Aims and sources

The aim of this book is to present a critical outline of current knowledge about the peoples who inhabited the highlands of what is now northern Ethiopia and adjacent parts of Eritrea during the period between about 3000 and 700 years ago (Fig. 1). It devotes most detailed attention to the Aksumite civilisation that flourished during the first seven centuries AD but, in order to provide context, it also provides overviews of earlier and later periods within the same general region. The cut-off point at which the book's treatment ends is c. AD 1270, when major changes accompanied the establishment of the so-called Solomonic dynasty. Overall, this was the period that saw the gradual development, from a subsistence-farming base established long previously, of a complex literate civilisation whose people erected some of the largest and most elaborate monoliths the world has ever seen, issued a unique coinage in copper, silver and gold, practised sophisticated metallurgy, ivory carving and manuscript illumination, established their rule over extensive surrounding territory including part of the Arabian peninsula, developed trade links extending from the western Mediterranean in one direction to Sri Lanka in the other, and whose Christian rulers were sought as political as well as religious allies by successive Roman and Byzantine emperors, while also maintaining the subsistence-farming, domestic architecture, and stone-tool technological traditions of their local forbears. It is now increasingly recognised that this civilisation in turn gave rise – far more strongly and directly than previously recognised – to the Christian civilisation that flourished in these highlands during more recent centuries.