Eon (c. 400 AD) was a King of the

Kingdom of Aksum The Kingdom of Aksum ( gez, መንግሥተ አክሱም, ), also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom centered in Northeast Africa and South Arabia from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. Based primarily in wh ...

. He is primarily known through the

coins A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to ...

minted during his reign, where his name is written in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

as "Eon Bisi Anaaph".

Reign

While "bisi Anaaph" is usually understood to mean "man of Anaaph",

Richard Pankhurst Richard Marsden Pankhurst (1834 – 5 July 1898) was an English barrister and socialist who was a strong supporter of women's rights. Early life Richard Pankhurst was the son of Henry Francis Pankhurst (1806–1873) and Margaret Marsden (180 ...

notes that the scholar Stephen Wright has argued the word ''bisi'' "might well be used in relation to the King's horse in the same way that Ethiopians of much later times used the word Aba.

Sahle Sellassie Sahle Sellassie Berhane Mariam ( Amharic: ሣህለ ሥላሴ ብርሃነ ማርያም; born 1936) is an Ethiopian novelist and translator. Sahle Sellassie wrote the first novel in the Chaha language in the mid-1960s. In 1969 Heinemann publ ...

, for example, was often known as Aba Dina (Dina being the name of his favorite horse)."Richard Pankhurst, ''An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia'' (London: Lalibela House, 1961), p. 30n.68. Eon may be the same person as the King Hiuna, who is mentioned in the ''

Book of the Himyarites The ''Book of the Himyarites'' (''Ktābā da-ḥmirāye'') is an anonymous Syriac account of the persecution and martyrdom of the Christian community of Najran in the Kingdom of Himyar around 523 AD and the ensuing Aksumite interventions. It was ...

'' as leading a military expedition from

Axum Axum, or Aksum (pronounced: ), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire, a naval and trading power that ruled the whole region ...

across the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

into

South Arabia South Arabia () is a historical region that consists of the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia, mainly centered in what is now the Republic of Yemen, yet it has also historically included Najran, Jizan, Al-Bahah, and 'Asi ...

; Munro-Hay notes that the "difference in spelling is no more than would result from transposing the name into the two languages concerned"; but he admits that the identification is not conclusive, or whether Hiuna was even a king.S. C. Munro-Hay, ''Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity'' (Edinburgh: University Press, 1991), p. 84. Eon was the first King of Axum to use the mysterious title ''+ BAC + CIN + BAX + ABA''. Munro-Hay reports this has been interpreted to mean ''Basileus habasinon'' -- "King of the Habashat/Habash", a title used in South Arabian inscriptions to refer to the Axumite kings.

Notes

Kings of Axum 5th-century monarchs in Africa 4th-century monarchs in Africa {{Ethiopia-royal-stub