November 23, 2018

Abreha and Atsbeha

By Stuart Munro-Hay

According to the Ethiopian traditional accounts of the conversion, Frumentius was captured during the reign of Ella Alada (Amida?), who was succeeded by two brothers, Abreha and Atsbeha, who were the first Christian kings. It has been suggested (Hahn 1983) that these names were constituent parts of the titulary of Ezana and his brother Sazana, but, as mentioned above (Ch. 7: 3) there is no real proof for this joint reign. They could alternatively have been two successive `Ella’-names adopted by Ezana. It may also be that, due to a confusion of legends, the conversion has become muddled with the other great Aksumite religious event, king Kaleb’s invasion of Yemen to end the persecution of Christians there. As Kaleb’s throne name was Ella Atsbeha, and the name of the rebellious general in Yemen was Abreha, this theory could easily provide the explanation for the Ethiopian legend (Ullendorff 1949).

The twin brother-kings Abreha and Atsbeha.

Abreha built the great cathedral at San`a, and tried to turn it into a major pilgrimage center, and so both he and Kaleb gained reputations as powerful champions of Christianity. Abreha is said to have written to the najashi saying `I have built a church for you, O King, such as has not been built for any king before you. I shall not rest until I have diverted the Arab’s pilgrimage to it’ (Guillaume 1955: 21). Some more ideas on the identity of Ezana and the date of his conversion have recently been aired. One theory (de Blois 1988) concluded that the Aksumite ruler Ezana of Constantius II’s time was a different person from king Ezana, son of Ella Amida, known from his inscriptions.

Abraha Atsbeha Church

This latter would have been an uncle and direct predecessor of Kaleb, the brother of Kaleb’s father Tazena, and the Andug of the Syriac sources; his reign would have concluded between 518 and 523. He would have been the first Ethiopian royal convert to Christianity, the earlier Ezana of the fourth century has retained his pagan beliefs; in spite of the presence of Frumentius, later consecrated bishop of Aksum, and in spite of Constantius II’s communication with him on ecclesiastical affairs. This view of the position of Ezana, multiplied into two kings, once again takes little account of the concrete evidence from the coinage. The consistency of the gold content in all three gold issues bearing the names of Ezanas/Ezana, the heavier weight of Ezanas’ pagan and Christian issues, and the fact that the Ezana issue reduces its weight to follow the contemporary Roman weight reduction, together with stylistic points, conclusively place Ezana in the fourth century, and indicate that the conversion took place at the Ethiopian traditions relate. The difference between the coins of Ezana Bisi Halen and Kaleb in terms of style, weight, gold content, and paleography is radical, and the two cannot possibly have been successive rulers. Schneider (1988) also dismisses this new theory for other reasons.

Abraha Atsbeha Church interior

Laszlo Török (1988) accepts that the king Ezana who was a contemporary of Emperor Constantius II eventually converted to Christianity. But he holds that this could only have happened after 361 since he believes that the text of Constantius II’s letter `is unambiguous as to the paganism of the tyrants Aizanas and Sazanas’. He goes on to say that `everything thus points to the probability that Ezana’s conversion, and consequently, the campaign against the Noba and Meroe, cannot be dated earlier than the decade after 361, perhaps closer to 370 than 360′. Török also believes that the inscription published by Anfray, Caquot, and Nautin (1970) does not belong to Ezana but to a brother and successor of his whose name he reads AG..AS.

Abraha Atsbeha Church

The first of these ideas is evidently based on a subjective reading of the letter of Constantius II. It can as well be asserted that the emperor did not specifically address the Aksumite rulers as Christians since he knew perfectly well that they were Christians, and had been for some time. He simply began to discuss an ecclesiastical point important to him with people he regarded as fellow Christians, and nowhere is there any remark which seems `unambiguously’ to indicate their paganism.

abreha-wa-atsbeha-church interior painting

The evidence for the postulated ruler AG..AS remains equally unconvincing. It seems far more probable that this king AG..AS never existed. There are no coins bearing his name, and the inscription almost certainly belongs to Ezana (exceptionally spelled AZANAS) as Anfray, Caquot, and Nautin believed. Most importantly, it bears Ezana’s well-known coinage and inscriptional title Bisi-Alene as well as his patronymic Elle Amida; the Greek spelling of the Bisi-title is in this case also exceptional, being rendered as either Bisi Alene or Bisi Alen on the coins. The inscription appears to be a version in Greek, with slight variations, of the `monotheistic’ vocalized Ge`ez inscription DAE 11 (Ch. 11: 5) of Ezana Ella Amida Bisi Halen. It is notable that in the case of the pagan inscriptions DAE 4, 6 and 7 of Aeizanas, and their parallels on the Geza `Agmai inscription, there are also small variations between the different versions. The most interesting here is that whereas the former version writes Saiazana and Adefan in Greek for the king’s brothers’ names, the latter writes Sazanan and Adiphan, showing a similar variation in the spelling of proper names; we now have four different spellings of Ezana’s name in Greek; (Ezana(s), Aeizanas, Aizanas, Azanas). In sum, neither of these two latest ideas about the chronology of Ezana and the Ethiopian conversion, seem strong enough to alter the view generally accepted.