Aksumite Coinage

Aksumite coinage is the money struck by the kingdom of Aksum, a trading state centred in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, from the late 3rd century CE until the early 7th century. Aksum issued coins in gold, silver and bronze, and was one of very few ancient states outside the Mediterranean and Iran to strike its own gold.

The coins are the main surviving record of many Aksumite kings, and they document one of the earliest official adoptions of Christianity, visible in the replacement of pagan symbols with the cross.

Aksum grew rich from Red Sea trade through its port of Adulis, exchanging ivory, gold and other African goods with Roman Egypt, Arabia and India. Before it had its own coins, foreign money, especially Roman and Kushan pieces, reached the region through this trade. Regular Aksumite minting began under King Endubis, generally dated to the late 3rd century CE.

The choice of gold for the earliest issues reflected the kingdom's role in international trade. Aksumite gold was modelled loosely on Roman gold coins such as the aureus but was much smaller and lighter, and its weight fell further over time.

Aksum used all three metals in a way that suggests different audiences. Gold coins carried legends in Greek, the language of Red Sea commerce, which points to their use in foreign trade. Many silver and bronze coins, used within the kingdom, came to carry legends in Ge'ez, the local written language. Some bronze coins bear a Greek phrase usually translated as "may this please the country", a royal formula with no close parallel elsewhere in ancient coinage.

A distinctive Aksumite technique was the partial gilding of silver and bronze coins. A small area, often the king's crown or a cross in the centre of the coin, was inlaid or overlaid with gold, giving a two-tone effect that is rare in ancient minting.

Early coins show the king's bust framed by ears of grain and topped by a disc and crescent, symbols of the pre-Christian religion. Under King Ezana, in the 4th century CE, these symbols were replaced by the cross after his conversion to Christianity. Aksumite coins are therefore among the earliest coins in the world to carry the cross as a state emblem, at roughly the same time as the Christian symbols that began to appear on Roman coinage after Constantine.

Later kings, including Kaleb in the 6th century, kept Christian imagery and expanded the use of Ge'ez. Coin types show the king seated, standing or crowned, and the general style followed developments in Byzantine coinage such as the solidus, the dominant gold coin of the eastern Mediterranean.

Aksumite minting ended in the early 7th century. The last coins are attributed to kings such as Armah and Gersem. The end of coinage is usually linked to the decline of Red Sea trade, the rise of new powers in Arabia and the gradual shift of the Ethiopian state's centre away from Aksum. The quality of the coins had already weakened, with lighter gold and cruder style, a familiar pattern of currency debasement at the end of a series.

After Aksum, Ethiopia had no regular coinage of its own for many centuries. Trade relied on foreign coins, salt bars and other forms of currency, together with barter, until modern issues that led eventually to the Ethiopian birr. Elsewhere in Africa and the Indian Ocean, goods such as cowrie shells filled similar roles.

Aksumite coins rank Aksum alongside Rome, Persia and the Kushan empire, whose gold Kushana dinar also reached Africa, as the great coin-issuing powers of late antiquity. They show how coins served both as tools of international trade and as statements of royal and religious identity. For wider background, see money.

• British Museum
• American Numismatic Society