Debre Dammo
Debre Dammo, Däbrä Dammo in Tigrinya or Däbrä Damo in later Amharic appellations , is the name of a flat-topped mountain, or amba, and a 6th-century monastery in Tigray Region of Ethiopia. The mountain is a steeply rising plateau of trapezoidal shape, about in dimension. It sits at an elevation of above sea level. It is north of Bizet and northwest of Adigrat in Central Zone, Tigray, close to the border with Eritrea.
The mountain hosts a monastery, accessible only by rope up a sheer cliff, high, is known for its collection of manuscripts and for having the earliest existing church building in Ethiopia that is still in its original style, and only men can visit it. Tradition claims that the monastery was founded in the 6th century by Abuna Aregawi.
Abune Mathias, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, claims that several churches had been burned during Tigray War, including Debre Damo. These claims have not been independently verified. He did not state who was responsible.
Monastery
The monastery received its first archeological examination by E. Litton, who led a German expedition to northern Ethiopia in the early 20th century. By the time that David Buxton saw the ancient church in the mid-1940s, he found it "on the point of collapse". A few years later, an English architect, DH Matthews, assisted in the restoration of the building, which included the rebuilding of one of its wood and stone walls.Thomas Pakenham, who visited the church in 1955, records a tradition that Debre Dammo had also once been a royal prison for heirs to the Emperor of Ethiopia, like the better-known Wehni and Amba Geshen. The exterior walls of the church were built of alternating courses of limestone blocks and wood, "fitted with the projecting stumps that Ethiopians call 'monkey heads'". Once inside, Pakenham was in awe of what he saw: