The so-called Obelisk of Axum is not an obelisk but a fourth century stele: a 24 meter, 160 ton block of phonolite, the sounding stone, carved with false doors, imitation locks, and rows of false windows like a multi-story building. In the kingdom of Aksum, in what is now Ethiopia, such steles marked royal catacombs, until King Ezana, taught by his tutor Frumentius, made Christianity the state religion and the tradition stopped. Earthquakes and the Ethiopian-Adal War of the 1520s and 1530s left most of the royal steles broken, including the 33 meter, 500 ton Great Stele. In 1937 occupying Italian forces cut this stele into three pieces, trucked them over two months to Massawa, shipped them to Naples, and unveiled the monument in Rome’s Porta Capena Square on October 28, 1937, the 15th anniversary of the March on Rome.

A 1947 peace treaty required Italy to return it within 18 months. The Lion of Judah came back in 1967, but the stele stayed in Rome for decades amid rumors of hospitals and debt relief offered in exchange. Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro committed to its return in April 1997. Engineers led by Giorgio Croci of Sapienza University found Ethiopian bridges too weak and the Eritrean port of Massawa off limits, so the Axum runway was extended and the pieces flew home in April 2005 on an Antonov An-124, with Italy paying 7.7 million dollars.

• The steel bars inserted in the 1930s conducted a lightning strike on May 27, 2002 that cracked the stone from inside
• The middle section was classified as the largest and heaviest piece of air freight ever carried
• The pieces landed on April 19, 22, and 25, 2005, then sat in storage for three years
• Reassembly used eight flexible, non-conductive aramid fiber bars to survive lightning and earthquakes
• Laser scanning in 2006 mapped the stelae field so cranes would not crush undiscovered tombs before the September 4, 2008 unveiling