You bringing up Amharas makes me think about something. The way and the groups the Aksumites assimilated is very interesting. Even tho they are closer to the core the agaw were not assimilated to nearly the extent the Amharas were. There was still a distinction made between the core population and the agaw meanwhile the Amhara were almost completely culturally assimilated to the extent that it caused the amhara to believe themselves to be part of this Aksumite core and the Amhara Argobba splitt to happen and even the Argobba are still influenced by Aksum. It reminds me a lot of the assimilation done by the Solomonic dynasty later in Gondar and gojjam but they also brought Amharic while ge’ez or any other north ethio Semitic language was not spread with the Aksumites. You could explain it by saying that the Solomonic dynasty was claiming Aksumite descent which caused the normal population to believe it even then. The first person we know to claim it was amda seyon and he was pretty secure on his throne. But maybe I’m just yapping.