Ezana’s Nile campaign and the end of Kush

Ezana recorded the campaign in a long Ge’ez inscription at Aksum that opens with an invocation of the “Lord of Heaven” and so belongs to the years after his conversion. The Noba, he says, had revolted, broken their oaths and plundered his envoys, boasting that the Aksumites would not dare to cross the Takaze (the Atbara). He defeated them at the Takaze, pursued them for twenty-three days, burned their towns, both walled with stone and of straw, threw their grain and idols into the Nile, fought the Kasu at the confluence of the Nile and the Takaze and sent columns up and down the river — to Alwa and to the towns the Noba had taken from the Kasu. The inscription counts 629 prisoners and 758 dead and a booty of 10,560 cattle and 51,050 sheep. Meroë itself is not named.

Aksumite armies had reached Meroë before: two fragmentary Greek victory inscriptions found there, dedicated to Ares, predate the conversion and may be the work of Ezana’s predecessor Ousanas. Whether Aksum destroyed Kush is debated. Many scholars point to a state already weakened by the collapse of its trade, a drier climate and the pressure of the Noba and the Blemmyes, and some even read Ezana’s stela as Aksumite help to Kush against the rebellious Noba. In any case the Aksumite presence was short-lived. After the middle of the century the Meroitic script and religion disappear, regional elites buried in great tumuli take the place of the kings, and the kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia later grew up in the former Kushite lands. Aksum took over the Greek name “Ethiopia”, once used for Kush.