Kingdom of Aksum

Origins

Aksumite civilization took shape on the Hatsebo plain of the northern Ethiopian highlands. The Metropolitan Museum traces earlier influences to South Arabian settlers of the late first millennium BCE, who brought a writing system and monumental stone building, seen in the temple at Yeha. Between roughly the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, Aksum developed into a kingdom. UNESCO describes it as the most powerful state between the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia from the 1st to the 8th century CE.

Red Sea trade

Aksum's fleets controlled Red Sea trade through the port of Adulis. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a 1st-century trader's handbook, is one of the earliest accounts of this commerce, which included ivory. Aksum exported ivory, gold, animal skins, incense and spices, and imported glass, textiles, metalwork and pottery, linking the Nile valley, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Coins and writing

Aksum was one of the few ancient African states to issue its own coinage. According to the British Museum, the first coins, in the name of King Endubis, appeared in the late 3rd century and followed Roman weight standards. Gold coins, largely meant for foreign trade, usually carried Greek inscriptions, while silver and copper coins used Ge'ez, the Ethiopic language and script. Royal inscriptions of King Ezana were written in Greek and Ge'ez, some also in South Arabian script.

Stelae

Aksum's best-known monuments are its granite stelae, raised as funerary markers for the elite. The tallest still standing is over 23 metres high and carved to resemble a nine-storey building, while a fallen stele of about 33 metres may be the largest single stone that ancient builders tried to erect. A stele taken to Rome during the Italian occupation was returned in 2005 and re-erected in 2008.

Christianity

In the 4th century King Ezana adopted Christianity, a conversion associated with Frumentius, a Syrian Christian at the Aksumite court who is revered as the founder of the Ethiopian church. Halfway through Ezana's reign the cross replaced the crescent and disc on his coins. Christianity spread more widely in the later 5th century through missionaries. Around 350 Ezana also led a campaign into the Meroitic lands of Kush along the Nile.

The Church of Saint Mary of Zion in Aksum, rebuilt in the 17th century, is believed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians to hold the Ark of the Covenant, a tradition recorded in the 13th-century Kebra Negast.

Decline

From the 7th century, as Muslim powers came to dominate the region's sea routes, Aksum lost access to international trade and declined. The town nonetheless kept its sacred role, and later Ethiopian emperors were still crowned there.