ABSTRACT
The rise of the Aksumite kingdom in northern Ethiopia in the first centuries Bc/Ad no longer seems so mushroom-like a phenomenon as has been represented in the past. Though considerable gaps remain in the record, Aksum's (Figs 36.1, 36.2) antecedents are now a little better known. The appearance of a complex society possibly of chiefdom status in the northern part of the region later controlled by Aksum, at Mahal Teglinos near Kassala in the Sudan-Ethiopian borderlands (Fig. 36.1), has now been confirmed archaeologically as far back as the late third to early second millennium Bc (Fattovich 1988; Fattovich 1990). Possibly the stelae found at Mahal Teglinos are prototypes for the funerary monuments which later became a characteristic feature of Aksum.
