Ge'ez is a South Semitic language that rose to prominence in the kingdom of Aksum, in the highlands of what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Royal inscriptions of the early centuries CE record it in three scripts, including the distinctive Ethiopic syllabary that developed from South Arabian letters. The decisive innovation came in the fourth century, when the script began marking vowels by modifying each consonant's shape, producing one of the world's most systematic writing systems, still used today for Amharic and Tigrinya.
In the same century King Ezana adopted Christianity, and his later inscriptions invoke the Trinity where earlier ones had invoked the old gods, a conversion documented in stone. Bible translation into Ge'ez followed, traditionally associated with Syrian missionaries remembered as the Nine Saints. As a spoken language Ge'ez gave way to its daughter and sister tongues during the medieval period, surviving in the way Latin survived in Europe, as the fixed language of scripture, liturgy and learning. Ethiopian tradition continued to compose in it for centuries, producing theology, royal chronicles, poetry in the qene tradition of improvised sacred verse, and the national epic Kebra Nagast, the Glory of Kings.