According to tradition, the people of Aksum were associated with the biblical Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel. The Bible suggests that there was a great love affair between the two. Indeed, the biblical Song of Solomon refers to a woman with dark skin.
Another tradition holds that a descendant of Sheba and King Solomon brought the Ark of the Covenant to Aksum. The Ark was a holy relic of the Israelite people, said to contain the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments as given to Moses; and as anyone who has ever seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) knows, it was also supposed to possess great spiritual power.
According to a January 27, 1998, report in the New York Times, a number of people believe that the Ark, or at least part of it, is in Ethiopia. Reporter James C. McKinley, Jr. wrote that when he asked an Ethiopian deacon where the Ark was, the man "just smiled at what he saw as an absurd question. Everyone in this windswept and dusty land knows that the ark is in a square stone temple beside [an] ancient church, he said."
Regardless of the Ark's whereabouts, it is certain that there has been a strong relationship between Africa and the Bible. Aside from Egypt, which figures prominently in the Israelites' story, the Old Testament frequently mentions Kush (or Cush) as well as the overall region, which writers referred to as Ethiopia.
Judaism took hold in East Africa at an early date, and the New Testament tells a story of an Ethiopian who went to worship in Jerusalem (Acts 8:26-40). The apostle Philip met him and led him to convert to Christianity. Two centuries after these events, King Ezana of Aksum also converted. Thereafter Ethiopia would remain Christian. During the Middle Ages, in fact, a myth spread in Europe concerning a great Ethiopian king named Prester John, who reportedly led a vast Christian empire.
The center of Aksum's cultures was in the Red Sea port of Adulis (ah-DOO-lis), through which it came in contact with, and was influenced by, the Greek culture of Ptolemaic Egypt after the 300s b. c. By the first century a. d., Aksum was on the rise and became an important center for trade with places as far away as China, from which it imported silk, and India. The latter was a source of spices, a particularly important part of life in the time before refrigerators because they slowed down the spoiling of meat.
Moses being blinded by the Ark of the Covenant.
Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.
Aksum also had a line of strong kings, who also served a religious function. In fact, the kings were considered sacred to the point that the queen mother (i. e., the king's mother) often took over the day-to-day administrative duties. The queen mother went by the title of Candace (KAN-des), which is often mistaken for a proper name. It was more like the equivalent of the Roman Caesar.
A particularly notable Aksumite monarch was Ezana (AY-zah-nah). In a. d. 325, he went to war against Kush and destroyed its fading capital at Meroe. But around the same time, he came in contact with two young Syrians shipwrecked at Adulis. Through their influence, he converted to Christianity, which became the religion of Ethiopia from then on. Before Ezana, the Aksumites had worshiped a variety of deities not unlike those of the Egyptians. They built obelisks (AH-buhl-iskz)—tall, freestanding columns of stone—in honor of gods associated with the Moon, warfare, and other aspects of life.
Aksum's power and wealth grew in succeeding centuries, till much of the region came under the control of its empire. During the a. d. 500s, its authority extended across the Red Sea, to control the so-called “incense states” of western Arabia. These were lush areas on the coast of the Arabian Peninsula—quite different from the desert interior—known for growing spices such as frankincense (FRANK-in-sints) and myrrh (MUHR).
World History
