place centuries ago, they remain alive in Ethiopian culture: “In Ethiopia the damage which Ahmad Gragn did has never been forgotten. Every Christian highlander still hears tales of Gragn in his childhood. Haile Selassie referred to him in his memoirs, ‘I have often had villagers in northern Ethiopia point out sites of towns, forts, churches and monasteries destroyed by Gragn as if these catastrophes had occurred only yesterday.’”83
During the invasion, the emperor, Dawit II (Lebna Dengel) (r. 1508–40), was forced to flee his capital and take refuge at the monastery at Debra Damo. He was wounded in a battle nearby in 1540 and died and was buried at Debra Damo. One of the Portuguese, Miguel de Castanhoso, records that Lebna Dengel’s widow remained in Debra Damo, during which time Gragn laid siege to the mound for a year. But he was unsuccessful in gaining access. This makes sense when one reads Castanhoso’s description of the place:
The summit is a quarter of a long league in circumference, and on the area on the top there are two large cisterns, in which much water is collected in the winter: so much that it suffices and is more than enough for all those who live above, that is, about five hundred persons. On the summit itself they sow supplies of wheat, barley, millet and other vegetables. They take up goats and fowls, and there are many hives, for there is much space for them; thus the hill cannot be taken by hunger and thirst. Below the summit the hill is of this kind. It is squared and scarped for a height double that of the highest tower in Portugal, and it gets more precipitous near the top, until at the end it makes an umbrella all round, which looks artificial, and spreads out so far that it overhangs all the foot of the mountain, so that no one at the foot can hide himself from these above; for all around there is no fold or corner, and there is no way up save the one narrow path, like a badly-made winding stairs, by which with difficulty one person can ascend as far as a point whence he can get no further, for there the path ends. Above this is a gate where the guards are, and this gate is ten or twelve fathoms above the point where the path stops, and no-one can ascend or descend the hill save by the basket.84
When the Portuguese arrived, they met with Lebna Dengel’s widow, and she accompanied them to the court of her son, Emperor Galawdewos. They joined forces and finally managed to defeat the invaders at a battle in 1543 with the help of Portuguese firearms that had been hidden at Debra Damo.85
It is possible that these events might have impinged on the life of our casket of coins. Perhaps it was not given to the monastery until this time, taken by the emperor when he took refuge. Or perhaps it was already there, stored in the treasury but removed to a niche on the cliff face during this period in case the site was ransacked. We do not even know for certain the date when it was found, said to be around 1940. The Italian archaeologist Antonio Mordini, who was carrying out excavations at the site, gives the following account:
Toward the beginning of that year [1940], a young monk, entrusted with the repair works of the small wall sustaining the terrace where the church rises in the cemetery area of the convent, found in a small natural cave below the terrace, the relics of a wooden box along with eleven small gold plates, tweleve [sic] small bands of same metal, and of various lengths, and a considerable number of gold coins. The coins along with the gold plates and bands (which presumably formed part of the ornamentation of the box), were brought to Asmara, and the prior of the convent, mamher Takla ab Tasfai sold the entire lot to an Italian jeweller; who, in turn, sold it to a person of culture, who felt interested in the hoard.86
This raises the question of the casket, for whose story we have even less evidence than for that of the coins, since at least we can be fairly certain of their origin. For a start, it is assumed that the pieces of wood, gold, and green stone found in the same place as the coins originally formed a casket. Mordini, one of the few people to see these, is confident on this point and describes them: “They consisted of ten small plates, partly rectangular and partly square; one large plate of hexagonal shape, slightly pyramidal and twelve bands of various sizes all decorated in light bas-relief with ornamental vines and stylish flowers of peculiar character.”
In 1943 Mordini located the nook and sieved the earth in it to find more remains of the casket, including pieces of wood, about thirty gold nails, “which, it is clear, must have served to fix the plates and the bands to the casket,” and some thin plates of green stone, which he could not immediately identify. He also found some potsherds that he judged to be from the Axumite period. In a later article, the Russian scholar S. I. Berzina suggests that the casket was Indian made and similar to a casket excavated by Neville Chittick.87 However, since the casket was found in pieces and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the pieces were not photographed or drawn, this conclusion must remain extremely tentative. David Phillipson gives information suggesting that the pieces of the casket were later discarded, so it is unlikely that we will ever know more.88 The assumption that the coins were held in the casket is reasonable, given that we could expect such a rich hoard to be housed in some sort of receptacle. But whether this was the original receptacle or one used later—perhaps when the coins were moved—and where the box originated remain too uncertain to call.
The sale of monastery treasures was not unusual—and continues to this day (see chapter 9). It is fortunate that Mordini had the opportunity to study the coins after they were sold on.89 This was sometime prior to 1959, when Mordini published his original account. I have not been able to find the identity of the Italian jeweler or the “person of culture,” although both might be noted in archives. The 1939 census of Asmara counted fifty-three thousand Italians among a total population of ninety-eight thousand in the city and a total of seventy-five thousand Italians in all of Eritrea. Among them there were presumably several jewelers. The nationality of the “person of culture” is unclear, but again details might be found in archives. As far as I know, this is the last record of the coins. While they might remain intact in a private collection, there is also the possibility that they were melted down to realize their value as gold.90
Whatever the story of these coins and how they traveled, they reflect many aspects of the Silk Road. Created in the “dynamo” of Inner Eurasian history by an exiled agro-pastoralist people who had perhaps largely adapted to a settled city life, they reflect the importance of the Kushan for trade by both land and sea. While the early pieces probably circulated as money, the newest issues were probably never used for this purpose, instead being kept unmarked and unworn as treasures. At some point they traveled from Central Asia to East Africa by land, river, and sea on routes used by Silk Road merchants, possibly in a wooden casket. They later became the property of a Christian church, surviving over centuries. We can only hope that they remain as a treasured collection. If so, although inaccessible to most, they continue their entanglement with their collector and to tell their story.
1. I owe a great debt to the work of numismatists for this chapter and would like to thank Joe Cribb and Robert Bracey in particular for their generous advice and suggestions. All mistakes, misunderstandings, and omissions are my own.
2. Agriculture is found here, but on a relatively small scale compared to Outer Eurasia. Cities are also found here.
3. Christian (1998: xxi).
4. See Chang et al. (2003) for a discussion of the Yuezhi as agropastoralists—farmers and herders.
5. Some have linked them to an Indo-European group known as the Tocharians, but this remains speculative.
6. The Yuezhi were renowned for their army of skilled archers, but the Xiongnu had mobile mounted warriors.
7. For a discussion of these, see Thierry (2005). For a detailed account of the Yuezhi migration, see Benjamin (2007). The historical record is always subject to support or otherwise from the archaeological record. They do not always tally, especially in the indiscriminate use of Xiongnu in the Chinese histories, where the archaeological record suggests different cultures.
8. Mainly in juan 123 of the
