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Ethiopia The Aksumite State
The Aksumite state emerged at about the beginning of the
Christian era, flourished during the succeeding six or seven
centuries, and underwent prolonged decline from the eighth
to the twelfth century A.D. Aksum's period of greatest power
lasted from the fourth through the sixth century. Its core
area lay in the highlands of what is today southern Eritrea,
Tigray, Lasta (in present-day Welo), and Angot (also in
Welo); its major centers were at Aksum and Adulis. Earlier
centers, such as Yeha, also continued to flourish. At the
kingdom's height, its rulers held sway over the Red Sea
coast from Sawakin in present-day Sudan in the north to
Berbera in present-day Somalia in the south, and inland as
far as the Nile Valley in modern Sudan. On the Arabian side
of the Red Sea, the Aksumite rulers at times controlled the
coast and much of the interior of modern Yemen. During the
sixth and seventh centuries, the Aksumite state lost its
possessions in southwest Arabia and much of its Red Sea
coastline and gradually shrank to its core area, with the
political center of the state shifting farther and farther
southward.
Inscriptions from Aksum and elsewhere date from as early as
the end of the second century A.D. and reveal an Aksumite
state that already had expanded at the expense of
neighboring peoples. The Greek inscriptions of King Zoskales
(who ruled at the end of the second century A.D.) claim that
he conquered the lands to the south and southwest of what is
now Tigray and controlled the Red Sea coast from Sawakin
south to the present-day Djibouti and Berbera areas. The
Aksumite state controlled parts of Southwest Arabia as well
during this time, and subsequent Aksumite rulers continually
involved themselves in the political and military affairs of
Southwest Arabia, especially in what is now Yemen. Much of
the impetus for foreign conquest lay in the desire to
control the maritime trade between the Roman Empire and
India and adjoining lands. Indeed, King Zoskales is
mentioned by name in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (the
Latin term for the Red Sea is Mare Erythreum), a Greek
shipping guide of the first to third centuries A.D., as
promoting commerce with Rome, Arabia, and India. Among the
African commodities that the Aksumites exported were gold,
rhinoceros horn, ivory, incense, and obsidian; in return,
they imported cloth, glass, iron, olive oil, and wine.
During the third and fourth centuries, the traditions
related to Aksumite rule became fixed. Gedara, who lived in
the late second and early third centuries, is referred to as
the king of Aksum in inscriptions written in Gi'iz (also
seen as Ge'ez), the Semitic language of the Aksumite
kingdom. The growth of imperial traditions was concurrent
with the expansion of foreign holdings, especially in
Southwest Arabia in the late second century A.D. and later
in areas west of the Ethiopian highlands, including the
kingdom of Meroë.
Meroë was centered on the Nile north of the confluence of
the White Nile and Blue Nile. Established by the sixth
century B.C. or earlier, the kingdom's inhabitants were
black Africans who were heavily influenced by Egyptian
culture. It was probably the people of Meroë who were the
first to be called Aithiopiai ("burnt faces") by the ancient
Greeks, thus giving rise to the term Ethiopia that
considerably later was used to designate the northern
highlands of the Horn of Africa and its inhabitants. No
evidence suggests that Meroë had any political influence
over the areas included in modern Ethiopia; economic
influence is harder to gauge because ancient commercial
networks in the area were probably extensive and involved
much long-distance trade.
Sometime around A.D. 300, Aksumite armies conquered Meroë
or forced its abandonment. By the early fourth century A.D.,
King Ezana (reigned 325-60) controlled a domain extending
from Southwest Arabia across the Red Sea west to Meroë and
south from Sawakin to the southern coast of the Gulf of
Aden. As an indication of the type of political control he
exercised, Ezana, like other Aksumite rulers, carried the
title negusa nagast (king of kings), symbolic of his rule
over numerous tribute-paying principalities and a title used
by successive Ethiopian rulers into the mid-twentieth
century.
The Aksumites created a civilization of considerable
distinction. They devised an original architectural style
and employed it in stone palaces and other public buildings.
They also erected a series of carved stone stelae at Aksum
as monuments to their deceased rulers. Some of these stelae
are among the largest known from the ancient world. The
Aksumites left behind a body of written records, that,
although not voluminous, are nonetheless a legacy otherwise
bequeathed only by Egypt and Meroë among ancient African
kingdoms. These records were written in two languages--Gi'iz
and Greek. Gi'iz is assumed to be ancestral to modern
Amharic and Tigrinya, although possibly only indirectly.
Greek was also widely used, especially for commercial
transactions with the Hellenized world of the eastern
Mediterranean. Even more remarkable and wholly unique for
ancient Africa was the minting of coins over an
approximately 300-year period. These coins, many with inlay
of gold on bronze or silver, provide a chronology of the
rulers of Aksum.
One of the most important contributions the Aksumite state
made to Ethiopian tradition was the establishment of the
Christian Church. The Aksumite state and its forebears had
certainly been in contact with Judaism since the first
millennium B.C. and with Christianity beginning in the first
century A.D. These interactions probably were rather
limited. However, during the second and third centuries,
Christianity spread throughout the region. Around A.D. 330-
40, Ezana was converted to Christianity and made it the
official state religion. The variant of Christianity adopted
by the Aksumite state, however, eventually followed the
Monophysite belief, which embraced the notion of one rather
than two separate natures in the person of Christ as defined
by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (see
Ethiopian Orthodox
Christianity, ch. 2).
Little is known about fifth-century Aksum, but early in the
next century Aksumite rulers reasserted their control over
Southwest Arabia, though only for a short time. Later in the
sixth century, however, Sassanian Persians established
themselves in Yemen, effectively ending any pretense of
Aksumite control. Thereafter, the Sassanians attacked
Byzantine Egypt, further disrupting Aksumite trade networks
in the Red Sea area. Over the next century and a half, Aksum
was increasingly cut off from its overseas entrepôts and as
a result entered a period of prolonged decline, gradually
relinquishing its maritime trading network and withdrawing
into the interior of northern Ethiopia.
Data as of 1991
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