Daily life in Lalibela during the 12th-13th centuries
A grounded look at medieval Ethiopia, where rock-hewn churches, pilgrimage, highland farming, clergy, artisans, and households shaped daily routines.
Lalibela became famous for its rock-hewn churches and religious landscape. In the 12th and 13th centuries, daily life around the site depended on highland farming, church service, pilgrimage, stone cutting, local markets, and household labor.
Housing and Living Spaces
Homes used stone, earth, timber, thatch, courtyards, and storage areas. Domestic spaces supported cooking, grain storage, sleeping, weaving, animal care, and family religious practice. Pilgrimage added temporary visitors and service needs.
Food and Daily Meals
Meals included grains such as teff, barley, and wheat, along with pulses, vegetables, dairy, honey, meat on some occasions, and fermented foods or drinks. Highland farming and livestock shaped food supply.
Work and Labor
Work included farming, herding, stone cutting, church service, manuscript work, weaving, market selling, food preparation, and hospitality for pilgrims. Religious construction and maintenance required skilled labor.
Social Structure
Lalibela included rulers or local elites, clergy, monks, artisans, farmers, herders, servants, and pilgrims. Status depended on land, religious role, craft skill, patronage, lineage, and household resources.
Tools and Technology
Tools included stone-cutting tools, plows, baskets, looms, manuscript materials, lamps, pottery, leather containers, and water systems. Rock-hewn architecture was the defining technology.
Clothing and Materials
Clothing used woven cotton, wool, leather, cloaks, wraps, belts, jewelry, and clerical garments. Dress reflected climate, religious role, status, and work.
Church Building and Skilled Work
The settlement was known as Roha before taking the name of King Lalibela, a ruler of the Zagwe dynasty associated with the great church complex. Tradition credits him with its creation, but architectural research identifies several phases of excavation and alteration. Some spaces may originally have served as royal residences or defensive buildings before becoming churches. A resident of the 12th century would therefore not necessarily have encountered the same religious landscape as someone living there a century later.
Workers cut into the rock to isolate building masses and then hollowed out interiors, leaving columns, doorways, and windows. Biete Ghiorgis has a cross-shaped plan, while Biete Medhani Alem contains five aisles. This work demanded careful planning because removing too much stone could compromise a wall or support. The architecture shaped movement inside as well: changes in floor height marked different sacred zones, while pillars divided interiors. Worshippers encountered spaces whose religious organisation was expressed through the carving of the rock itself. Trenches and drainage channels were part of the complex's practical design, carrying water away from excavated spaces. The scale of the remains implies sustained labour, food provision, and coordination, although surviving evidence does not give a complete account of workers' recruitment or payment.
Religion and a Sacred Landscape
Lalibela's churches linked local worship to the wider Christian holy land. Biblical names and places associated with Jerusalem gave the site meaning beyond its highland setting. The complex came to be understood as a New Jerusalem, offering sacred destinations within Ethiopia. Its dedications and uses nevertheless changed over time, so present-day pilgrimage customs cannot all be assigned unchanged to the Zagwe period.
Passages connected sunken courtyards and churches, while openings led towards spaces used by hermits and for burial. These arrangements brought communal worship and religious withdrawal into the same landscape. Carved windows and architectural details also recalled the older Aksumite tradition, connecting medieval patrons with Ethiopia's Christian past. For surrounding households, a centre of worship meant supporting people whose principal work was religious rather than agricultural. Pilgrims needed food and shelter, and church communities depended on supplies from outside the sanctuaries. These are practical implications of the site's functions; its monuments preserve the organisation of sacred space more clearly than the daily budgets of farmers or hosts.
Sources: UNESCO, Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela; Metropolitan Museum of Art, church construction and changing uses.