Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

offering. In the sixth century Arabian war, the historian Procopius says that the Ethiopian 
army sent by Kaleb to the Yemen to punish the usurper Abreha and his supporters for the 
deposition of Sumyafa` Ashwa` consisted of three thousand men; a figure the more 
convincing for its relative modesty. This army in fact turned against Kaleb, and remained 
to support Abreha (Procopius, ed. Dewing 1914: 191). Later Arab writers elevate the 
numbers of men sent to the Yemen to 70,000 men under Aryat (Guillaume 1955: 20, after 
Ibn Ishaq). Tabari (Zotenberg 1958: 182) agrees with this figure, mentioning that Dhu 
Nuwas (Yusuf Asar) had 5000 men at San`a; he then says that the najashi sent another 
army with 100,000 men under Abreha. After Abreha's rebellion the najashi sent another 
4000 with Aryat's second mission, and on its failure began to assemble yet another army 
to punish Abreha. The numbers of men in these armies, swelling as the story develops, 
are certainly highly exaggerated, and only Procopius' information seems credible; though 
of course there is always the standard explanation that the lower figures represent the real 
fighting strength, and the higher the whole mass of non-combatant dependents. The 
inscription of Yusuf Asar Yathar (Rodinson 1969) claims that he took 11,000 prisoners, 
but even if the figure is a true one, many of these must have been from Arabs fighting 
against the king on the side of the najashi.  
3. Weapons 
 
Military equipment is shown on certain stelae at Aksum. The so-called `Stele of the 
Lances' is now known to be part of Stele 4 (after the DAE notation), whose apex is to be 
found elsewhere in the town (Chittick 1974: 163); on it two spears, one with a long blade 
and one with a shorter blade, were depicted. The Ethiopia n slave Wahsi, one of the first 
of his countrymen to embrace Islam, was famed for his skill with the spear. Ibn Ishaq's 
comment here is interesting, in that he specifically mentions that Wahsi could "throw a 
javelin as the Abyssinians do, and seldom missed the mark". Wahsi himself, questioned 
later at his house in Homs, mentioned that at the time when he killed Hamza, the prophet 
Muhammad's uncle, in battle, he was "a young Abyssinian, skilful like my countrymen in 
the use of the javelin" (Guillaume 1955: 371, 376). He also killed the false prophet 
Musaylima with his javelin after Muhammad's death. It seems from the reports about 
Wahsi's career that spear- fighting was an Ethiopian speciality at the time.  
On the reverse of the Stele of the Lances is depicted a round shield. What may be a round 
shield is also carved on the back of the still- standing Stele 3. The Arab author al-Maqrizi, 
who died in the mid- fifteenth century, mentions that the Beja still used shields of buffalo-
hide called `aksumiyya' and `dahlakiyya' (Maqrizi, al-Khitat Ch. 32, in Vantini 1975: 
621). The former were made of buffalo-skin, reversed or `turned round the side'.  
Illustration 58. The reverse of the so-called Stele of the Lances (part of no. 4), depicting a 
round shield.  
No personal armour has yet been found, nor are there any surviving representations of 
soldiers, except from one most unusual source. In the Musée des Tissus, Lyon, there is a 

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brightly coloured woven textile fragment, apparently of Egyptian manufacture of the 
sixth century, which, it has been suggested, is a copy of a Persian textile based on an 
original fresco (Browning 1971: 176). Grabar thought it might be either imported from 
Persia or made in a factory in the Roman empire after an Iranian model (1967: 326). It 
came from the excavations at Antinoë, and is thought to represent a battle scene from one 
of the Yemeni (or Aksumite — Grabar, 1967: fig. 382) wars of the time of Khusrau I. A 
seated potentate, possibly the Persian king himself or perhaps his viceroy, is enthroned, 
seated in a hieratic pose holding his sword, point downwards, watching a contest between 
Persian warriors and black and white troops. The Persians are shown mounted or on foot, 
fully clothed with tunic and trousers, and armed with bows. Their adversaries wear only a 
small kilt, and what seems to be a sword-belt diagonally across one shoulder; a black 
warrior, who seems to be a captive tied by a rope to a Persian horseman, has his broad-
bladed, flat-ended sword slung behind his back. The white warriors are long-haired, like 
the Persians and earlier Yemenis as depicted on their coins and in sculpture, and one 
holds a small round shield. This textile may provide the only picture we have of an 
Aksumite soldier, albeit fighting in the Yemeni wars outside Aksumite control.  
The Periplus (Huntingford 1980: 21-2) lists certain weapons among the imports into the 
Aksumite region. Iron (sideros) used for spears is specified, the spears being used for 
hunting elephants and other animals as well as for war. Swords are also in the list, and 
iron and steel figure as raw material.  
Tomb finds at Aksum have revealed iron weapons, including tanged spear- heads which 
closely resemble those on the Stele of the Lances. Iron knives or poniards, probably 
originally with bone or wood handles, were also found, and, from Matara (Anfray and 
Annequin 1965: pl. LXIV, 1), came a handle of bronze decorated on each side with 
bosses formed by the heads of large nails. The Aksumite kings depicted on the coins 
sometimes hold a spear (or, in Aphilas' case — Munro-Hay 1984: 50 — what is 
apparently a sword), and spears and shields are mentioned in the description of the 
Byzantine embassy to Ethiopia by John Malalas (see 
Ch. 7: 2
). A few arrow-heads, but 
no swords as yet, have been found during archaeological excavations in Ethiopia.  
Although there is as yet no direct evidence, one would suppose that horses were known 
and used in warfare; some of the regiments could perhaps have been cavalry forces. That 
horses were valued possessions in at least one of the lands under Aksumite hegemony is 
shown by the burial of horses, in elaborate silver and jewelled harness, at the tombs of the 
`X-Group' monarchs at Ballana (Kirwan 1973). In later times in Ethiopia favourite 
chargers were of such importance that a leader could be named after his horse; one 
suggestion even relates the `Bisi' -title of the kings to their horses (Pankhurst 1961: 30, n. 
68).  
The use of elephants for Kaleb's state chariot, and the report (Photius, ed. Freese 1920: I, 
17-19) of one of the Byzantine ambassadors, Nonnosus, that he saw some 5000 of them 
grazing near Aue (sometimes identified with Yeha (Bent 1896: 143-7), but probably 
further to the north-east; see 
Ch. 3: 1
) on the Adulis-Aksum route, make it possible that 
they could have been used for military purposes, though Kosmas notes that the 

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