Aksumite coinage
Moneda de Aksum
- Date
- c. 270 · confidence medium
- Place
- Aksum, Tigray, Ethiopia
- Credited to
- King Endubis and successors (Kingdom of Aksum)
- Field
- Communication
What it is
Coins of gold, silver and bronze bearing the king's name, first with Greek legends and later in Ge'ez. It is the first coinage of a sub-Saharan state and, after Ezana's conversion, among the first to bear the cross.
Coinage lasted until c. 630. Ezana's coins mark the shift from pagan symbols (crescent and disc) to the cross around 340.
What it led to
- Aksum's integration into Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade
- royal and religious propaganda on coinage
- evidence of the kingdom's Christianisation