section_path: History by region/Africa/Afro-Asiatic Africa/Aksum and ancient Ethiopia
section_name: Aksum and ancient Ethiopia
paragraph_text: Aksum and ancient Ethiopia
  
  The Kingdom of Aksum was an important trading nation in northeastern Africa centered in present-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, it existed from approximately AD 100 to 940, growing from the Iron Age proto-Aksumite period around the 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD. The Kingdom of Aksum at its height by the early 6th-century AD extended through much of modern Ethiopia and across the Red Sea to Arabia. The capital city of the empire was Aksum, now in northern Ethiopia.