The forgotten kingdom of Aksum .. Finding a lost historical city for the Negus kingdom

Tariq Kabil

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient city missing from a major civilization in northern Ethiopia, and the discovered city was part of the legendary Axum kingdom civilization that had dominated eastern Africa for centuries.

Aksum was formerly known as Abyssinia, and it was based at the foot of the mountains of Adwa, east of the Ethiopian Tigray Region.

Axum was the first sub-Saharan African country to cast its coins and the first country to adopt Christianity in the fourth century AD, and it controlled the territories of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and part of the Arabian Peninsula, but we still know very little about them.

Aksum Kingdom
According to a new study published in the journal Antikuti on December 10, the Axum Empire existed between the first and ninth centuries AD, along with the Roman, Persian and Chinese empires.

The Kingdom of Axum was founded in 325 BC under the leadership of the Sulaymanid dynasty, which, according to some legends, dates back to King Solomon and Queen of Sheba.

Axum was the seat of the Ethiopian Church, as was the seat of the Negus, who honored and benefited Muslims at the time of the mission of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. In 1980, UNESCO considered the remains of the ancient city to be a site of human heritage.

Samati Beta
Archaeologists have discovered one of the most important sites in Axum so far, and it is a busy commercial and religious center, buried between the capital and the Red Sea, in an area called Yeh, and the remains of this settlement called Beta Samati, which means "house of the audience" in the local Tigrinya language, can help uncover About some of the mysteries surrounding the rise and fall of this ancient African empire.

"This is one of the most important ancient civilizations, but people in the western world don't know that," said archaeologist Michael Harrow of Johns Hopkins University, told the New Scientist newspaper. "Outside of Egypt and Sudan, this is the first complex society or major civilization in Africa," he added.

In the 1970s, many important sites of the Aksum civilization were surveyed near Yha, and the surrounding areas were left completely unexplored until 2011, when local residents informed archaeologists of the discovery of ancient monuments, and eventually found the ancient Beta Samati settlement hidden deeper more From three meters below the surface of the earth.

According to scholars, the Samati House was a commercial and religiously populated center, and four excavation seasons between 2011 and 2016 resulted in results indicating that this ancient city was inhabited about 1,400 years ago and played an important role in the social, political and economic structure of the region.

Future research
While more research is needed on the new site, initial results challenge the common notion about the old empire, as it was believed that societies in this region had collapsed, leaving only "small rural settlements" behind.

But archaeologists now believe that there is much more continuity, and the researchers wrote, "Our work demonstrates that the Samati Beta was a large, densely populated settlement located 6.5 kilometers (90 minutes on foot) northeast of the city of Yeha, the center of political power for the closest area in Africa. Sub-Saharan (pre-Axumite) ".

Experts have found many stone buildings, coins, engravings, and an engraved gold ring from the Throne Hall showing Roman influences and a cathedral built during the fourth century AD, according to the history of radiant carbon.

"Future site research has the potential to clarify a range of topics, including the rise of one of the first complex policies in Africa, the development of trade links in Aksum, the shift from polytheism to Christianity, and the final decline of the Aksum Empire," the researchers wrote.