Aksum adopts Christianity

The Aksumite kingdom in the Horn of Africa traded across the Red Sea and minted its own coins. King Ezana is traditionally said to have adopted Christianity around 330 CE.

The date of Ezana's conversion is approximate.

Context

Aksum's wealth rested on its port at Adulis on the Red Sea, which linked the highlands to Egypt, Arabia and India. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first-century CE merchant guide, already describes this trade, and ivory was a major export. Aksumite kings began minting coins in the third century CE, and the coins make it possible to date individual reigns.

Christian tradition credits Frumentius, a Syrian Christian who had been brought to the court, with converting Ezana. The Met dates Ezana's reign to roughly 320 to 350 and gives no exact year for the conversion, which is why 330 is an approximation. Ezana's early coins carried the crescent and disk symbols of the older religion, and later ones show a cross.

Aksum remained an important Christian state for centuries, and the Ethiopian church descends from this conversion. Aksum declined after the seventh century as Muslim control of the Red Sea cut its access to long-distance trade.

The kingdom also left monumental stelae in Aksum, tall carved stone monuments that probably marked royal tombs. Britannica credits Frumentius with the first steps toward Christianity at court, and the church he founded later received a bishop from the Coptic church of Egypt. Ezana's inscriptions, written in Ge'ez and Greek, are among the main sources for his reign, and their change in religious language marks the shift.