Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn, 1000 BC-AD 1300

"This is an absolutely fantastic book that takes you through Aksumite history, which is a history most people are not acquainted with And having gone through much of the story of Aksum in detail for my book, I’ve got to ask the question, ‘Why is it not talked about more?’ Aksum was a kingdom—an empire, really—in Ethiopia. It rose around the beginning of the reign of Augustus, so the turn of the Common Era is when it took off. Archeologically, we do know of life at the site before then, but what we think of as Aksum appears around that period, and then it just grows as a power and as an influence. And because of its position near to the Red Sea coast and close to the Indian Ocean, it’s a really important point on the ocean trade routes. So, as Roman trade came out of the Mediterranean through the Red Sea, it would pass Aksum and a port town that it had on the coast in what is now Eritrea. And from there, it would continue to places further south. The furthest south it seems to have gone is a place called Rhapta, which is in modern Tanzania. Then it would also go east to India and beyond—maybe even as far as Co Loa, we don’t know. So, Aksum grows, and as it does so, it evolves culturally. Because of the amount of Greek and Roman trade coming through, it adopted the Greek written script on some of its coinage and some of its communication. They also wrote in their own language of Ge’ez. We have different scripts used for different things, which is interesting. What coins would you write in Greek, and what coins would you write on in Ge’ez? Aksum became a Christian kingdom around the fourth century, and then it entered its golden age of influence. It expanded into Arabia. It expanded even toward places like Mecca. All the while, Europe was going through the collapse of the Roman Empire. In Ethiopia, we have the height of Aksumite culture, history, and society, whilst in Europe, you have the split between the Eastern and the Western Roman Empires, and what used to be called the Dark Ages occurring. Aksum continued to flourish up until the rise of Islam. There is a story that some of the Islamic refugees from Arabia, who had to flee in the early years of the Prophet Muhammad, came to Aksum for safety. As a thank you for this, Muhammad said Ethiopia was off-limits for jihad. And if you look at the history, it’s not until the Ottomans that anyone breaks that. The Ethiopian church is one of the world’s oldest, unbroken Christian traditions. They’re so far south they avoid all the disagreements about Christianity that happened further north, and it comes out with its own incarnation: the Ethiopian church is unique in its faith and in its belief. So Aksum is this fascinating kingdom. It’s described as one of the great empires alongside the Chinese, the Achaemenid Persian Empire , and the Romans, and we just don’t hear about it. The way we look at the ancient world, anything south of Egypt is often ignored as irrelevant. But when we start to look at places like Aksum, that just falls apart. These stories relate to important, wider issues: the rise of Islam, the fall of the Western Empire, the spread of Christianity, the various schisms, and the evolution of Christianity in different cultures. These are all relevant themes. I do not understand why Aksum and the Aksumites are not part of that story. There are. I describe the large stelae in the book, on what is potentially a royal burial ground. You can visit the park. You can also see the Bibles that came from Aksum, the Garima Gospels, which are beautifully illuminated. There was an exhibit of them in Oxford recently. There was also the ivory trade—items that appeared around the world and, as I mentioned, ended up in Anglo-Saxon burials in Britain. It’s all connected. It’s not as if these artifacts have disappeared, and that would explain why there’s no interest in Aksum. It did. It got absorbed into what can only be described as conspiracy theories and pseudo-history. But there is a church in Ethiopia that claims to have the Ark of the Covenant. There is a tradition that the Queen of Sheba was from Aksum and that she had a son with King Solomon. That son was given it as a gift and took it back to Ethiopia. That’s why they claim to still have it to this day. You can visit that church, but you cannot see the Ark of the Covenant."