Around AD 502, a group known as the Nine Saints arrived in Ethiopia while the Ethiopian Church already maintained close links with Alexandria. Their names suggest that the group included Syrians as well as Egyptians. They represented the missionary expansion of Egyptian Monophysitism along the commercial routes running south from Alexandria toward the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

The missionaries worked to restore and extend coenobitic monastic Christianity of the Pachomian type. Their principal foundation was the great monastery of Debre Damo, established on a hill overlooking Aksum. The monastery provided an institutional base from which monastic practices and religious teaching could reach wider parts of the Ethiopian highlands.

The mission also initiated, if only modestly, the translation of Scripture into Ge’ez, the language of northern Ethiopia. The Nine Saints gave Christianity a strong impetus in the highlands and encouraged its zealous acceptance by the ruling house. Their influence formed part of a wider religious network linking Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Red Sea world.