"Where the south declines towards the setting sun lies the country called Ethiopia, the last inhabited land in that direction. There gold is obtained in great plenty, huge elephants abound, with wild trees of all sorts, and ebony; and the men are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere else. The Ethiopians were clothed in the skins of leopards and lions, and had long bows made of the stem of the palm-leaf, not less than four cubits in length. On these they laid short arrows made of reed, and armed at the tip, not with iron, but with a piece of stone, sharpened to a point, of the kind used in engraving seals. They carried likewise spears, the head of which was the sharpened horn of an antelope; and in addition they had knotted clubs. When they went into battle they painted their bodies, half with chalk, and half with vermilion. . ."

- Herodotus, The History, trans. George Rawlinson (New York: Dutton & Co., 1862)

"The Dodonaeans called the women doves because they were foreigners, and seemed to them to make a noise like birds. After a while the dove spoke with a human voice, because the woman, whose foreign talk had previously sounded to them like the chattering of a bird, acquired the power of speaking what they could understand. For how can it be conceived possible that a dove should really speak with the voice of a man? Lastly, by calling the dove black the Dodonaeans indicated that the woman was an Egyptian. And certainly the character of the oracles at Thebes and Dodona is very similar. Besides this form of divination, the Greeks learnt also divination by means of victims from the Egyptians."

- Herodotus: The Histories, c 430 BCE, Book 2, 57

 

"2.Now the Ethiopians, as historians relate, were the first of all men and the proofs of this statement, they say, are manifest. For that they did not come into their land as immigrants from abroad but were natives of it and so justly bear the name of "autochthones" is, they maintain, conceded by practically all men; furthermore, that those who dwell beneath the noon-day sun were, in all likelihood, the first to be generated by the earth, is clear to all; since, inasmuch as it was the warmth of the sun which, at the generation of the universe, dried up the earth when it was still wet and impregnated it with life, it is reasonable to suppose that the region which was nearest the sun was the first to bring forth living creatures. And they say that they were the first to be taught to honour the gods and to hold sacrifices and processions and festivals and the other rites by which men honour the deity; and that in consequence their piety has been published abroad among all men, and it is generally held that the sacrifices practised among the Ethiopians are those which are the most pleasing to heaven. As witness to this they call upon the poet who is perhaps the oldest and certainly the most venerated among the Greeks; for in the Iliad he represents both Zeus and the rest of the gods with him as absent on a visit to Ethiopia to share in the sacrifices and the banquet which were given annually by the Ethiopians for all the gods together:

For Zeus had yesterday to Ocean's bounds
Set forth to feast with Ethiop's faultless men,
And he was followed there by all the gods.

And they state that, by reason of their piety towards the deity, they manifestly enjoy the favour of the gods, inasmuch as they have never experienced the rule of an invader from abroad; for from all time they have enjoyed a state of freedom and of peace one with another, and although many and powerful rulers have made war upon them, not one of these has succeeded in his undertaking.

3.Cambyses, for instance, they say, who made war upon them with a great force, both lost all his army and was himself exposed to the greatest peril; Semiramis also, who through the magnitude of her undertakings and achievements has become renowned, after advancing a short distance into Ethiopia gave up her campaign against the whole nation; and Heracles and Dionysus, although they visited all the inhabited earth, failed to subdue the Ethiopians alone who dwell above Egypt, both because of the piety of these men and because of the insurmountable difficulties involved in the attempt.

They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony. For, speaking generally, what is now Egypt, they maintain, was not land but sea when in the beginning the universe was being formed; afterwards, however, as the Nile during the times of its inundation carried down the mud from Ethiopia, land was gradually built up from the deposit. Also the statement that all the land of the Egyptians is alluvial silt deposited by the river receives the clearest proof, in their opinion, from what takes place at the outlets of the Nile; for as each year new mud is continually gathered together at the mouths of the river, the sea is observed being thrust back by the deposited silt and the land receiving the increase. And the larger part of the customs of the Egyptians are, they hold, Ethiopian, the colonists still preserving their ancient manners. For instance, the belief that their kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to their burials, and many other matters of a similar nature are Ethiopian practices, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their letters are Ethiopian; for of the two kinds of writing which the Egyptians have, that which is known as "popular" (demotic) is learned by everyone, while that which is called "sacred" is understood only by the priests of the Egyptians, who learn it from their fathers as one of the things which are not divulged, but among the Ethiopians everyone uses these forms of letters. Furthermore, the orders of the priests, they maintain, have much the same position among both peoples; for all are clean who are engaged in the service of the gods, keeping themselves shaven, like the Ethiopian priests, and having the same dress and form of staff, which is shaped like a plough and is carried by their kings, who wear high felt hats which end in a knob at the top and are circled by the serpents which they call asps; and this symbol appears to carry the thought that it will be the lot of those who shall dare to attack the king to encounter death-carrying stings. Many other things are also told by them concerning their own antiquity and the colony which they sent out that became the Egyptians, but about this there is no special need of our writing anything.

4.We must now speak about the Ethiopian writing which is called hieroglyphic among the Egyptians, in order that we may omit nothing in our discussion of their antiquities. Now it is found that the forms of their letters take the shape of animals of every kind, and of the members of the human body, and of implements and especially carpenters' tools; for their writing does not express the intended concept by means of syllables joined one to another, but by means of the significance of the objects which have been copied and by its figurative meaning which has been impressed upon the memory by practice. For instance, they draw the picture of a hawk, a crocodile, a snake, and of the members of the human body\u2014an eye, a hand, a face, and the like. Now the hawk signifies to them everything which happens swiftly, since this animal is practically the swiftest of winged creatures. And the concept portrayed is then transferred, by the appropriate metaphorical transfer, to all swift things and to everything to which swiftness is appropriate, very much as if they had been named. And the crocodile is a symbol of all that is evil, and the eye is the warder of justice and the guardian of the entire body. And as for the members of the body, the right hand with fingers extended signifies a procuring of livelihood, and the left with the fingers closed, a keeping and guarding of property. The same way of reasoning applies also to the remaining characters, which represent parts of the body and implements and all other things; for by paying close attention to the significance which is inherent in each object and by training their minds through drill and exercise of the memory over a long period, they read from habit everything which has been written.

5.As for the customs of the Ethiopians, not a few of them are thought to differ greatly from those of the rest of mankind, this being especially true of those which concern the selection of their kings. The priests, for instance, first choose out the noblest men from their own number, and whichever one from this group the god may select, as he is borne about in a procession in accordance with a certain practice of theirs, him the multitude take for their king; and straightway it both worships and honours him like a god, believing that the sovereignty has been entrusted to him by Divine Providence. And the king who has been thus chosen both follows a regimen which has been fixed in accordance with the laws and performs all his other deeds in accordance with the ancestral custom, according neither favour nor punishment to anyone contrary to the usage which has been approved among them from the beginning. It is also a custom of theirs that the king shall put no one of his subjects to death, not even if a man shall have been condemned to death and is considered deserving of punishment, but that he shall send to the transgressor one of his attendants bearing a token of death; and the guilty person, on seeing the warning, immediately retires to his home and removes himself from life. Moreover, for a man to flee from his own into a neighbouring country and thus by moving away from his native land to pay the penalty of his transgression, as is the custom among the Greeks, is permissible under no circumstances. Consequently, they say, when a man to whom the token of death had been sent by the king once undertook to flee from Ethiopia, and his mother, on learning of this, bound his neck about with her girdle, he dared not so much as raise his hands against her in any way but submitted to be strangled until he died, that he might not leave a greater disgrace to his kinsmen."

- Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, Books II.35 - IV.58, Translated by C.H. Oldfather, Harvard University Press, 2000

 

 

6: However, Sesostris, the Egyptian, he adds, and Tearco [Tiharka] the Aethiopian advanced as far as Europe; and Nabocodrosor, who enjoyed greater repute among the Chaldaeans than Heracles, led an army even as far as the Pillars. Thus far, he says, also Tearco went; and Sesostris also led his army from Iberia to Thrace and the Pontus; and Idanthyrsus the Scythian overran Asia as far as Egypt; but no one of these touched India, and Semiramis too died before the attempt; and, although the Persians summoned the Hydraces as mercenary troops from India, the latter did not make an expedition to Persia, but only came near it when Cyrus was marching against the Massagetae.

13. The whole of India is traversed by rivers. . . . As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in colour, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians.

21. To this statement Aristobulus and his followers, who assert that the plains are not watered by rain, would not agree. But Onesicritus believes that rain-water is the cause of the distinctive differences in the animals; and he adduces as evidence that the colour of foreign cattle which drink it is changed to that of the native animals. Now in this he is correct; but no longer so when he lays the black complexion and woolly hair of the Aethiopians on merely the waters and censures

- The Geography of Strabo - Book XV

 

Negus Sahela Selassie of Shoa (1813-1847), the visionary king.

Details on the origins of all the peoples that make up the population of highland Ethiopia were still matters for research and debate in the early 1990s. Anthropologists believe that East Africa's Great Rift Valley is the site of humankind's origins. (The valley traverses Ethiopia from southwest to northeast.) In 1974 archaeologists excavating sites in the Awash River valley discovered 3.5-million-year- old fossil skeletons, which they named Australopithecus afarensis. These earliest known hominids stood upright, lived in groups, and had adapted to living in open areas rather than in forests.

Coming forward to the late Stone Age, recent research in historical linguistics--and increasingly in archaeology as well--has begun to clarify the broad outlines of the prehistoric populations of present-day Ethiopia. These populations spoke languages that belong to the Afro-Asiatic super-language family, a group of related languages that includes Omotic, Cushitic, and Semitic, all of which are found in Ethiopia today. Linguists postulate that the original home of the Afro-Asiatic cluster of languages was somewhere in northeastern Africa, possibly in the area between the Nile River and the Red Sea in modern Sudan. From here the major languages of the family gradually dispersed at different times and in different directions--these languages being ancestral to those spoken today in northern and northeastern Africa and far southwestern Asia.

The first language to separate seems to have been Omotic, at a date sometime after 13,000 B.C. Omotic speakers moved southward into the central and southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, followed at some subsequent time by Cushitic speakers, who settled in territories in the northern Horn of Africa, including the northern highlands of Ethiopia. The last language to separate was Semitic, which split from Berber and ancient Egyptian, two other Afro-Asiatic languages, and migrated eastward into far southwestern Asia.

By about 7000 B.C. at the latest, linguistic evidence indicates that both Cushitic speakers and Omotic speakers were present in Ethiopia. Linguistic diversification within each group thereafter gave rise to a large number of new languages. In the case of Cushitic, these include Agew in the central and northern highlands and, in regions to the east and southeast, Saho, Afar, Somali, Sidamo, and Oromo, all spoken by peoples who would play major roles in the subsequent history of the region. Omotic also spawned a large number of languages, Welamo (often called Wolayta) and Gemu-Gofa being among the most widely spoken of them, but Omotic speakers would remain outside the main zone of ethnic interaction in Ethiopia until the late nineteenth century.

Both Cushitic- and Omotic-speaking peoples collected wild grasses and other plants for thousands of years before they eventually domesticated those they most preferred. According to linguistic and limited archaeological analyses, plough agriculture based on grain cultivation was established in the drier, grassier parts of the northern highlands by at least several millennia before the Christian era. Indigenous grasses such as teff and eleusine were the initial domesticates; considerably later, barley and wheat were introduced from Southwest Asia. The corresponding domesticate in the better watered and heavily forested southern highlands was ensete, a root crop known locally as false banana. All of these early peoples also kept domesticated animals, including cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys. Thus, from the late prehistoric period, agricultural patterns of livelihood were established that were to be characteristic of the region through modern times. It was the descendants of these peoples and cultures of the Ethiopian region who at various times and places interacted with successive waves of migrants from across the Red Sea. This interaction began well before the modern era and has continued through contemporary times.

During the first millennium B.C. and possibly even earlier, various Semitic-speaking groups from Southwest Arabia began to cross the Red Sea and settle along the coast and in the nearby highlands. These migrants brought with them their Semitic speech (Sabaean and perhaps others) and script (Old Epigraphic South Arabic) and monumental stone architecture. A fusion of the newcomers with the indigenous inhabitants produced a culture known as pre-Aksumite. The factors that motivated this settlement in the area are not known, but to judge from subsequent history, commercial activity must have figured strongly. [see "Kebra Negast"] The port city of Adulis, near modern-day Mitsiwa, was a major regional entrepôt and probably the main gateway to the interior for new arrivals from Southwest Arabia. Archaeological evidence indicates that by the beginning of the Christian era this pre-Aksumite culture had developed western and eastern regional variants. The former, which included the region of Aksum, was probably the polity or series of polities that became the Aksumite state.

- United States Library of Congress

 

 

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 Ethiopians to describe it clearly.