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4. The Fourth Century CE: Aksum in Nubia The story of Aksum’s military operations in Upper Nubia is a familiar one, retold countless times—with varying degrees of accuracy —in secondary literature on Ethiopia and Nubia, as well as in general histories of pre-colonial Africa.270 Traditionally, the dynamic Aksumite king ‘Ēzānā, also famous as the first Christian king of Ethiopia, has been credited with singlehandedly dealing the death-blow to Meroë on the basis of several inscriptions in Greek and Ge‘ez which he erected at Aksum. In fact, the history of Aksumite military intervention in Upper Nubia during the fourth century is a good deal more complicated than this standard narrative implies, for there is good evidence that the Aksumites invaded Nubia twice during the fourth century, that ‘Ēzānā was by no means the initiator of this more aggressive Aksumite policy towards Nubia, and that the casus belli cannot be explained away as a straightforward political or economic rivalry between Aksum and Kush. In this chapter it will be argued that during the reign of Ousanas (c. 310-330) a direct military confrontation took place between the two kingdoms in which the Kushite capital of Meroë was involved in some way. But in the reign of Ousanas’ son and successor ‘Ēzānā (c. 330-370) the Aksumites undertook a much larger-scale invasion of Nubia (See Map 2). Although the Kushites were also afected by this second invasion, the main casus belli by that time was the Noba, a people who threatened Aksum’s western frontier from their base in the Nile Valley. 4.1. Ousanas and Kush: RIE 186 As we have seen, the third-century Monumentum Adulitanum II says nothing of an invasion of Nubia, but states only that the Aksumite army reached the borders of the realm of the “Ethiopians.” The earliest evidence for Aksumite involvement with Nubia proper is preserved in 270 The popular literature on this history is fairly substantial and need not be treated here. Not counting the specialized studies cited in the present work, one may note the descriptions of the Aksumite invasion of Nubia in the more general monographs of Adams 1977: 386-8; Kobishchanov 1979: 82-5 (in which the untenable theory of two Aksumite kings named ‘Ēzānā is adopted); Marcus 1994: 7-8; Shinnie 1996: 116-17; Welsby 1996: 197-9; Ehret 2002: 215. 68 Aksum and Nubia a royal title borne by a fourth-century ruler who erected an inscription, RIE 186, at Aksum to commemorate his military campaigns in northeast Africa.271 Of particular interest in this inscription is the title borne by the king, which lists the vassals of Aksum. Such royal titles provide a unique insight into how the Aksumites envisioned the geographical extent of their empire. It is only from the fourth century on, however, that such titles are attested in the epigraphic record. The titles borne by third-century Aksumite kings are much terser. Thus one such king, Gadarā, is referred to only as “King of Aksum” (ngśy ’ksm=*nagāśī ’Aksūm) on a ritual object272 from ‘Ādī Galamō (RIE 180),273 while Sembrouthes is only slightly more creative with his title of “King of Kings (βασιλεὺς ἐκ βασιλεῶν) of Aksum”274 in his Greek inscription from Daqqī Maḥārī (RIE 275).275 Since the opening lines of Monumentum Adulitanum II had either gone missing by the time Cosmas Indicopleustes copied the inscription in 518, or were for whatever reason not included by Cosmas in his copy of the text in the Christian Topography, the title borne by the anonymous king who erected Monumentum Adulitanum II remains unknown. With RIE 186 we find for the first time a much longer royal title, one which lists a series of lands and peoples on both sides of the Red Sea over which the king of Aksum claims to have held sway.276 The inscription itself is written in Ge‘ez 271 Bernard et al. 1991: 250-4. 272 For an illustration of this object, see Bernard et al. 1991: 220. The object itself is shaped like a curved stick, not unlike the throw-sticks used down to the present in the Sudan, and which were among the commodities imported by the ancient Egyptians from Nubia and Punt (Kendall 1989: 703-7, pl. VI). That implements such as these are associated with burials in Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt (ibid.: 704) suggests that they had ritual importance, a hypothesis supported by the...

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