2. Aksum in Ancient Sources
Some details about the political and military history of Aksum have been preserved in
ancient documentary sources, some Aksumite and some foreign. A number of Greek and
Roman geographers and scholars noted small snippets of information about contemporary
Aksum, and certain travellers, merchants, ecclesiastics and ambassadors added various
facts about the country in their writings. None of them seems to have acquired any really
substantial knowledge about the kingdom — certainly no-one appears to have left us
more than the briefest accounts — but at least we are afforded some slight glimpses from
time to time.
The Roman writer Gaius Plinius Secundus — Pliny the Younger — whose notes on
Ethiopia in his Naturalis Historia were probably completed in their present form in
AD77 (Rackham 1948: 467-9), mentions only Aksum's `window on the world', the Red
Sea port of Adulis, through which the kingdom's international trade passed. Another
document, called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, notes the `city of the people called
Auxumites' (Schoff 1912: 23) or `the metropolis called the Axomite' (Huntingford 1980:
20), or `the metropolis itself, which is called Axômitês' (Casson 1989: 53), and gives
details of the trade goods imported and exported. This anonymous report, which modern
scholars view as either an official report, or a merchants' and sailors' guide to the known
Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports, dating perhaps somewhere between the mid-first and the
early second century AD, also describes the ruler of this region. This monarch, almost
certainly the Aksumite king himself (but see Cerulli 1960: 7, 11; Huntingford 1980: 60,
149-50; Chittick 1981: 186; Casson 1989: 109-10), was called Zoskales; he is represented
as a miserly man, but of good character, who had some acquaintance with Greek
literature. The famous Greek astronomer and geographer, Claudius Ptolomaeus —
Ptolemy — of Alexandria, describes Aksum in the middle of the second century AD as
the seat of the king's palace (Stevenson 1932: 108); and the existence of a prospering
trading centre at Aksum at about this time is confirmed by the latest archaeological
investigations (Munro-Hay 1989).
The Persian religious leader Mani, founder of the Manichaean religion, who died in 276
or 277AD, is reported by his followers to have described the four most important
kingdoms of the world as comprising Persia, Rome, Aksum and Sileos, the latter possibly
China (Polotsky 1940: 188-9). This remark shows that Aksum's repute was spreading in
the contemporary world. It was about this time that the Aksumites produced their own
coinage, an excellent way of bringing their country into prominence abroad, since only
the greatest of contemporary states issued a gold coinage.
Around 356AD, the Roman emperor Constantius II wrote a letter to Ezana, king of
Aksum, and his brother Sazana, on an ecclesiastical matter. The letter has been preserved
in the Apologia ad Constantium Imperatorem of the famous Alexandrian patriarch
Athanasius (Szymusiak 1958). Aksum is also mentioned in the account (Philostorgius;
ed. Migne 1864: 482ff.) of the travels of an Arian bishop, Theophilus `the Indian', who
was sent by Constantius to try to convert the Arabian kingdoms; he later seems to have
visited Aksum. It has been suggested that possibly it was he who carried the letter from
Constantius to the Aksumite rulers, but Schneider (1984: 156) points out that according
to Philostorgius Theophilus returned from his mission not long after 344AD. The
ecclesiastical historian Rufinus (ed. Migne 1849: 478-9), writing at the end of the fourth
century, gives an account of the conversion of the country, apparently taken directly from
bishop Frumentius of Aksum's erstwhile companion, Aedesius of Tyre.
Very little is known of the fifth century history of Aksum, but in the sixth century the
dramatic events following upon king Kaleb of Aksum's expedition to the Yemen greatly
interested the Christian world. Several ambassadors from Constantinople, sent by the
emperor Justinian to propose various trading and military arrangements, have left
accounts of their embassies. One ambassador described the king's appearance at an
audience (Malalas, ed. Migne 1860: 670). Another Greek-speaking visitor, Kosmas,
called `Indikopleustes', who was in Ethiopia just before Kaleb's expedition, was asked by
the king's governor at Adulis to copy an inscription so that it could be sent to the king at
Aksum. He complied, and preserved the contents of the inscription, together with various
other interesting details about Aksumite life, in his Christian Topography (Wolska-Conus
1968, 1973).
After the time of Kaleb, foreign reports about Ethiopia grow much sparser. The
Byzantine historian Procopius mentions (ed. Dewing 1961: 191) that Kaleb's successor
had to acknowledge the virtual independence of the Yemeni ruler Abreha, but all the rest
of our information on the later Aksumite kings comes from inferences drawn from their
coinage. For the followers of the recently-arisen prophet Muhammad, the Muslims, the
country was important because the reigning najashi gave asylum to the prophet's early
followers (Guillaume 1955: 146ff). Muhammad is said to have mourned when he heard
of this king's death. However, the najashi, Ashama ibn Abjar, though he was the ruler of
the territories of the Aksumite kingdom, may no longer have used that city as his capital.
There is reason for thinking that by the time of Ashama's death in 630AD, the centre of
the kingdom may have shifted elsewhere. If this is so, the portrait of a najashi or nigos
(the picture is labelled in both Greek and Arabic), preserved on the walls of a hunting
lodge at Qusayr `Amra in Jordan, built and decorated at the command of the Caliph alWalid (705-715AD), would be of one of the successors of Ashama ibn Abjar who was no
longer resident at Aksum (Almagro et al 1975: 165 & pl. XVII).
In the ninth and tenth centuries, Arab historians still noted the vast extent of the territories
of the reigning najashi see (Ch. 4:
, but situated the capital at a place called Ku`bar orKa`bar, a large and prosperous trading town. Where this was, we do not know at present,
but presumably it was situated in a place more favourable for the exploitation of trade
and for participating in current political events than was Aksum. The legends about the
fall of Aksum to Gudit, which seem, from the accounts of the Arab authors, to have
derived from events in the later tenth century, do not really militate against this. Aksum,
as Ethiopia's pre-eminent ecclesiastical centre, and perhaps coronation city, (a function
restored to it in later times), may have suffered from Gudit's armies, but was not
necessarily the country's administrative capital at the time. The great wealth of its
cathedral, the ruins of its palaces, and the giant funerary monuments of its former kings,
might well have attracted the attention of invaders in search of loot. Several of the kings
mentioned in Ethiopian historical texts are said to have moved their capitals, doubtless
reflecting the memory of a real event, unless they were already by that time nomadic
tented capitals as was customary later in Ethiopian history