This photo of the entrance to the 13th century rock-hewn Church of Bet Giorgis captures the building's cross-shaped design better than the previous one.

What's remarkable is the size of the open space around the church. It's important to bear in mind the builders started with a gently sloping hillside of sold volcanic rock.

The builders then dug down into the rock (think trenches), leaving a cube of rock standing in the center of the excavation site. Well, maybe the block of rock wasn't cube shaped; it might have been the same general shape as the finished building.

Whatever its shape, the block of rock created by the trenching into the solid rock hillside is what eventualy became the Church of Bet Giorgis after untold hours of careful planning, heavy labor and exquisitely delicate and precise craftsmanship. The church stands in a man-made pit about 40 feet deep.

As long as we're on the subject of massive excavations, I wonder whether anyone has determined where the ancient builders dumped all the rubble created during the massive construction projects at Lalibela. It's the sort of thing that might even show up on satellite imagery.

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."