A century later King Ezena (r. ca. 333–ca. 356) converted to Christianity, and a cross replaced the disc and crescent on the Axum coinage. Churches were built and monasteries endowed over the following centuries. In the late fifth century it is recorded that nine Christians came to Axum from various parts of the Roman Empire (27 BC–AD 1453) to avoid persecution after the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The council, convened by the Eastern Church, declared that Christ had two natures in one person, God and man. This was not a doctrine accepted by many parts of the Christian Church and resulted in a split in the Eastern Church. The churches not accepting this doctrine are often referred to as the Oriental Orthodox or Old Oriental Churches. The Axumite Church was among them—along with Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, and Malankara (Indian) Orthodox. The lives of the nine Christians are recorded in much later biographies, albeit with many contradictions. Among them was ʾAragawi Zä-Mikaʾel—the Elder Zä-Mikaʾel.
According to his later biography, Zä-Mikaʾel was the son of the Roman prince Yeshaq and of Edna (an Ethiopian name). The biography states that at age fourteen he received his name from and became a monk with Pachomius (ca. 292–348) in Egypt.75 Other Christians joined them in what Pachomius established as a new form of monastic community, where monks and nuns formed one community with common property and were presided over by an abbot or abbess. This broke with the earlier tradition of ascetics living largely as hermits. Zä-Mikaʾel’s mother Edna later became a nun here. Later Zä-Mikaʾel traveled to Rome and thence to Axum, which was by this time Christian. He invited his eight fellow believers to join him, and together with his parents they were welcomed by the king.76 They lived at the court for twelve years before separating to evangelize in the countryside. Zä-Mikaʾel went with his mother and a disciple called Mattéwos to Eggala in the Tigray district. Here he decided to found a monastery—associated with Debra—on top of a steep-sided plateau. But he was unable to climb the cliffs until a serpent, living on top, let down his tail and pulled him up. The monastery was erected on the order of King Gabra Masqal, a large ramp being constructed to transport the building materials. On completion, the ramp was removed, making the perilous cliff climb the only route up. Zä-Mikaʾel’s biography also reports that his mother Edna became part of the community, which suggests there might also have been nuns, as in Pachomius’s original monastery.77
Tradition says that the king endowed the monastery with treasures. This is possibly another clue in the journey of our coins. Could the king have presented the coins to the monastery at this time? We have no evidence of this, but it is a possible hypothesis. It is, of course, also possible that the monastery was built on an existing shrine and that the coins were already there, or, indeed, that they did not make its journey to Axum until later. It is almost certain that we will never have the answers to such questions.
Treasuries are found in churches throughout the Christian world (see chapter 8) and present-day Ethiopia is no exception, laying claim to holding one of the greatest treasures of Christianity, the Ark of the Covenant. According to tradition, this gilded wooden chest contains the tablets giving the Ten Commandments received by Moses on Mount Sinai and was carried with the Israelites until the temple was built in Jerusalem to house them. Ethiopian tradition further records that the Ark left Jerusalem at the time of King Solomon, carried by his son with the Queen of Sheba, Menelik. It was kept safe until finally being enshrined in the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, built by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1960 for this purpose. Today it is said to be in the treasury building adjacent to the church. Only the high priest is allowed to see it.
While most believe this story to be apocryphal, the treasury probably does contain some ancient treasure, just like many other churches in Ethiopia. Other treasures have been found at Debra Damo, including an Axumite coin of Armah (r. 614–31), gold and silver Arabic coins dating from about the eighth to the tenth centuries, and some textiles from the sixth to twelfth century, probably originating in Egypt.78 Our coins probably remained safely there for centuries. However, oral and written histories tell of two major threats to Debra Damo and the Christian heritage of the Axumites in the intervening centuries.
The first, which appears mainly in oral tradition, was during the reign of Queen Gudit around the mid-tenth century. Some corroboration is provided by a contemporary Arab traveler and geographer Ibn Ḥawqal in his work Kitāb Ṣūrat al-ʿArḍ (Picture of the earth), written in 977. “The country of the habasha [Abyssinians] has been ruled by a woman for many years now: she has killed the king of the habasha who was called Haḍani [from Ge’ez haṣ́ani, modern aṣ́e or atse]. Until today she rules with complete independence in her own country and the frontier areas of the country of the Haḍani, in the southern part of [the country of] the habasha.”79
Gudit (Judith) is said to have come from Axum’s Jewish community, which had coexisted there for centuries alongside the Christians. Tradition tells that she killed the king to take the throne. It was usual at the time that royal princes were exiled on hilltop settlements such as Debra Damo—presumably to keep them from seeking power.80 Queen Gudit duly went there, built a ramp to gain access, as Gabra Masqal had done, and killed the exiled princes to rid her of her rivals.81
The second event is better attested. It took place long after the end of the Axum Empire, starting in 1529 with the invasion of Ethiopia by Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī (r. ca. 1506–43), the ruler of the neighboring Muslim sultanate of Adal. He was named Gragn—“the Left-Handed” in Amharic. During this invasion many churches and monasteries were destroyed—including the Church of St. Mary of Zion, and, it is reported, many church treasuries were looted.82 The Ethiopians asked for assistance from the Portuguese, who landed a force in 1541, and the invaders were eventually driven out. As Paul Henze noted, although these events took place centuries ago, they remain alive in Ethiopian culture: “In Ethiopia the damage which Ahmad Gragn did has never been forgotten. Every Christian highlander still hears tales of Gragn in his childhood. Haile Selassie referred to him in his memoirs, ‘I have often had villagers in northern Ethiopia point out sites of towns, forts, churches and monasteries destroyed by Gragn as if these catastrophes had occurred only yesterday.’”83
During the invasion, the emperor, Dawit II (Lebna Dengel) (r. 1508–40), was forced to flee his capital and take refuge at the monastery at Debra Damo. He was wounded in a battle nearby in 1540 and died and was buried at Debra Damo. One of the Portuguese, Miguel de Castanhoso, records that Lebna Dengel’s widow remained in Debra Damo, during which time Gragn laid siege to the mound for a year. But he was unsuccessful in gaining access. This makes sense when one reads Castanhoso’s description of the place:
The summit is a quarter of a long league in circumference, and on the area on the top there are two large cisterns, in which much water is collected in the winter: so much that it suffices and is more than enough for all those who live above, that is, about five hundred persons. On the summit itself they sow supplies of wheat, barley, millet and other vegetables. They take up goats and fowls, and there are many hives, for there is much space for them; thus the hill cannot be taken by hunger and thirst. Below the summit the hill is of this kind. It is squared and scarped for a height double that of the highest tower in Portugal, and it gets more precipitous near the top, until at the end it makes an umbrella all round, which looks artificial, and spreads out so far that it overhangs all the foot of the mountain, so that no one at the foot can hide himself from these above; for all around there is no fold or corner, and there is no way up save the one narrow path, like a badly-made winding stairs, by which with difficulty one person can ascend as far as a point whence he can get no further, for there the path ends. Above this is a gate where the guards are, and this gate is ten or twelve fathoms above the point where the path stops, and no-one can ascend or descend the hill save by the basket.84
When the Portuguese arrived, they met with Lebna Dengel’s widow, and she accompanied them to the court of her son, Emperor Galawdewos. They joined forces and finally managed to defeat the invaders at a battle in 1543 with the help of Portuguese firearms that had been hidden at Debra Damo.85
It is possible that these events