Kingdom of Aksum
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The Kingdom of Aksum was a trading state in the Horn of Africa, centred in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. From its inland capital at Aksum and the Red Sea port of Adulis it controlled the route between the Roman Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Aksumite coins in gold, silver and bronze have been found from Egypt to India, and Adulis shipped ivory, obsidian, tortoiseshell and enslaved people to Egypt. Inscriptions in Ge'ez, written in a script derived from South Arabian lettering, record kings who styled themselves king of Aksum and king of Kush. The first Christian king, Ezana, converted in the fourth century under the Syrian Christian Frumentius, making Aksum one of the earliest states to adopt Christianity officially; the church of Our Lady Mary of Zion at Aksum still claims to hold the Ark of the Covenant. Aksum intervened across the Red Sea and defeated the Himyarite kingdom in Yemen in the sixth century. Decline had several causes: the Sasanian and then the Islamic empires disrupted the trade the kingdom depended on, soil erosion and deforestation reduced harvests, and by the tenth century the Zagwe dynasty had replaced the older line. The last certain king, Dilna, is attested in the mid-tenth century.