Ezana in the context of "Aethiopia"

Aksumite currency was coinage produced and used within the Kingdom of Aksum (or Axum) centered in present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Its mintages were issued and circulated from the reign of King Endybis around AD 270 until it began its decline in the first half of the 7th century where they started using Dinar along with most parts of the Middle East. During the succeeding medieval period, Mogadishu currency, minted by the Sultanate of Mogadishu, was the most widely circulated currency in the eastern and southern parts of the Horn of Africa from the beginning of the 12th century.

Aksum's currency serves as an indicator of the kingdom's contemporary cultural influences and religious climate (first polytheistic and later Oriental Christianity). It also facilitated the Red Sea trade on which it thrived. The coinage has also proved invaluable in providing a reliable chronology of Aksumite kings due to the lack of extensive archaeological work in the area.

Ancient Aethiopia, (Greek: Αἰθιοπία, romanized: Aithiopía) first appears as a geographical term in classical documents in reference to the skin color of the inhabitants of the upper Nile in Sudan, areas south of the Sahara, and less often to certain parts of Asia. Its earliest mention is in the works of Homer: twice in the Iliad, and three times in the Odyssey. The Greek historian Herodotus uses the appellation to refer to regions south of Egypt when describing "Aethiopians," most commonly Nubia. Likewise, the Hebrew term Cushi is derived from Kushite. Despite this, the Byzantine Greeks also referred to the Aksumites as Ethiopians and Negus Ezana, conqueror of Meroë took on the title of "king of Ethiopia" prior to the rise of the medieval Ethiopian Empire. The ancient Libyans (North African Berbers) were also called White Aethiopians by contemporary Greek sources. By the modern period the term Aethiopian Sea was used to refer to the southern Atlantic ocean, particularly the area adjacent to West Africa.

Though near universally used to invoke the "Ethiopia of North Africa" ("African Ethiopia"); there was another region sometimes called Asiatic Ethiopia, located either in one of the provinces of Mesopotamia (Assyria and Babylon), or in Ancient Armenia (Colchis). Ethiopia in Roman History (1-200 AD) states later the term "Ethiopia" would become synonymous with all Africans. Unlike the earlier Greek writers who distinguished Ethiopians from other Africans, Claudius Ptolemy (90–168 AD), a Roman citizen who lived in Alexandria, used "Ethiopia" as a racial term. In his Tetrabiblos: Or Quadripartite, he tried to explain the physical characteristics of people around the world saying, 'They are consequently black in complexion, and have thick and curled hair...and they are called by the common name of Aethiopians.'" The Classical Greek historian wrote about a colony founded in the region of Colchis, which was inhabited by Ethiopic people, believed to have been brought there by the Egyptian Pharaoh Sesostris. Herodotus states that the Colchians, with the Ancient Egyptians and the Ethiopians, were the first to practice circumcision, a custom which he claims that the Colchians inherited from remnants of the army of Pharaoh Sesostris (Senusret III). Herodotus writes: