While Europe stumbled through the early Middle Ages, a Red Sea empire was striking gold coins, carving stone towers thirty meters tall, and trading with Rome, Persia, and India in the same season. Aksum was Africa’s great commercial civilization — and its church still stands where the stelae fell.
Aksum ★ Adulis Bab el-Mandeb Himyar Lalibela Greatest extent — stylized map 100 Emporium rises 330 Ezana's conversion 1937 The obelisk looted 2005 Obelisk returns Rise · zenith · fall The rise Aksum grew out of the highlands of what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, where the port of Adulis gave inland farmers and herders a window onto the sea. The geography was a fortune in itself: every ship sailing between the Mediterranean and India had to pass the Bab el-Mandeb strait, and Aksum taxed the traffic both ways. Ivory, frankincense, gold, and exotic animals flowed out; silk, spices, glass, and wine flowed in. The surplus built a state — and the state built in stone.
