Ebook: Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa

Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological
evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian
kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century
CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject
of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has
been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues
that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area
politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia
developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as
a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its
energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main route of
contact with the outside world, while Aksum was oriented towards
the Red Sea and Arabia. In this way Aksum and Kush coexisted
in peace for most of their history, and such contact as they maintained
with each other was limited to small-scale commerce. Only
in the fourth century CE did Aksum take up arms against Kush,
and even then the conflict seems to have been related mainly to
security issues on Aksum’s western frontier.