History Forum / General / Ancient History / July 2008

My knowledge in Ancient Ethiopian history is old, but I am glad to
sharewhat I have read before and what I have come to know very
recently. To begin with Aksum was not the first and oldest Ethiopian
civilization. Adulis, forinstance had an older existence than Aksum.
There are archaeological discoveries illustrating pre Aksumite
civilization and culture, and these were located at Coloe (some 20 km
from Adi Qeyih), Yeha (near Aksum),Tokanda (near Coloe, and many
others. We have to wait for the archaeological findings in Southern
Ethiopia. The question is whether this remote civilization was a
product of ancient immigrants from south Arabia or indigenous
Ethiopians? For long timescholars perpetuated a hypothesis on the
South Arabian origin and/orinfluence of the Ethiopian civilization.
This hypothesis ischallenged by Ephraim Isaac and Cain Felder in their
extensive article "Reflections onthe Origins of the Ethiopian
Civilization", Eight International Conference of Ethiopian Studies,
November 1984. Without denying historical and culturalties between
Ethiopian and South Arabian, they, however, refuted "the conceptof
cultural domination directly or indirectly". In the first place, the
hypothesis is based on a Hegelian Euro-centric philosophical
perspective which entertains that no indigenous high culture developed
in Africa and as such major African civilizations are often attributed
to outsiders. Secondly the hypothesis contained "erroneous historical,
linguistic andarchaeological assumptions", which theauthors
demonstrated in their article. It is beyond the scope of this column
to make a review, and readers are recommended to refer the article for
details. Very recently I watched a video film recording the works and
views of atraditional Ethiopian scholar named Aba Tesfa Selassie
Moges. In what follows I present some of his views which I patched up
from his ecliptic andmpressive discourse on Ethiopians and ancient
civilization.Aba Tesfa Selassie Moges has done his education in the
Ethiopian monasteries before he left abroad for further studies. In
Greek, at the University ofAthen, he studied theology and philosophy
(M.A), and earned BA degree in political science. It is said that he
knows 16 languages, including classical Greek, Latin, German and
Arabic. He claimed that he is the onlyperson in the world who knows
the Sabean language, a dead language "of theEthiopians". He is
currently working on Ethiopian pre history and historystarting from
the time of Lucy (Dinknesh) up to the period of 60 BC (Before Christ).
He said that he has written 12 of the 15 volumes projectwork. Besides,
he has collected over 10 000 books on Ethiopia .When it comes to the
issue of discussion at hand Aba Tesfa Selassie's viewgoes beyond the
point of Ethiopians-South Arabians relation. He believed
thatEthiopians are the foundation of mankind and the origin of its
civilization.According to him the first man is an Ethiopian, and he
presented such a rchaeological evidence as Lucy and a number of
prophesies from the Bible.He defined Ethiopians as a selected race:
Ethiopians differ fromotherraces by their form (qers), skin (koda) and
texture (yezet). The identity of an Ethiopian is the three colour. An
Ethiopian, belonging to the samefather and mother, can have one of the
three colour (Mulu Qey, Ye Qey Damaand Tekur Dama, (in addition Mulu
Tekur), In each family, and in everylinguistic/ethnic group, there are
these three colour and these colourmake an Ethiopian different from
black Africa, Arabs of Middle East,white and yellow people.
Accordingly Somalian, people of Djibouti, Nubians of Sudan and Egypt
are all Ethiopians. Ethiopians are the origins of a skincolour.Based
on his archaeological and linguistic evidence, he claimed thatbefore
1900 BC, the Egyptian were Ethiopians. Egypt was the first landwhere
Ethiopians cultivated Lentils (Meser), thus called Land of Meser.The
Faros of Egypt, some of them who ruled between 3200 to 2000from
1700-1500 were Ethiopians. Clieopatra was an Ethiopian, as her
facialfeatures testify nothing other than an Ethiopian. It was around
1900 BC that the Arabs came to Egypt from Yemen and Iraq as slave for
cultivationof agricultural plantation. And since then they
intermingled and lived with the Ethiopians. Out of the 450 famous
Farsan kings 250 were Ethiopians. TheIsraelis were also Ethiopians,
(and he differentiated Israelis from Jews) and he said the land held
by the Ethiopian monasteries in Jerusalem was acontinuation of the
old. For him Christ was an Ethiopian, and he does notaccept the white
Christ. According to him the Latin and Arabic alphabet had their
origin from theEthiopian alphabet (Fidel), which was copied with no
orlittle modification.Only the letter "S" belonged to Latin. This had
been supported by aGerman scholar. The Ethiopian alphabet was in
existence since 4500 BC. The first astronomer is an Ethiopian. Around
1900 BC an Ethiopian namedAhamenet wrote about the existence of 16
planets, the kind of life foundin each of the planets. This tradition
has continued and today we have abook called Awde Negest (Book of
Stars) which remains mysterious to manyEthiopians. Henok who wrote
about the life and resources of the earth wasan Ethiopian. Ethiopians
are the founders of Christian and Islamic religions. As I
havementioned, Christ was an Ethiopian, Israel, not a Jew. According
to himJews guarded the lands of Ethiopians, Israel. The apostles were
Ethiopians(Matthew, Marqos, etc.). The founder of Islamic religion is
an Ethiopian,his name was Belay Gebremedhin, and he was a governor of
Mecca(around 400 AD). The evidence comesfrom an original hand written
book ofQuran.By and large, the above statements summarise the views of
Aba Tesfa Selassie. Without agreeing to his racial view and
ideologies, I think thetenet of his hypothesis is as good as the once
I have so far read. As he claimed his evidences are based on documents
written by ancient Romans inancient Greek language, for which he has a
good knowledge. He had collecteda total of 10900 documents in German
language-- documents whose content wentas far back as 3000 BC. During
his three years and seven months researchstay in Italy he managed to
collect about 7000 documents written on Ethiopia. He reads the
inscriptions written in the Sabean language, which he called
anEthiopian language. He said that he has written 3000pages (in
another pointhe said 12 volumes) which he planed to publish along with
500 pictures. Ifthe material he presentedissolid as he asserted and if
the evidences are critically evaluated, I think his view can have a
profound effect not onlyon ancient Ethiopian history but also on
ancient world history. If you havenot yet seen the video, it is good
to watch it. My warning is that hiscomment on some religious group is
offending, one which you do notexpect from him.