Page "History of Eritrea" Paragraph 12

The first verifiable kingdom of great power to rise in Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia was that of Aksum in the 1st century AD.

It was one of many successor kingdoms to Dʿmt and was able to unite the northern Ethiopian plateau beginning around the 1st century BC.

They established bases on the northern highlands of the Ethiopian Plateau and from there expanded southward.

The Persian religious figure Mani listed Axum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time.

The origins of the Axumite Kingdom are unclear, although experts have offered their speculations about it.

Even whom should be considered the earliest known king is contested: although C. Conti Rossini proposed that Zoskales of Axum, mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, should be identified with one Za Haqle mentioned in the Ethiopian King Lists ( a view embraced by later historians of Ethiopia such as Yuri M. Kobishchanov and Sergew Hable Sellasie ), G. W. B.

Huntingford argued that Zoskales was only a sub-king whose authority was limited to Adulis, and that Conti Rossini's identification can not be substantiated.