Early human history records that it was at about the second millennium BCE when cereal grains and the use of the plow were introduced into the Semitic Ge’ez speaking Tigrayans residing in the rich highlands of Tigray, in the Horn of Africa. In the 7th century BCE, the Tigrayans established the kingdom of D’mt. This kingdom dominated lands to the west, obtaining ivory, tortoiseshell, rhinoceros’ horn, gold, and silver, trading them with South Arabian merchants.

After 300 BCE, the diversion of D’mt’s trade routes for easier access to coastal ports and subsequent wars of expansion led to unification under the inland state of Aksum which history still knows not only as the center of Tigrayan civilization but also as one of four early African and world civilizations. Aksum, from its base on the Tigray Plateau, controlled the ivory trade into the Sudan, other trade routes leading farther inland to the south, and the port of Adulis on the Gulf of Zula. Aksum’s culture comprised a written indigenous alphabet (Geʿez), sculpture and architecture similar to regional prototypes. It is also well documented that there was close trade and cultural exchange between Aksum, the Arabian Peninsula, the Mediterranean Region and the Far East.

By the 5th century CE, Aksum was the dominant trading power in the Red Sea. Commerce rested on sound financial methods, attested to by the minting of coins (please note the coins on the Chamber’s logo) bearing the sculpture of Aksumite emperors. In the anonymous Greek travel book Periplus Maris Erythraei, written in the 1st century CE, Adulis is described as an “open harbour” containing a settlement of the then Greek and Roman merchants. It was through such communities, established for the purposes of trade, that the Christianity of the eastern Mediterranean reached the Aksumites (Tigrayans) during the reign of Emperor Ezana (c. 303–c. 350).