Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

established, including Adulis. One incumbent of the latter see, Moses, is known from a 
travel account dated to the fifth century (Derrett 1960; Desanges 1969).  
The main event of the period, and one which had a profound effect on Christian Ethiopia, 
was the arrival of missionaries, like the so-called `Nine Saints'. They came largely, it 
seems, from the eastern Roman Empire, doubtless fleeing from persecutions there 
(Sergew Hable Sellassie 1972: 115ff). After 451 AD the Council of Chalcedon had 
condemned the monophysite belief, but Alexandria and its dependent churches continued, 
despite the persecution, to hold to the doctrine of Christ's single nature. The Ethiopian 
hagiographies refer to an influx of `Roman' Christians at about this time as the Tsadqan, 
or `Righteous Ones'. They, and the Nine Saints, and doubtless others like them, possibly 
including some Syriac-speaking Roman subjects, began or continued the spreading of 
Christianity into the Ethiopian countryside, and established their hermitages in places 
which are still local cult centres. Two of these missionaries, Abba Liqanos and Abba 
Pantelewon, are commemorated by churches in the environs of Aksum itself, on small 
hills which may have previously been pagan sanctuaries. Pantelewon's monastery is said 
to have been the place where king Kaleb retired after his abdication (Budge 1928: III, 
914). The missionary Abba Afse went to Yeha, site of the largest and most important 
Sabaean temple in the region. A number of these wandering monks are said to have 
suffered persecution from the pagan inhabitants of the land, before their miracles, and 
some timely help from the royal armies in the case of the Balaw-Kalaw or Bur people 
near Matara (Sergew Hable Sellassie 1972: 125-6; Schneider 1963: 168) persuaded the 
populace of their virtue.  
Illustration 55a. A late 17th century picture from a Life of Aregawi, written and painted 
at Dabra Damo, showing the Nine Saints. Photo B. Juel-Jensen, MS Aeth. J-J 44.  
Monasteries like Dabra Damo were also founded by the sixth century (though the 
surviving church is thought to be rather later — Buxton 1970: 102). This particular 
monastery is supposed to have been founded by Kaleb's son Gabra Masqal on the site 
where another of the Nine Saints, Aregawi, settled. He was the founder of monasticism in 
Ethiopia, and it becomes frequent in the hagiographies to hear of people retiring to either 
hermitage or monastery. Both Kaleb and his son Wa`zeb followed Ezana's example in 
emphasising their faith by the epithet Gabra Krestos, servant of Christ, in their 
inscriptions (
Ch. 11: 5
).  
Biblical quotations appearing in the inscriptions indicate that the translation into Ge`ez 
was well under way by the fifth to seventh centuries. The Aksumites received apocryphal 
books as well; the Book of Henok (Enoch) and others are only preserved in their entirety 
in their Ge`ez versions (Ullendorff 1968: 34). Some works dealing with the rules and 
regulations of monastic communities were also translated; these would have helped in the 
establishment and regulation of the Aksumite monasteries.  
By the sixth century, if the Ethiopian legends are to be believed, the liturgical music 
attributed to Yared was being used (
Ch. 13: 4
). Ethiopian church ritual today contains 
many extraordinary features, which may well date even to pre-Aksumite times. There is 

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also a strong Jewish element, owing to Jewish influences received, it seems, before the 
introduction of Christianity. The modern `Ethiopian Jews' the Falashas, present, 
according to Ullendorff (1973: 106-7), a remarkable mixture of pagan, Jewish and 
Christian elements from Aksumite times. Their `Judaism' wo uld not be more than a 
reflection of those Jewish elements imported into Ethiopia from South Arabia, which 
have been added to both pre-Christian and Christian beliefs.  
The distance and irregularity of patriarchal supervision must have allowed many things to 
be retained in, or adopted by, Ethiopian Christianity, which Alexandria might not have 
entirely condoned. Thus there is a very individual slant to Ethiopian church ceremony. 
Deacons (called dabtara) dance before the tabot or ark at festivals, whilst the music of 
drums and sistra, local violins and trumpets accompany the splendid chants of Yared. The 
sistrum was used in ancient Egypt and may have entered Ethiopia from there; though its 
use doubtless spread in later times through the worship of Isis in the Roman empire. 
Special festivals, like Timkat, a ceremonial re-baptism, and the keeping of the Jewish 
Sabbath, annoyed the Catholic Portuguese and contributed to their failure in Ethiopia. 
Circumcision is practised, priests marry, magical spells with a Chr istian overtone are 
employed for defence against demons, and innumerable fast and feast days swell the 
church calendar. Much of this must have existed already in the Aksumite kingdom, and 
from what evidence we have it seems that the Ethiopian church quickly became one of 
the great institutions in the country.  
The Aksumites do not seem to have been plagued with many heresies, but there is an 
interesting account which does mention one. When the Byzantine bishop Longinus, in the 
580s, was in the southern Nubian kingdom of Alodia, he came across persons who had 
been converted to the heretical belief of Julian of Halicarnassus (who held that Christ's 
body was incorruptible), by Aksumite missionaries (John of Ephesus, ed. Brooks 1952: 
versio 180; Vantini 1975: 20 for an English translation). Perhaps these had been sent in 
the days when Aksum still claimed suzerainty over the Noba; the last incidence of such 
claims is that of Wa`zeb in his inscriptional titulary. In any event Longinus persuaded 
those who advocated this heresy that they were wrong, and received their recantations. 
The account, preserved by John of Ephesus, is interesting in that it tells us that in the 
sixth century Aksumites were propagating the Christian faith in Africa and Arabia.  
5. Churches 
 
Abreha and Atsbeha are supposed, according to the Book of Aksum (Conti Rossini 1910: 
3), to have constructed the cathedral at Aksum on land which Christ miraculously dried 
up from a former lake for the purpose. There were, in fact, certainly two earlier Aksumite 
buildings there already, the remains of which were excavated by MM. de Contenson and 
Anfray, and the podium of the present cathedral rests on another Aksumite structure, 
possibly an earlier church (de Contenson 1959, 1963: Anfray 1965). One or both of these 
earlier buildings may have been associated with a pre-Christian temple if, as elsewhere, 
the custom was to establish the church on an already sanctified site, though the excavated 

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