Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

The traveller would know that Aksum lay in those highlands, several days journey from 
the top of the escarpment, in a different climatic zone, and to all intents and purposes in a 
different world.  
Adulis, with its prosperous international trading community, and sizable buildings in the 
Aksumite style, was the first important town on the journey to the capital. It evidently 
became `Aksumite' in terms of architecture and government, but may well have already 
had a long history before that. During the Aksumite period, it was probably still rather 
different from the inland towns, as one would expect from a community exposed to many 
foreign influences. Paribeni (1907) found there many objects apparently imported from 
the Graeco-Roman world or even India.  
Immediately on leaving Adulis on the Aksum road, a traveller would have seen the 
famous monument left by an unknown Aksumite king, and a stele belonging to one of the 
Egyptian Ptolemies (Chs. 
3: 4
 and 
11: 1
). From here the journey to Aksum took eight 
days, according to the Periplus (Huntingford 1980: 20), or twelve days according to 
Procopius (Dewing 1914: 183). The difference doubtless reflected either some change in 
the route, or in the season of travelling, if it was not simply caused by the greater haste of 
merchants in comparison to ambassadors travelling in a comparatively leisurely manner. 
The journey took travellers through two of the three climatic zones recognised by the 
Ethiopians nowadays; the first is called the kwolla, below 1800 m and with a hot tropical 
climate (26°C or more), and the second the woina dega, from 1800-2400 m, with a sub-
tropical climate and average temperatures of 22°C. Aksum itself lay at about 2100 m. The 
final climatic zone was the high dega, above 2400 m with an average temperature of 
16°C.  
The climatic extremes or differences were mentioned by ancient travellers such as 
Kosmas (Wolska-Conus 1968: 362), who particularly noted that it was the rainfall in 
Ethiopia which formed the torrents which fell into the Nile. The ambassador of Justinian, 
Nonnosus (Photius; ed. Freese 1920) noted the two zones;  
"The climate and its successive changes between Aue and Aksum should be mentioned. It 
offers extreme contrasts of winter and summer. In fact, when the sun traverses Cancer, 
Leo and Virgo it is, as far as Aue, just as with us, summer and the dry weather reigns 
without cease in the air; but from Aue to Aksum and the rest of Ethiopia a rough winter 
reigns. It does not rage all day, but begins at midday everywhere; it fills the air with 
clouds and inundates the land with violent storms. It is at this moment that the Nile in 
flood spreads over Egypt, making a sea of it and irrigating its soil. But, when the sun 
crosses Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, inversely, the sky, from the Adulitae to Aue, 
inundates the land with showers, and for those who live between Aue and Aksum and in 
all the rest of Ethiopia, it is summer and the land offers them its splendours".  
Frequently, because of the possibility of the name Aue being a Greek rendition of the 
name Yeha, the two are identified (see for example Bent 1896: 143ff). But Nonnosus 
specifically says that Aue is mid-way between Adulis and Aksum, and this note, with the 
climatic information, seems to place it among the first towns of the highlands when the 
plateau is reached, possibly Qohayto, Tekondo, or Matara (if the latter is not identified 

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with the Koloë of the Periplus). Schneider (1982) has already suggested that Aue lay on 
the edge of the plateau.  
After following the winding rocky passes up and up into the cooler zone of the highlands 
the traveller would reach one of these towns, set in the broken scenery of the high 
Ethiopian plateau, scored by rivers and valleys sloping westwards to the Nile valley and 
scattered with strange-shaped mountains. Flat land is relatively rare here, but the plateaux 
on the tops of the mountains, called ambas, are utilised for cultivation, and also act as 
natural fortresses. Balthasar Telles (Tellez 1710: 31) mentioned their advantages;  
"Some of these mountains, which the natives call ambas, stand by themselves apart from 
all others, are prodigious high, as it were in an impregnable fortress. . . ."  
Vegetation and streams abound, and there must have been a considerable variety of 
wildlife in ancient times. Alvares, who described part of his journey as passing "through 
mountains and devilish jungle", populated his jungle with lions, elephants, tigers, 
leopards, wolves, boars, stags, tapirs and "all other beasts which can be named in the 
world except . . . bears and rabbits". His tigers may have been hyenas, as Bruce 
suggested (Beckingham and Huntingford 1961: 67) or perhaps cheetahs. Telles and 
Alvares mention crocodiles and hippopotami in the Takaze river, as well as the electric 
fish, called the torpedo or cramp- fish (Tellez 1710: 20-21).  
Illustration 6. The mountainous scenery of northern Ethiopia. Photo R. Brereton.  
On entering the highlands of Eritrea and Tigray, the heartland of the Aksumite kingdom, 
it is the mountains which most impress. To quote Bruce again,  
"It is not the extreme height of the mountains in Abyssinia that occasions surprise, but the 
number of them, and the extraordinary forms which they present to the eye. Some of them 
are flat, thin and square, in the shape of a hearth-stone, or slab, that scarce would seem 
to have base sufficient to resist the action of the winds. Some are like pyramids, others 
like obelisks or prisms, and some, the most extraordinary of all the rest, pyramids pitched 
upon their points, with the base uppermost, which, if it was possible, as it is not, they 
could have been so formed in the beginning, would be strong objections to our received 
ideas of gravity".  
Telles commented that there were  
"almost continual mountains of a prodigious height, and it is rare to travel a day's 
journey without meeting such steep, lofty and craggy hills, that they are dreadful to 
behold, much more to pass over".  
The northern Ethiopian scenery, enhanced by the startling shapes of the imposing 
euphorbia candelabra trees on the slopes, is both beautiful and formidable. Nowadays, 
however, when the rains have not arrived, the area around Aksum can seem as desolate as 
a moonscape, inhospitable and without a blade of grass anywhere; the results of climatic 
changes and man's improvidence (
Ch. 15
).  
All along the main route south, from the head of the valleys where one finally entered the 
highlands, were Aksumite towns. A traveller must have passed at least one major town, 
Matara, and many others with impressive stone buildings, before he turned west to 

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