Greek inscription of Ezana with a Trinitarian opening (RIÉ 271)

The stone is 1.63 metres high; the record says that it was found at Aksum about 1959. It carries a Greek text (RIÉ 271) and a Ge’ez text in South Arabian letters (RIÉ 190). The Greek gives the king’s titles, among them king of Aksum, of the Himyarites, of Raydan, of Saba and of the Beja, and tells how he went to war against the Noba after neighbouring peoples complained of them.

What sets it apart from the other inscriptions of Ezana is its beginning. Instead of naming the king as son of Ares, it opens with the faith of God and the power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who has preserved his kingdom, and with the faith of God’s Son Jesus Christ, who helps him. These opening lines are not transcribed in the online record, which gives only lines 22–26 and 32 of the Greek; they are reported here from the translation that Butts quotes. This is a statement in the king’s own name and from his own time, and Butts treats it as the evidence that establishes that Ezana presented himself as a Christian. It does not say when or how he became one.