430 YE EH A. 
surface of the walls from the effects of the weather ; so that the 
portion still remaining affords as perfect a specimen of plain archi- 
tecture, as can be produced, perhaps, in any other part of the 
world. 
The founder of this monastery, Abba Asfe, whose name it still 
retains, was one of the nine priests who went into Ethiopia from 
Egypt during the early part of the sixth century, in the reign of the 
Emperor Ameda, one of the predecessors of Caleb, as recorded in the 
Abyssinian chronicles, though some later authors have attributed 
this event to a different period, an opinion which I myself was led 
to adopt in my former journal, owing to my having relied too has- 
tily upon the assertions of others. The statement in the chronicles 
must be considered, however, as the more correct, from my having 
lately met with a strong confirmation of the fact in a passage 
from a Greek author, who actually gives the name of the sovereign 
(Av^ocg,) reigning in Ethiopia when those clergymen (icXvipijcoi) went 
over, a circumstance which I shall notice more at large in a short 
treatise which I propose to give respecting the ancient history of 
the country. Notwithstanding the long interval of time which 
this statement gives, as having elapsed since the arrival of Abba 
Asfe, (constituting a period of nearly one thousand three hundred 
years,) yet I am still led to believe, from the general appearance 
of the ruin, that it formed a portion of the original building, 
as the consequence of Abyssinia began shortly afterwards to 
decline. 
Father Alvarez, who visited this place in 1520, speaks of the 
building with great rapture, though even in his time it was be- 
giSining to fall into decay. He calls it Abba-facem, and after 
