Endubis or Endybis was a late-3rd-century sovereign of the
Kingdom of Aksum in
East Africa (modern-day
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
and
Eritrea). He was among the earliest rulers in the
Horn of Africa to mint his own coins; the
Aksumite currency
Aksumite currency was coinage produced and used within the Kingdom of Aksum (or Axum) centered in present-day Eritrea and Ethiopia. Its mintages were issued and circulated from the reign of King Endubis around AD 270 until it began its decline i ...
of his reign was issued in
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...
and
silver
Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...
denominations and bore inscriptions in
Koine Greek
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
.
The coins of Endubis are dated to c. 295 to c. 310 and are "undoubtedly
..the oldest Aksumite coins".
On the coins of Endubis so far recovered, either of two mottos were engraved. On some coins he described himself as "ΑΞΩΜΙΤΩ ΒΑϹΙΛΕΥϹ", "king of Axum". On others appeared the motto "ΒΙϹΙ ΔΑΧΥ", "bisi Dakhu"; this is the first appearance of the title "bisi", which S. C. Munro-Hay believes is related to the
Ge'ez word "be'esya", "man of".
[S. C. Munro-Hay, ''Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity'' (Edinburgh: University Press, 1991), p. 75.]
References
External links
Page with coin struck under Endubis
Kings of Axum
3rd-century monarchs in Africa
{{Ethiopia-royal-stub