Description : Ankober (Amharic: አንኮበር), formerly known as Ankobar, is a town in central Ethiopia. Located in the Semien Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region Ankober Woreda, Ankober is perched on the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian Highlands at an elevation of about 2,465 meters (8,100 ft). It is 40 kilometers (25 mi) to the east of Debre Birhan and about 90 miles (140 km) northeast of Addis Ababa. Ankober was formerly the capital of the Ethiopian kingdom of Shewa. Buildings that survive from the Shewa period include the Kidus Mikael church, built by Sahle Selassie. According to Philip Briggs, all that survives of Menelik's palace, which he had built on the site of his father's palace, is "one long stone-and-mortar wall measuring some 1.5m high." Briggs comments that it is "difficult to say why this one wall should have survived virtually intact when the rest of the palace crumbled into virtual oblivion." Ankober is also known as where the endemic Ankober serin was first observed by ornithologists in 1979.
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