Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

images of the dog-star, probably of metal"). Bruce found, below the coronation stone, 
another stone with a defaced inscription which, naturally, he announced "may safely be 
restored" with the Greek letters reading `King Ptolemy Euergetes'. He further alludes to 
the Mai Shum reservoir, and estimates the town to have amounted in his time to some six 
hundred houses. Oddly enough, in view of his particular desire to see most of the 
monuments as Egyptian, Bruce was, while in Tigray, actually presented with a late 
Egyptian (possibly XXXth Dynasty or Ptolemaic) cippus (a small stele bearing magical 
texts) of Horus, which he illustrates in two engravings. This is one of the very rare 
Egyptian or Meroitic objects known from Ethiopia, but a standing figure of the same 
deity shown on the cippus, Horus-the-Child or Harpokrates, is also known from a 
cornaline amuletic figure found at Matara (Leclant 1965).  
Illustrations 3 & 4. Prints after one of Bruce's sketches, showing the Egyptian Cippus of 
Horus given to him in Ethiopia.  
In spite of Bruce's curious interpretations of the Aksumite monuments visible in his time, 
his publication, though a certain amount of incredulity greeted his account of what he had 
seen and done, attracted interest in Ethiopian history and antiquities. He was soon 
followed by Henry Salt, who travelled to Ethiopia with George Annesley, viscount 
Valentia, in 1805, and again as British envoy in 1809. In the last volume of Valentia's 
three-volume account (1809), Salt contributed a chapter on Aksum, and first published 
Ezana's inscription as well as other antiquities; the folio acquatint companion volume to 
Valentia's work contained a picture of the stelae, the first nineteenth-century illustration 
of Aksumite antiquities. Salt also published A Voyage to Abyssinia in 1814, illustrating it 
with a copy of Ezana's famous trilingual inscription. With Salt, who cleared the base of 
this inscription, we may say that archaeology had arrived at Aksum, although it was not 
until 1868 that a deliberately planned excavation, amateurish though it seems to us today, 
was undertaken. This occurred when soldiers accompanying the British military 
expedition, sent to relieve the prisoners kept by the emperor Tewodros (Theodore) at 
Magdala, opened some trenches at the site of the port of Adulis. They were theoretically 
under the distant supervision of R. R. Holmes, the British Museum's agent, who actually 
remained up-country endeavouring, unsuccessfully as it transpired, to obtain permission 
to visit Aksum (Munro-Hay, 1989). Other visitors of various nationalities followed, 
including Theodore Bent who, in 1893, was able to add a certain amount to the 
description of Aksum and its surroundings in his Sacred City of the Abyssinians (1896). 
The Italian archaeologist Paribeni, in 1906, and the Swede Sundström, also excavated at 
Adulis and found impressive ruined structures, with a number of coins and other objects 
(Paribeni 1907: Sundström 1907).  
Illustration 5. The Greek version of the trilingual inscription of king Ezana of Aksum first 
published by Salt. Photo BIEA.  
With the beginning of archaeology in the country, the potential for discovering more 
about the Aksumites' way of life was immensely increased. Details about technological 
and agricultural affairs, or urbanisation, not available from any other source, now began 
to emerge. The major event in Ethiopian archaeology until the excavations of modern 

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times, was the arrival of the Deutsche Aksum- Expedition, led by Enno Littmann, in 1906 
(Littmann et al. 1913). The German team explored Aksumite sites along their route 
across Ethiopia, and surveyed the whole Aksum region; they dug for the plans of major 
structures, and meticulously planned, drew or photographed whatever they cleared. 
Almost immediately after their return a preliminary report appeared (Littmann and 
Krencker 1906). The German team also presented, in their copiously- illustrated four-
volume publication in 1913, sketches, photographs and descriptions of everything of 
interest both ancient and modern. This included a number of Aksumite inscriptions, 
which were translated and so offered some primary material for speculations about 
chronology and other aspects of Aksumite history.  
The foundation which they laid has been built upon, though very modestly in comparison 
to work in other countries, by subsequent expeditions. Archaeological and survey work 
has been done by Italian, French, American and British teams, and by the Ethiopian 
Department of Antiquities (most of it only published in preliminary reports in the 
Annales d'Ethiopie, but see also Chittick 1974 and Munro-Hay 1989). The surveys and 
excavations have revealed numerous structures and domestic material of Aksumite date 
in many parts of northern Ethiopia. As a result, some idea can now be obtained as to the 
extraordinary civilisation developed between about the first and seventh centuries AD by 
the Aksumites at their capital city and other urban centres. Though the archaeological 
study of the kingdom is still in its infancy, the results are very impressive, and we can 
now put Aksum firmly into its place among the great civilisations of late antiquity.  
  
  
3. The City and the State 
 
  
1. The Landscape 
 
A traveller 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 (1790) put it  
"The mountains of Abyssinia have a singular aspect from this (coastal plain), as they 
appear in three ridges. The first is of no considerable height, but full of gullies and 
broken ground, thinly covered with shrubs; the second, higher and steeper, still more 
rugged and bare; the third is a row of sharp, uneven-edged mountains, which would be 
counted high in any country in Europe".  

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