to Jerusalem sometime in the 4th Century seems to be plausible.

Helena herself is another story. She is venerated as Saint Helena across many branches of Christianity as the mother of Constantine, the Caesar responsible for the Edict of Milan (313 AD) – proclaiming “tolerance” for Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. He himself, it is said, became the first Roman to convert to Christianity when, on his deathbed, he accepted the faith.

Of where Helena was born, just as where she met her husband, or even whether the two were married, nothing is known. Some accounts have her as a Greek, others as a stable-maid or of similar modest origin and yet others as a concubine Constantius met in his military campaign against what is now Syria. Romanticized versions have them meet in the most fateful manner, where Constantius concluded she was his soulmate when, on the day they met, he noticed they were wearing similar silver bracelets.

Whichever way they met, history has it that this obscure woman was abandoned by the father of her child, when sometime before 289 AD, he left her for a certain Theodora, a woman “closer to his social standing”. Although at the time of this “divorce”, Helena was in what is now known as Serbia with her son, it is not known where or how Helena lived with her son until the latter returned in glory to Constantinople. Constantine’s affection for his mother was literally of historical proportions as he not only restored her status as an important public figure but had Constantinople itself renamed Helenopolis. History cannot confirm whether Helena, as a Queen or as a divorcee, ever visited Jerusalem.

Who can then blame Ethiopians for filling the holes history itself left open? Where history fell short, they stepped in. But then, why do Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrate Meskel the way they do, together, in a public square, with bonfire, flowers and much color?

Between mystery and practice

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church mentions that the feast coincides with what it calls “the month of spring” and that in the rural areas peasants have a tradition, on the eve of Meskel, of gathering at a designated place and dancing around a bonfire singing “There you are my flower, Meskerem is here”. The Church also admits that “although the songs are not about Meskel, they do not diminish the exaltation of the cross”. Priests are called to bless the bonfire, and the fire is lit after prayers, almost at dawn the next day. Everyone then rushes to get a small amount of the ashes as it “has healing powers on both humans and animals”.

It is another particularity of Ethiopian stories to be woven inextricably into religious practices. We will never know whether with Meskel, the Church, like many other branches of Christianity, sanctioned a preexisting communal practice or how the tradition evolved progressively into its current form. Once again, what neither religion nor history explains, Ethiopians leave to their imagination (or is it faith?).

Is Timkat, with all its carnival-like features, and perhaps even more historical inaccuracy, comparable to Meskel in its mystery? Are there other examples of Ethiopian stories so closely intertwined with history or stories from other parts of the world? A better example of a complete appropriation of characters and events of other histories? I find even the legend of the Queen of Sheba, fascinating in its own right, pales by comparison. The Meskel celebration in Ethiopia was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage in 2018. The 12-page document prepared by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is a testament to the lack of research and documentation on Meskel.

Between victory and defeat

It is the fate of most Ethiopian stories that they be known by all and yet unknown, at once distant and close, rich and impoverished. They acquire almost a status of facts not through study but through sheer, unquestioned rehearsal. In response to the question of ensuring that the tradition is passed on from generation to generation, the 12-page application document for Meskel’s inscription as UNESCO intangible heritage status only had this to say: “Because the celebrations take place at a public square, younger generations have the opportunity to watch and learn. We will keep multimedia records of the celebration, and plans are underway to add information about Meskel in school curricula”. Five years on, leaving aside the veracity of the promise to start teaching Meskel in schools, one wonders which written material will actually be used for such a plan.

How old is Meskel? Why did the feast attain a place of such importance from Zalanbesa to Gurague zones of Ethiopia? How far do the regional adaptations of the feast go? These are not questions we will readily answer from existing documents that do not go beyond descriptions of the festivity.

Adam Reta, one of Amharic literature’s greats, believes that the “linear narration form”- told in chronological order- is not the only way to tell a story. He therefore introduced what he calls the “Histenawi” genres, which consist of stories with unidentifiable beginnings and ends often linked to one another by a tangible or intangible “object”.

The story of Meskel might qualify as one: a story of a Roman Queen of unknown origins celebrated across many generations long after her Empire is dead and, in a land, far removed from hers.

And so, Meskel carries on with all its mystery, at the intersection of culture and religion, between tradition and faith. Perhaps it has reached a sacred status, best left unexamined?

Inscribing Meskel as a world heritage comes with responsibilities too. What has survived and thrived for our generation to enjoy must be maintained and passed on to future generations. Yet, the Ethiopia that marks Meskel today is quite different from the one even a few decades ago. Today, a multi-cultural, multi-religious Ethiopian fragmented society battles each other out for recognition (and dominance) in a growingly globalized and connected world that is facing its own struggle between liberal and “nationalist/protectionist” voices.

But the “whole point of Meskel”, as it were, is that it is a “master narrative”, a supreme one which started as a simple story. Understanding a story, much like crafting the story, also involves a choice, both personal and to a certain extent collective. Which is not easy when so much competes to influence that choice and when so much is “politicized”. In Meskel, Ethiopians have primarily inherited a masterfully inclusive and exalting story that has remained relevant despite and even against all odds. It is a story that steals facts from faraway times and territories to exalt and elevate Ethiopians to the rank of God’s own people. It is, therefore, a story that you want to wholly embrace and be part of because not being part of it means you are not chosen.

The story does not go to people; people come to the story and hence become united, tied together by belief in their superiority. It is how nations are made and held together, undefeated and unbeatable.

Meskel is a lesson from our ancients that divisive, isolating, and victimizing narratives…they die. Only exalting ones survive.

(This article was originally published in 2018 in a now-defunct online magazine, Gebena Street.)