Ethiopia is endowed with incredible rock-cut churches embodying great architectural, aesthetic and artistic significance built over its past. However, these priceless cultural antiquities are frequently confronted with different threats. This study aims to explore potential threats and associated impacts evidencing with least known and threatened rock-cut churches. Several rock-cut churches are subjected to different problems such as stripping, cracking, degradation, breaking and demolition that badly affected their significant values. Different natural and anthropogenic agents are responsible for these problems. Recycling rainfall and sunlight, among others, are the major natural factors that caused deterioration or destruction of various rock-cut churches. Uninformed local intervention, one of the major anthropogenic factors, not only has failed to restore lost structural, architectural and aesthetic elements of the rock-cut churches but it also has replaced original rock-cut features by culturally unfamiliar contemporary buildings. Previous war and conflict, the sixteenth-century war of the Islamic Sultanates against the Christian Kingdom, for instance, were also the other man-made causes of destruction, abandonment and plundering of many rock-cut churches that are evidenced in different areas. Above all, the absence of governmental attention towards heritage management is costing the country with a profound loss of its incredible built heritages particularly in the remote areas. All the evidences presented in this study are indicators that the country’s cultural heritage management is at its critical situation which needs the engagement of concerned stakeholder to preserve the country’s past.

Most of the rock hewn and cave churches of Ethiopia to the west and south of Lalibela have escaped the notices of scholars who in different times visited the rock hewn churches of Lalibela and its surroundings. Nazugn Maryam, one of the ancient rock hewn churches of this area is neither scholarly researched nor professionally conserved. The main objective of this study was to document the architecture and the conservation problems of this hypogeum. Data of the study was collected through interview, field observation and analysis of the archives. The study intimates that the church is traditionally believed to have been carved by Abunä Musé, who is regarded as the second bishop of Ethiopia. Being carved out of a single rock, it is rectangular and monolithic. Pointed and arched styles of both opened and false windows, buttresses, and horizontal beam are some of the dominant architectures of the church projected on its exterior facades. Internally it has a basilica with aisles divided by pillars, with no arches and capitals. However, its architectural values are deteriorating due to natural agents such as torrential summer rainfall and sunlight. Besides, the elements attempt at conservation since 1950s have also contributed to its deterioration. New materials like cement and basaltic stone were introduced during the restoration and this has exacerbated its deterioration endangering this important hypogeum. This paper examines how this introduction of new material poses challenges to the future conservation decisions.

This study sought to assess local conservation practices and problems in the context of management of cultural heritage in Ethiopia focusing on ancient rock-hewn churches in Lay Gayint District, Amhara Region. Interviews, questionnaires, and field observations were used to gather its data. The authors used a descriptive research strategy, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings demonstrated that causes from both nature and human activity deteriorated the rock-hewn churches of Lay Gayint. The main natural elements that damaged the hypogea's architectural elements were sunlight, rain, and botanical interventions. Intentions to repair damaged features of the rock-hewn churches were initiated and managed only with the efforts of the local communities. These local efforts lacked assistance from conservation experts and hence failed to restore the lost architectural details of the rock-hewn churches. These had also posed new challenges to the preservation efforts. The primary man-made factors endangering the churches' movable sacred treasures include theft and a lack of convenient storage for antiquities. The conservation condition of the rock-hewn churches demonstrates the current precarious state of CHM in rural areas of the country, calling for scholars' and enforcement of heritage management frameworks to preserve these incredible cultural properties for future generations.

This study aims to explore Däbrä Aron, a least known monastic rock-cut church of the 14th century of Christian Ethiopia. Däbrä Aron is named after abba Aron, a famous Ethiopian monk, the founder and hewer of the monastery, which is established at Däbrä Daret, a mountain situated along the upper course of Täkkäzze River. It is a monastery that integrates troglodytic and mountainous monastic landscapes. Like Däbrä Gol, where Aron experienced his monastic life, Däbrä Daret was centre for coenobitic monastic life and opposition against immoral practices ofSolomonic kings who in different times exiled Aron and other monastic men. The church is excavated in to a white soft tuff rock and it is one of the few instances for the declining rock-church tradition of the Solomonic period. Expansion works are made internally by using gudəb, abba Aron’s ax-like excavation tool which is still preserved in the church. It has a complex layout constituting different parts – elongated anteroom, aisles, nave, tripartite sanctuary and compartmented chapels – separated by unevenly shaped columns with rough capitals and arches. This caveis unique largely by its səqurät, aperture of the cave’s roof opened into the sky. The nave’s səqurät, rectangular in shape, allows, except rainfall droplets, entrance of sunlight into the church. The reputation of Däbrä Aron is partly associated with the acceptance of this feature as icon of the architectural excellence and spiritual devotion of abba Aron by whom many Christians were attracted into his monastic life. The cave also has an engraved processional cross decorated with symbolical trifoliate motifs