THE FIRST CAPITAL OF ETHIOPIA 

Mysterious monoliths its very early history is unknown, but high civilization was established by Semitic immigrants from south Arabia centuries before the era of Christ.

Axum emerged as the capital 3000 thousand years ago according to legend and 2100 years ago according to historical assumption. In both cases Axum is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in Africa.

By the time of the birth of Christ Axum rose to its importance and dominated the vital cross roads of Africa and Asia. From 1st century A.D. to 6th century, Axum enjoyed it’s high time civilization. Its territory was overseas the Blue Nile river in the west, Yemen was part of Ethiopia in the eastern part of Somalia up to port Barbara, and Djibouti, Eritrea and south Sudan were part of the Axumite kingdom. At its high time, they were minting coins for internal and external trading, and paying salary in coin for their soldiers.

Port Adolis was one of their laxurative income sources because they were trading Middle East, Europe, and Asian countries and the port served as linking point between Africa and the rest of the world besides wide territory tribute. By that time Axum was among the 4 most powerful nations in the world. And to now a days there are many historical remnants or relics which will remind us of the time and could be interesting sites for visitors, like different stele which varies from 3 mts to 33 mts height and more than 500 tons of weight from a single stone, well decorated and showed models of story build (up to 13 stories) and hundreds stele. And palace remnants, graves, old buildings, inscriptions in different language are among them. 

Axum has long been considered as holy city for Christians, and the cathedral church of the town is Axum Zion. When Christianity reached Ethiopia in 333 A.D., the first church was Axum Zion. The true Ark of the Covenant (with the Ten Commandments) is believed to be kept in Axum in a special chapel within the church under special guarding of the community of the compound and only single priest in the chapel. From the legendary king of Menelik the first to the time of emperor Haile Selassie coronation was held in Axum. 

In the 7th century the Axumite empire started to decline due to the expansion of the Islamic empire. At last power shifted to north central Ethiopia Agew land, district of Lasta with its capital Lalibela.