Aksum Adopts Christianity

c. 330 CE — Africa, Kingdom of Aksum

Today: Northern Ethiopia (Aksum)

Aksum, in the Ethiopian highlands, controlled the Red Sea trade between Rome and India, minted its own gold coinage, and raised carved stone obelisks over a hundred feet tall. Its king converted to Christianity in the 330s — within a few years of Rome doing the same, and independently of it. The church he founded still exists: Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity has run continuously for seventeen centuries, survived the Islamic expansion that surrounded it, and remains the faith of tens of millions. It is one of the oldest state religions on earth, in a country that was never colonized.

Worth knowing: A Persian writer of the 200s listed the four great kingdoms of the world: Rome, Persia, China, and Aksum. Three of those are household names.

Pattern: Ideological movement — A belief system rises, spreads, institutionalizes, and then schisms — changing the rules people accept as legitimate.

Entry 86 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.