By Stuart Munro-Hay In producing their own coinage the Aksumite rulers would have had all sorts of considerations before them. The coinage must be, first of all, acceptable both externally and internally, to foreign traders and the Ethiopian population at large. Endubis, apparently the first of the kings to try the experiment of superseding the […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay There are numerous occasions when ships and shipping are mentioned in Aksumite contexts. The various expeditions and trading ventures overseas would suggest that Aksum was mistress of a fleet of some kind. Though there is no really clear statement to that effect in the local sources, a fleet is mentioned in the […]
BY STUART MUNRO-HAY The events of the time of Kaleb swell the sources available for Aksumite history to a disproportionate degree, and have resulted in the assumption that Kaleb was Aksum’s greatest and most powerful ruler. However, the majority of the sources merely consist of more or less repetitious accounts by ecclesiastical historians full of praise for Kaleb’s incursion into […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay Whatever was the cause of the end of the former Aksumite kingdom, a new centre eventually appeared in the province of Lasta to the south under a dynasty, apparently of Cushitic (Agaw) origin, later regarded as usurpers, called the Zagwé (Taddesse Tamrat 1972: 53ff; Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography 1975: 200ff). The existence […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay 1. The Landscape A traveler arriving at Gabaza, the coast station and customs point for the port city of Adulis (Ch. 3: 4) a short distance inland, may well have looked westwards towards Aksum from the hot and humid coastal plain by the Red Sea shore with some trepidation. As James Bruce […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay Whilst there are no contemporary accounts of the Aksumite coronation ritual, it is interesting to learn how the later `Solomonic’ kings exploited the religious and historical prestige of the ancient site, by making it their ceremonial coronation place. Information can be assembled from different accounts of the coronations, such as those of […]
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, […]
The economy of Aksum in the days of its prosperity was flourishing enough to support a selection of specialised local industries. Perhaps the most impressive was the pottery (Anfray 1966; Wilding in Munro-Hay 1989), large numbers of both luxury and utilitarian wares being produced in very varied, sometimes elegant shapes. Pottery could be finished in […]
The Aksumites would doubtless have served their food in some of their large range of pottery vessels, after preparing it in the coarse-ware cooking vessels on open fires, in ovens or on charcoal-fed stoves. Much of their diet would have consisted of products of the local environment. Beef or mutton, bread, beer (sewa), honey wine […]
Perhaps the most frequently quoted remark about Ethiopia occurs in a brief excursus on the Ethiopian church which Edward Gibbon included in his monumental work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written at the end of the eighteenth century; `Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion the Æthiopians slept near […]
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