Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

In those towns which became administrative centres of the Aksumite state, Aksumite 
institutions would of course be prominent. The largest mansions probably housed the 
ruler of the region and acted as governmental and ceremonial centres; their layout, with 
the separation of the imposing central pavilion on its podium and staircases, seems 
emphatically designed to impress. In such town mansions the outer ranges must have 
been partly used for occupation and partly for service activities. We are still 
archaeologically ignorant of what went on in the dependencies. Certain features, like 
ovens, would indicate domestic activities serving the central occupant and all his people; 
others, like a possible heating system under the floor, would seem to indicate a luxury 
dwelling. Some rooms may even have been used as manufacturies of items needed in 
everyday life. Francis Anfray excavated one of these mansions just to the west of present-
day Aksum, the so-called `Château de Dungur', and when the results of this excavation 
are completely published we will certainly have a much clearer idea of the nature of these 
structures (Anfray 1972).  
Illustration 7. View of the Dungur villa, showing one of the facades of the central 
pavilion with a double staircase leading to the entrance. Photo R. Brereton.  
The country mansions, one might think, were more likely to have been on agriculturally-
based estates of the surrounding region, perhaps owned by city-dwellers who possessed 
the capital to build elsewhere as well. Land around Aksum or any other largish town must 
have become a good investment as the city grew and the demand for foodstuffs increased. 
Did some of these mansions lie in estates which were selected since they could produce 
sufficient surplus crops to serve the capital? Some of the mansions we know of were 
situated close enough to Aksum to exploit the constant demand the town-market must 
have created, provided there was a reasonable road and transport system to guarantee the 
preservation of perishables in transit; there may have been wheeled carts and porters 
employed for inland transport, and one made-up stone road, apparently ancient, has been 
found northeast of Aksum. Conversely this demand must have acted as a spur to 
production. In such circumstances one can well imagine the Aksumite noble or 
businessman deciding to try out an agricultural investment, and building on his estate the 
imitation of his town mansion. Such mansions would then have been in some sense 
dependencies themselves. Alternatively, perhaps, we should think in terms of a `rural 
aristocracy' living and farming on their estates? In fact, we know nothing of such putative 
estates; only the existence of the mansions themselves allows us to postulate the estates.  
  
5. The Inhabitants 
 
The population of the Aksumite villages probably resembled closely the inhabitants of 
the present day; Semitic speakers in the central region (`Aksumites, Habash') owing 
something of their cultural tradition to influences from South Arabia in earlier times, with 
Cushitic speaking peoples on the peripheries of the kingdom. We know that tribal groups, 

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if they submitted to Aksum, were left under the control of their local rulers, and probably 
those not in the immediate vicinity of the capital managed to preserve something of their 
own social systems. But we also learn from inscriptions that forcible transportation for 
rebellious tribes was practised, and by this method some alien elements must have been 
introduced. Ezana, for example, removed some 4400 Beja tribespeople to a province 
called Matlia (
Ch. 11: 5
), seemingly a march of several months. It has been suggested 
that this move could have been the origin of the present province-name Begamder 
(Begameder), or `Land of the Beja'.  
No painted representations or statues of Aksumites survive to give us an idea of their 
appearance; except for the badly damaged picture of an Ethiopian ruler at Qusayr Amra 
in Jordan, and the pottery heads from jars found during excavations (Munro-Hay 1989: 
280). Pirenne has noted that the coiffure of the latter resembles that of figures carved on 
the decorated roof-beams of the temple of Ma`in in South Arabia (1977: I. 255-7). 
Another sort of coiffure seems to be represented on a small mask-pendant from Aksum 
(Tringali 1987: Tav. VIa). No personal descriptions are available either, though one of 
the Byzantine ambassadors described king Kaleb's costume and ornaments on a state 
occasion (
Ch. 7: 2
). The kings' features on the coins are fixed from the very first issues, 
and tell us little about their actual appearance; the large eyes, straight nose and prominent 
lips and chin may owe as much to the die-cutter's conventions as to an idea of portraiture. 
The situation is, curiously enough, different for the pre-Aksumite period. Statues, 
fragments of statues, and relief sculpture, from the pre-Aksumite Ethiopian sites at Addi 
Galamo and Hawelti (Caquot and Drewes 1955; de Contenson 1963ii) show elegantly-
robed female figures represented with tightly-curled hair, large, wide eyes outlined in the 
Egyptian fashion, and enigmatically smiling mouths. Two statues from Hawelti show 
women wearing full- length robes, apparently pleated, and adorned with heavy triple-
necklaces; they are rather reminiscent of some South Arabian sculptures of goddesses 
(Pirenne 1977: I. 439, I. 451). Another, from Addi Galamo, wears a fringed robe 
decorated with a repeated pattern of a dot with eight others set in a circle around it. A 
male figure carved on an elaborate covered throne from Hawelti wears a shorter knee-
length kilt, a cloak knotted over his shoulders, and sports a jutting beard with his close-
curled hair. From Matara (Anfray and Annequin 1965: pl. LXIII: 1) came only the 
fragment of a statue showing one of the heavily outlined Egyptian-style eyes, and tightly-
curled hair. Aksum itself yielded, from the Maryam Tseyon area (de Contenson 1963: pl. 
XIII, d), the remains of yet another head, in basalt, with only the close curls of the hair 
visible. A human-headed sphinx, a very early example of a type later found in South 
Arabian art, came from Kaskase, found with inscriptions dating to perhaps the fifth 
century BC (Pirenne 1977: I. 468-9, fig. 1).  
Very likely these pre-Aksumite statues represent much the same people as those who 
later formed the Aksumite population. We know from Ezana's `monotheist' inscription 
(
Ch. 11: 5
) that the Aksumites recognised the Black (tsalim) and the Red (qayh) peoples, 
mentioning also the `Red Noba'; but it is not clear where in these categories they fitted 
themselves. Littmann (1913) thought that the implication was of  the `red' people of the 
kingdom of Aksum in contrast to the `black' Noba (and others), a differentiation which 
still applies today in the eyes of the northern Ethiopians. Both Drewes (1962: 98) and 

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