The Kingdom of Aksum was formed around 1000BC but reached its apex between 330 and 360 A.D. It covered a large swathe of modern day Northern Ethiopia, all of Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan. It even had vassals on the Arabian Peninsula.
The Kingdom was based in Northern Ethiopia but its most significant town was arguably Adulis, a port town on the Red Sea, from which the kingdom controlled trade with her neighbors, some coming from far away as India and Greece. Some of the items traded included animal trophies, gold, salt, emeralds, and spices.
Aksum was the only African kingdom to mint coins and also had a written form that survives to this day. Ge’ez, the written language of the kingdom, survives today as the script for Amharic, Tigre, and other Ethiopian and Eritrean languages. Ge’ez itself is considered a virtually dead language, as it is only used in Ethiopian Orthodox Church liturgy. The coins were made of gold, silver and bronze.
Aksum offered refuge to many people fleeing religious persecution in the Arabian Peninsula, such as Syrian monks (the Nine Saints) and Arabian Muslims (the First Hijra), all monotheists in a region still dominated by polytheists. Christianity became the state religion of Aksum under the reign of King Ezana, the most renowned of all Aksumite kings.
The advent of Islam in the 7th century led to the gradual decline of the kingdom, as newly found Islamic states surrounded the kingdom from all sides and forced the rulers to move higher into the Ethiopian Highlands and thus, ceding trade routes that were their mainstay.
Consequently, the capital Aksum was abandoned and the kingdom disappeared only to reemerge under a new dynasty called the Zagwe. This dynasty was ultimately deposed by a “Solomonic” lineage that claimed direct ancestry to the first Aksumite kings.
Much of ancient Aksum remains buried under the modern city, but there is still a lot to see in the town that is now a dusty regional town with about 50,000 inhabitants. The first thing that will capture your eye is the numerous number of obelisks and stele in the vicinity. These were erected to honor renowned people in Aksumite society.
And who knows, you could get a chance to see the Covenant of the Ark, which, according to Ethiopian legend, is in the Church of Mary of Zion.
By Matengo Chwanya
Editor: Nancy Nguyen
Sources: Archive archeology, Above top secrets,
Africa Global News Publication
