Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay



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A few stelae have been noted placed beside structures which have been firmly dated to 
the Christian period, such as the Dungur villa, the building at Wuchate Golo, and Matara, 
Tertre D; at the latter place Anfray suggests the stele might denote a sacred edifice 
(Anfray and Annequin 1965: p. 68 and pl. XLIX, fig. 4). This might well apply also to 
Wuchate Golo, but does not seem to be the case at Dungur.  
The origins of the stelae are very difficult to disentangle. Attributions of stelae in 
Ethiopia to the pre-Aksumite period, though customarily accepted (Munro-Hay 1989: 
150), are not necessarily correct (Fattovich 1987: 47-8). A stele tradition appears 
nevertheless to have existed in the Sudanese-Ethiopian borderlands, and in parts of 
northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in pre-Aksumite times. Fattovich suggests, plausibly 
enough, that stelae belong to an ancient African tradition. In the case of the stelae at 
Kassala and at Aksum — despite the difference in time and the difference in the societies 
which erected them — he sees a similarity in several features. These include the 
suggestion that `the monoliths are not directly connected with specific burials' (Fattovich 
1987: 63). However, this is questionable as far as the Aksum stelae are concerned, now 
that it has been possible to analyse the results of Chittick's work. Though it is not yet easy 
to identify tombs for all the stelae, it does seem that, at the Aksum cemeteries, wherever 
archaeological investigations have been possible there is a case for suggesting that stelae 
and tombs are directly associated.  
. Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity 
by Dr. Stuart Munro-Hay. 
© 1991 by Dr. Stuart C. Munro-Hay. 
Online edition with the author's permission, by Alan Light (alight@vnet.net). 
Chapters 6-10. 
Back to Table of Contents
.  
6. The Civil Administration 
 
1. The Rulers 
 
The government of Aksum, as far as can be discerned, was administered through a 
pyramid of authority expanding as it passed from the king to the lower echelons. There is 
some slight evidence that at times there may have been two kings reigning 
contemporaneously (
Ch. 7: 3
), but in such a case one of them would have presumably 
been recognised as pre-eminent. The structure of power appears to have been that of an 
absolute monarchy, with a form of kingship implying a semi-divine ruler, and with the 
king's immediate family retaining important supportive military and administrative posts. 
At the next level were provincial governors or chiefs and sub-kings.  


What information we have concerning the theory of government, and the working of the 
administration and other government functions is episodic, and we may assume that over 
the centuries the machinery of government did not remain static, but was subject to 
gradual changes as situations altered. One of the more important changes must have 
occurred with the acceptance of Christianity. The pre-Christian kings whose inscriptions 
have come down to us called themselves `son of the invincible god Mahrem', the royal 
tutelary deity, and thus asserted their own claim to divine honours; they may also have 
been high-priests of the state cult. This semi-divine status, though implicitly abandoned 
by the Christian kings — or at least transformed by the anointing and coronation rituals 
— seems to have lost them little if any authority, since they remained the de facto heads 
of their own church; one of the advantages of having the titular head of the church in far-
away Alexandria (
Ch. 10: 2
). Ezana, the first Christian king, in order to keep the 
customary protocol intact in an inscription (
Ch. 11: 5, DAE 11
) simply replaced the 
divine filiation with his own real filiation `son of Ella Amida, never defeated by the 
enemy'.  
Various stratagems were employed to keep power vested in the royal family. This 
appears to have also included female members of the ruling dynasty, since Rufinus (ed. 
Migne 1849) tells us that the dowager queen acted as regent during Ezana's minority. If 
the theory suggested by de Blois (1984) is valid, the royal wives may have been chosen 
from the chief clans of the country, thus encouraging their support for the regime. Those 
royal wives who became the mothers of future kings, would pass on to their sons the 
clan-names used by the kings in their `Bisi' -titles (see below).  
Sons of the nagashis, like Baygat and Garmat (
Ch. 4: 4
), led military campaigns in South 
Arabia, and Ezana later employed two of his brothers on similar tasks. Sometimes things 
may not have worked out so well; the story of the rebellion of Abreha, who is said by 
Tabari (ed. Zotenberg 1919: 184) to have conquered the Yemen after a previous general, 
Aryat, had failed, illustrates this. Tabari thought that Abreha belonged to Kaleb's family, 
and was accused of trying to take power in the Yemen; the najashi sent Aryat back to the 
Yemen to take control, but Abreha killed him and then later managed to make an 
accommodation with the najashi. However, Tabari was writing some centuries after the 
event, and is not necessarily reliable; his source, Ibn Ishaq, does not mention any 
relationship between the najashi and Abreha (Guillaume 1955). Procopius, a 
contemporary of these events, says rather that after Abreha's coup, another army was sent 
to punish him, under a relative of Kaleb Ella Atsbeha, and that this army defected to 
Abreha's camp, killing their royal general (Procopius: ed. Dewing 1914). Abreha's 
assumption of command of the army, or at least of those parts of it which had remained in 
Arabia, far from the supervision of Aksum, was almost inevitable if the local leader (at 
that time Sumyafa` Ashwa`, apparently a Himyarite by birth) was incompetent or for 
some reason disliked by the army, and the same thing often happened among generals in 
charge of the Roman legions. It is interesting to note, however, that Tabari gives various 
reasons for Abreha's eventual submission to his overlord, including the fact that the army 
would not have supported him against the najashi himself (Zotenberg 1919: 187). Whilst 
military power in the hands of any subject must have been a possible threat, the reserving 


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