Qualla: Adulis https://qualla.com/adulis en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Adulis https://qualla.com/adulis Adulis: Introduction https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt had a fleet of war elephants he had captured in East Africa, and he wanted everyone to know about it. Around 240 BCE, somewhere near the African Red Sea coast, he commissioned an inscription boasting of his victories - a triumphal monument that listed the exotic animals he had brought back from campaigns abroad. Centuries later, a Byzantine Christian traveler named Cosmas Indicopleustes found the inscription still standing at a port city called Adulis, and he copied it down before continuing on his way. The copy is how we still know it. The original is gone, along with the city that held it. What remains of Adulis are the ruins beneath the modern Eritrean town of Zula, and the knowledge that this stretch of African coast was once a hinge of world trade.

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Image: sailko | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Adulis: The Africans Who Traded https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0. Adulis was a port of the Kingdom of Aksum, the African civilization that rose in the highlands of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea and for several centuries was one of the four great powers of its world, ranked by the 3rd-century Persian prophet Mani alongside Rome, Persia, and China....

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Image: sailko | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-the-africans-who-traded.mp3 0:06 2 full Adulis: Puntland https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit M.Bitton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The archaeology beneath Adulis reaches back further than Aksum itself. Fragments of glass vessels found in the lowest excavated layers match specimens from Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, around 1450 BCE, suggesting active trade contact with New Kingdom pharaohs more than three thous...

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Image: M.Bitton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-puntland.mp3 0:06 3 full Adulis: Pliny and the Periplus https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit PHGCOM, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pliny the Elder is the earliest European writer to mention Adulis, in his Natural History. He got the etymology wrong - he thought the name meant the place had been founded by escaped Egyptian slaves - but he correctly identified it as the principal mart for the Troglodytae and t...

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Image: PHGCOM | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-pliny-and-the-periplus.mp3 0:06 4 full Adulis: Inscriptions and a Bishop https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Two inscriptions at Adulis were famous in the ancient world. One was a copy of Ptolemy III's triumphal record of his war-elephant campaigns. The other, called the Monumentum Adulitanum, was inscribed in the twenty-seventh year of an Aksumite king - perhaps named Sembrouthes, perh...

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Image: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-inscriptions-and-a-bishop.mp3 0:06 5 full Adulis: The End https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit Breton jean-francois, CC BY-SA 4.0. Historians agree that Adulis declined sometime in the 8th century CE. They disagree about how. Traditional accounts say the city was destroyed by an Arab expedition in 640 CE; excavations have revealed traces of fire, but historical records suggest the Arab expedition was conside...

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Image: Breton jean-francois | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-the-end.mp3 0:06 6 full Adulis: Unfinished Business https://qualla.com/adulis/ Photo credit David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0. The first archaeologists arrived in 1840 - a French mission that mapped three structures they believed were temples. In 1868, soldiers attached to Britain's Napier expedition against Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia stopped at Adulis and exposed the foundations of a Byzantine-styl...

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Image: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/s/n/adulis-wp/sfsn-adulis-unfinished-business.mp3 0:06 7 full