The ''Book of Axum'' ( Ge'ez መጽሐፈ ፡ አክሱም ''maṣḥafa aksūm'', , , ) is the name accepted since the time of

James Bruce James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who physically confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North and East Africa and in 1770 became the fir ...

in the latter part of the 18th century CE for a collection of documents from Saint Mary's Cathedral of

Axum Axum, also spelled Aksum (), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire. Axum is located in the Central Zone of the Tigray Re ...

providing information on History of Ethiopia. The earliest parts of the collection date to the mid-15th century during the reign of Zar'a Ya`qob (r. 1434-1468). The book's editor Carlo Conti Rossini classified the book into three parts: the first, earlier, section describes the Church Maryam Seyon in Axum prior to it being damaged in the mid-16th century, the topography of Axum and its history, and contains a list of services and the like regarding Maryam Seyon and its clergy. The second part is dated to the early 17th century and contains 104 historical and legal texts, many dealing with land grants, along with their protocols, while the third text dates to the late 17th century and contains 14 miscellaneous legal and historical texts regarding Axum's history. The book was also supplemented in the mid-19th century with further later documents. The book derives the name

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

from Itiyopp'is, an (otherwise unmentioned) son of the

Biblical Cush Cush or Kush ( ''Kūš''; ), according to the Hebrew Bible, was the oldest son of Ham and a grandson of Noah. He was the brother of Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. Cush was the father of Nimrod. Cush is traditionally considered the ancestor of the ...

. According to the ''Book of Axum'' Itiyopp'is built Mazaber, the

Kingdom of Axum The Kingdom of Aksum, or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom in East Africa and South Arabia from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, based in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, and spanning present-day Djibouti and Sudan. Emerging ...

's first capital.Stuart Munro-Hay, "Aksumawi," in Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: A-C'' (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), p. 186.

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See also