Taking Aviation to New Heights: A Biography of Pierre Jeanniot

Chapter 3: A Train for Addis Ababa

19 3 it had already been several weeks since Renée Jeanniot had returned to her apartment over the railroad station in Addis Ababa. She had resumed her daily routine in the Ethiopian capital, a city that seemed to enjoy eternal spring. She was also back with her husband, her bedroom, her books, her easel, her piano and those responsible for taking care of the household. Once more she breathed in the scents of Addis Ababa, whose humid warmth, spicy fragrance and eucalyptus perfume all mingled within a pale bluish mist. Not far off was the surrounding countryside, where the principal ethnic groups, the Amhara, the Oromo and the A Train for Addis Ababa The Addis Ababa railroad station. Postcard, 1930. Pierre Jeanniot Collection Taking Aviation to New Heights 20 Gurage, cooked over eucalyptus fires. The faint fumes of smokedriftedin,especiallyinthemorningandearlyevening. Through the half-open window she could hear the hubbub on the main square, with its fruit sellers, its passersby, its children and the travelers being let off at the station. The city, whose population was then about 300,000, still had the air of an exotic capital belonging to another century and another continent. Situated at an altitude of 2,400 metres, Addis Ababa was founded in 1887 by the ‘King of Kings,’ Menelik II. Claiming tobethedirectdescendantofKingSolomonandtheQueenof Sheba, he declared his supremacy over the other contenders to the throne of the Kingdom of Shewa, and in 1865 restored the reign of the Solomonic dynasty. After the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, Ethiopia took on strategic importance for European trade, and Italy wanted to make it a protectorate under its jurisdiction. Menelik II resisted the invasion, and gained celebrity as far away as Europe for his decisive victory at Adwa in 1896, becoming the new hero of Ethiopia. After having expanded his realm through combat with the kings (called ras) of the Harar, Ogaden, Kaffa and Sidamo provinces,n he declared himself the ‘Negus’ (or King of Kings) of Ethiopia, and shifted the capital of Shewa to a central location on a high point whose climate was more moderate, and where thermal springs had been found. He would call the new capital of Ethiopia, which he had united under his iron hand, Addis Ababa, meaning ‘new flower.’ In order to supply the city with wood for construction and heating, he planted around the new capital a forest of eucalyptus imported from Australia. There he built the Gebbi, his sumptuous palace, today the Menelik Museum, and erected on the central square the famous Lion of Judah, thepalpablesymbolofhislegitimacyasthedirectdescendant of the celebrated king of Israel, the great Solomon, called the “wise man among men,” who reigned over Israel and Judah.n Receptive to modern technology, he introduced the telegraph, the telephone and the automobile. It was his idea to construct a railroad line that would link Addis Ababa to the Red Sea through the port of Djibouti, then a French colony. In August 1897, Menelik II, for this vast project, entered French merchants supported him by selling him arms. He did business in particular with an arms merchant by the name of Arthur Rimbaud, the poet prodigy who had traded in his pen for a lucrative career as an African adventurer. See Alain Borer, Rimbaud in Abyssinia, trans. Rosmarie Waldrop (William Morrow & Company, 1991). The legend goes that Solomon succumbed to the charms of the Queen of Sheba, a kingdom situated within the territory of today’s Yemen and Ethiopia. Makeda, the“black and comely” sovereign of the Bible, had visited Solomon in order to establish a commercial alliance with him to the detriment of the Egyptian Pharaoh, their common enemy. She fell in love with Solomon and had a son by him called Menelik, whom she raised at Aksum in the Jewish faith, to which she had converted. At thirteen, the age of his bar mitzvah, Menelik went to see his aging father in Jerusalem, and the king presented him with the tabernacle and the Tables of the Law that Moses had received on Mount Sinai. The descendants of the Queen of Sheba were converted to Byzantine Christianity in the fourth century, while retaining the Jewish rituals of circumcision and the Sabbath. The Ethiopian Falashas are the descendants of those Jews who remained loyal to Judaism, and the Copts are the descendants of those who converted to Christianity. The legend inspired many adventurers, painters, writers and 21...