Marked Aksum

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Kingdom of Aksum

From the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea, Aksum traded ivory and gold across the Red Sea, minted its own coins, raised giant stone stelae, and under King Ezana in the 300s became one of the first states to adopt Christianity.

Place
Aksum · Adulis · MataraAfrica
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IA Red Sea power
  2. IIThe great stelae
  3. IIICoins of gold, silver and bronze
  4. IVEzana and the cross
  5. VGe’ez writing
  6. VIThe stele that came home

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Ezana
  • Frumentius
  • Kaleb

Objects

  • King Ezana’s stele
  • Aksumite coins
  • The Obelisk of Axum, returned in 2005

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 100 to AD 940. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?