The so-called Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea was the dominant African polity along the southern Red Sea in the first millennium AD. The polity emerged in central Tigray (northern Ethiopia) in the late first millennium BC, incorporated eastern Tigray and central Eritrea in the mid-first millennium AD, and eventually declined in the late first millennium AD. The adoption of Christianity as a state religion in the fourth century AD was a crucial event in the history of the polity. At present, the development of this polity is uncertain, as no real effort to understand the process of formation, consolidation, and decline has been made. In this paper I suggest that a local polity based on kinship emerged at Aksum in the fourth century BC to second century AD, incorporated most of the highlands in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in the third century, and consolidated as a kingdom organized on the same state-church relationship of other eastern Mediterranean Christian states in the fifth–sixth centuries AD. The inclusion of the polity in Roman-Byzantine long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, warfare, and adoption of Christianity were the crucial factors that sustained the main transformations of the polity through time.

中文翻译：

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从社区到州：阿克苏姆人政体的发展（埃塞俄比亚北部和厄立特里亚），c。公元前400年–公元800年

埃塞俄比亚北部和厄立特里亚北部的所谓的阿克苏姆王国是公元第一千年沿红海南部的主要非洲政体。政体于公元前一千年代后期出现在提格雷中部（埃塞俄比亚北部），并于公元一千年中旬合并了提格雷东部地区和厄立特里亚中部地区，并最终在公元一千年末期下降。在公元四世纪，基督教被采纳为国教是政治历史上的关键事件。目前，这种政体的发展尚不确定，因为还没有真正的努力来了解形成，巩固和衰落的过程。在本文中，我建议在公元前四世纪至公元二世纪的阿克苏姆（Aksum）出现基于亲属关系的地方政治，在三世纪时，它合并了埃塞俄比亚北部和厄立特里亚的大部分高地，并在公元五至六世纪巩固了与其他东地中海基督教国家的州-教会关系所组成的王国。在地中海和印度洋之间的罗马拜占庭式长途贸易中包括政治，战争以及采用基督教是维持政治在时间上主要转变的关键因素。