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The Kingdom of Aksum adopts Christianity under King Ezana

c. 330s CE·Religion & ideology·Ethiopia / Eritrea (Aksum)·
c. 330s CEDate
Religion & ideologyCategory
14Empires active
Date
c. 330s CE
Category
Religion & ideology
Region
Ethiopia / Eritrea (Aksum)
Era
Classical Antiquity
Significance

In the early-to-mid 4th century the Aksumite king Ezana, ruler of a powerful trading state centred on the Ethiopian highlands and astride the Red Sea routes between Rome and India, converted to Christianity — making Aksum one of the first kingdoms in the world to adopt the faith as a state religion.

Tradition credits Frumentius, a shipwrecked Greek-speaking Christian raised at the Aksumite court who was later consecrated first bishop of Aksum by Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria (traditionally c. 328–333), with introducing the religion. The conversion is documented materially: Ezana's coinage, which had borne the pagan crescent-and-disc, was restruck with the Christian cross — the earliest cross to appear on any state's coins — and his royal inscriptions came to invoke the 'Lord of Heaven.' The decision tied Ethiopia to the Coptic Church of Alexandria and founded the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, one of the oldest continuous Christian institutions, which has endured to the present day.

See the world map in c. 330s CE →More religion & ideologyThe Classical Antiquity era

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A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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