‘Lucy to Lalibela: heritage and identity in Ethiopia in the twenty-first century’

Unusually for an African country, Ethiopia was only briefly colonised. As such, this multi-ethnic yet predominantly ancient Christian country, for hundreds of years ruled by an Imperial Dynasty, preserved a unique cultural identity underpinned by a powerful social memory. The ‘story of Ethiopia’ (which in the present article is given the label ‘heritage meta-narrative’) was carefully nurtured over hundreds of years in order to stress the ancient Christian Orthodox lineage of the country and an almost divine form of kingship prior to 1974, and was used to provide a strong centralising force for an ethically and culturally disparate population. In recent years, after a series of complex political events, these disparate Ethiopian populations are agitating for political change, if not outright independence, and in order to stress the legitimacy of these claims they are re-examining what their heritage means, and in turn are creating new heritage micro-narratives. Using sources drawn from official works, academic papers and popular Web-log (blog) posts, the present article charts the fracturing of the old Ethiopian heritage meta-narrative and the creation of new multiple heritage micro-narratives against the background of political change.