This catalogue describes and illustrates over 600 pieces of coinage issued between the third and seventh centuries AD by the northern Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum. It includes descriptions of all known issues represented in the British Museum's collection.

Catalogue of the Greek coins of Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia Nabataea, Arabia Provincia, S. Arabia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Alexandrine empire of the East, Persis, Elymais, Characene. By George Francis Hill With a map and fifty-five plates.

Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main route of contact with the outside world, while Aksum was oriented towards the Red Sea and Arabia. In this way Aksum and Kush coexisted in peace for most of their history, and such contact as they maintained with each other was limited to small-scale commerce. Only in the fourth century CE did Aksum take up arms against Kush, and even then the conflict seems to have been related mainly to security issues on Aksum’s western frontier. Although Aksum never managed to hold onto Kush for long, much less dealt the final death-blow to the Nubian kingdom, as is often believed, claims to Kush continued to play a role in Aksumite royal ideology as late as the sixth century. Aksum and Nubia critically examines the extent to which relations between two ancient African states were influenced by warfare, commerce, and political fictions. Online edition available as part of the NYU Library's Ancient World Digital Library and in partnership with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW).

Im Frühjahr 1906 fand die von Kaiser Wilhelm II. entsandte Deutsche Aksum-Expedition statt, die unter Leitung des deutschen Orientalisten Enno Littmann (1875-1958) stand. Schon 1913 wurden die Ergebnisse, zu denen erste systematische Ausgrabungen in Aksum, die Dokumentation von Kirchen und Klöstern, die Aufnahme von 37 Gesängen in amharischer und arabischer Sprache und die Sammlung zahlreicher Inschriften gehörte, publiziert. Zur Vorbereitung der 100. Wiederkehr dieses Ereignisses fand vom 2. bis 5. Mai 2002 in München die Erste Internationale Littmann-Konferenz zum Thema "Archaeology and History of the Horn of Africa" statt, die in der Öffentlichkeit und in Fachkreisen ein breites Echo fand. Sie wurde nach dem Muster der von F. Hintze begründeten Internationalen Meroitisten-Konferenzen organisiert. In 80 Beiträgen wurde der aktuelle Forschungsstand auf ausgewählten Gebieten behandelt. Knapp die Hälfte davon ist in diesem Band abgedruckt. Drei der vier Hauptreferate sowie sechs Diskussionsbeiträge zum Thema "Archaeology of the Horn of Africa" (R. Fattovich), vier Beiträge zum Thema "The History of the Horn of Africa", sieben Beiträge zum Thema "The Ethiopian Church" (S. Munro-Hay) und sechs Beiträge zum Thema "Enno Littmann und die Deutsche Aksum-Expedition" (R. Voigt) liegen in dem voluminösen Band vor. Sie werden ergänzt durch sieben Beiträge zu "Recent Research and New Discoveries".

Leading historian G.W. Bowersock provides a narrative account of a fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history — the holy war between Christian Ethiopians and Jewish Arabs in the sixth century AD.

"Focuses on the Aksumite state of the first millennium AD in northern Ethiopia and southern Eritrea, its development, florescence and eventual transformation into the so-called medieval civilisation of Christian Ethiopia. This book seeks to apply a common methodology, utilising archaeology, art-history, written documents and oral tradition from a wide variety of sources; the result is a far greater emphasis on continuity than previous studies have revealed. It is thus a major re-interpretation of a key development in Ethiopia's past, while raising and discussing methodological issues of the relationship between archaeology and other historical disciplines; these issues, which have theoretical significance extending far beyond Ethiopia, are discussed in full. The last millennium BC is seen as a time when northern Ethiopia and parts of Eritrea were inhabited by farming peoples whose ancestry may be traced far back into the local 'Late Stone Age'. Colonisation from southern Arabia, to which defining importance has been attached by earlier researchers, is now seen to have been brief in duration and small in scale, its effects largely restricted to ľite sections of the community. Re-consideration of inscriptions shows the need to abandon the established belief in a single 'Pre-Aksumite' state. New evidence for the rise of Aksum during the last centuries BC is critically evaluated. Finally, new chronological precision is provided for the decline of Aksum and the transfer of centralised political authority to more southerly regions. A new study of the ancient churches - both built and rock-hewn - which survive from this poorly-understood period emphasises once again a strong degree of continuity across periods that were previously regarded as distinct."--Publisher's website.

This volume brings together a set of contributions, many appearing in English for the first time, together with a new introduction, covering the history of the Ethiopian Christian civilization in its formative period (300-1500 AD). Rooted in the late antique kingdom of Aksum (present day Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea), and lying between Byzantium, Africa and the Near East, this civilization is presented in a series of case studies. At a time when philological and linguistic investigations are being challenged by new approaches in Ethiopian studies, this volume emphasizes the necessity of basic research, while avoiding the reduction of cultural questions to matters of fact and detail.

"In this long-awaited second edition, Susan Whitfield expands her trailblazing exploration of the Silk Road and broadens her rich and varied portrait of life along the great premodern trade routes of Eurasia. This new edition is comprehensively updated to support further understanding of themes relevant to global and comparative history. In the first 1,000 years after Christ, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants, and military men traveled on the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road. Whitfield recounts the lives of twelve individuals who lived at different times during this period, including two new characters: an African shipmaster and a Persian traveler and writer during the Arab caliphate. With these additional tales, Whitfield extends both geographical and chronological scope, bringing into view the maritime links across the Indian Ocean and depicting the network of north-south routes from the Baltic to the Gulf. Throughout the narrative, Whitfield conveys a strong sense of what life was like for ordinary men and women on the Silk Road, the individuals usually forgotten to history. A work of great scholarship, Life along the Silk Road continues to be extremely accessible and entertaining"--Provided by publisher.

Leading scholars in early Christianity, Judaic studies, classics, history and archaeology explore the ways that memories were retrieved, reconstituted and put to use by Jews, Christians and their pagan neighbours in late antiquity, from the third century B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E.