Yes, There Were Ancient African Civilizations!

Most people in the United States and Europe imagine that, prior to European colonialism, all of Africa south of the Sahara was nothing but a jungle full of simple, illiterate savages living in straw huts with only Stone Age technology. They imagine that there were no civilizations there of any kind.

This stereotype couldn’t be more inaccurate. Contrary to what most people have been led to believe, there were peoples in sub-Saharan Africa in ancient times who had systems of writing. They had cities. They had iron tools and weapons. They minted coins. They established empires and built colossal monuments. At least by the standards of the ancient world, they were civilized.

The main reason why you probably haven’t heard of any ancient civilizations in sub-Saharan Africa is because, for centuries, racist white people—including many racist white historians—have chosen to ignore and dismiss all evidence for their existence and to instead falsely portray pre-modern Africa as a civilizationless void.

Thankfully, the old racism that once pervaded the historical discipline is slowly starting to go away and historians are beginning to recognize that ancient Africa was actually just as civilized as Europe and Asia. Today, I want to talk about some of the civilizations that we know existed in Africa in ancient times.

How modern white westerners have traditionally portrayed African cultures

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many white historians, thinkers, writers, and political leaders in the United States and western Europe intentionally portrayed Africans as uncivilized in order to justify western colonialism.

For instance, at a banquet in 1879, the renowned French writer Victor Hugo (lived 1802 – 1885) described Europe as the “ultimate civilization” and Africa as “utter barbarism.” He proclaimed that it was the moral duty of white Europeans to conquer Africa and force European culture onto all its inhabitants, saying:

“In the nineteenth century the white made a man out of the black; in the twentieth century Europe will make a world out of Africa. … Go peoples … and take this land for God. God gave it to humans. God offers Africa to Europe. Take it.”

In 1899, the English poet Rudyard Kipling (lived 1865 – 1936) wrote a highly influential poem titled “The White Man’s Burden” in which he portrays non-white peoples as ignorant heathen savages and declares that it is the supreme moral duty of the white race to conquer these peoples and spread “civilization” (i.e. European culture) to them. Here is the first stanza of the poem:

“Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.”

This narrative that non-white peoples are uncivilized and that white people need to “civilize” them by force is extremely pervasive throughout writings produced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by white western European and American authors.

ABOVE: Grotesquely racist political cartoon from April 1899 titled “The White Man’s Burden,” depicting the personifications of Great Britain and the United States “nobly” carrying the supposedly barbarous and uncivilized nations of the non-white races to the glory of “civilization”

There were a few white western writers who did challenge this narrative. Most notably, the American writer Mark Twain (lived 1835 – 1910) was an avowed anti-imperialist and an ardent critic of the whole narrative about white people bringing “civilization” to the other nations of the world.

Unfortunately, Twain and those who agreed with him seem to have been a minority. The narrative of the “white man’s burden” (to borrow Kipling’s phrase) thoroughly permeated early twentieth-century white popular culture. For instance, in this article from May 2020, I criticize the novel The Coward of Thermopylae by Caroline Dale Snedeker, which was originally published in 1911. In the novel, Snedeker describes ancient African peoples as “half naked… ebon savages” and goes to great lengths to insist that they are totally uncivilized, even calling them “creatures of some unwholesome dream.”

In promoting this racist narrative, western colonialists have intentionally ignored and tried to explain away all evidence for the existence of black civilizations. For instance, the archaeologists who studied the medieval site of Great Zimbabwe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries literally insisted that the city couldn’t have possibly been built by black people because (according to them) black people are inherently too stupid to build such impressive structures.

The English archaeologist James Theodore Bent (lived 1852 – 1897) declares in the third edition of his book The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, published in 1902:

“It [i.e. the architectural sophistication of the city] is, however, very valuable confirmatory evidence, when taken with the other points, that the builders were of the Semitic race and of Arabian origin, and quite excludes the possibility of any Negroid race have had more to do with their construction than as slaves of a race of higher cultivation; for it is a well accepted fact that the Negroid brain never could be capable of taking the initiative in work of such intricate nature.”

This is obviously just him being racist. The architecture of Great Zimbabwe is very similar to the architecture of other zimbabwes built by the native Shona people and there is no good evidence to indicate that the builders of Great Zimbabwe were Arabs. Modern scholars universally agree that Great Zimbabwe was built by black Africans.

Unfortunately, this racist narrative about Africa being totally uncivilized hasn’t gone away. It is still alive and well in the twenty-first century. Today, though, I am going to do my own small part to combat it.

ABOVE: Aerial photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the ruins of the sprawling medieval city of Great Zimbabwe in southeastern Zimbabwe

Ancient civilizations in North Africa

First of all, I should note that some of the most famous ancient civilizations—civilizations that nearly everyone has heard of—were located in North Africa. Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest civilizations to arise anywhere on Earth. We don’t normally think of ancient Egypt as an ancient African civilization, but Egypt is located on the African continent and its people are therefore Africans.

As I talk about in this article from April 2020, there were definitely some people in ancient Egypt who were what we would consider black. A few examples of known black Egyptians include Maiherpri (a powerful Egyptian nobleman who lived during the reign of Thutmose IV and was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings) and Lady Rai (a lady-in-waiting to Queen Ahmose-Nefertari).

The ancient Egyptians, however, generally portrayed themselves in art with brown skin; whereas they generally portrayed people from the lands to the south with much darker skin. Most modern Egyptians also have brown skin. There is good reason to think that the majority of people in ancient Egypt were probably brown-skinned like most modern Egyptians—neither exactly what we consider “white” nor exactly what we consider “black.”

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons of the Egyptian New Kingdom at its greatest territorial extent in the fifteenth century BC

Likewise, the city-state of Carthage was founded in around the ninth century BC by Phoenician colonists in what is now Tunisia. For centuries, Carthage was the dominant power in the western Mediterranean. The Romans were only able to establish dominance in the west by defeating the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars.

At the beginning of the Punic Wars, Carthage and Rome were about evenly matched. If Carthage had won the Punic Wars instead of Rome, then instead of a Roman Empire ruling the Mediterranean with its capital in Italy, we might have seen a Carthaginian Empire ruling the Mediterranean with its capital in North Africa. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but it’s a distinct possibility of something that could have happened if history had gone differently.

Although the Carthaginians were descendants of Phoenician settlers and they thought of themselves as Phoenicians, it is likely that there was a great deal of intermarriage between the Carthaginians and the native Berbers of the region, so many of them probably had some native Berber ancestors as well.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons of Carthage and its dependencies at the height of Carthaginian power in 264 BC

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of some of the ruins of ancient Carthage

Finally, it’s worth noting that, at its height, the Roman Empire ruled all of North Africa, including all the former territories of Carthage and Egypt. The Romans first gained real control over most of North Africa after they defeated the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War (lasted 149 – 146 BC) and destroyed the city of Carthage itself. Over time, they expanded their influence in the region.

The Romans later annexed Egypt after Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, committed suicide in mid-August of 30 BC. (As I explain in this article from August 2019, contrary to popular belief, it is highly unlikely that she killed herself by allowing an Egyptian asp to bite her on the breast and far more likely that she either drank poison or poisoned herself through a cut on the arm.)

North Africa was an essential part of the Roman Empire. Indeed, for most of Roman history, the empire was heavily dependent on the grain supplies from North Africa. As I discuss in this article from November 2019, some of the most famous ancient Latin writers were natives of North Africa, including the comic playwright Publius Terentius Afer (lived c. 185 – c. 159? BC), the novelist Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (lived c. 124 – c. 170 AD), the early Christian writer Tertullianus (lived c. 155 – c. 240 AD), and the revered Church Father Augustine of Hippo (lived 354 – 430 AD).

Rome even had emperors who came from North Africa. As I discuss in this article from September 2019, Septimius Severus (ruled 193 – 211 AD) was born in the city of Leptis Magna in what is now Libya. He was of mixed Italian, Punic, and possibly Berber descent. He was the founder of the Severan Dynasty (lasted 193 – 235 AD). In 212 AD, Septimius Severus’s son Caracalla issued the Constitutio Antoniniana, which decreed that all free people throughout the Roman Empire—including all free people in North Africa—were officially Roman citizens.

The Romans lost control of western North Africa to the Vandals in the fifth century AD, but, during the reign of the emperor Justinian I (ruled 527 – 565 AD) the general Belisarios successfully reconquered it. The Romans eventually lost all of North Africa to the Rashidun Caliphate in the middle of the seventh century AD.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons of the Roman Empire at its greatest territorial extent in 117 AD. Notice that all of North Africa is included in the empire.

Kingdom of Kush

When people ask about “ancient African empires,” though, they are usually thinking of empires in the region of Africa south of the Sahara Desert. That’s ok, though, because there were a whole bunch of really interesting sub-Saharan African empires too. One great example of a sub-Saharan African empire is the kingdom of Kush, which arose in the region of Nubia to the south of Egypt sometime around 2500 BC.

The earliest iteration of the kingdom of Kush had the city of Kerma in what is now northern Sudan as its capital. By the early second millennium BC, it had become the first empire in sub-Saharan Africa. Its power rivalled that of Egypt itself.

Between 1575 and 1550 BC, Kush formed an alliance against the Egyptians with the Hyksos, a Semitic people who had settled in the Nile River Valley. The Kushites invaded deep into Egyptian territory. They looted Egyptian statues and artifacts and brought them to Kerma.

Then Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose I (ruled c. 1506 – c. 1493 BC) drove the Kushites out of Egyptian territory and, in around 1503 BC or thereabouts, he conquered Kush itself and destroyed the city of Kerma. He appointed a man named Ahmose as “Viceroy of Kush”—a kind of provincial governor under the authority of the pharaoh.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruined city of Kerma, the original capital of Kush during the first phase of its civilization

Egypt ruled Kush for most of the New Kingdom Period (lasted c. 1550 – c. 1069 BC), but, sometime around 1070 BC or thereabouts, as Egyptian power was waning, the Egyptians lost control over the region and a new independent kingdom of Kush arose.

As one might have guessed, this new Kushite culture was heavily influenced by Egyptian culture. These Kushites wrote using the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system, worshipped many of the Egyptian deities, and built Egyptian-style temples. Instead of Kerma, this new Kushite kingdom had the city of Napata—located near the modern city of Karima in central Sudan—as its capital.

In the eighth century BC, the Kushite king Piye (ruled 744–714 BC) successfully conquered all of Egypt, establishing the Kushite Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Egypt. The Kushites ruled Egypt for a little bit less than a century. During the time when they were in power, they renovated Egyptian temples and generally adopted Egyptian culture, but they also introduced some aspects of Kushite culture to Egypt.

The Kushite king Taharqo (ruled 690–664 BC) lost control of Egypt in 671 BC when the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon invaded as far south as Memphis, forcing him and his armies to retreat southward. He was able to briefly regain control of Upper Egypt a few years later before being driven out again by Esarheddon’s successor Ashurbanipal.

In around 656 BC, the Kushites were driven out of Upper Egypt for the last time by Psamtik I, a native Egyptian pharaoh who had been appointed as a vassal ruler by Ashurbanipal. In 593 BC, Pharaoh Psamtik II sacked the Kushite capital of Napata, leading the Kushites to relocated their capital to the city of Meroë, which is located significantly further to the south.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the Kushite Empire at its greatest territorial extent in around 700 BC, when the Kushites ruled all of Egypt and Nubia

During the Meroitic Period, Kush grew more independent from Egypt. For most of their history, the Kushites had written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, but, in around the third century BC or thereabouts, the Kushites developed their own writing system: the Meroitic script, an alphabet with twenty-three letters. They used this alphabet to write their own language, the Meroitic language. The Meroitic script was deciphered in 1909 by the British Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith. Unfortunately, the Meroitic language itself is still not fully understood.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an inscription in the Meroitic script, which was used by the ancient Kushites in what is now Sudan, starting in the early second millennium BC

The Kushites also built some magnificent temples and monuments in their own land. One of the more impressive such temples is the temple of the lion-headed warrior god Apedemak at Musawwarat es-Sufra, which has survived in a remarkable state of preservation.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the temple of Apedemak in Musawwarat es-Sufra

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a relief carving on the side of the temple of Apedemak in Musawwarat es-Sufra

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the temple of Apedemak in Musawwarat es-Sufra

The Kushites also developed their own artistic style that shows influence from Egyptian art, but is distinctive nonetheless.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a column and a carving of an elephant from Musawwarat es-Sufra

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Kushite statues of rams in front of the temple of Amun Ra in Naqa

The Kushites built pyramid tombs modeled on the Egyptian ones. Although the Kushite pyramids are still quite large structures, they are significantly smaller than the most famous of the Egyptian pyramids. They are relatively small at their bases, but are built at extremely steep angles, making them very tall and narrow. They often have mortuary temples directly attached to their bases.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Kushite pyramids at Nuri, near Napata

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Kushite pyramids at Nuri

The most impressive Kushite pyramids are the ones at Meroë, which date to the later period of Kushite history. The French naturalist Frédéric Cailliaud, who visited Meroë in the 1820s, was astonished at how well-preserved the pyramids there were.

Unfortunately, these pyramids were partly demolished in 1834 by the Italian treasure-seeker Giuseppe Ferlini. Ferlini was so desperate to find treasure that he literally used explosives to blow up the pyramids, hoping he would find gold and jewels inside. He is believed to have partly or completely demolished at least forty pyramids, including the largest and most impressive ones.

Even in their ruined state, the pyramids of Meroë still have the capacity to inspire awe. They are not in nearly as good condition as they once were, but you can imagine what they would have originally looked like.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Kushite pyramids at Meroë

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Kushite pyramids at Meroë

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Kushite pyramids at Meroë

Ferlini was ultimately successful in his quest for treasure. He found exquisite gold jewelry unlike any that Europeans had found in Nubia before in burial chamber underneath the pyramid of Amanishakheto (which he totally demolished). He initially had trouble selling the artifacts he found in the burial chamber because people in Europe thought they were forgeries, since they couldn’t believe that black Africans were capable of such fine craftsmanship.

Eventually, though, he succeeded in selling most of the treasure to King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The looted treasures are now split between the Staatliche Sammlung für Ägyptische Kunst in Munich and the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin. They are unlikely to be repatriated to Sudan anytime soon. (And, unfortunately, they might not be safe in Sudan, which is currently in a state of political turmoil.)

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Kushite usekh collar looted by Ferlini from the pyramid of Amanishakheto on display in the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Kushite bracelet looted by Ferlini from the pyramid of Amanishakheto on display in the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin

In the first century BC, the Kushites came into conflict with the Romans by invading Roman Egypt. According to the Greek historian Strabon of Amaseia (lived c. 64 BC – c. 24 AD) in his Geographika 17.1.53-54, the Kushites captured the cities of Syene, Elephantine, and Philai, enslaved some of the inhabitants, and tore down statues of the Roman emperor Augustus. In 23 BC, Publius Petronius, the Roman governor of Egypt, launched a retaliatory invasion of Kush, forcing the Kushites to retreat to the city of Dakka (which is known in Greek as Pselchis).

The next year, Petronius sacked the city of Napata. Not wanting to stay in Kush, however, he left and returned to Egypt, leaving a fortified garrison at the site of Primis in Upper Nubia. Kandake Amanirenas of Kush led an army against the garrison, but it was so well-fortified that her armies were not able to take it. The Kushites sent ambassadors to Petronius, who told them to go to Augustus.

In around 21 or 22 BC, Kushite ambassadors met with Augustus on the Greek island of Samos and they concluded a peace treaty. We don’t know exactly how the negotiations went, but the Kushite ambassadors were extraordinarily successful. In the end, the terms of the treaty were extremely favorable to the Kushites. Augustus not only agreed that Kush would retain full autonomy, but even agreed to return all the lands the Romans had taken from Kush and to exempt Kush from paying any tribute to Rome.

The kingdom of Kush was far from the only great empire to arise in sub-Saharan Africa in antiquity, though. In fact, it seems to have met its end at the hands of another empire that was rising in the region; in around 350 AD, the kingdom of Kush was conquered by the Aksumite Empire of Ethiopia.

Daʿamat

In order to talk about the Aksumite Empire, we need to go back a bit to talk about the kingdom that preceded it. The kingdom of Daʿamat arose sometime around 980 BC in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. Its capital is believed to have been located at Yeha in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about Daʿamat because, although the people of the kingdom did have written language, only a small number of readable inscriptions have been found.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the culture and economy of Daʿamat were significantly influenced by the Sabaeans, a people who lived in the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula. Scholars debate just how deep this Sabaean influence went. Some scholars believe that Sabaean influence was short-lived and only in a few Daʿamat communities, while others think that Daʿamat itself arose as a mixture of Sabaean and local cultures.

The Great Temple at Yeha, which is believed to have been built sometime around 700 BC, is the oldest standing structure in Ethiopia. Its architecture shows Sabaean influence. The temple is remarkably well-preserved, partly due to the sturdiness of the original construction and partly due to the fact that it was converted into a Christian church sometime around the sixth century AD or thereabouts and remained in use as a church for a very long time.

Scholars are unsure of what exactly happened to Daʿamat. The kingdom may have fallen into decline and ended before the Axumite Empire began, developed into the Axumite Empire itself, or been one of the smaller kingdoms conquered by the Axumite Empire. Our knowledge is limited by the scarcity of written records.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruins of the Great Temple at Yeha

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of stone slabs with writing in Sabaean that were discovered at Yeha

The Aksumite Empire

We don’t know much about Daʿamat, but we do know a lot about the empire that came after it: the Aksumite Empire, which arose in Ethiopia in around 80 BC or thereabouts. Its capital was the city of Aksum in Tigray Province, Ethiopia. By the second century AD, it had become one of the most powerful and prosperous empires on Earth. It was seen as an empire on par with the Roman Empire, Han China, and Sassanian Persia. The Persian religious leader Mani (lived c. 216 – c. 277 AD) wrote:

“There are four great kingdoms on earth: the first is the Kingdom of Babylon and Persia; the second is the Kingdom of Rome; the third is the Kingdom of the Aksumites: the fourth is the kingdom of the Chinese.”

Unfortunately, Aksum is not nearly as famous today as these other ancient empires, in part because of the systematic effort by western Europeans to erase all sub-Saharan African empires from history.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the territory controlled by the Aksumite Empire at its greatest territorial extent in around 531 AD

Sometime around 100 AD or thereabouts, the Aksumite Empire developed its own writing system, the Geʿez script, an abugida based on the older South Arabian script. They used this script to write their language, Geʿez, a South Semitic language. This same alphabet is still used today to write Ethiopian Semitic languages, including Amharic and Tigrinya.

The Aksumite Empire began minting its own currency sometime around 270 AD during the reign of King Endubis (ruled c. 270 – c. 300 AD). The kingdom minted coins made of gold, silver, and other metals. Although the dominant language of the Aksumite Empire was Geʿez, their earliest coins usually bear inscriptions in Greek.

This seems to be because the people of the Aksumite Empire traded extensively with the peoples of the Middle East, where Greek was the lingua franca. Only in later times, did Aksumite coins begin to more regularly feature inscriptions in Geʿez.

Early Aksumite coins also regularly feature a symbol of the solar disk and crescent moon, symbolizing the deities of the sun and the moon respectively.

ABOVE: Gold coin of the Aksumite Empire bearing the portrait of King Endubis

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of some other coins minted by Emperor Endubis. The inscription on the coin on the left reads, in Greek, “ΑΞΩΜΙΤΩ ΒΑϹΙΛΕΥϹ,” means “King of Aksum.” The coin on the right reads “ΕΝΔΥΒΙϹ ΒΑϹΙΛΕΥϹ,” which means “Endubis the King.”

The early kings of Aksum were buried in elaborate underground tombs outside the capital city. They erected colossal funerary stelae to mark the sites where they were buried. Over time, these stelae grew taller and more ornately carved. The site of these stelae is now the city of Aksum’s Northern Stelae Park.

The three largest stelae at Northern Stelae Park are the Great Stele, the Stela of ʿEzana, and the so-called “Obelisk of Aksum.” These stelae are decorated with elaborate carvings of doors and windows.

The Great Stele is the largest of all the stelae at Aksum. It originally stood at a height of roughly thirty-three meters tall and is the tallest monolithic structure ever erected anywhere on Earth. It collapsed at some point, probably due to an earthquake or structural instability, and it now lies broken on the ground in several pieces.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of stelae at Northern Stelae Park, taken in October 2010

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Great Stele lying broken on the ground

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the tombs underneath the stelae at Northern Stelae Park

As usual, though, this story involves western Europeans pillaging Africa’s cultural heritage. In 1935, fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia. They found the towering stelae at Aksum and decided they wanted one in Rome. Thus, in 1937, the Italians cut the so-called “Obelisk of Aksum”—the second largest of all the stelae at Aksum—into five parts and shipped it to Rome, where it was reassembled and put on display in Porta Capena Square, directly in front of the Ministry for Italian Africa.

In 1947, after the end of World War II, the United Nations ordered Italy to return the obelisk to Ethiopia. Italy agreed that it would, but the Italian government wasn’t sure how on Earth it was going to move the obelisk and the Ethiopian emperor made little push for the monument’s return, so, for about half a century, it stayed where it was in Rome.

A few decades and a few regimes changes in Ethiopia later, demands for Italy to return the monument became more strenuous and, in 1997, the Italian president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro agreed to return the monument. In 2003, Italy began disassembling the monument in preparation to return it to Ethiopia.

The runway at the Aksum airport had to be specially enlarged just so the Italian plane carrying the piece of the monument could land. The obelisk was finally reassembled at its original location at Aksum in 2008. The whole operation of returning the monument cost Italy roughly $7.7 million. All the same, the stele is home now and a great wrong has been set right.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Obelisk of Aksum in Rome in 2002 before its return to Ethiopia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Obelisk of Aksum after its restoration to its original location in Northern Stelae Park in 2008

It was not long after the Obelisk of Aksum was first erected in around the third century AD, though, that a major social change came to the Aksumite Empire. King ʿEzana (ruled c. 330 – c. 360 AD) ascended to the throne at an extremely young age. The young king was tutored by the Syrian Christian Frumentius, who converted him to Christianity. Thus, Ethiopia’s conversion to Christianity began.

ʿEzana went on to expand Aksum’s influence in the region. He conquered the kingdom of Kush and sacked the city of Meroë. He erected a large stele there proclaiming his victory. Meanwhile, the famous ʿEzana Stone at Aksum bears a trilingual inscription from King ʿEzana in Geʿez, Greek, and Sabaean describing his conversion to Christianity and some of his victories, including his victory over the Kushites.

In the years that followed ʿEzana’s conversion to Christianity, all the works of the Christian Bible, as well as a large number of other Jewish and Christian texts, including apocryphal scriptures and various writings of the Church Fathers, were translated into Geʿez. These early Aksumite translations remain an important source for scholars who study ancient Christian texts. The Book of Enoch, one of the most famous Jewish apocryphal texts, has only survived through a Geʿez translation.

Although the vast majority of the texts that were translated from Greek into Geʿez during this period are religious, a few less explicitly religious writings were also translated—most notably the Physiologos, a work of natural history.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ʿEzana Stone, bearing an inscription describing King ʿEzana’s conversion to Christianity

After ʿEzana’s conversion to Christianity, the Aksumites stopped erecting stelae, which were seen as pagan, and began building churches instead. The main church of the Debre Damo monastery in northern Ethiopia, which was originally constructed in around the sixth century AD or thereabouts, is possibly the oldest church in the world that has been in continuous use ever since antiquity, that has never been used for any purpose other than as a church, and that still has the same basic structure that it had originally.

There are churches in Europe that are older than the main church at the Debre Damo monastery (some of which I talk about in this article about the Byzantines that I published earlier this month), but all of them have been extensively structurally changed since they were originally constructed. The main church at Debre Damo has been restored many times, but it has always kept the same structure that it had originally.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the main church of the Debre Damo monastery in Ethiopia

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the main church of the Debre Damo monastery

ABOVE: Another photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the main church of the Debre Damo monastery

During this period, wealthy Aksumites also built sprawling mansions. These mansions are all now in ruins, but you can get a sense of how huge they were originally by looking at the foundations that remain. One of the most famous Aksumite mansions is the Dungur palace at Aksum, which was built sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries AD.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruined entrance to the Dungur mansion in Aksum

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruins of the Dungur mansion

ABOVE: Modern reconstruction of what the Dungur mansion would have originally looked like

In the late sixth century AD, the Aksumite Empire fell into steep decline. By the early seventh century AD, it had lost control of the coastal regions it had once controlled and stopped minting its own coinage. The Aksumites were also forced to move their capital away from Aksum and retreat into the highlands of Ethiopia.

Between 639 and 646 AD, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered all of Egypt and the Red Sea. In the decades that followed, the Arabs conquered North Africa. By 709 AD, all of North Africa was under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate. Umayyad never tried to expand their empire into Ethiopia and the Aksumite Empire remained firmly Christian. Nonetheless, it was cut off from the rest of the Christian world.

In subsequent centuries, Aksum expanded its territories in the south to make up for the territories it had lost in the north. Sometime around 960 AD or thereabouts, a foreign queen conquered Aksum and burned most of its churches, along with many of its writings. The Zagwe Kingdom rose as a major power in the region shortly thereafter. The last king of the Zagwe Kingdom was defeated by Yekuno Amlak (ruled 1270 – 1285 AD), who claimed to be a descendant of the last king of Aksum. That’s getting to medieval history, though, and we don’t have time for that today.

The Nok culture

The empires I’ve talked about so far have all been located in the region around Ethiopia and Sudan, but there were ancient civilizations in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa as well. The Nok culture arose sometime around 1000 BC in what is now northern Nigeria. Unfortunately, we don’t know as much about it as we do about other ancient African civilizations because, as far as we know, it had no system of writing and its archaeological sites have not been extensively excavated by professionals.

The Nok culture is earliest culture in western sub-Saharan Africa that is known to have practiced iron smelting. The Nok people are highly unusual in how they developed this technology because they seem to have progressed directly from stone tools to smelting iron, without ever adopting the use of bronze or copper.

The Nok culture is best known today, though, for its abstract terracotta sculptures. Perhaps the most famous of these sculptures is a statue in the Louvre of a man resting his chin on his knees. Unfortunately, the extremely high demand for Nok figures on the art market has led to Nok archaeological sites being absolutely torn apart by looters looking for figures to sell for profit on the antiquities market.

Nearly all of the Nok figurines on the art market are of uncertain provenance and nearly all the ones that are authentic have been illegally looted. Because looters do not keep record of where they find the artifacts they dig up or in what context, we still know very little about why these figures were made and what they were used for.

The Nok culture seems to have ended sometime around 500 AD for unknown reasons.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Nok sculpture dated to sometime between c. 500 BC and c. 500 AD on display in the Louvre

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Nok sculpture dated to sometime between c. 200 BC and c. 200 AD on display in the Kimbell Art Museum

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Nok terracotta head dated to sometime between c. 600 BC and c. 250 AD

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Nok terracotta figurine dated to between c. 500 BC and c. 500 AD on display in the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac

Conclusion

There were major civilizations in sub-Saharan Africa in medieval times as well, but I can only cover so much in a single post. I will probably write another article about medieval African empires at some point in the future, although there are so many that I doubt I could cover them all in a single article and I may just have to do a separate post about each one.

My point here is that there were civilizations—even empires—in sub-Saharan Africa in ancient times. Unfortunately, most people haven’t heard of them, which is at least partly because western European colonialists have promoted the narrative that, prior to their colonialization of Africa, it was nothing but jungle and the people there were nothing but backwards savages.

They have promoted this narrative not because it is true, but rather because it is useful, because it has given them an excuse to exploit African nations for their resources and to steal their cultural heritage.