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To-do list for Axum:  ·  history ·  watch ·  refresh · Updated 2022-10-05 Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Expand : sections needed on, eg, education (not just the university), demographics, governance, economy, history, etc The bit on history in the first section seems to ignore the thousand years between the 10th and 20th centuries - surely something happened?! Infobox : could do with more content Split : consider splitting off important aspects not immediately relevant to modern town into new article Verify : add more inline citations (essential for promotion beyond start class) Wikify : an article should have an introductory section that summarises the whole article - the first part of this article includes a sizeable chunk of history that should be in a separate section & some other bits that could also be elsewhere Other : location map within country

This whole piece is so far from what is widely known in History. I suspect there are people from Eritrea who are trying to systematically rob somebody else's history. During the Aksumite Empire, there was nothing as Tigray Region or Eritrea. However, the records and the evidences show that the Empire was in what is today known as Ethiopia. Aksum is a town in Ethiopia, not Eritrea. Eritrea was a name given to a former province of Ethiopia By Italians Aksum was by no means an Eritrean civilization. A reader is advised to check some other more credible sources. To the writer: whatever your motive is, you are not doing a good service to the truth or to history — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:700:700:6:BC4B:EC0D:9AE:5E34 ( talk) 13:23, 18 January 2018 (UTC) reply

What are you talking about? Eritrea is not even mentioned once in this article. Turtlewong ( talk) 19:13, 18 January 2018 (UTC) reply

The page "Niexemetes" is a redirect to the "Axum" article, but the Axum article doesn't mention Niexemetes. The term doesn't appear in the Axum page history either. The redirect page appears to have been created out of nothing; the term is neither explained nor referenced anywhere. This kind of defeats the purpose of the redirect. Would it useful to include a section on "Niexemetes" in the Axum article?

Was it one of the very early Christian dioceses in Nubia ? BushelCandle ( talk) 08:42, 4 April 2021 (UTC) reply

This article seems to always have referred to the modern site as a town, and still did even when the lead was just changed to make it a city. UNESCO calls it a town although the article also discusses the ancient city. One of the main scholars to study Ethiopia, Stuart Munro-Hay, someone whose works we use as sources in various articles, calls it a town. [1] As to other sources, both tourist guides and scholarly, eg [] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iUIJSxxVaI0C&pg=PA44&dq=Aksum+town+tourist&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-_Kn7rNTgAhWBonEKHf_fCwkQ6AEIMTAB#v=onepage&q=Aksum%20town%20tourist&f=false this]. It's growing and may become a city again, but it has been a town for centuries. Doug Weller talk 12:26, 24 February 2019 (UTC) reply

Can we consider renaming the article as Aksum? The latter stays more close to Ethiopic script that does not know the letter "x". See also the official name of Aksum University. Rastakwere ( talk) 12:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC) reply

I've just changed "Axum University" to "Aksum University" and made it an internal link. -- BushelCandle ( talk) 01:43, 23 April 2021 (UTC) reply

• Support Aksum. Looking through Geʽez script, and the old and new (pre-Tigray-War) web pages of the university, Aksum is clearly favoured in latin script:

• 2011-08-11 old domain name
• 2011-10-10 old domain name
• 2020-07-20 www.aku.edu.et
• 2021-02-03 www.aku.edu.et (doesn't seem to have any post-2-November 2020 content, presumably due to the internet block; the server itself is apparently not at the university itself, since the university computers are probably all in Eritrea now)

The Tigrinya name that we currently have, ኣኽሱም, would seem to me to be Axsum, based on Geʽez script#Letters used in modern alphabets, but I don't see online evidence that Tigrayans (so far) wish to use this in latin script, and for the moment they obviously have other priorities, such as breaking the communication blockade and surviving and stopping the genocide and famine and SGBV.

So "Aksum" seems to be the current best option. Boud ( talk) 14:11, 17 February 2021 (UTC) reply

Having visited Axum many times I disagree. You will encounter "Axum" far more often in writing in English used locally. See this article and photo for an example: https://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2020/Nov/180811/ethiopia_accuses_tigray_forces_of_destroying_axum_airport.aspx BushelCandle ( talk) 08:21, 4 April 2021 (UTC) reply

In the English Wikipedia, we don't call the capital of Serbia, Beograd and we shouldn't be influenced by local language spellings. I do understand that in the Ge'ez alphabet (መጽሐፈ ፡ አክሱም) the words are usually transliterated to maṣḥafa aksūm, and in Amharic to meṣhafe aksūm, and in the local lingo of Tigrinya to meṣḥafe aksūm but that doesn't change the long accepted ENGLISH language spelling - especially when the locals almost exclusively write "Axum" when they are writing in Latin script. In fact the Latin transcription of the Book of Axum ( Latin: Liber Axumae) should give you a clue! It has been called "Axum" in English (and Scots English) for more than 220 years! ^{[1] [2] [3]} BushelCandle ( talk) 06:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC) reply

Even in US English it's been Axum for a very long time. See the 1893 Rand McNally Map of Abyssinia (click on the map image at that URL to enlarge the map and then further enlarge the image using the "+" button) BushelCandle ( talk) 09:28, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply

Boys, all my Storiography reports only Aksum and never Axum; I think that the name Axum could be come later and we have to refer to Aksum in the past with "ks". I don't know where you have found the word Axumae (Axum or Axuma ?) but my Latin dictionary doesn't report them, I think could be a modern word. I'm for keeping the actual situation and for refer to the city in past as Aksum and in the present as Axum. X is a wrong trascription for the letter ks, because they are different phonemes. Did you know that latins and Greeks always changed the names!? Also my Greek dictionary doesn't report it neither as Axum or Aksum. BandiniRaffaele2 ( talk) 00:25, 23 April 2021 (UTC) reply

So, if I've understood you correctly, you concede that the modern spelling - in English, as opposed to ancient Greek or Latin or a transcription of one of the local languages of Ethiopia - is Axum and that this spelling should be used for the modern town/city, but that other spellings can be used in a historical context? -- Bushel C andle 01:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC) reply

Yes. BandiniRaffaele2 ( talk) 01:20, 23 April 2021 (UTC) reply

The Axum spelling has been used in American English for more than 200 years. You will need to considerably enlarge the map, but then you will see an early example of the Axum spelling on this 1843 map. -- Bushel C andle 02:18, 25 April 2021 (UTC) reply

The official language on the other page is written as Greek which is completely false and makes it seem as if Ge'ez was used much after. It maybe worth trying to change that. Rania212 ( talk) 00:42, 27 November 2023 (UTC) reply