File:The Windows of Bet Giorgis, Lalibela, Ethiopia (3275780282).jpg

This photo is best seen in the "large" or "original" sizes.

I am intrigued by the relief decoration around the windows near the top of the 13th century rock-hewn Church of Bet Giorgis in Lalibela, Ethiopia. For that matter, the entire window is fascinating because it is so whimsical to my eyes.

I'm not enough of an architectural historian to identify the influences that came together to form the design.

Situated as it was on the Red Sea, Ethiopia was a crossroads in antiquity and in later times, with ties to the Mediterranean world, the Arabian peninsula and, I suspect, India. So what we're seeing here could well be a melange of stylistic elements from different regions.

I wish a had a close-up head-on photo of one of these windows, because there's an intriguing asymmetry to almost every aspect of the mouldings that project into the window space at the base of the ogee arch.

The conventional wisdom is that details in ancient stone buildings often mirror the many components of earlier structures built of a variety of different materials. For instance, some believe the details on the elaborately carved ancient obelisks at Axum copy post-and-beam construction of contemporary wooden buildings.

I don't know whether that convention accounts for the asymmetry in these windows and others like them at Lalibela, or whether it's the result of some other influence unrelated to the practicalities of construction.

On a different note, if you were fortunate enough to be living in a pre-war stone house in, say, Greenwich, Ct., and you discovered this much lichen forming on it (and if the people you defrauded to pay for your opulent lifestyle weren't hot on your trail), your estate manager might send a man to the local hardware store for some moss killer and a stout wire brush. After all, lichen and its cousins hasten the decomposition of stone so they can eat the byproducts.

Well, that's not an approach you can take with a world heritage building such as Bet Giorgis in Lalibela.

As much as I would hate to see the elements and erosive agents such as lichen reduce the church to a featureless blob, I'm deeply conflicted about the notion of erecting a shelter over the building. In many respects, it could be a case of killing the patient along with the pathogen.

For all I know, Bet Giorgis isn't on UNESCO's list of buildings to cover with shelters. If it is, I am grateful I saw it when I did, lichen and all. If UNESCO does cover the church, I hope it is only temporary while the lichen is removed or its progress arrested using state-of-the-art techniques and materials.

According to the Web site sacredsites.com,

"The most remarkable of the Lalibela churches, called Bet Giorgis, is dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of Ethiopia."

"According to legend, when King Lalibela had almost completed the group of churches which God had instructed him to build, Saint George appeared (in full armor and riding his white horse) and sharply reproached the king for not having constructed a house for him. Lalibela promised to build a church more beautiful than all the others for the saint."

"The church of Bet Giorgis is a nearly perfect cube, hewn in the shape of a cross, and is oriented so that the main entrance is in the west and the holy of holies in the east. The nine windows of the bottom row are blind; the twelve windows above are functional."

"One of the most sophisticated details of Bet Giorgis is that the wall thickness increases step by step downwards but that the horizontal bands of molding on the exterior walls cleverly hide the increase."

"The roof decoration, often used today as the symbol of the Lalibela monuments, is a relief of three equilateral Greek crosses inside each other. The church is set in a deep pit with perpendicular walls and it can only be entered via a hidden tunnel carved in the stone."