First plague pandemic

Other accounts from contemporaries of the pandemic are included in the texts of Evagrius Scholasticus, John of Ephesus, Gregory of Tours, Paul the Deacon, and Theophanes the Confessor; most seem to have believed plague was a divine punishment for human misdeeds.

According to Jacob of Edessa (died 708), the "great plague (mawtānā rabbā) began in the region of Kush (Nubia), south of Egypt, in the year AG 853 (AD 541–542).

An inscription dated to 543 records how Abraha, the Ethiopian ruler of Himyar, repaired the Maʾrib dam after sickness and death had struck the local community.

[9] The testimony of Procopius, who says that the plague began in Pelusium in the east of the Nile Delta and then spread to Alexandria, is consistent with an introduction from the Red Sea region, possible via ship-borne rats if the Canal of the Pharaohs was still open.

According to Peter Sarris, the "geopolitical context of the early sixth century," with an Aksumite–Roman alliance against Himyar and Persia, "was arguably the crucial prerequisite for the transmission of the plague from Africa to Byzantium.

In 610, Chao Yuanfang mentioned an endemic plague of "malignant bubo" described as "coming on abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue.

[5] According to 2024 research, major plagues that significantly impacted the Roman Empire are strongly linked to periods of cooler and drier climate conditions, indicating that colder weather may have contributed to the spread of these diseases during that time.

[15][16] The historian Lester Little suggests that just as the Black Death led to the near disappearance of serfdom in western Europe, the first pandemic resulted in the end of ancient slavery, at least in Italy and Spain.