Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

ensuring the land's fertility. The ritual of cutting the cord affirms his legitimate descent 
through the recent kings right back to the very founders of the kingdom, while the 
presence of the abun and church hierarchy, the army and nobles, confirms their 
acceptance of his right to rule. Some elements, familiar in the panoply of African 
monarchy, like the parasol and the state drum, can easily be imagined as heirlooms from 
the Aksumite tradition, though no contemporary  reference to them survives; in some 
monarchical traditions the royal umbrella, and the laying of carpets when the king walks, 
are used to protect the king from the sun and the earth, contact with either being 
presumed to dissipate his essential force to the detriment of the land he rules.  
The Ethiopian mediaeval coronation ritual as a whole, the last trace of Aksum's former 
function as the capital of the country, allows us to see the ruins of the city's monuments, 
through the eyes of the Portuguese and the native chroniclers, as a living and vital part of 
the mediaeval Ethiopian monarchy's most important ceremony.  
8. The Economy 
 
1. Population 
 
An important factor in the economic development of the Aksumite state would have been 
its demographic history. Kobishchanov (1979: 122-5), in his discussion about Aksumite 
population, somewhat adventurously concluded that the largest towns, including Aksum, 
were, `judging by the area they occupied' to be `numbered in thousands or a few tens of 
thousands of persons', and that the population of the whole Aksumite kingdom without 
Arabia and Nubia, was `at the outside half a million'. This was presumably based on 
available archaeological evidence. It has been mentioned above that a survey conducted 
by Joseph Michels in 1974 revealed a concentration of population in the immediate area 
around Aksum, where he identified eight `culture historical phases' (
Ch. 3: 3
). His plans 
(Kobishchanov 1979: 24; Michels 1988) show many large and small élite residences, 
which he identified as belonging to the phases within the Aksumite period, but the entire 
city plan for any one period is not available. Accordingly, no valid population estimates 
can be made.  
There is in reality little evidence which allows us to even try to estimate Aksumite urban 
populations. We cannot really judge population from the size of the towns, since their 
peripheral areas, where we may suppose a considerable number of people would be 
concentrated in contrast to the probably more sparsely-populated élite areas, were 
doubtless occupied by impermanent dwellings untraceable without excavation. Though 
such areas can be partially identified archaeologically by surface collection of sherds and 
so forth, this has only been done for Aksum, with the results shown on Michels' survey 
plan. From the chronological point of view, Michels (1986) considered that some of the 
élite residences behind Enda Kaleb dated from a late period in Aksumite history when the 

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capital had been `reduced to a loose cluster of villages'. In earlier times the town would 
not have extended so far, and only after much more concentrated archaeological 
investigation can we expect to assemble an accurate picture of the town's various 
expansion phases over the centuries. Nevertheless, the general impression of the capital 
resulting from Michels' survey is of a town of considerable size, containing a 
corresponding population.  
Doubtless the same applies to Adulis and Matara, where excavations have revealed 
sizeable areas of settlement (Paribeni 1907; Anfray 1963; Anfray and Annequin 1965). 
We have no real information about the extent of the other Aksumite towns and villages 
known so far only by their few  surviving stone monuments (
Ch. 3: 4
), but their very 
number seems to hint at a substantial population in certain areas of the country. A few 
foreigners' descriptions of Aksumite towns imply that they were of a fair size, an 
interesting observation when such visitors were, like Nonnosus (Photius, ed. Freese 
1920), familiar with towns of the importance of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch or 
Alexandria. When the number of known Aksumite town or village centres is taken into 
account, without considering the supporting rural population whose local centres these 
were, the estimate of half a million at the outside for the whole kingdom seems perhaps 
too cautious, since whole regions of the former Aksumite kingdom have only been 
cursorily surveyed for archaeological sites, if at all. Manpower, particularly in the 
military and agricultural sectors, must ultimately have been one of the most important 
bases of Aksumite power, and perhaps it was with this in mind that Ezana took such 
pains over moving troublesome Beja groups from their traditional lands to Matlia, instead 
of simply destroying them (see 
Ch. 11: 5
).  
The rather better climatic conditions deduced by Butzer (1981) may indicate that the 
carrying capacity of the land was greater in earlier Aksumite times, especially if the 
methods of agriculture were reasonably sophisticated, and therefore sizable town 
populations could have been supported by the work of fewer food-producers than might 
be expected. But as yet our knowledge about such questions as agricultural methods and 
possibilities, or about the area of cultivated or cultivable land, and the availability of easy 
transport to enlarge each town's food-catchment area, is completely inadequate. The land-
charters of later ages, and some which claim to be of Aksumite or just post-Aksumite 
date, give the impression that adequate records about the land had been compiled 
(Huntingford 1965), but unfortunately information which might lead to the preparation of 
population estimates based on statistics of hearths or families per village is lacking.  
It is not beyond imagination that Aksumite government officials maintained some records 
about the numbers of the population. Some sort of census would have helped in 
estimating such matters as taxation returns, available labour for large projects, or the size 
of military musters, and the accounting machinery was certainly available. The 
inscriptions DAE 4, 6 & 7 (
Ch. 11: 5
), for example, detail the exact numbers of the Beja 
tribes being moved to Matlia, and record precise amount s of food supplied to them. The 
establishment of a church organisation in the country might further have encouraged 
population survey to some extent, as boundaries between parishes or dioceses were fixed. 
No extensive cemeteries, with their useful information on the people's diet, diseases and 

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