November 3, 2018

Officials of the Government

By Stuart Munro-Hay

High officials with `ministerial’ rank are almost unknown. One most unusual example was Frumentius, the future bishop of Aksum. After his capture, he rose by his intelligence and application to the rank of the controller of the royal exchequer and correspondence; a sort of finance minister and secretary. Nevertheless, he remained a prisoner, if not actually a slave, in the royal household. Only when the king died, did he and his relative Aedesius gain their freedom to leave if they wished, and he himself remained in Aksum to become more or less prime-minister to the queen-regent, according to the historian Rufinus (ed. Migne 1849). Rufinus got his information from Aedesius, who was with Frumentius at Aksum; but it is of course not impossible that he exaggerated Frumentius’ importance. Frumentius is the only known figure who approaches the position occupied by the freedmen of the Roman Imperial government, who so often reached very high rank under certain emperors; but there may well have been other such men in the Aksumite administration.

St. Frumentius of Ethiopia

Frumentius’ position had been resigned when he eventually left the country and must have been completely transformed when he returned as bishop or metropolitan of Aksum. In later times the church hierarchy may have included other bishops (such as Moses of Adulis, Ch. 10: 4) and a number of local appointees to ecclesiastical posts. Doubtless, these ecclesiastics represented the real power of the church, since its head, the metropolitan or abun, was traditionally a Copt from Egypt, and they may have been able to use the organization of the church in helping the civil administration to function. However, we have no information save the lists of metropolitans, and a few isolated details from the hagiographies, about the progress and influence of the church in Ethiopia in Aksumite times (see Ch. 10).

Nothing is known of the other organs of government, except for inferences drawn from inscriptions and later literary references. For example, there seems to have been a body of traditional law, of which a few sections only survive. These are concerned with regulating the provisions due to the king on visits, according to the Safra inscription (Drewes 1962). This seems to date to the third century AD and could refer to the negusa nagast or to a local king. It does at least indicate that there was some sort of written legal code available. Some references allude to nobles and ecclesiastics surrounding or advising the king (Malalas: ed. Migne 1860; Guillaume 1955: 151-2), and a council of notables would not be at all unexpected. Ibn Hisham, mentioning the visits by representatives of the Quraysh tribe to Aksum, says that officials surrounding the najashi bore the title shuyum, with a gloss to explain the equivalent in Arabic, al-aminuna; minor chiefs called shums have been concerned with the local administration of the country even into the twentieth century; the descendants of the Zagwé kings bore the title Wagshum.

Aksumite Empire trade route

Other glimpses of the administration of law and justice may perhaps be inferred from various oblique references or archaeological finds. Kosmas, describing the Adulis throne, comments that those condemned to death were, up to his day, executed in front of the throne; perhaps it was considered the symbol of the royal presence there (Wolska-Conus 1968: 378). The discovery of chained prisoners in dungeon-like rooms at Matara indicates punishment by imprisonment (Anfray 1963: 100, pls. LXI, LXXXI, LXXXII) and there is a note in Kosmas’ work that the Semien mountains were a place of exile for those subjects condemned to banishment by the Aksumite king (Wolska-Conus 1968: 378).

There were certainly ambassadors, messengers and interpreters or translators to regulate the royal business, and they are mentioned by Malalas (ed. Migne 1860: 670; English translation in Sergew Hable Sellassie 1972: 138, after Smith 1954: 449-50). In addition, there must have been a corps of administrators, clerks, assessors, and collectors of taxes, regulators of trade and market business such as weights and measures, and so forth, both at Aksum and other towns; but we know nothing about them as yet. From the extraordinary precision of the booty counts and prisoner tallies related in the inscriptions (Ch. 11: 5), the accounts clerks were evidently very efficient, and the inscriptions themselves reveal that some considerable pains were taken over recording precise details of chronology and events. The chronological details reveal that the Ethiopian calendar was in use by Ezana’s time (Ch. 11: 5; Anfray, Caquot and Nautin 1970), and its use indicates that the inscriptions were meant to be very precise. Possibly, as in later times, there were official chroniclers for each reign.

There must presumably have been some sort of information system, perhaps a corps of messengers who were sent out to the peoples of the kingdom as required. The preparation of inscriptions in three scripts seems to reflect a desire to disseminate the official versions of the royal achievements to both native and foreign readers. However, the inclusion amongst the inscriptions of a version in Ge`ez written in an elaborated form of the South Arabian script with, sometimes, quite inappropriate use of the `m’-ending (mimation) to the words to add an `Arabian’ touch, seems to show that these inscriptions were rendered into this script solely for prestige reasons, perhaps in imitation of the trilingual (Greek, Parthian and Sassanian) inscriptions in use in Persia. It can be imagined that an official with very much the same status as Frumentius, supervising the royal correspondence, might have had the task of drafting these inscriptions and preparing the Greek translations.

The Coinage of Aksum

The coins were also part of the state propaganda. At first, they were produced in all metals with Greek legends and were primarily aimed at foreigners who understood Greek. Later they became part of the bilingual efforts to disseminate information, many issues in silver and bronze being devoted to the Ge`ez-speaking ahzab (the peoples). By the fourth century the coins were used to convey messages from the central government in the form of mottoes, generally a different one for each issue (see Ch. 9). Once again, some high official must have decided the policy to follow with each new issue, and have approved the text and design before instructing the mint officials and die-engravers accordingly. Later Ethiopian tradition supplied a whole administrative hierarchy for the Aksumite rulers from Menelik onwards, starting with those sons of the elders of Israel who came with the first emperor to Aksum. Their titles and functions are detailed by the Kebra Nagast (Glory of Kings; Budge 1922: 62) and include generals (of troops, foot-soldiers, cavalry, the sea, and recruits), scribes (a recorder, scribe of the cattle, assessor of taxes), various priests, household and administrative officials (chief of the house, keeper of the decorations, bearer of the royal umbrella, administrator of the palace, chief of the royal workmen), and the judges of the palace and the assembly. A number of other titles occur in documents or copies of documents from the Zagwé and later periods (Ch. 7: 2). Whilst a good deal of this reflects the later administrative structure of the kingdom, such officials are to be expected earlier, though we have no actual proof of their existence from the Aksumite period.