UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

The civilization of Aksum from the first to the seventh century
century. The pilot Hippalus showed how sailors could make use of the
winds to the best advantage, and this undoubtedly gave an impetus to sea
traffic. Strabo records that 'every year, in the time of Augustus, a hundred
and twenty ships set out from Myos Hormos'.
Commercial connections multiplied. Ships brought cargoes, and made it
possible to trade with India and the Mediterranean world. Adulis was the
meeting-point for maritime trade, as it was - and this is the second factor -
for inland trade. In the interior, a traffic was growing in a very valuable
commodity: ivory. In fact, Pliny and the author of the Periplus place it first
on the list of exports from Adulis. Aksum was the great collecting-centre
for ivory from various regions. It was an article which was indispensable
to the luxury-loving Romans. In the age of the Ptolemies the Ethiopian
elephant was already highly prized. Armies used it as a sort of tank.
Later it was hunted for its tusks. Whenever the authors of antiquity talk
of Adulis, Aksum or Ethiopia (East Africa), they always give prominence to
elephants and their ivory. They mention other goods - hippopotamus hides,
rhinoceros horn, tortoise-shell, gold, slaves, spices - but they take a special
interest in elephants. According to the Periplus, elephants lived inland, like
the rhinoceros, but sometimes they were hunted 'on the shore itself, near
Adulis'. In the reign of Justinian, Nonnosus visited Aksum and on the way
saw a herd of 5000 elephants. Cosmas notes that there is 'a multitude of
elephants with large tusks; from Ethiopia these tusks are sent by boat to
India, Persia, the land of the Himyarites, and Romania' {Christian
Topography, XI, 33). In 1962, the mission from the Ethiopian Institute of
Archaeology found an elephant's tusk in the Aksumite ruins at Adulis, and
in 1967, they discovered pieces of a terracotta figurine of an elephant in the
walls of the castle at Dongour.
The African roots
The civilization of Aksum developed in the firstcenturies of our era, but its
roots lie deep in prehistory. It was foreshadowed in the culture of the last
five centuries before our era. Archaeology is attempting to define its
characteristic features, but only a few aspects of the subject have been
investigated so far, and the cataloguing of the data of antiquity is by no
means complete. The main task ahead is to determine what comes from
external influences and what is really indigenous: like other civilizations,
that of Aksum is the result of an evolutionary process aided by geographic
conditions and historical circumstances. The indigenous contribution is
naturally of great importance, for there can be no doubt that Aksumite
civilization is, above all, the product of a people whose ethnic identity is
progressively emerging from the study of its inscriptions, language and
traditions. Archaeology is gradually revealing the unique character of
Aksum's material achievements. Much remains to be done, and future
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