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Aksum (modern Axum) lies in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, at 2,130 m elevation in a highland plateau. From roughly 100 CE to 940 CE it was the capital of the Aksumite Empire, which at its height controlled the Red Sea trade between the Roman Empire and India, dominated the Horn of Africa, occupied Yemen and parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and converted to Christianity in the fourth century CE under King Ezana — making it one of the first Christian kingdoms in the world. The empire's power derived from controlling the ivory trade route between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean, and from its port at Adulis on the Red Sea. Aksum is most visibly marked by its field of giant granite stelae (obelisks), monolithic shafts carved to resemble multi-storey buildings with false windows and doors, used as funerary monuments for Aksumite royalty. The largest stele, now fallen and broken, would have stood 33 m and weighed an estimated 520 tonnes — the largest single monolith ever quarried and moved in antiquity. A second stele of 24 m, looted by Mussolini's forces in 1937, was returned from Rome to Aksum in 2008. The city also contains the ruins of royal palaces, underground tombs, a pre-Christian temple, and the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, which local tradition claims houses the original Ark of the Covenant.
