500 BCE–700 CE: (A Second Major African State — The Ethiopian Highlands Polity and the Empire of Aksum — Archaeological and Meager Epigraphic Sources Suggest…

500 BCE–700 CE: (A Second Major African State — The Ethiopian Highlands Polity and the Empire of Aksum — Archaeological and Meager Epigraphic Sources Suggesting a Major State Taking Shape Southeast of the Napata-Meroë Empire in the Ethiopian Highlands During the Middle and Second Half of the First Millennium BCE, Its Successor State the Empire of Aksum Being Far Better Known, at Its Height from the Early First Millennium CE to the Seventh Century, Building Prosperity and Power on Control over Frankincense Myrrh Gold and Ivory, Sending Armies Across the Red Sea to Conquer Economically Competing Areas of Southern Arabia, Like Hannibal’s Carthaginian Army the Armies of Aksum Also Making Use of Tamed African Elephants): A second major African state, the archaeological and meager epigraphic sources suggest, took shape southeast of the Napata-Meroë Empire, in the Ethiopian Highlands, almost as early — during the middle and second half of the first millennium BCE. Its successor state, the Empire of Aksum, is far better known to historians. Aksum was at its height from the early first millennium CE to the seventh century. It built its prosperity and power on its control over access to highly valued African products — notably frankincense, myrrh, gold, and ivory — and its rulers sent armies across the Red Sea to conquer economically competing areas of southern Arabia. Like Hannibal’s Carthaginian army, the armies of Aksum also made use of tamed African elephants in their wars. Aksum is one of the few ancient African states that the Western academy grudgingly acknowledges, largely because its monumental stelae and its adoption of Christianity make it legible within Western categories of civilization. But even here, the standard narrative distorts by omission. Aksum was not merely an exotic kingdom perched on the Ethiopian plateau. It was one of the four great empires of its age — Rome, Persia, China, and Aksum — recognized as such by the Persian prophet Mani in the third century CE. It projected military power across the Red Sea, conquering territories in Arabia that threatened its commercial dominance. It controlled the production and trade of the luxury goods — frankincense and myrrh, the sacred aromatics of the ancient Mediterranean world — that fueled religious ritual from Rome to Mesopotamia. And its armies deployed African elephants in warfare, a military technology that paralleled Hannibal’s famous use of the same animals against Rome. Aksum was not a sideshow. It was a principal actor on the stage of ancient world history, and its predecessor state in the Ethiopian Highlands, dating to the mid-first millennium BCE, pushed the roots of Ethiopian state formation back centuries earlier than the conventional narrative allows.