Kingdom of Aksum: Rise of the Ancient Ethiopian Empire

The Kingdom of Aksum was an ancient state in the highlands of northern Ethiopia and Eritrea that grew, from around the 1st century AD, into one of the leading powers of late antiquity. Controlling Red Sea trade through its port of Adulis, it minted its own gold coins, raised colossal stone monuments and became one of the first states in the world to adopt Christianity. In the 3rd century the prophet Mani is said to have ranked it among the four great kingdoms of the world, alongside Persia, Rome and China.

Background: the northern Horn before Aksum

The highlands of Tigray and Eritrea were farmed long before Aksum rose. From around the 8th century BC a kingdom known from inscriptions as D’mt flourished there, with strong cultural links to the Sabaean civilisation of southern Arabia across the Red Sea. Its best-known monument is the stone temple at Yeha, which resembles Sabaean temples in Yemen.

After D’mt faded, around the 5th century BC, the region was divided among smaller communities about which little is known. Archaeologists stress that the later Aksumite state grew mainly from local roots, while absorbing Arabian influences in writing, religion and architecture. Older ideas that Aksum was founded by Arabian colonists are no longer widely accepted.

Rise of a trading state

Aksum first appears clearly in written sources in the 1st century AD. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek merchants’ handbook usually dated to the mid-1st century, describes the port of Adulis and the inland “metropolis” of the Axumites, from which ivory was brought to the coast. It names a ruler called Zoskales, described as greedy in trade but otherwise a good king who knew Greek.

The kingdom’s geography was its fortune. Aksum sat on the highland plateau, with fertile land, reliable rains and access to the elephant herds and gold sources of the interior. Adulis, on the Gulf of Zula, linked it to ships sailing between Roman Egypt, southern Arabia and India, especially after Mediterranean merchants learned to use the monsoon winds.

By the 3rd century Aksum had become a regional power. Inscriptions from Yemen record an Aksumite king called GDRT (often vocalised as Gadarat) intervening in the wars of southern Arabia around AD 200. Aksumite rulers would repeatedly try to control the Arabian side of the Red Sea for the next four centuries.

Coins, writing and monuments

Around AD 270, under a king named Endubis, Aksum began to mint its own coins in gold, silver and bronze. At the time very few states issued their own gold coinage; the others were Rome, Persia and the Kushan Empire in South Asia. Aksumite coins carried legends in Greek, the commercial language of the Red Sea, and later also in Ge’ez, the kingdom’s own language. They have been found as far away as India and Arabia.

Ge’ez was written in a script derived from South Arabian writing. During the 4th century scribes began adding vowel marks to the consonant signs, creating the syllabic script still used today for Ge’ez, Amharic and Tigrinya.

Aksum’s elite expressed their power in stone. In the stelae fields of the capital they raised giant granite monoliths over their tombs; the largest, carved to resemble multi-storey buildings, are among the biggest single stones ever quarried for erection in the ancient world. The story of these monuments is told in Obelisks of Aksum. Large stone-and-timber palace complexes, such as the building known as Dungur, show the wealth of the ruling class.

Ezana and the conversion to Christianity

The best-documented ruler of Aksum is Ezana, who reigned in the mid-4th century. His early coins carry the disc-and-crescent symbol of the traditional Aksumite gods; later coins carry the cross. According to the Roman church historian Rufinus, a Syrian Christian named Frumentius, brought to Aksum as a captive in his youth, rose to influence at court and was later consecrated bishop of Aksum by Athanasius of Alexandria. The story is told in Ezana’s Conversion.

Ezana also left long inscriptions in Ge’ez, Sabaic-style script and Greek. In them he styles himself king of Aksum and of Himyar, Saba and several African peoples, a list of claims rather than a precise map of his rule. One inscription describes a campaign against the Noba along the Nile and the Atbara, often linked with the end of the Kingdom of Kush and its capital at Meroë; see Fall of Meroë.

Christianity spread slowly beyond the court. Monks known in Ethiopian tradition as the Nine Saints, who arrived in the late 5th century, are credited with founding monasteries and translating scripture into Ge’ez. The Ethiopian church remained linked to the patriarchate of Alexandria until the 20th century.

Aksum and Arabia: the age of Kaleb

Aksum’s greatest overseas venture came in the early 6th century. Around 523 Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar, a Jewish king of Himyar in Yemen often known by the name Dhu Nuwas, persecuted the Christians of Najran. The Aksumite king Kaleb, also called Ella Asbeha, sent a large expedition across the Red Sea around 525, with the encouragement of the Byzantine emperor Justin I. Yusuf was defeated and killed, and Himyar became a client of Aksum.

Control did not last. An Aksumite commander named Abraha seized power in Yemen and ruled largely independently for decades. Around 570 the Sasanian Persians intervened in southern Arabia, and Aksumite influence there ended.

The Byzantine traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited Adulis around the time of Kaleb’s campaign, described the port and copied a royal inscription there. His account, written in the 6th century, is one of the few eyewitness descriptions of the kingdom by an outsider.

Trade and daily life

Aksum’s economy rested on farming as well as trade. Highland farmers grew wheat, barley and the local grain teff, kept cattle and used terracing. The cities of Aksum, Adulis, Matara and others housed craftsmen working in stone, metal, ivory and pottery.

Exports included ivory, gold, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell, incense and live animals. Imports came from the Mediterranean, Arabia and India: glass, fine textiles, metalwork, wine and olive oil. Byzantine and Indian coins and goods found at Aksumite sites confirm how far this network reached.

Decline and transformation

Aksum’s power faded during the 7th and 8th centuries. The Persian occupation of Yemen and then the rise of Islam shifted control of the Red Sea and its trade. Aksumite gold coinage became debased and coin production appears to have ended in the early to mid-7th century. Adulis declined in the same period.

Relations with early Islam began peacefully. Muslim tradition records that around 615 a group of the Prophet Muhammad’s followers fled persecution in Mecca and found refuge with the Christian king of Aksum, known in Arabic sources as al-Najashi. This episode is remembered as the first hijra, or migration.

Some researchers also suggest that centuries of farming and tree-cutting strained the land around the capital. Whatever the balance of causes, the political centre of the Christian kingdom moved further south. Later Ethiopian tradition tells of a destructive queen, Gudit, in the 10th century; see Queen Gudit and the Decline of Aksum. Aksum itself remained a holy city and the place of coronation for many later Ethiopian rulers.

Myths and facts

Myth: Aksum was founded by the Queen of Sheba. Ethiopian tradition, set down in the Kebra Nagast in the 14th century, links the royal line to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. This is a powerful national legend, but there is no archaeological evidence connecting the Kingdom of Aksum to a queen of the 10th century BC, and the ruin popularly called the Queen of Sheba’s Palace is an Aksumite building of much later date.

Fact: Aksum was known far beyond Africa. Greek, Roman, Persian, Arabian and Manichaean sources all mention the kingdom, and its coins travelled across the Indian Ocean world.

Disputed: the Ark of the Covenant. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds that the Ark is kept in a chapel at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum. No outsider is allowed to see it, so the claim cannot be examined historically.

Timeline

• c. 8th-5th century BC: The kingdom of D’mt flourishes in the northern Horn, with strong links to southern Arabia.
• c. AD 40-70: The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes Adulis, the Axumites and their ruler Zoskales.
• c. AD 200: King GDRT of Aksum intervenes in the wars of southern Arabia.
• c. AD 270: Aksum begins issuing gold, silver and bronze coins under Endubis.
• c. AD 330s-350s: King Ezana adopts Christianity and campaigns along the Nile against the Noba and Kush.
• c. AD 525: King Kaleb invades Himyar and defeats Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar.
• c. AD 570: Persian forces take control of Yemen, ending Aksumite influence in Arabia.
• c. AD 615: Early Muslims find refuge at the court of the king of Aksum.
• 7th century AD: Aksumite coinage ends and the kingdom’s power declines.
• 1980: The archaeological site of Aksum is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Why it matters

Aksum shows that sub-Saharan Africa was home to a literate, coin-minting, internationally connected state at the same time as the late Roman Empire. Its adoption of Christianity shaped the religious life of Ethiopia and Eritrea to this day, and its script, language and monuments remain central to Ethiopian identity.