Lost Ethiopian town reveals new details about mysterious Aksum Empire
Lost Ethiopian town reveals new details about mysterious Aksum Empire
There is something magical each time archeologists uncover an ancient, lost city. At the end of 2019, that happened in Ethiopia, where a buried town once inhabited for nearly 14 centuries resurfaced out of a hill.
The town belonged to a mighty civilization called Aksum, which at its peak dominated East Africa and was as robust of an empire as Rome, Persia, or China.
“This is one of the most important ancient civilizations, but people [in the Western world] don’t know it,” says Michael Harrower of John Hopkins Unversity in Baltimore, Maryland, reports the NewScientist.
“Outside of Egypt and Sudan, it’s the earliest complex society or major civilization in Africa,” he said.
The Aksum Empire reigned over East Africa and realms of Arabia from the 1st century B.C. until the 9th century A.D.
Its capital was called Aksum as well, noted for its tall stone-carved obelisks, and where archeologists have spent most time and effort in looking for answers about the Aksum Empire.
The origins of the Aksum civilization are not so well known. It derived from a “pre-Aksumite” society, the name of which is unknown, and which developed in the northern realms of Ethiopia.
It was this civilization that first introduced writing and standing architecture in the sub-Saharan part of the African continent. That was also a reason compelling enough why archeologists went on to look other remnants of this civilization in the region and eventually came to the lost, buried city that once thrived under the Aksum rule.
The lost town reemerged from a hill near a local village. Archeologists first stumbled upon a grid of stone walls of buildings. The town picked the name of Beta Samati, which in the local Tigrinya language translates to “house of the audience.”
Radiocarbon dating of the remains revealed the site dated from 771 B.C. to 645 A.D., a period that would encompass both pre-Aksumite and Aksumite society. Since the site would have been inhabited continuously, including during the transition of the first to the former, it seems there wasn’t any political upheaval that led to halting. Archeologists have previously suspected otherwise.
The remnants of Beta Samati reveal numerous small buildings, some of which would have been residential, and others served as workshops. A more significant, rectangular building would have been utilized as a “basilica” and seems to bear an association with the Roman Empire where basilicas initially functioned as courts and public administration facilities, but later as places of Christian worship.
Aksum would have been converted to Christianity at some point during the 4th-century, while previously, it followed a polytheistic religion influenced by traditions from the Saba kingdom in what is nowadays crisis-stricken Yemen. An accompanying stone pendant marked with a Christian cross that also emerged from the site indicates the basilica may have functioned as a Christian church.
Other findings included a copper alloy ring covered with gold leaf and garnished with carnelian, which is a brownish-red gemstone. The carnelian also revealed an engraved image of a bull’s head over a vine or wreath, which according to Harrower “looks a lot like a Roman ring, except for the style of the bull insignia.”
It is well known that Aksum resembled a major trading civilization which imported various gemstones, gold, ivory, and other resources to its territory. It could have been that Aksum rulers also attended in Roman artisans and trained them to adapt Roman designs to suit their peoples’ culture.
Other traces of international trade to Beta Samati include amphorae that likely stored wine, and which seem to come from Aqaba in what is now Jordan, as well as a glass bead probably brought in from the eastern Mediterranean.
Archeologists have described the exploration of Beta Samati as “highly significant,” and their findings can be thoroughly read in the journal Antiquity.
Beta Samati subverts traditional archeological fieldwork that has so far largely focused on the capital city of Aksum and shows that there were also other cities famous for trade and religion in the region between Aksum and the Red Sea. So much so that the Smithsonian Mag even titled their feature on Beta Samati as “Church Unearthed in Ethiopia Rewrites History of Christianity in Africa.”
That is also the beauty of regions that are less archeologically excavated. Compared to Rome or Greece, where the historical narratives are much clearer, there is always something significantly new to add when it comes to lesser-known, enigmatic civilizations such as the Aksum.
Comments
Post a Comment