Kingdom of Aksum

Politics and institutions

The Kingdom of Aksum rose in the first centuries CE in the highlands of northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, ruling from the inland capital of Aksum the trade of the Red Sea. Its kings — recorded in Ge'ez inscriptions and on their own coins — styled themselves kings of Aksum and of Kush, heirs of Meroe and masters of a realm of Agaw, Semitic and Cushitic peoples. The state was a tribute empire of subordinate chiefs, and its power was carved in stone: stelae twenty and thirty meters tall marked the royal graves, and the great obelisks of Aksum remain among the largest single stones ever raised in the ancient world. In the fourth century King Ezana converted to Christianity under the Syrian Frumentius, and the kingdom became one of the first states to adopt the faith officially.

Economy and finance

Aksum's power was commercial. From the port of Adulis its ships reached Egypt, Arabia and India, exporting ivory, obsidian, tortoiseshell, incense and enslaved people, and importing cloth, wine, metal and glass. Gold, silver and bronze coins — the first native coinage of sub-Saharan Africa — circulated from Egypt to India and carried the kings' names in Greek and Ge'ez. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first-century Greek sailing guide, already described Adulis as the market of the interior, and tribute from the Nile valleys and the lowland ivory trade filled the treasury. When the Red Sea trade faltered under Sasanian and then Arab pressure, Aksum's revenue — and its reason for being a coastal power — faltered with it.

Society and culture

Aksumite culture joined South Arabian roots to African ground. The Ge'ez script, derived from South Arabian lettering, became the written language of the kingdom and, after conversion, of the Ethiopian church to this day; royal inscriptions in Greek as well as Ge'ez addressed the Mediterranean world. Christianity, adopted under Ezana in the 330s with Frumentius as its first bishop, raised the church of Our Lady Mary of Zion at Aksum, where the Ark of the Covenant is still said to rest, and monasticism crossed from Egypt into the Ethiopian highlands. Monumental architecture — stelae, palaces, tombs with false doors — and the coins and ceramics of the capital show a state at once African and Mediterranean in its taste.

Military and frontiers

Aksum's armies fought by land and, unusually for Africa, by sea. Its expeditionary forces crossed the Red Sea repeatedly: in the sixth century King Kaleb invaded Himyar in Yemen to protect the local Christians, defeated the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas, and governed South Arabia through viceroys for decades — an African state holding Arabian territory. Nubia to the north was raided and claimed earlier, and the title king of Kush recorded the pretension. The army fought with javelins, iron-tipped spears and cavalry, wearing mail; after the seventh century, however, the rise of the Islamic caliphates cut the kingdom off from its maritime world, and Aksum's military history narrows into a retreat to the highlands.

Foreign relations

Aksum's diplomacy spanned three continents. It traded with Rome and later Constantinople, which counted it a Christian ally on the flank of Persia; its fleets served in the Red Sea wars of the sixth century; the Persian prophet Mani named Aksum one of the four great kingdoms of the world, beside Rome, Persia and China. The rise of Islam changed the terms: the first Muslim refugees found protection at the Aksumite court — the Negus refused to surrender them — but the caliphates took the sea lanes, and by the eighth century the kingdom's Mediterranean connections were gone. The Zagwe dynasty that replaced Aksum's line by the tenth century turned away from the sea, toward the rock-hewn churches of the interior.

Legacy and influence

Aksum is the fountainhead of Ethiopian statehood. Its conversion made Ethiopia one of the oldest Christian nations on earth; its Ge'ez script and coinage began literate, monetary history south of the Sahara; its obelisks — one carried to Rome by Mussolini and returned in 2005 — remain the emblem of the highland kingdom. The Solomonic emperors who ruled from 1270 claimed Aksum's throne and its Ark; the Ethiopian church claims its Zion. Historians rank it by Mani's judgment among the four great powers of its world, and by its own achievement as the kingdom that connected the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and inner Africa — leaving its script, its church and its stones to modern Ethiopia and Eritrea.