Aksum: the great power you were never taught

One of four great powers

The Kingdom of Aksum was based in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, with its capital at the city of Axum, and it reached across the Red Sea into southern Arabia. It was founded in the first century.[1]

In the third century Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, counted it among the four great powers of the world, alongside Persia, Rome and China.[1]

Coins, ships and a trade route

Aksum stood on the trade route between Rome and India and gained a monopoly of Indian Ocean trade.[1]

Under King Endybis, between 270 and 310, it began to mint its own coins. They have been dug up as far away as Caesarea and southern India.[1]

A script, a stone and a new faith

The Aksumites developed their own script, Ge'ez, which was later changed to mark vowels and became an abugida.[1]

They also raised giant obelisks to mark the tombs of emperors and nobles. The best known is the Obelisk of Aksum.[1]

Under King Ezana the kingdom adopted Christianity as its state religion in the mid-fourth century, around 325 by one count. After that the Aksumites stopped building the steles.[1]

Three inscriptions on the Ezana Stone record the king's conversion and two military campaigns, one inscribed in Greek and the other in Ge'ez.[1]

Its widest reach, and its slow end

Aksum reached its greatest extent under Kaleb (514–542), about 2.5 million square kilometres, after he invaded the kingdom of Himyar in Yemen at the request of the Byzantine emperor. The territory was later lost in wars with Persia.[1]

The decline began in the seventh century, when the kingdom stopped minting currency. A Persian and later Muslim presence in the Red Sea and the weakening of Rome, a main trade partner, hurt its economy, and the population of the city shrank.[1]

The last three centuries are considered a dark age, and the kingdom collapsed under uncertain circumstances around 960.[1] Afterwards, despite its place among the foremost empires of late antiquity, Aksum fell into obscurity as Ethiopia stayed isolated through the Late Middle Ages.[1]