Home › Timeline › The Capture › Ezana of Aksum takes the cross
Ezana, king of Aksum in the Ethiopian highlands, was baptised by his former tutor Frumentius, a Christian from Tyre whom Athanasius of Alexandria ordained bishop about 347 with a charge to render the church's biblical and liturgical texts into the Ethiopic language. Ezana's later coins replace the pagan disc and crescent with a cross, possibly the first cross on any coinage.
The mechanism
CUSTODY OF THE WORD
How it was checked
- EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
- Letter eraTHE CAPTURE 313 to 1302
- SourcesRECORD — Britannica, 'Saint Frumentius'; CoinWeek, 'The Coinage of Aksum' · checked 19 September: Britannica (read in a browser; WebFetch is refused by the site), 'Saint Frumentius'; Wikipedia, 'Ezana of Axum' (reign; coin motifs)