“ is to my knowledge the earliest physical evidence for a church in Ethiopia, ” says Aaron Butts, a professor of Semitic and Egyptian languages at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved with the excavation. With news of the Aksumite excavation, researchers can now feel more confident in dating the arrival of Christianity to Ethiopia to the same time frame. Christianity had reached Egypt by the third century A.D., but it was not until Constantine’s legalization of Christian observance that the church expanded widely across Europe and the Near East. Today, nearly half of all Ethiopians are members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.įor early Christians, the risk of persecution from the Romans sometimes ran high, forcing them to practice their beliefs in private, posing a challenge for those scholars who study this era. In the 16th century, the kingdom came under attack from Somali and then Ottoman armies, but ultimately retained control of its strategic highlands. At first, relations between the two religions were largely peaceful but grew more fraught over time.
Yet it remained defiantly Christian even as Islam spread across the region. The kingdom began its decline in the eighth and ninth centuries, eventually contracting to control only the Ethiopian highlands. That trade, by camel, donkey and boat, channeled silver, olive oil and wine from the Mediterranean to cities along the Indian Ocean, which in turn brought back exported iron, glass beads and fruits.Ī stone pendant with a cross and the term "venerable" in Ethiopia's ancient Ge'ez script found outside the eastern basilica wall. Louis’ Washington University who was part of the team, adds that Aksum served as a “nexus point” linking the Roman Empire and, later, the Byzantine Empire with distant lands to the south. Helina Woldekiros, an archaeologist at St. “The empire of Aksum was one of the world’s most influential ancient civilizations, but it remains one of the least widely known,” says Michael Harrower of Johns Hopkins University, the archaeologist leading the team. The find suggests that the new religion spread quickly through long-distance trading networks that linked the Mediterranean via the Red Sea with Africa and South Asia, shedding fresh light on a significant era about which historians know little. The discovery of the church and its contents confirm Ethiopian tradition that Christianity arrived at an early date in an area nearly 3,000 miles from Rome. The team detailed their findings in a paper published today in Antiquity. Through radiocarbon dating artifacts uncovered at the church, the researchers concluded that the structure was built in the fourth century A.D., about the same time when Roman Emperor Constantine I legalized Christianty in 313 CE and then converted on his deathbed in 337 CE. and would go on to dominate much of eastern Africa and western Arabia. In the dusty highlands of northern Ethiopia, a team of archaeologists recently uncovered the oldest known Christian church in sub-Saharan Africa, a find that sheds new light on one of the Old World’s most enigmatic kingdoms-and its surprisingly early conversion to Christianity.Īn international assemblage of scientists discovered the church 30 miles northeast of Aksum, the capital of the Aksumite kingdom, a trading empire that emerged in the first century A.D.
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