Foundations of Aksumite Civilization and Its Christian Legacy

Ethiopia’s rich and unique artistic heritage is the product of a series of transcontinental cultural exchanges whose beginnings can be traced back as far as the late first millennium B.C. At this time, South Arabian immigrants began to arrive in the Ethiopian highlands from across the Red Sea, bringing with them a belief in diverse gods, a system of writing, and a tradition of monumental stone building that would profoundly influence the region’s architectural and religious traditions. The most famous early manifestation of this influence still extant is the 60 x 50–foot stone structure at Yeha in modern-day northern Ethiopia, estimated to have been constructed around the fifth or fourth century B.C. Possibly once a temple to a South Arabian deity, this rectangular building was constructed from ten-foot sandstone blocks fitted together without the use of mortar.

Located approximately 30 miles southwest of Yeha, the fertile Hatsebo plain where Aksumite civilization originated began to be populated in the fourth to third centuries B.C., developing into a kingdom between the mid-second century B.C. and the mid-second century A.D. Aksum (Axum) is perhaps most renowned internationally for its enormous monolithic stelae, erected during the third and fourth centuries A.D. as funerary markers for deceased members of its elite. To the faithful of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, it is the place where the Ark of the Covenant was brought by Menelik I, son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel, as detailed in the thirteenth-century Kebra Negast, “The Book of the Glory of Kings.”