After the Italian invasion, an expedition privately funded, but backed by the Italian fascist party was conducted in 1937 and 1938 in an attempt to locate the fabled King Solomon’s mines. In 1940, the expedition eventually stumbled across rich mineral deposits in the very same Haud region.
The Italian Cogne Minery Company began mining this region for its large quantities of Platinum. Up until 1941, the precious metal was transported by plane to Italy for the production of Fivre valves used in the Italian EC3/ter radar systems. But in January 1941, the Cogne miners were slaughtered by bandits and Commonwealth forces during the liberation of Abyssinia and the secret location of this mine died with them.
However, Abyssinian tradition states that the oldest of the Axum obelisks contained the cryptic map location of King Solomon’s mines and many believed the obelisk most likely to hold this secret was the very same one wisked away to Rome.
The University of Leeds, which never stopped searching for these mines since 1930, also felt that the Obelisk in Italy held the key to King Solomon’s mines. The British had lobbied hard for over 65 years to sway the Italian government to return the stele to Ethiopia, and furthermore, volunteered to fund its restoration in Axum.
Axum's Stele in Rome
Cernuschi states that the Italian government was aware of this cryptic cipher in the obelisk. For 65 years this code had never been broken. And as fate would have it, a portion of the map was damaged in a lightning storm two weeks after the obelisk was dismantled in Rome, rendering the Obelisk useless for the lobbying Brits.
According to “Il Mistero di San Pietro in Ciel d’oro“, the British were only funding the restoration of the stele just so they could finally decipher the crypted location of King Solomon’s mines. Once the map was damaged, the British decided to no longer fund the restoration project.
Is this just a wild story made up by Haggard and others? It is not known. But the stele, divided into three pieces, remained in Djibouti for 3 years due to this loss in funding. It wasn’t until Italy finally decided to allocate the additional money to restore it in its original location in Axum that the Obelisk finally came back home.
For the Italians occupiers, the opportunity to search the many myths and legends of the ancient land of Abyssinia was not taken for granted. In an unrelated, yet interesting attempt by Italians to explore mystical Abyssinia, were at least 2 private Italian expeditions to Gimma in search of the legendary Cemetery of Elephants, long considered a mystery to the people of East Africa. Nowadays, more is known about these strange and rare cemeteries where the bones of elephants lay scattered on the ground. Once considered a myth, studies now show that when elephants prepare to die, they seek a flat location near food and water. These locations in East Africa are usually hard to come by so the elephants tend to congregate to the same location and die with the others.
With the research of Cernuschi and others slowly providing details of this often overlooked chapter of Italian imperialism, some interesting details are beginning to emerge. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark may be a fictional movie, but the Italian exploits in Abyssinia is a historical event . The measures taken to obtain the biblical secrets of Abyssinia is a part of that history that needs to be explored further.
References: Email correspondence with Enrico Cernuschi, author of “Il Mistero di San Pietro in Ciel d’oro”, The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Faith and Order, Global Alliance for Ethiopia, Ethiopian Review, La Stele di Axum, Nile Trip, Comando Supremo: Italy at War, Keepers of the Lost Ark?, Haile Sellasie’s War, by Anthony Mockler
Discuss this article in the forum.
Loading ...
claireshana on 
fallenone on 
Great article, I’ll be on Wikipedia all night following up now!