Habesha peoples
| File:Habeshabox002.jpg | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Ethiopia: 29,300,000[1] Eritrea: 1,900[1] | |
| Languages | |
| Ge'ez, Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, Hebrew, Gurage and all other Semitic languages in Ethiopia | |
| Religion | |
| Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity; Muslim and P'ent'ay minorities exist |
The term Habesha (Ge'ez ሐበሻ ḥabaśā, Amh. hābešā, Tgn., ḥābešā Arabic. Al Habesh; sometimes Amh. Abesha, አበሻ `ābešā) refers to the Semitic-speaking peoples of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is usually used to refer to just the two politically dominant Semitic-speaking Amhara and Tigray-Tigrinya ethnic groups of Ethiopia and Eritrea, although usually to the christians. The Amhara and Tigray tribes combined make up about 36% of Ethiopia's population (ca. 23 million Amhara, 4.5 million Tigray) while Tigrinyas make up about half of Eritrea's population (ca. 2.25 of 4.5 million).
Etymology
The term "Habesha" is thought by some [2] to be of Arabic descent (who used the word Habash, also the name of an Ottoman province comprising parts of modern-day Eritrea), because the English name Abyssinia comes from the Arabic form.[3] South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser claimed that the hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Punt, probably located around southern Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, and the Sudanese border) used by Queen Hatshepsut ca. 1460 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected, a claim repeated by others; however, this etymology is not at all certain, given the large time difference in the usage of the terms.[2]
The modern term derives from the vocalized Ge'ez ሐበሣ (ḥabaśā), first written unvocalized as ሐበሠ (ḥbśt, but probably pronounced ḥbst) or the "pseudo-Sabaic ḥbštm".[2] The earliest known use of the term dates to the second or third century AD South Arabian inscription, recounting to the defeat of the Aksumite king (nəgus) GDRT (vocalized Gadarat or Gedara) of Aksum and HBSHT.[4] The term "Habashat" seems to refer to a group of peoples, however, rather than a specific tribe, as evidenced by an inscription by the Himyarite king Shamir Yuhahmid, an ally of Aksum under `DBH in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD:
Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and Himyar had called in the help of the clans of Habashat for war against the kings of Saba; but Ilmuqah granted . . . the submission of Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and the clans of Habashat.[5]
History
Historically, the province of Tigray and central Eritrea was where Ethiopian and Eritrean (Habesha) civilization had its origins. The first kingdom to arise was that of D`mt in the 8th century BC. The Aksumite Kingdom, one of the powerful civilizations of the ancient world, was centered there from at least 400BC to the 10th century AD. Spreading far beyond Tigray and Eritrea, it molded the earliest culture of Ethiopia and left many historical treasures: towering finely carved stelae, the remains of extensive palaces, and the ancient places of worship still vibrant with culture and pageantry.
Ancient Period
Throughout history, indigenous peoples had been interacting through population movement, warfare, trade, and intermarriage in the Horn of Africa region, resulting in a predominance of peoples speaking languages of the Afro-Asiatic family. The main branches represented were the Cushitic and the Semitic. (Munro-Hay 62) As early as the third millennium BC, the pre-Aksumites had begun trading along the Red Sea. They mainly traded with Egypt. Earlier trade expeditions were taken by foot along the Nile Valley. The Egyptians main object in the trade from the Ethiopian region (which they may have called Punt) was to acquire myrrh, which the northern Horn of Africa region had much of.
The foundation of the Kingdom of Aksum’s is suggested to be as early as 300 BC. Very little is known of the time period between the mid-first millennium BC to the beginning of Aksum’s flourish, thought to be around the first century AD. There is little in common between the Aksumites and the earlier pre-Aksumite civilizations (Munro-Hay 1991, 4).
The Aksumite kingdom was located in the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray and Eritrea and it Aksum remained the capital until the seventh century AD. Aksum owes its prosperity to its location. The Blue Nile basin and the Afar depression are both within a close proximity of Aksum. The former is rich in gold and the latter of salt: both materials having a highly important use to the Aksumites. Aksum was also within an accessible distance to the port of Adulis, on the coast of the Red Sea, hence maintaining trade relations with other nations, such as Egypt, India, and Arabia. Aksum’s ‘fertile’ and ‘well-watered’ location produced enough food for its population as well as its exotic animals, such as elephants and rhinoceros (Pankhurst 1998, 22-3).
From its capital on the Tigray Plateau, Aksum was in command of the trade of ivory with Sudan. It also dominated the trade route leading south and the port of Adulis on the Gulf of Zola. Its success depended on resourceful techniques, production of coins, steady migrations of Greco-Roman merchants and ships landing on the port of Adulis. In exchange for Aksum’s goods, traders bid many kinds of cloth, jewelry, metals and steel for weapons.
At its peak, Aksum controlled territories as far as southern Egypt, east to the Gulf of Aden, south to the Omo River, and west to the Nubian Kingdom of Meroe. The South Arabian kingdom of the Himyarites and also a portion of Western Saudi Arabia was also under the power of Aksum. At this point in time the majority of the citizens of Aksum were ancestors of the present day Amhara and Tigray and the Biher-Tigrigna (also Tigrinya speakers) of Eritrea.
Medieval Period
Some time in the late middle ages, the Amharic and Tigrinya languages began to be differentiated, and Ge'ez eventually became extinct (except in churches). Amhara warlords often competed for dominance of the realm with Tigrayan warlords. While many branches of the Imperial dynasty were from the Amharic speaking area, a substantial amount were from Tigray. The Amharas seemed to gain the upper hand with the accession of the so-called Gondar line of the Imperial dynasty in the beginning of the 17th century. However, it soon lapsed into the semi-anarchic era of Zemene Mesafint ("Era of the Princes"), in which rivalling warlords fought for power and the Yejju Oromo inderases (or regents) had effective control, while emperors were just as figureheads. The Tigrayans only made a brief return to the throne in the person of Yohannes IV, whose death in 1889 allowed the base to return to the Amharic speaking province of Shewa.
Some consider the Amhara to have been Ethiopia's ruling elite for centuries, represented by the line of Emperors ending in Haile Selassie. Many commentators, including Marcos Lemma, however, dispute the accuracy of such a statement, arguing that other ethnic groups have always been active in the country's politics. One possible source of confusion for this stems from the mislabeling of all Amharic-speakers as "Amhara", and the fact that many people from other ethnic groups have Amharic names. Another is the fact that most Ethiopians can trace their ancestry to multiple ethnic groups. In fact, the last Emperor, Haile Selassie I, often counted himself a member of the Gurage tribe on account of his ancestry, and his Empress, Itege Menen Asfaw of Ambassel, was in large part of Oromo descent. The expanded use of Amharic language results mostly from its being the language of the court, and was gradually adopted out of usefulness by many unrelated groups, who then became known as "Amhara" no matter what their ethnic origin.
Modern Period
The Eritreans mounted a revolt against the status of Eritrea as a province in 1961, which culminated in the defeat of the Derg in 1991 and independence by referendum in 1993. During the time of the Derg in the 1970s, various movements arose in Tigray and throughout Ethiopia against its persecution. One of these, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, formed in the mid 1970s, grew disgruntled with the Derg and advocated the secession of Tigray. By 1991, however, when the group defeated the Derg, its views had changed, and it became the helm of the EPRDF, created under its guidance (and dominated by the TPLF), the current dominant party. As a result a new nation was born Eritrea, separating itself from Ethiopia. However, despite being separated by a border, the Tigrinya people in Eritrea are the same ethnically and linguistically as the Tigrayans in Ethiopia. Some Ethiopians complain that the new TPLF-controlled government favors Tigray at the expense of other regions.
Origins
The Imperial family of Ethiopia (which is in exile today) claims its origin directly from the offspring of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Ge`ez: ንግሥተ ሣብአ nigiśta Śab'a , who is named Makeda (Ge`ez: ማክዳ) in the Ethiopian account. The Ethiopian epic 'Glory of Kings', the Kebra Negast, is supposed to record the history of Makeda and her descendants. King Solomon is said in this account to have seduced the Queen, and sired a son by her, who would eventually become Menelik I, the first Emperor of Ethiopia. The tradition that the biblical Queen of Sheba was a ruler of Ethiopia who visited King Solomon in Jerusalem in ancient Israel is supported by the 1st century ad Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who identified Solomon’s visitor as a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.
It was long held that the ancient communities that evolved into the modern Ethiopian state were formed by a migration across the Red Sea of Semitic-speaking South Arabians around 1000 BC who intermarried with local non-Semitic-speaking peoples. Indeed, the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum ruled much of Southern Arabia including Yemen until the rise of Islam in the 7th century, and both the indigenous languages of Southern Arabia and the Amharic and Tigrinya languages of Ethiopia are South Semitic languages. There is also evidence of ancient Southern Arabian communities in modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea in certain localities, attested by some archaeological artifacts and ancient Sabaean inscriptions in the old South Arabian alphabet. However, there is archeological evidence of a region in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea called Saba, now referred to as Ethiopian Saba to avoid confusion.[citation needed]
Sabean theory
The state of Sheba mentioned in the Old Testament is sometimes believed to have been in Ethiopia, but more often is placed in Yemen. Others believe it covered parts of both the Yemen and present-day Ethiopia. According to the Ethiopian legend, best represented in the Kebra Negest, the Queen of Sheba was tricked by King Solomon into sleeping with him, resulting in a child, named Ebn Melek (later Emperor Menelik I. When he was of age, Menelik returned to Israel to see his father, who sent with him the son of Zadok to accompany him with a replica of the Ark of the Covenant (Ethiosemitic: tabot). On his return with some of the Israelite priests, however, he found that Zadok's son had stolen the real Ark of the Covenant. Some believe the Ark is still being preserved today at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopia.
The Sabean theory which has existed for many centuries, even within the Ethiopian monarchy states that at an early epoch South Arabian tribes emigrated to the opposite African coast, where Sabaean trade colonies had probably existed for a long time. As early as the first century A.D. we find in the north of the Abyssinian mountain — lands the Semitic realm of Aksum. The conquerors brought with them South Arabian letters and language, which in their new home gradually attained an individual character. From this language, the Ge'ez, wrongly called Ethiopian, two daughter-languages are descended, Tigré and Tigriña. The confusion of this kingdom with Ethiopia probably owes its origin to the fact that the Semite emigrants adopted this name from the Graeco-Egyptian sailors, at a time when the Kingdom of Meroë was still in some repute. And so they called their kingdom Yteyopeya. From Aksum as a base they gradually extended their dominion over all Abyssinia, the northern population of which today shows a purer Semitic type, while the southern is strongly mixed with Hamitic elements. At an early date the south must have been settled by Semites, who spoke a language related to Ge'ez, which was afterwards to a great extent influenced by the languages of the native population, particularly by the Agau dialects. A descendant of this language is the Amharic, the present language of intercourse in Abyssinia itself and far beyond its boundaries.
By mid first millennium BC, clear evidence of close contact between the Ethiopians and the South Arabians has been found. The immigrants, though probably not entirely, mostly came from a region of western Yemen associated with Sabean culture. It has become a rather difficult task in assessing why the Arabians originally left their homes to an entirely new culture, which had very little connection to their own. Perhaps, conditions were extremely harsh in their homelands such that the only means of escape is a direct route across the Red Sea into Eritrea. Over time, as their social and perhaps economical connections in the Ethiopian region became vast, it was safe to assume that migrating from the harsh desert would only be in their best interest. When the Sabeans crossed the Red Sea, they founded the tribes of the Beja, Agaw, and Sidama, to name a few of the major groups (Tamrat 5-6). The south Arabians brought with them a writing system, from which Ge’ez takes its origin.
The Sabean theory also states that the Ge'ez language originated from Sabean migrants that brought the South Arabian language and modified it.
Indigenous Theory
There is few archaeological evidence to verify the story of the Queen of Sheba — and the longstanding presumption that Sabaean migrants had played a direct role in Ethiopian civilization has recently come under attack.[6] Sabaean influence is speculated by more recent authors to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of D`mt or some proto-Aksumite state.[7]
On the other hand, the Indigenous Theory, which is becoming more common today states that although the Abyssinian civilization was heavily influenced by the Sabeans, they only influenced culturally, while linguistically Ethiopia and Saba influenced one another.
Later, in the reign of King Ezana (ca. early 4th c. AD, the term is listed as one of the nine regions under his domain, translated in the Greek version of his inscription as Αἰθιοπία, the first known use of this term to specifically describe the region known today as Ethiopia (and not Kush or the entire black African and Indian region).[2] The 6th c. author Stephanus of Byzantium later used the term "Αβασηγοί" (i.e. Abasēnoi) in reference to:
an Arabian people living next to the Sabaeans together with the Ḥaḍramites. The region of the Abasēnoi produce[d] myrrh, incense and cotton and they cultivate[d] a plant qhich yields a purple dye (probably wars, i.e. Fleminga Grahamiana). It lies on a route which leads from Zabīd on the coastal plain to the Ḥimyarite capital Ẓafār.[2]
The Abasēnoi spoken of by Stephanus was located by Hermann von Wissman as a region in the Jabal Hubaysh (perhaps related in etymology with the ḥbš root). Other places names in Yemen contain the ḥbš root, such as the Jabal Habashi (Ḥabaši), whose residents are still called al-Ahbuš (pl. of Ḥabaš). [8] Traditional scholarship has assumed that the Habashat were a tribe from modern-day Yemen that migrated to Ethiopia. However, the Sabaic inscriptions only use the term ḥbšt to the refer to the Kingdom of Aksum and its inhabitants, especially during the 3rd c., when the ḥbšt (Aksumites) were often at war with the Sabaeans and Himyraites.[8] The location of the Abasēnoi in Yemen may perhaps be explained by remnant Aksumite populations from the 520s conquest by King Kaleb; King Ezana's claims to Sahlen (Saba) and Dhu-Raydan (Himyar) during a time when such control was unlikely may indicate an Aksumite presence or coastal foothold.[9]
Genetics
For the past centuries, in recorded texts and cultures throughout the middle east and Africa, the Habesha have been regarded as a people with an admixture both African and Middle Eastern features both ethnically and culturally.
Most Y-chromosome haplotypes in Ethiopia are of E3b or one of its derivatives. It is extant in its highest level among the Oromo, where it represents 79.5% of the haplotypes, and it is also found at 45.8% among the Amhara. The haplogroup is thought to have originated in Ethiopia or elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, and it mostly characterized by E3b1 (M78). The haplogroup J is also found in minimal to 0 numbers in the Amhara and Tigray people. The haplogroup is characterised by the mutation 12f2a, and is thought to have originated and spread from the sub-Saharan Africa-linked Natufian culture.[10]
The Foundation Stone states that "Another lineage common in the ancestral Arab-Jewish gene pool is found among today's Ethiopians and may have reached the Middle East by men who traveled up the Nile. Though Ethiopians are generally considered black in pigmentation and hair type, their Caucasoid (Mediterranean) accretions are evident in their cranial and facial morphology, which distinguishes them from pure West African Negroids."
"...an ancient tongue spoken in this region fissured into the modern languages of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) family. This family includes the Cushitic and Semitic languages now spoken in Ethiopia.... During the 2nd millennium BC...a people speaking Ge'ez (a Semitic language) came to dominate the rich northern highlands of Tigray. There, in the 7th century BC, they established the kingdom of Da'amat.... Aksum's culture comprised Ge'ez, written in a modified South Arabian alphabet, sculpture and architecture based on South Arabian prototypes, and an amalgam of local and Middle Eastern deities. Thus, evidence exists of a close cultural exchange between Aksum and the Arabian peninsula...." ("History of Ethiopia," Encyclopaedia Britannica)
"The role populations in eastern Africa's prehistory has always been debated. Traditionally, they are viewed as late migrants into the area. But as there is better palaeoanthropological and linguistic documentation for the earlier presence of these populations than for any other group in eastern Africa, it is far more likely that they are indigenous eastern Africans. I have argued elsewhere (Schepartz 1985) that these prehistoric linear populations show resemblances to both Upper Pleistocene eastern African fossils and present-day, groups in eastern Africa, with differences stemming from changes in overall robusticity of the dentition and skeleton. This suggests a longstanding tradition of linear populations in eastern Africa, contributing to the indigenous development of cultural and biological diversity from the Pleistocene up to the present."
"We have analyzed and compared mitochondrial DNA variation of populations from the Near East and Africa and found a very high frequency of African lineages present in the Yemen Hadramawt: more than a third were of clear sub-Saharan origin. Other Arab populations carried ~10% lineages of sub-Saharan origin, whereas non-Arab Near Eastern populations, by contrast, carried few or no such lineage."
(Martin Richards, Chiara Rengo, Fulvio Cruciani, Fiona Gratrix, James F. Wilson, Rosaria Scozzari, Vincent Macaulay, and Antonio Torroni)
"The occurrence of E*5 212 and E*5 204 alleles in two populations of the Mediterranean basin (Turkey and Italy) but not in West Africans can be explained by taking into account that the Ethiopian gene pool was estimated to be >40% of Caucasoid derivation (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). In addition, more recent phylogenetic analysis based on classical protein polymorphism (Tartaglia et al. 1996) and Y-chromosome sequence variation (Underhill et al. 2000) showed that Ethiopians appear to be distinct from Africans and more closely associated with populations of the Mediterranean basin."
(Scacchi et al., Hum Biol, 2003)
"Non sub-Saharan African samples are all grouped together...with...the Ethiopian Amharic sample [on the Y-chromosome]. Ethiopians are not statistically differentiated from the Egyptian and Tunisian samples, in agreement with their linguistic affiliation with the Afro-Asiatic family."
(Poloni et al., Am J Hum Genet, 1997)
"Notably, 62% of the Ethiopians fall in the first cluster, which encompasses the majority of the Jews, Norwegians and Armenians, indicating that placement of these individuals in a 'Black' cluster would be an inaccurate reflection of the genetic structure. Only 24% of the Ethiopians are placed in the cluster with the Bantu and most of the Afro-Caribbeans."
(Wilson et al., Nat Genet, 2001)
Culture
The way of life evokes images of Bible times. Camels, donkeys, and sheep are everywhere. Fields are plowed using oxen. The Orthodox Church is a large part of the culture. The church buildings are built on hills. Major celebrations during the year are held around the church, where people gather from villages all around to sing, play games and observe the unique mass of the church, which includes a procession through the church grounds and environs.
Coffee is a very important ceremonial drink. The "coffee ceremony" is common to the Tigrinya and the Amhara. Beans are roasted on the spot, ground and served thick and rich in tiny ceramic cups with no handles. When the beans are roasted to smoking, they are passed around the table, where the smoke becomes a blessing on the diners.
The country houses are built mostly from rock, dirt, and a few timber poles. The houses blend in easily with the natural surroundings. Many times the nearest water source is more than a kilometer away from their house. In addition, they must search for fuel for the fire throughout the surrounding area.
The Habesha people have a rich heritage of music and dance, using drums and stringed instruments tuned to a pentatonic scale. Arts and crafts and secular music are performed by mostly artisans who are regarded with suspicion. Sacred music and iconic art is performed by monastically trained men.
Language and Literature
"...an ancient tongue spoken in this region fissured into the modern languages of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) family. This family includes the Cushitic and Semitic languages now spoken in Ethiopia.... During the 2nd millennium BC...a people speaking Ge'ez (a Semitic language) came to dominate the rich northern highlands of Tigray. There, in the 7th century BC, they established the kingdom of Da'amat.... Aksum's culture comprised Ge'ez, written in a modified South Arabian alphabet, sculpture and architecture based on South Arabian prototypes, and an amalgam of local and Middle Eastern deities. Thus, evidence exists of a close cultural exchange between Aksum and the Arabian peninsula...." ("History of Ethiopia," Encyclopaedia Britannica)
All Habesha people speak Semitic languages, which originate from the Ancient language of Ge'ez. The Ge'ez language is classified as a South Semitic language. It evolved from an earlier proto-Ethio-Semitic ancestor used to write royal inscriptions of the kingdom of Dʿmt in Epigraphic South Arabian. As a member of South Semitic, it is closely related to Sabaean, and the Ge'ez alphabet later replaced Epigraphic South Arabian in the Kingdom of Aksum (although Epigraphic South Arabian was used for a few inscriptions into the 8th century, though not any South Arabian language since Dʿmt). Early inscriptions in Ge'ez and Ge'ez alphabet have been dated2 to as early as the 5th century BC, and in a sort of proto-Ge'ez written in ESA since the 9th century BC. Ge'ez literature properly begins with the Christianization of Ethiopia (and the civilization of Axum) in the 4th century, during the reign of Ezana of Axum. While Ge'ez is an extinct language that is only used in churches, the two languages that have branched off from it are Amharic and tigrinya. Tigrinya is a direct descendant of Ge'ez, while Amharic has a large Cushitic influence.
Religion
Christianity
Many people think of Christianity in Africa as a European import that arrived with colonialism, but this is not the case with the Tigray (or with the Amhara). The empire centered in Axum and Adowa was part of the Mediterranean world in which Christianity grew. The arrival of Christianity in Tigrayan lands happened about the same time that it arrived in Ireland. The Tigrayans, in fact, had been converted to Christianity hundreds of years before most of Europe. Many Tigrayan churches were cut into cliffs or from single blocks of stone, as they were in Turkey and in parts of Greece, where Christianity had existed from its earliest years. The church is a central feature of communities and of each family's daily life. Each community has a church with a patron saint.
Ethiopia has often been mentioned in the bible. A great example of this is the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch as written in Acts, Chapter 8, verse 27: "Then the angel of the Lord said to Philip, Start out and go south to the road that leads down from Jerusalem to Gaza. So he set out and was on his way when he caught sight of an Ethiopian. This man was a eunuch, a high official of the Kandake (Candace) Queen of Ethiopia in charge of all her treasure." The passage continues by describing how Philip helped the Ethiopian understand one passage of Isaiah that the Ethiopian was reading. After the Ethiopian received an explanation of the passage, he requested that Philip baptize him, which Philip obliged. I cross referenced some of my Ethiopian materials and discovered that Queen Gersamot Hendeke VII (very similar to Kandake) was the Queen of Ethiopia from the year 42 to 52. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church was founded in the fourth century by Syrian monks. Historically, the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches have had strong ties with the Egyptian Coptic church, the Egyptian Church appointing the archbishop for the Eritrean Church. They gained independence from the Coptic church in the 1950´s, although the Eritrean Orthodox Church has recently reforged the link.
Over 5 million of this people are Coptic Orthodox, with one priest for every 92 members--the highest concentration in Ethiopia. The remainder are Muslims. There are many Muslims in Tigray Province, but they generally belong to other people groups. The Tigray are reported to have fewer than 500 evangelical believers. There are more believers among the Tigrinya in Eritrea.
The faith of the Coptic Church is very intimately woven into the culture of the Tigrinya people and is central to their way of life. It is loosely defined as a Christian church, but a major icon in the church is the Ark of the Covenant. The people accept the Bible as true, but the Orthodox canon includes some books unique to their tradition. With 24% literacy and only 12% functional literacy, most can´t read the Bible. Furthermore, the Church discourages reading the Bible.
Church services are conducted in Ge´ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is considered the holy church language, just as Latin once was in the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike Latin, however, Ge´ez is taught to only a few educated scholars. Even the average priest only memorizes his part of the service.
Much has been added to Christianity. The Church grounds, like the Biblical temple, are filled with beggars and people selling religious paraphernalia such as candles and pictures of Mary and the Saints. Orthodox beliefs are law-oriented with emphasis on the rigid observance of worship rituals such as church attendance, fasting, prescribed prayers, and devotion to saints and angels. A child is never left alone until baptism and cleansing rituals are performed. Boys are baptized forty days after birth; girls wait for eighty days.
Defrocked priests and deacons commonly function as diviners, who are the main healers. Spirit possession is common, affecting primarily women. Women are also the normal spirit mediums.
Judaism
Judaism in Ethiopia undoubtedly goes back into very ancient times.[citation needed] Precisely what its early history was, however, remains obscure. The now dominant Coptic Ethiopian Church claims it originated from the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon back in the Tenth Century B.C. This visit is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (I Kings 10:1), but Sheba probably was a kingdom in the south of the Yemen, but is very close to Ethiopia from the Red Sea, and it has been recorded that Ethiopia was heavily influenced by the Sabean kingdom. Moreover, the details of the queen's visit, including the alleged theft of the Holy Ark as well as Solomon getting her pregnant with a child who established the "Solomonic" lineage in Ethiopia, as given in Christian Ethiopian tradition, are not in the Bible. They instead developed in the middle ages, first written down in full in the 13th century Kebra Nagast, inspired partly to legitimize the Solomonic dynasty as compared to the previous Zagwe dynasty of Agew descent (Cushitic, not Semitic-speaking, though passionately Christian).
What we call the Jewish Pre-settlement Theory essentially states that starting around the 8th century BC until about the 5th century BC, there was an influx of Jewish settlers both from Egypt & Sudan in the north, and southern Arabia in the east. Whether these settlers arrived in great numbers is yet a matter of debate. What is certain, however, is that these settlers must have preceded the arrival of Christianity. Evidence for their presence exists not only in historical books, but also material artifacts quite depicting ancient Jewish ceremony. For instance the Temple at Yeha (in Tigray province), which is said to have been erected in the 6th century BC, is believed to an architectural copy of other Jewish temples found in Israel and Egypt during the pre-Babylonian era (before 606 BC). Another example is found on the monastery islands of Lake Tana (northern Gojjam), where several archaic stone altars, fashioned in the manner of Jewish sacrificial alters of pre-8th century BC Israel, have been found not only preserved in good condition but also containing blood residue. The manner of the blood placed on the stone altars was found to be typical to a culture that strongly adhered to Mosaic Law.
The chief Semitic languages of Ethiopia also suggest an antiquity of Judaism in Ethiopia. "There still remains the curious circumstance that a number of Abyssinian words connected with religion -- Hell, idol, Easter, purification, alms -- are of Hebrew origin. These words must have been derived directly from a Jewish source, for the Abyssinian Church knows the scriptures only in a Ge'ez version made from the Septuagint" (From Page 40, A.H.M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935).)
Beta Israel traditions claim that the Ethiopian Jews descended from the lineage of Moses himself, some of whose children and relatives are said to have separated from the other Children of Israel after the Exodus and gone southwards, or, alternatively or together with this, that they descended from the tribe of Dan, which fled southwards down the Arabian coastal lands from Judaea at the time of the breakup of the Kingdom of Judah into two kingdoms in the 10th century B.C. (precipitated by the oppressive demands of Jeroboam, King Solomon's heir), or at the time of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century. Certainly there was trade as early as King Solomon down along the Red Sea to the Yemen and even as far as India, according to the Bible, and there would therefore have been Jewish settlements at various points along the trade routes. There is definite archaeological evidence of Jewish settlement and of their cultural influence on both sides of the Red Sea well at least 2,500 years ago, both along the Arabian coast and in the Yemen, on the eastern side, and along the southern Egyptian and Sudanese coastal regions.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Tigrinya, Amhara, Gurage". Retrieved 2006-09-11.
- ^ a b c d e Herausgegeben von Uhlig, Siegbert, Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha. Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. pp. 948.
- ^ Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: A Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991. pp. 19.
- ^ Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: A Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991. pp. 39.
- ^ Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: A Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991. pp. 66.
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard K.P. Addis Tribune, "Let's Look Across the Red Sea I", January 17, 2003.
- ^ Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, pp.57.
- ^ a b Herausgegeben von Uhlig, Siegbert, Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha. Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. pp. 949.
- ^ Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: A Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991. pp. 72.
- ^ Brace et al. (2005) The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form.
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- Pankhurst, Dr. Richard. "History of Northern Ethiopia - and the Establishment of the Italian Colony or Eritrea". Civic Webs Virtual Library. Retrieved March 25.
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This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
See also
- Beta Israel
- Amhara people
- Tigray-Tigrinya people
- History of Ethiopia
- Sheba
- Solomonic Dynasty
- Semitic
- Ethiopian Orthodox Church