The Takazze is the river Atbara, and the text certainly implies that the Noba were a people previously subject to Aksumite rule and that the campaign was a punitive one.
The text goes on to describe how he defeated the Noba at the crossing of the Atbara, burnt their towns and seized much material including stocks of cotton, and killed many of this enemy, among whom were several chiefs whose names are given.
Unfortunately the exact conditions of discovery of this inscription are not known, but Sayce, who published the piece, says it was brought to him at Meroe, and it probably came from there.
The only other Aksumite object from Meroe is one copper coin found in excavations of 1969-70; this coin, though it does not bear the name of Ezana, is of about his time and, since it bears the symbol of a cross, cannot be earlier than AD 350.
The problem of the identity of the Noba and the archaeological material that perhaps can be identified with them will be discussed furhter below, but it is now necessary to look to the Eritrean, north Ethiopian highland and to say something of the origins and history of the kingdom which so suddenly and dramatically irrupted into the Nile Valley.
The origins of the Aksumite kingdom go back well into the first millenium BC, when settlers from Syria introduced Semitic languages, building in stone, and literacy.
He repulsed the Mahdis end of the 19century in Akordat.
The inscription then describes the campaign and says that Ezana 'took the field against the Noba, when the people revolted', and 'when they boasted, "he will not cross the Takazze"', and when they made attacks on identified neighbouring peoples - the Mangurto, Hana and Barya(Baria) - and plundered envoys sent by Ezana.
The reason for their flight was race requested has at that time in Tigray, that all Tigrinya-muslims your belief to change and to suppose believe that Christian-orthodox because it feared an Islamisation of the community.
Ras Woldemichael Selomon was the last sovereign of Mereb Milash.
The evidence for this expedition is to be found in an inscription at Aksum written in Ge'ez, which describes an Aksumite campaign in the Island of Meroe, though there are a number of varying interpretations as to the nature of the campaign and the situation at Meroe at the time.
The text itself begins with the protocol normal in Aksumite inscriptions of this period.