UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Christian Aksum
Yeha bear witness to this fact. After the conversion of the Aksumite kings
all these temples were transformed into churches.
And now we come to the question of the language in which these monks,
who came from all corners of the Byzantine empire, taught the Gospel.
The people of the upper classes close to the court were more or less
polyglot and spoke Greek, Syriac or Arabic; in their case there does not
seem to have been any linguistic problem. But the foreign monks were
obliged to study the language of the country before they could make
themselves understood by the people in general. Possibly some of the
pilgrims who went to the holy places in Jerusalem, Constantinople and
Alexandria spoke Greek or Syriac and could act as interpreters, or could
teach the people themselves, directly.
This would explain why we find Greek-style names and Syriac words
in several of our religious texts, such as: Arami (Aramene), Arb, Haymanot,
Hatti, Mehayn, Melak, Melekot, etc. (pagan, Friday, faith, sin, believer,
angel, divinity).
The kingdom of Aksum and south Arabia
It has long been known that groups of peoples of Semitic origin crossed
the Red Sea and settled in northern Ethiopia, probably seeking more fertile
and richer lands than their own desert country. The newcomers possessed
a higher form of civilization than that of indigenous peoples (most of whom
were Beja, Aguew, and so on, of Kushitic origin) and ended by taking
over the central power and founding the cities of Yeha, Matara, Aksum
and other places.
Other groups of the same origin (Sabaeans, Himyarites) remained in
their native land, while those who had crossed the Red Sea became more
and more powerful, to the point where the central government of Aksum
seemed strong enough to some to be considered the third world power.
Royal castles, temples, circles and crescents, symbolizing the gods Mahrem
and Almuqah, all confirm the identity of the two peoples who lived on
either side of the Red Sea. ' 6
This ethnic and cultural kinship explains to a large extent the Aksumite
conquest of south Arabia which the Aksumites considered their ancestral
home, and why in his formal titles King Ezana laid great stress on that
of king of Aksum, of Mimyar, of Saba, as distinct from those who called
themselves Kasu, Siyamo and Beja, and who came from the western
regions, or were simply natives of Kushitic areas.
Until the beginning of the fourth century the Semitic people on the
opposite shores of the Red Sea practised the same traditional religions,
that is, the worship of the moon, with the crescent as its symbol, which
is still honoured today by the Muslim Arab states. Perhaps the Prophet
16. C. Conti-Rossini, 1928, ch. 4.
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