Most text-based studies of Aksumite history place considerable emphasis on religion, particularly on the king's adoption of Christianity. The account offered here lays stress on those aspects of religious development that are reflected in ancient Ethiopian sources and in the archaeological record, paying less attention to purely doctrinal or theological matters which are more rarely illustrated by contemporaneous local materials.

For hundreds of years prior to the local advent of Christianity, it seems that a form or forms of polytheistic belief-system analogous – but by no means identical – to that known to have been established in southern Arabia prevailed also in the northern Horn. Although the deities' names indicated by the known inscriptions are – with one exception – different, use of the crescent-anddisc symbol – known in earlier times on altars and incense-burners in both southern Arabia and the northern Horn (cf. Chapter 3) – was continued in pre-Christian Aksumite times on coins and on the Anza and Matara stelae (Chapter 6 and 7 respectively), which have been dated to the third century on palaeographic grounds. No detailed evidence has yet been published for pre-Christian Aksumite religious buildings, nor should it be assumed that all religious structures erected after the mid-fourth century were necessarily Christian.

The coming of Christianity

Knowledge about the advent and development of Christianity in the Aksumite realm is based on varied sources: written texts originating outside Ethiopia, inscriptions, coins and other archaeological materials – including remains of church buildings – from Aksum and related sites, and Ethiopian historical tradition.