Ethiopian archeologists uncover several ancient relics

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

Ethiopian archeologists uncover several ancient relics
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Ethiopian archeologists said Wednesday they have uncovered several ancient relics and building through excavations they conducted at the northern ancient town of Axum.

Tekle Hagos, coordinator of the archeologists' team told journalists that the team has been carrying out excavations beginning from Feb. 8 on the tombs of King Izana and King Remhai around the Statue of Queen of Sheba in Axum town.

Tekle said the team has uncovered claywares, several metallic and stone-made relics as well as a four-pillar building.

He added that by the side of the ancient building was found a throne statue erected for a warrior named Hatsani Daniel.

"The script on the statue describes the victory of Hatsani Daniel at Kessela and Wolqait and his refusal to accept the appointment offered to him by the Aksumite king," said Tekle.

The team also uncovered glassware and clay molding tools which indicate that glass technology was in use in ancient Axum, he said.

Moreover, Tekle said armaments, claywares, silver and bronze coins, bracelets and other ornaments have been found at the site.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in the world. The first known civilization in Ethiopia was that of the mighty Aksumite Kingdom.

Having established itself in 1,000 BC, in northern Ethiopia, it eventually spread over all of northern and even central Ethiopia. The ancient city of Axum, which was started by the Aksumites, was Ethiopia's first capital city.

[Yom]

Nice! 97% (or was it 93%?) of Aksum (not sure if it's the site or civilization) is unexcavated. It's on the verge of major archaelogical breakthroughs like those of Egypt in the 1920s or Greece in the 1890s. Not to mention the Western areas like Shire have sites that have barely been looked at. Aksum wasn't the first Ethiopian kingdom though. Ignoring PWNT (Punt), there was definitely a civilization called D'MT (or Da'amat, or Da'amot, etc.) around 8th c. B.C. - 3rd c. B.C. with very variable dates. There's an inscription of 4 kings naming their Yemeni Sabaean counterparts, but the dates of the Yemeni kings have not yet been certainly established; they vary from c. 500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.


Btw, where did you get this? I'm very interested in new archaelogical findings.

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

Nice! 97% (or was it 93%?) of Aksum (not sure if it's the site or civilization) is unexcavated. It's on the verge of major archaelogical breakthroughs like those of Egypt in the 1920s or Greece in the 1890s. Not to mention the Western areas like Shire have sites that have barely been looked at. Aksum wasn't the first Ethiopian kingdom though. Ignoring PWNT (Punt), there was definitely a civilization called D'MT (or Da'amat, or Da'amot, etc.) around 8th c. B.C. - 3rd c. B.C. with very variable dates. There's an inscription of 4 kings naming their Yemeni Sabaean counterparts, but the dates of the Yemeni kings have not yet been certainly established; they vary from c. 500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.


Btw, where did you get this? I'm very interested in new archaelogical findings.

I think only 2-3% of Aksum have been excavated... I hope that there will be a major breakthrough! But the problem is the funding of all these projects! We have more pressing problems than this - sadly...

Anyway, are there any excavations going on in Eritrea (Matara, Qohayito, etc.)?

BTW, what do you think are D'MT and the "medieval" Damoti (?) and the modern Damot area the same place? do you know any interesting writings on this topic?

Yeha is also older than Aksum...

I found this somewhere in the internet... I think it was on ethioindex or something... the source is a Xinhua site... I should have copied the link... sorry...

[shtoni]

posted here a while back.

"I could not understand [Plato's] dialogues until I visited Ethiopia.''

- Jean Doresse, Historian

During the recent interview between journalist Haimanot Alemu and Dr Lapisso G. Delebo on ''face-to-face'' programme of Ethiopian Television (ETV), Jean Doresse's books were frequently refered to by the latter. Inspired by this Ato Akalu W. Mariam took the opportunity during his recent visit to France to find J. Doresse in his house in Fayance, about 926 km from Paris, and conduct an interview with him.

J. Doresse, 85, is a renowned historian specializing on Egyptian and Ethiopian history. He had published a number of books on ancient and medieval history of Ethiopia including ''Ethiopia under the Kingdom of Queen of the Sheba'' and ''The Prester John of Ethiopia''. J. Doresse, who has spent much of his life time in Ethiopia, pioneered the French Archaeological study on Ethiopia and the center for the Ethio-French studies. He was also Editor-in-chief of the first French newspaper in Ethiopia "L'Ethiopie d'Aujourd'hui". J. Doresse is currently writing a book on the people of southern Ethiopia. He lives in Fayance, France, with his Ethiopian wife and his Ethiopian adopted son. Following are excerpts from the interview.

Would you make a comparison between ancient Greece, Egypt and Ethiopia? How ancient are these countries?

When I went to Ethiopia I found the life, the ancient culture which was at the origin of ancient Greece. I found this in the vein of people more than the excavations. I found there the exact way of thinking, the clear mentality of ancient Greece. I am very much fond of reading Plato and some of his dialogues but I could not understand those dialogues until I visited Ethiopia. This is because Greek literatures were translated into different languages including French. But while translations were being made, there were always distortions in meanings. When I visited Ethiopia, I found ways of thinking and ideas that made me very clear with my Plato's readings.

How ancient are these civilizations of Greece, Egypt and Ethiopia?

Ethiopia is older than pharaonic Egypt. We have some proofs for this. People working on Ethiopia did not find the language of ancient Egypt in Ethiopia. But in ancient Egyptian we found many words which are in Ethiopia, both in Amharic and even more in Oromiffa. So, the conclusion is that Ethiopia is the birthplace of ancient civilization which developed later in Egypt and much later on in Greece and other countries.

Would you justify this argument by giving us some archaeological evidences?

Formerly I was an Egyptologist with knowledge of the hieroglyphics system. But when I was in Ethiopia I found that there are the same names, the same appelations for so many things that appeared at the beginning of pharaonic language. For instance, there is a word "Oromo" in Ethiopia which appeared in ancient Egypt referring to the same subject, with consonants only, without using vowels. It would have been good for a person who is an Egyptologist to study Amharic and Oromiffa and try to list out words that were in use in both countries.

Some people who went through your books like the Ethiopian historian Dr Lapisso G. Delebo claim that your work is an authoritative source regarding the ancient civilization of Ethiopia. Do you have any concrete findings that supports their statements?

First we have proof that in Ethiopia there was a very very ancient civilization.

In Aksum, the fallen obelisk is 37.5 meters high. It is extraordinary, it is taller than the greatest Egyptian obelisks. And we do not know from where they took this stone. It was not certainly from Aksum. They had to transport this monolithic obelisk. This is a task as important as the building of the Egyptian-pyramids.

In Ethiopia we started studying archaeology only fifty years ago. In Ethiopia there were stone carvings that have helped the birth of ancient civilizations. This had developed later in Lalibela and many other places.

The other justification relates to the birth of languages. Historians argue that the first language was Sabean. But Oromiffa, Somali and Afar languages use words whose origin is earlier than hieroglyphic Egyptian. They are the most ancient spoken languages. It was later on that Amharic was born and developed with Semitic characteristics. We have exactly the same thing in Egypt for hieroglyphic. Egyptian hieroglyphics was Semitic, if not completely. It is a mystery. Therefore, we have to make a parallel between the ancient Egyptian and Amharic languages. The Sabean language, which is purely a Semitic language, gave birth to Geez in the northern part of the country when Ethiopia accepted Christianity.

Contrary to conventional belief, my own opinion is that all the Horn of Africa and South Arabia are the places of birth for the history of mankind rather than Egypt and the other parts of the world. These are the birthplaces of man, the birthplaces of languages and civilization, though perhaps there was no idea of religion at the beginning.

Would you tell us briefly about your books, the contents and the paradigm you used?

My first publications about Ethiopia were papers about our discoveries in Yeha where we found the ancient Sabean temple at the time of Christianity, where they conducted baptistry. And then my second paper was on Hawlti Melazo of Achibidera [now in Eritrea]. We found at Achibiera a statue in bones, and objects of a king called Gedera and Egyptians bones and vessels which were brought certainly from Egypt. My discoveries in Axum were in fact never published.

I spent two years excavating and I found, indeed, the tombs corresponding to the erected stelae, but since my time as an archeologist was terminated, I couldn't continue with it.

I had also found the stairs going down to the tombs where other archaeologists found plenty of objects.

My first book was entitled "Ethiopia under the Kingdom of Sheba," which was published immediatly after I left Ethiopia and was translated into English in England, in the United States and Canada.

After that I published two books on ancient Ethiopia and medieval Ethiopia with the title "Prester John of Ethiopia." This one was never translated.

What about your latest book?

The one I am writting now?

No, the one before, the one on the life style of Ethiopians.

They are not in books. They are long papers published on " Le Monde" during the Silver Jubilee of His Majesty Emperor Haile-Selassie. Added to this there were others that came out in "annale d'Ethiopie" in French. I was also writing frequently on Ethiopia in French newspapers. I could have written so much during the time. I was then called to manage and run "Ethiopia Today" in French in the Ministry of Information, but I was instructed to focus on the newspaper. In fact that was the happiest time of my life (1960-1962) because, though I couldn't write a book I had the chance to publish on the issues related to pertaining problems of the time and Ethiopian history.

I tried to upgrade the quality of the newspaper I was in charge so that it could be kept in libraries abroad. Until now, I am using some of these papers as a reference. It was a weekly newspaper.

Some historians say that some of the languages and the people of Ethiopia are not indigenous to the land. What is your opinion on this?

This is completely false. All of them are indigenous to Ethiopia. If you take the South and the East, it is the cradle of mankind. To this, one can attest the discovery of Lucy. It was an expansion of humanity, indeed. There has been a belief that it started from Yemen. But it is the reverse. The Sabeans in Yemen and Arabia were the extensions of the Sabeans in Ethiopia. In fact it is completely parallel to their argument. South of Arabia was part of the kingdom of Axum. Ancient Ethiopia was more wider as to incorporate many different people than under the Sabean hegemony. Ethiopia's territory was extended to the Sudan. It was a large country having international significance. Historians understand ancient Ethiopia as only having relations with countries on the Nile basin, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean world. In fact my belief is that Ethiopia had relations with the regions adjacent to the Indian Ocean, the remaining of Africa and up to China.

What was the geographical extent of ancient Ethiopia?

During the Axum time we have inscriptions describing that Ethiopia's territory was even wider than Ethiopia under Emperor Haile-Selassie and Emperor Menilik II. The problem is some people understand Ethiopia only in terms of Ethiopian Christianity limit. Muslim Ethiopia was highly related to Christian Ethiopia. There was a good relation between the Christian Ethiopia and Muslim Ethiopia which was in total called Ethiopia and was under the same rule. The Jews, the Muslims and other non-believers believe that they were Ethiopians. Then where is the limit of Ethiopia? I feel that the limit of Ethiopia was the necessary part of the whole part of the Horn of Africa. The other countries on the border of Ethiopia in the north and south would never have a modern life if they were not connected to the central part of Ethiopia. Once an Ethiopian scholar asked me the same thing. I told him that the geographical limit of Ethiopia included all the coastal areas. But since Emperor Haile-Selassie was interested in the Christian highlands, he couldn't restore the historical Ethiopia with all its aligned coasts. In this regard, the fact that the French Government had promised to restore Djibouti but failed for unknown reasons on the Ethiopian side could be cited as an example. Still there are cultural ties between all of them and will remain so.

The territorial extent of ancient Ethiopia is also mentioned in the Old Testament. Since it is vast to cover, I have dedicated a chapter in my future book to this issue.

Would you please brief us about your upcoming book?

Well, I started it some 30 years ago. My focus is on people of the southern part of Ethiopia who are outside Christianity and who have their own very ancient beliefs and practices which are very intelligent ones. They had concepts of man, of fun and life, of the surrounding nature which are related to my reading of Plato. In this same book I have tried to reinterpret the real mind, knowledge and practices of the people of Ethiopia against those artificially interpreted by foreign scholars. This is because I believe deep in my heart that I was an Ethiopian, having an Ethiopian family, which helped me to deeply understand the real life of Ethiopian to describe it clearly. [/b

[shtoni]

Yom, can you give more info about the Da'amat civilization, please?

Tekle said the team has uncovered claywares, several metallic and stone-made relics as well as a four-pillar building.

He added that by the side of the ancient building was found a throne statue erected for a warrior named Hatsani Daniel.

The script on the statue describes the victory of Hatsani Daniel at Kessela and Wolqait and his refusal to accept the appointment offered to him by the Aksumite king," said Tekle.

too cool.

[Yom]

Nice! 97% (or was it 93%?) of Aksum (not sure if it's the site or civilization) is unexcavated. It's on the verge of major archaelogical breakthroughs like those of Egypt in the 1920s or Greece in the 1890s. Not to mention the Western areas like Shire have sites that have barely been looked at. Aksum wasn't the first Ethiopian kingdom though. Ignoring PWNT (Punt), there was definitely a civilization called D'MT (or Da'amat, or Da'amot, etc.) around 8th c. B.C. - 3rd c. B.C. with very variable dates. There's an inscription of 4 kings naming their Yemeni Sabaean counterparts, but the dates of the Yemeni kings have not yet been certainly established; they vary from c. 500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.


Btw, where did you get this? I'm very interested in new archaelogical findings.

I think only 2-3% of Aksum have been excavated... I hope that there will be a major breakthrough! But the problem is the funding of all these projects! We have more pressing problems than this - sadly...

Anyway, are there any excavations going on in Eritrea (Matara, Qohayito, etc.)?

BTW, what do you think are D'MT and the "medieval" Damoti (?) and the modern Damot area the same place? do you know any interesting writings on this topic?

Yeha is also older than Aksum...

I found this somewhere in the internet... I think it was on ethioindex or something... the source is a Xinhua site... I should have copied the link... sorry...

D'mt and Damoti and modern Damot are three different things. Modern Damot could be from D'mt, but Damoti is different. That's what the Sidama used to be called, which is far from where D'MT was located (I guess Sidama from Damoti?). The SA inscription(s) referring to it apparently use the letter "d." (i.e. "atse" "ts", which is why "Hatsani" in the phrase "Hatsani Daniel" is "Hadani" in Arabic mentions of the king of Aksum), which may or may not have been "s./ts" in proto-Semitic," or "d." like in Arabic. So the Civilization might have been S.'mt, and the name could have been preserved as Tiamo/Tsiyamo, an Aksumite title (I read this from Stuart Munro-Hay, the link is at the end of my post).


There isn't much information about D'mt, unfortunately. Its capital was Yeha, and it was centered around the same area as Aksum was, although I think western Tigray & Wolqayt might have been more important than it was under Aksum.

Here are the only major discussions I've ever seen online.

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail ... 13472.html - A discussion about the dating of the kings (i.e. earlier or later) - doesn't talk much about the civilization and concerns itself somewhat more with the Sabaean dating.

http://users.vnet.net/alight/aksum/mhak2.html - Chapter 4 (first part about pre-Aksumite history) from Aksum: A civilization of late antiquity (which I'm sure Tiqur Anbessa is familiar with). It discusses D'mt some at the beginning.


On an unrelated note, I'm really exited by the statues they've found. It would be nice to put a face to all of our great kings (it's a shame there aren't portraits pr statues of the kings of the Solomonid dynasty like there are for most other civilizations).

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

that's very interesting!

[mesebo]

Nice! 97% (or was it 93%?) of Aksum (not sure if it's the site or civilization) is unexcavated. It's on the verge of major archaelogical breakthroughs like those of Egypt in the 1920s or Greece in the 1890s. Not to mention the Western areas like Shire have sites that have barely been looked at. Aksum wasn't the first Ethiopian kingdom though. Ignoring PWNT (Punt), there was definitely a civilization called D'MT (or Da'amat, or Da'amot, etc.) around 8th c. B.C. - 3rd c. B.C. with very variable dates. There's an inscription of 4 kings naming their Yemeni Sabaean counterparts, but the dates of the Yemeni kings have not yet been certainly established; they vary from c. 500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.


Btw, where did you get this? I'm very interested in new archaelogical findings.

I think only 2-3% of Aksum have been excavated... I hope that there will be a major breakthrough! But the problem is the funding of all these projects! We have more pressing problems than this - sadly...

Anyway, are there any excavations going on in Eritrea (Matara, Qohayito, etc.)?

BTW, what do you think are D'MT and the "medieval" Damoti (?) and the modern Damot area the same place? do you know any interesting writings on this topic?

Yeha is also older than Aksum...

I found this somewhere in the internet... I think it was on ethioindex or something... the source is a Xinhua site... I should have copied the link... sorry...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 417434.htm

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

Nice! 97% (or was it 93%?) of Aksum (not sure if it's the site or civilization) is unexcavated. It's on the verge of major archaelogical breakthroughs like those of Egypt in the 1920s or Greece in the 1890s. Not to mention the Western areas like Shire have sites that have barely been looked at. Aksum wasn't the first Ethiopian kingdom though. Ignoring PWNT (Punt), there was definitely a civilization called D'MT (or Da'amat, or Da'amot, etc.) around 8th c. B.C. - 3rd c. B.C. with very variable dates. There's an inscription of 4 kings naming their Yemeni Sabaean counterparts, but the dates of the Yemeni kings have not yet been certainly established; they vary from c. 500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.


Btw, where did you get this? I'm very interested in new archaelogical findings.

I think only 2-3% of Aksum have been excavated... I hope that there will be a major breakthrough! But the problem is the funding of all these projects! We have more pressing problems than this - sadly...

Anyway, are there any excavations going on in Eritrea (Matara, Qohayito, etc.)?

BTW, what do you think are D'MT and the "medieval" Damoti (?) and the modern Damot area the same place? do you know any interesting writings on this topic?

Yeha is also older than Aksum...

I found this somewhere in the internet... I think it was on ethioindex or something... the source is a Xinhua site... I should have copied the link... sorry...

D'mt and Damoti and modern Damot are three different things. Modern Damot could be from D'mt, but Damoti is different. That's what the Sidama used to be called, which is far from where D'MT was located (I guess Sidama from Damoti?). The SA inscription(s) referring to it apparently use the letter "d." (i.e. "atse" "ts", which is why "Hatsani" in the phrase "Hatsani Daniel" is "Hadani" in Arabic mentions of the king of Aksum), which may or may not have been "s./ts" in proto-Semitic," or "d." like in Arabic. So the Civilization might have been S.'mt, and the name could have been preserved as Tiamo/Tsiyamo, an Aksumite title (I read this from Stuart Munro-Hay, the link is at the end of my post).


There isn't much information about D'mt, unfortunately. Its capital was Yeha, and it was centered around the same area as Aksum was, although I think western Tigray & Wolqayt might have been more important than it was under Aksum.

Here are the only major discussions I've ever seen online.

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail ... 13472.html - A discussion about the dating of the kings (i.e. earlier or later) - doesn't talk much about the civilization and concerns itself somewhat more with the Sabaean dating.

http://users.vnet.net/alight/aksum/mhak2.html - Chapter 4 (first part about pre-Aksumite history) from Aksum: A civilization of late antiquity (which I'm sure Tiqur Anbessa is familiar with). It discusses D'mt some at the beginning.


On an unrelated note, I'm really exited by the statues they've found. It would be nice to put a face to all of our great kings (it's a shame there aren't portraits pr statues of the kings of the Solomonid dynasty like there are for most other civilizations).

Very interesting... I've read Stuart Munro-Hay's book a long time ago... and I didn't remember this detail. But just today I read a part of an article about "Yodit"... and the Arab historian "ibn Haukal" writes that the country of "Habasha" was ruled by a woman for many years. And she had killed "the king of the habasha who was called Hadani"!

What's very interesting about this is, that the King was called Hadani by Ibn Haukal and not "Najashi", as the King was called who helped the Muslims on their first Hijra. Although, I must say, I don't know when that hadith was written. Do you happen to know that?

So either there was a clear distinction between "Hadani" and "Najashi" (aTse and Nigus) even in Arabic, or the words were used interchangeably.
BTW, what's the difference between "aTse" and "Nigus"? Is it like "Majesty" and "King"?

Oh and it would really be great if they excavated more! It would really be great to see statues and maybe paintings of our Kings and our people!

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

Nice! 97% (or was it 93%?) of Aksum (not sure if it's the site or civilization) is unexcavated. It's on the verge of major archaelogical breakthroughs like those of Egypt in the 1920s or Greece in the 1890s. Not to mention the Western areas like Shire have sites that have barely been looked at. Aksum wasn't the first Ethiopian kingdom though. Ignoring PWNT (Punt), there was definitely a civilization called D'MT (or Da'amat, or Da'amot, etc.) around 8th c. B.C. - 3rd c. B.C. with very variable dates. There's an inscription of 4 kings naming their Yemeni Sabaean counterparts, but the dates of the Yemeni kings have not yet been certainly established; they vary from c. 500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.


Btw, where did you get this? I'm very interested in new archaelogical findings.

I think only 2-3% of Aksum have been excavated... I hope that there will be a major breakthrough! But the problem is the funding of all these projects! We have more pressing problems than this - sadly...

Anyway, are there any excavations going on in Eritrea (Matara, Qohayito, etc.)?

BTW, what do you think are D'MT and the "medieval" Damoti (?) and the modern Damot area the same place? do you know any interesting writings on this topic?

Yeha is also older than Aksum...

I found this somewhere in the internet... I think it was on ethioindex or something... the source is a Xinhua site... I should have copied the link... sorry...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 417434.htm

Thanks Mesebo!

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

Some interesting websites:

http://hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/atobrukh/ ... atara.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bacon/313/

[Yom]

Very interesting... I've read Stuart Munro-Hay's book a long time ago... and I didn't remember this detail. But just today I read a part of an article about "Yodit"... and the Arab historian "ibn Haukal" writes that the country of "Habasha" was ruled by a woman for many years. And she had killed "the king of the habasha who was called Hadani"!

Yes, that's the reference I was talking about, actually. He doesn't call her "Yodit," though. They called her "Bani al-Hamwiyah" (from "History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria"). Conti Rossini argued that it was a misreading of "Bani al-Damutah" (i.e. a Sidama Queen, she was definitely from the south), but I'm not so sure. the D->H I can see with some difficulty, but they would have to completely drop the "waw" (double-u) for it to work.

What's very interesting about this is, that the King was called Hadani by Ibn Haukal and not "Najashi", as the King was called who helped the Muslims on their first Hijra. Although, I must say, I don't know when that hadith was written. Do you happen to know that?

So either there was a clear distinction between "Hadani" and "Najashi" (aTse and Nigus) even in Arabic, or the words were used interchangeably.
BTW, what's the difference between "aTse" and "Nigus"? Is it like "Majesty" and "King"?

The reference to Ashama ibn Ajar (or Armah?) uses Nagashi, and that's from the early 7th century (~615 AD). Atse is an emperor, while Nigus is just a king (i.e. the first is a higher level than the other), which is why the title is Niguse Negest, and not just Nigus (like Nigus Menelik, the King of Shewa). I don't know what the distinction was in the past, though. Hatsani Daniel wasn't an Axumite King as far as I know, so it obviously didn't mean emperor back then. Maybe it meant "great warrior?" since the article says he helped the king in battle but refused to accept a position.

Oh and it would really be great if they excavated more! It would really be great to see statues and maybe paintings of our Kings and our people!

I agree wholeheartedly.

[Yom]

Some interesting websites:

http://hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/atobrukh/ ... atara.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bacon/313/

I'm familiar with the first (which is very interesting), but not the second. It's too bad that it's in German. The google translation will surely not be as good.

One interesting thing about D'mt (in the Munro-Hay link) is that they had priest-kings, which is similar to the Yemeni tradition but pretty unheard of in Ethiopia at that time (as far as I'm aware - Lalibela comes much later & aside from Zagwe, all the emperors were Warrior-Kings).

[Tiqur_Anbessa]

Some interesting websites:

http://hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/atobrukh/ ... atara.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bacon/313/

I'm familiar with the first (which is very interesting), but not the second. It's too bad that it's in German. The google translation will surely not be as good.

One interesting thing about D'mt (in the Munro-Hay link) is that they had priest-kings, which is similar to the Yemeni tradition but pretty unheard of in Ethiopia at that time (as far as I'm aware - Lalibela comes much later & aside from Zagwe, all the emperors were Warrior-Kings).

But the question is... what's known about the Ethiopia of that time? I guess that there must be other sources than just the titles on some inscription that we know today that a mkrb or mukarrib is a priest-king. So I don't know if we know enough to say what exactly the Negus / Hatsani / MLK was...

About the second website... I guess I could help you with the German stuff..

BTW, what do you think about the "Out of Africa" theory concerning the semitic languages / cultures etc.? And do you think that there was an immigration of Southern Arabians that conquered and founded the Aksumit and Pre-Aksumite civilisations?

[Yom]

Some interesting websites:

http://hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/atobrukh/ ... atara.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bacon/313/

I'm familiar with the first (which is very interesting), but not the second. It's too bad that it's in German. The google translation will surely not be as good.

One interesting thing about D'mt (in the Munro-Hay link) is that they had priest-kings, which is similar to the Yemeni tradition but pretty unheard of in Ethiopia at that time (as far as I'm aware - Lalibela comes much later & aside from Zagwe, all the emperors were Warrior-Kings).

But the question is... what's known about the Ethiopia of that time? I guess that there must be other sources than just the titles on some inscription that we know today that a mkrb or mukarrib is a priest-king. So I don't know if we know enough to say what exactly the Negus / Hatsani / MLK was...

About the second website... I guess I could help you with the German stuff..

BTW, what do you think about the "Out of Africa" theory concerning the semitic languages / cultures etc.? And do you think that there was an immigration of Southern Arabians that conquered and founded the Aksumit and Pre-Aksumite civilisations?

I knew we would get to the question soon. I think Semitic languages probably (but not assuredly) originated in N/NW Ethiopia and then spread to Yemen and the rest of Arabia and the Levant, but I'm not a scholar myself, so this is all speculation based on what I know (which I guess all analyses are).

As for the civilzation aspect, I'm certain Aksum was indigenous and that Ethiopians are indigenous as well (i.e. we don't look the way we do b/c of mixing with Arabs). If you look in Donald Levine's "Greater Ethiopia," you'll see that there are skeletons with Ethiopian features as far back as 9,000 B.C. (before any Sabaean migration would have occurred), and that Grover Hudson has shown that Semitic languages existed at least as early as 2000 B.C. in Ethiopia (again earlier than Sabaean migrations). Stuart Munro-Hays book also argues against a huge Sabaean migration. While it certainly existed, it was very localized, existing in only a few towns, and the community existed for only a few decades or a century before being absorbed into the local population or maybe leaving back. It certainly wasn't an invasion, and it was probably not even a migration but just some sort of symbiosis treaty between the Aksumites (or D'mt?) and the Sabaeans.

Here's the E-Book (from Google books, not complete book) by Levine:

Skull type:
First

Semitic languages:
First result - pages 27-8 - Need a gmail account to see

Btw, I think the link I posted earlier (or on Semitic languages?) was broken. Here's the correct link to the Pre-Aksumite section: http://users.vnet.net/alight/aksum/mhak2.html#c4.

Inscriptions found at some of these sites include the names of persons bearing the traditional South Arabian title of mukarrib, apparently indicating a ruler with something of a priest-king status, not otherwise known in Ethiopia (Caquot and Drewes 1955). Others have the title of king, mlkn (Schneider 1961; 1973). Evidently the pre-Aksumite Sabaean-influenced cultural province did not consist merely of a few briefly-occupied staging posts, but was a wide-spread and well-established phenomenon. Until relatively recently South Arabian artefacts found in Ethiopia were interpreted as the material signs left behind by a superior colonial occupation force, with political supremacy over the indigenes — an interpretation still maintained by Michels (1988). But further study has now suggested that very likely, by the time the inscriptions were produced, the majority of the material in fact represented the civilisation of the Ethiopians themselves. Nevertheless, a certain amount of contact with South Arabia is very apparent, and had resulted in the adoption of a number of cultural traits (Schneider 1973; 1976).

Evidently the arrival of Sabaean influences does not represent the beginning of Ethiopian civilisation. For a long time different peoples had been interacting through population movements, warfare, trade and intermarriage in the Ethiopian region, resulting in a predominance of peoples speaking languages of the Afro-Asiatic family. The main branches represented were the Cushitic and the Semitic. Semiticized Agaw peoples are thought to have migrated from south-eastern Eritrea possibly as early as 2000BC, bringing their `proto-Ethiopic' language, ancestor of Ge`ez and the other Ethiopian Semitic languages, with them; and these and other groups had already developed specific cultural and linguistic identities by the time any Sabaean influences arrived. Features such as dressed stone building, writing and iron-working may have been introduced by Sabaeans, but words for `plough' and other agricultural vocabulary are apparently of Agaw origin in Ethiopian Semitic languages, indicating that the techniques of food-production were not one of the Arabian imports. Clark (1988) even suggests that wheat, barley, and the plough may have been introduced from Egypt via Punt. Some of the graffiti found in eastern Eritrea include names apparently neither South Arabian nor Ethiopian, perhaps reflecting the continued existence of some older ethnic groups in the same cultural matrix. Various stone-age sites and rock-paintings attest to these early Ethiopians in Eritrea and Tigray. At Matara and Yeha, for example, archaeologists have distinguished phases represented by pottery types which seem to owe nothing to South Arabia, but do have some Sudanese affinities. The Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Fattovich, who has particularly interested himself in this study, has suggested that the pre-Aksumite culture might owe something to Nubia, specifically to C— group/Kerma influences, and later on to Meroë/Alodia (Fattovich 1977, 1978, 1989). Worsening ecological conditions in the savanna/Sahel belt might have induced certain peoples to move from plains and lowlands up to the plateau in the second half of the second millenium BC (Clark 1976), bringing with them certain cultural traditions. Evidence for early trade activity to regions across the Red Sea from eastern Sudan and Ethiopia at about this time has been noted by Zarins (1988), with reference to the obsidian trade. Extremely interesting results have lately come from work in the Gash Delta on the Ethiopo-Sudanese borderland, indicating the existence of a complex society there in the late 3rd-early 2nd millenium BC (Fattovich 1989: 21); possibly the location of the land of Punt there reinforces this suggestion (Kitchen 1971; Fattovich 1988: 2, 7). It seems that the new discoveries are of major importance to an understanding of the dynamics of state formation in the Ethiopian highlands. The latest work suggests that in the late second and early first millenium BC the eastern part of the Tigray plateau was included in a widespread cultural complex on both the African and the Arabian Tihama coasts of the Red Sea, in contact with the lowlands of the Sudan and perhaps with the Nile Valley, while the western part was in contact with peoples of the Gash Delta. These two regions of the plateau later became united culturally and politically under the D`MT monarchy (Fattovich 1989: 34-5). [url][/url]

Edit: I fixed the link.