Now have been said that “picking cotton”. Now that’s funny coming from a mixed fool who lives most of his life in sewage areas. You come over here and the best job you’ll get is a taxi driver. Other options would be washing dishes and cooking burritos. Who are you to talk about heritage when you don’t even have any? At least black people know where they came from- Africa. You don’t even know who you are where you came from or what your true identity is. Now go get me some burritos I'm hungry.

How many Egyptians are taught ancient Egypt, in the degree it is taught overseas?

Secondly, name the person who made the claim that Cleopatra was black. How does this person suddenly become the repesentative of a whole group of people?

Personally, I welcome anyone, regardless of their ethnicity, who wants to correct politically motivated distortions of history; this is how word spreads. The enemy should be the one, who distorts or clings onto distortions.

Cleopatra was not even Egyptian. Some scholars say that she might have had a grandmother that was non-Greek but she was not ethnically Egyptian. The person who made the claim that Cleopatra was black was a man named J.A. Rodgers. J.A. He was basically going off the old one-drop rule in American soceity to claim historical figures as ''black''. He was a product of his time.

African-Americans,as any other group of people, have every right to study ancient Egyptian history. The discipline of studying Egypt should not be to only Egyptians. We need various disciplines to piece together the puzzle of ancent Egypt.

I would agree that many African-Americans unfortunately neglect other areas of Africa. However, I believe that African-Americans studying ancient Egypt will bring them closer to other African cultures,and even serve as a gateway to their own diasporian culture.

For instance, the Gullah people of South Carolina still retain alot of their Western African culture,but because of neglect its slowly fading away into obscurity. African-Americans would benefit from studying and learning more about these people since most of their ancestors probably come from South Carolina.

Fareed, you shouldn't really get made at African-Americans. Everybody on this planet wants to claim ancient Egypt or place themselves within this civlization. It wasn't the African-Americans who called the modern Egyptians things like ''white-washed niggers'', ''a course mullato stock'',or mogrels. This was the words of early racist Egyptologist like Breasted,Petrie,Maspero,and Sir Elliot Grafton Smith.

Fareed, another factor is call Egyptomania. Egyptomania was widespread from Europe into the Americans. Amongst white Americans it stook a racist sland with often the ancient Egyptians being used in a political fashion to support slavery.

Read this:

"Introduction to Types of Mankind"
Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1854)

No single publication was more infamous or influential in the history of nineteenth-century American Egyptomania than Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon?s 1854 Types of Mankind. Over 800 pages long, carefully compiled and lavishly illustrated, packed with data and provocative conclusions, Nott and Gliddon?s Types of Mankind was an instant classic, a best-selling scientific textbook that went through over a dozen printings and which stayed in print until the turn of the century. It rocketed Nott and Gliddon to fame, forever associated them with a very particular school of thought, and cemented their place in American scientific history. It is also one of the most racist texts ever written, a classic of American racism as much as American science, and is today considered the highwater mark of American scientific racism.

Josiah Clark Nott was from Mobile, Alabama, a medical doctor and slaveholder who performed experiments on his slaves and had strong beliefs in black inferiority. Gliddon was British, a businessman, politician, and public lecturer who had once been vice-consul to Cairo and who had made a name for himself as a popularizer of the relatively young field of Egyptology. It was Gliddon who was contacted in the 1830s by the Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton with a request for any specimens of ancient Egyptian skulls; Morton was collecting data on crania for his ongoing research into fixed racial differences, and Gliddon happily obliged. Over the years, the relationship between these three men grew, until they were seen as the center of a loose-knit group of scientists and historians which became known as the American School of Ethnology: a school of scientific thought which understood its threefold mission to be the proving of inherent differences between different racial groups, the ranking of these groups in hierarchical order (from ?low? to ?high?), and the establishing of these differences as so ancient as to date from human origin itself. In other words, members of the American School of Ethnology believed that different racial groups were in fact separate species, and thus had separate points of origin.

The American School was, as might be imagined, at immediate odds with mainstream Christians. By arguing that whites and blacks had different origins, Nott and Gliddon were contradicting the account of a single human origin found in the Book of Genesis. But not only was this not a problem for the American School, it was seen as a virtue: Nott especially was a fierce opponent of the account of human origin found in the Bible, and believed that what he called ?parson-skinning? was a necessary step in the battle between the ?fictions? of the Bible and the ?truth? of racial science.

Interestingly enough, however, the American School championed many of the classic virtues of western science: objectivity, rigorous logic, and the quest for ultimate truth. Indeed, through these skirmishes with the traditional Christian story of Adam and Eve, Nott and Gliddon, for all their racism, represent an important if often overlooked moment in the history of the clashes between Christian belief and the theory of evolution. It would be some years, of course, before the term ?evolution? would be used in America ? and in fact Nott thought that, by implying an evolutionary connection between humans and other primates, Darwin had gone too far towards implying a connection between whites and blacks ? but an often forgotten footnote to the history of the American School is that, by initially challenging the authority of the Biblical account of human creation, it helped to lay the groundwork for the acceptance of the theory of evolution in America.

Nevertheless, the American School is still very justifiably best known for its claims regarding fixed racial differences and the theory of ?multiple origins.? As it is for its mode of argument: as proof both of the fallibility of Biblical chronology and of the ancient separations between the races, the American School focused on ancient Egypt. Evidence from ancient Egypt, it was argued, proved both that humans had predated the date often given to the Garden of Eden, and that, even at this extremely remote date in ancient history, ?Negroes? and ?Caucasians? had always been separate species ? one inferior, one superior. With Types of Mankind, Nott and Gliddon ushered in a new age in American racism.

This selection from the Types is the Introduction. Signed by Nott, it outlines the terms of the argument of the book: that ethnology is the study of the variety of human species, that Egyptology provides the best evidence available for the age and progress of these different species or ?types of mankind,? and that the combination of ethnology and Egyptology shows the permanent inferiority of the Negro type.

Browse scholarship by topic:
Art & Architecture
History
Literature
Religion
Science

http://chnm.gmu.edu/egyptomania/scholarship.php?function=detail&articleid=39

Egypt Land : Race And Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania - New Americanists (PAP) -US-
TRAFTON, SCOTT
2004/11 (Duke Univ Pr) ISBN:0822333627 US$23.95

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Originally posted by fareed:
In their desperate search for a heritage, I think it's pathetic the way some black Americans want to adopt anything from the vast continent of Africa.

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Josiah Clark Nott was from Mobile, Alabama, a medical doctor and slaveholder who performed experiments on his slaves and had strong beliefs in black inferiority. Gliddon was British, a businessman, politician, and public lecturer who had once been vice-consul to Cairo and who had made a name for himself as a popularizer of the relatively young field of Egyptology. It was Gliddon who was contacted in the 1830s by the Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton with a request for any specimens of ancient Egyptian skulls; Morton was collecting data on crania for his ongoing research into fixed racial differences, and Gliddon happily obliged. Over the years, the relationship between these three men grew, until they were seen as the center of a loose-knit group of scientists and historians which became known as the American School of Ethnology: a school of scientific thought which understood its threefold mission to be the proving of inherent differences between different racial groups, the ranking of these groups in hierarchical order (from ?low? to ?high?), and the establishing of these differences as so ancient as to date from human origin itself. In other words, members of the American School of Ethnology believed that different racial groups were in fact separate species, and thus had separate points of origin.

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Of course we know all the above is nonsense and pure fiction!!

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It wasn't the African-Americans who called the modern Egyptians things like ''white-washed niggers'', ''a course mullato stock'',or mogrels. This was the words of early racist Egyptologist like Breasted,Petrie,Maspero,and Sir Elliot Grafton Smith.

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I wonder why?

Ha! Isn't it funny how ratjizz uses the same terminology as these old white Egyptologists, like ni***r! Perhaps rat is just following in their footsteps...

All that the main people in this forum is saying is that the Egyptians were indeed black Africans, no one said anything about African American ancestors! But this would mean that African Americans do bear a relation to the Egyptians, probably not directly, but still!

You on the other hand make wild claims about Egyptians like this
being North African "caucasians"!!!

Fareed should make a personal thread of his own called Desperate search for Identity!!! LOL

Also I encourage Africans to be proud of many successful African-Americans here in US as well. It’s not all about bling bling. You have other guys like Martin Luther King, Du Bois, and Malcome X. Today you have billionaire in Robert Johnson and then you have Oprah. She represents intellect and women power. No bling bling here she is probably one or two women that are self-made billionaire in the entire world. Most other women are inherited fortune. Women in general regardless of race use Oprah as example that they can compete with men. I can go on but feel proud of your African brothers (and sisters) here in US. They are getting bigger and bigger as years go by.

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Originally posted by Atheist:
Your entire culture is phony starting with believing in a mythical phony character like Allah. (edited 13 June 2005).]

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Originally posted by fareed:
In their desperate search for a heritage, I think it's pathetic the way some black Americans want to adopt anything from the vast continent of Africa. One of their favorite claims is that Cleopatra was a black woman. So what? None of her descendants ever ended up picking cotton on a plantation in America. And, - here we go again.

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You should actually read some Afrocentric books. You'll find that many of them are actually written by White people. I find these conversations rather stimulating but it really doesn't mean anything. Egypt is not a good example for Blacks anyways. Ethiopia is a far better example since they maintained their indenpendence, sovereignty and RESPECT. Though poor they were able to defeat the Egyptians, Sudaness, Italians, Turks and so on. The battles that the Ethiopians fought against Muslim and European invaders should be made into a movie.

Egypt is just mulatto land today because of Mulatto Arabs.

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Originally posted by multisphinx:
Come on now!!!! At first i thought you were Knowlegable but after that statement i take it back. That coment comes out so irogantly. Before u say somthing about Islam, read from the right sources as you have done with Egypt and Africa.

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I must agree! multi, if you noticed, his name is Aethiest, which means he doesn't believe in God. I am perfectly tolerant of this, but there is no need for disrespect by blaspheming!!

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Originally posted by osirion:

Egypt is not a good example for Blacks anyways. Ethiopia is a far better example since they maintained their indenpendence, sovereignty and RESPECT.

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This statement almost reminds me of something, which someone here, I think Rasol, quoted along the lines, that Egypt should be left alone by black folks, and that rather, they should be content with Nubia.

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Originally posted by Super car:
...Why should Africans have to compromise or choose 'any' history, i.e., include some, while excluding others? On the flip side, should Europeans be made to choose what European history to accept as part of Europe's past, and which not to accept? I tell you what, this notion of choice is ridiculously laughable, but when dealing with irrational people, anything goes!

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Then again, that's exactly what many Eurocentrics are doing when they deny that the E3b carrying peoples who migrated into Europe, ultimately originated from Africa!!LOL

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Then again, that's exactly what many Eurocentrics are doing when they deny that the E3b carrying peoples who migrated into Europe, ultimately originated from Africa!!LOL

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I guess what I am trying to say here is that, a 'historical' fact is a fact. You can try to hide from it, or hide it, but you can't change it.

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Originally posted by Super car:
This statement almost reminds me of something, which someone here, I think Rasol, quoted along the lines, that Egypt should be left alone by black folks, and that rather, they should be content with Nubia.

Ancient Egypt was an African society, with a culture developed by Africans; there is nothing to compromise here. Lest someone thinks that Ancient Egypt is the only ancient African culture that had become a victim of European imperialism, think again. Ancient Egypt just so happens to be the most 'famous' example. It shouldn't be boiled down to whether one African culture fared better than the other, but should be about correcting the injustice and wrongdoings of early racist European 'scholars', who were an instrument of European imperialism. Why should Africans have to compromise or choose 'any' history, i.e., include some, while excluding others? On the flip side, should Europeans be made to choose what European history to accept as part of Europe's past, and which not to accept? I tell you what, this notion of choice is ridiculously laughable, but when dealing with irrational people, anything goes!

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I said Egypt is not a good example. I didn't say it should be left alone in the sense of research and so on. I am just saying that in modern times we need a more modern and successful example and Egypt is not it. Egypt is ruled by foreigners and the Egyptian blacks are almost entirely ignored. Even when a Black becomes of any reputation he denounces is own Blackness.

Now Ethiopians may have this fantasy about the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon but they still recognize their own Blackness. Can you imagine this, the Egyptians hired racist Confederate soldiers to fight for them against Ethiopia. Yohannes slaughtered these so called Egyptians and the Confederate army soliers.

Any country that has so betrayed Blacks to hire Confederate soldiers to fight against the holy lands of Africa, I want nothing to do with. And then to make matters worse, Anwar Sadat was himself an admirer of Adolf Hitler. It just can't get any worse than this.

Sure Ancient Egyptians are interesting but not relevant to modern times. I think Ethiopia is a far more romantic story of Black perserverance and innovativeness.

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Originally posted by osirion:
I said Egypt is not a good example. I didn't say it should be left alone in the sense of research and so on.

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If you recall I said it "reminds" me of someone's comment; and you'll see why, in a momment:

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osirion:
I am just saying that in modern times we need a more modern and successful example and Egypt is not it.

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Why? Is this not a way of saying indirectly, that one should choose 'one' history over 'another'.

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osirion:
Egypt is ruled by foreigners and the Egyptian blacks are almost entirely ignored. Even when a Black becomes of any reputation he denounces is own Blackness.

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Well, modern Egypt is a product of a succession of events from the past. These past events, both the glamorous and not so glamorous, is still part of Africa's history; it won't change.

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osirion:
Now Ethiopians may have this fantasy about the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon but they still recognize their own Blackness.

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Actually various Ethiopians, particularly the Amhara, are prejudice against what they perceive as their darker fellow citizens, and this is extended to foreigners.

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osirion:
Can you imagine this, the Egyptians hired racist Confederate soldiers to fight for them against Ethiopia. Yohannes slaughtered these so called Egyptians and the Confederate army soliers.

Any country that has so betrayed Blacks to hire Confederate soldiers to fight against the holy lands of Africa, I want nothing to do with. And then to make matters worse, Anwar Sadat was himself an admirer of Adolf Hitler. It just can't get any worse than this.

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Sadat is not ancient Egypt, nonetheless a figure, who is part of Egypt's past. It goes back to what I said earlier, about how modern Egypt got to where it is now, due to events, which occurred in the past.

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osirion:
Sure Ancient Egyptians are interesting but not relevant to modern times.

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How will you understand modern Egypt, without relevancy of what happened in ancient times. This is why someone would ask a question like, "what happened to the Egyptians?", when that person could realize the answer to this, by merely exploring the different stages of the past.

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osirion:
I think Ethiopia is a far more romantic story of Black perserverance and innovativeness.

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Well, that is a subjective matter. The more important thing, is for Africans (any other people for that matter) not allow themselves to be denied their histories.

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Originally posted by Super car:
Well, that is a subjective matter. The more important thing, is for Africans (any other people for that matter) not allow themselves to be denied their histories.

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My reply was actually poor timing. I wasn't really considering the subject of this thread when I posted. Just finished a good book on Ethiopia and it was rather impressive. When I read about Egyptians I keep coming across perfectly Black looking people that vehemently deny their Blackness.

As for Ethiopia, they are certainly prejudice and do indeed have a caste system. But then so do many other tribes in Africa. However, I am not aware of the caste system being based on actual skin color. Many of the lowland Ethiopians are actually lighter in skin tone than the highlanders. However, I have yet to meet one that doesn't associate himself with Black Americans here in the USA. None of this, I'm a North African Caucasian crap. Just like Iman - "pure black".

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Originally posted by osirion:

My reply was actually poor timing. I wasn't really considering the subject of this thread when I posted. Just finished a good book on Ethiopia and it was rather impressive. When I read about Egyptians I keep coming across perfectly Black looking people that vehemently deny their Blackness.

As for Ethiopia, they are certainly prejudice and do indeed have a caste system. But then so do many other tribes in Africa. However, I am not aware of the caste system being based on actual skin color. Many of the lowland Ethiopians are actually lighter in skin tone than the highlanders. However, I have yet to meet one that doesn't associate himself with Black Americans here in the USA. None of this, I'm a North African Caucasian crap. Just like Iman - "pure black".

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Africans certainly have their own social constructs. Now of course, when Ethiopians and other Africans come to the U.S., they soon come to the realization that they will be identified and treated as Black folks or "non-whites". So an Ethiopian in the U.S., will have a broader perspective on Eurocentric prejudice, than one in Ethiopia, who has never left the country.

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Interestingly though, while pointing to foreign ancestry, these Amharan elites proclaimed the Amharas to be the true indigenous people, portraying others as late comers to the region.

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Actually, the whole Sheba/Solomon myth came from a Cushic people called the Zagwe. The Kenbra Negast was fabricated court literature where the Zagwe[converted Jews] tried to legitmize their Judahism by connecting themselves back to Sheba/Solomon. New World Rastafarians eat this up but don't realize that by embracing such heritage they are disregarding indigenous African heritage.

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Originally posted by ausar:

Actually, the whole Sheba/Solomon myth came from a Cushic people called the Zagwe. The Kenbra Negast was fabricated court literature where the Zagwe[converted Jews] tried to legitmize their Judahism by connecting themselves back to Sheba/Solomon. New World Rastafarians eat this up but don't realize that by embracing such heritage they are disregarding indigenous African heritage.

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Actually the Aksumites started the Sheba/Solomon legend. Folklore is based on the fact that many Jewish Yemeni migrated to Ethiopia and mixed with the Cushitic local people which supposedly produced the Amhara people who are your royal caste. There is no records indicating that such a migration actually occurred though. However, there are Jews in Yemen that claim to have started their migration during the time of Solomon. And we know that Ethiopia had control over Yemen. And of course we have the Fallashas and the Lembas to account for.

Interesting stuff really.

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Actually the Aksumites started the Sheba/Solomon legend. Folklore is based on the fact that many Jewish Yemeni migrated to Ethiopia and mixed with the Cushitic local people which supposedly produced the Amhara people who are your royal caste.

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This is not true. The people who mixed with local Cushic people to produce the Amharan are the Sabeans/Himyarite people of southern Arabia. Legends claim a mixture between Agew Cushic people and Sabeans.

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Originally posted by ausar:

This is not true. The people who mixed with local Cushic people to produce the Amharan are the Sabeans/Himyarite people of southern Arabia. Legends claim a mixture between Agew Cushic people and Sabeans.

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I know, Jewish Sabeans (Southern Arabia = Yemen). Basically you have a convert = Queen of Sheba (or Sabean) and you have a migration = Sabeans into Ethiopia. You have an alliance (usually by marriage) Cushitic and Sabean and you now have a legend (Yewish and Cushitic). Probably no actual Hebrews (King Solomon)involved.

We will probably never really know. We do know that the Aksumite empire controlled most of Souther Arabia. This control does not appear to be a military conquest. It was likely due to an alliance by marriage.

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Yes, this is a very funny situation. The Amharas as well as the Tigres are the real mixed-race Ethiopians, having descent from both indigenous Ethiopians and peoples from Yemen. Yet they all of a sudden claim themselves as the true indigenous ones!

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Osirion says: Actually the Aksumites started the Sheba/Solomon legend. Folklore is based on the fact that many Jewish Yemeni migrated to Ethiopia and mixed with the Cushitic local people which supposedly produced the Amhara people who are your royal caste.

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Ausar says: This is not true. The people who mixed with local Cushic people to produce the Amharan are the Sabeans/Himyarite people of southern Arabia. Legends claim a mixture between Agew Cushic people and Sabeans.

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Amharas even falsely claim that Oromos are from Madagascar.
Relaxx

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Fattovich observed features on pre-Aksumite pottery resembling those on pottery of the Sudanese peoples labelled by archaeologists Kerma and C— group, and suggested that even such cultural features as the stelae, so characteristic of later Ethiopian funerary customs, might perhaps have derived from early Sudanese prototypes. Some of these features date back to the late 3rd and early 2nd millenia BC, and the discovery of evidence of fairly complex societies in the region at this early date may suggest, to quote Fattovich, "a more complex reconstruction of state formation in Northern Ethiopia" (see also Ch. 4: 1)…

At the moment, however, the early history of Aksum is almost unknown and there is little evidence available relating to the formation of the Aksumite state.

However, we can suggest a possible course of development. It would seem that the favourable position of the future capital both from the trading point of view, and from that of local food-production and other resources, allowed increasing prosperity to come to the settlement. With this prosperity there was possibly a rise in the local population, and, concomitantly, an increase in potential military strength. Expansion to secure either new resources or various trade-routes was possible with the development of a military machine which, as we may surmise from later events, became very efficient. What other incentives may have arisen to encourage the Aksumites to exploit their new potential we do not know, but there could have been such impulses as the need to repel a possible threat from nearby peoples, or the rise of an exceptional leader. Aksum was not a great colonial power, arriving with superior weapons to fight ill-equipped locals; though they did exploit the possibilities of imported weapons, as the Periplus mentions, it was, if we can hazard a guess, increased manpower, organisational ability, speed and capable generalship which eventually gave Aksum the dominant military role in the region” - Dr. Stuart Munro-Hay

Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity

by Dr. Stuart Munro-Hay.

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The Aksumites developed a civilisation of considerable sophistication, knowledge of which has been much increased by recent excavations (Ch. 16). Aksum's contribution in such fields as architecture (Ch. 5: 4-6) and ceramics (Ch. 12: 1) is both original and impressive. Their development of the vocalisation of the Ge`ez or Ethiopic script allowed them to leave, alone of ancient African states except Egypt and Meroë, a legacy of written material (Ch. 13: 1, Ch. 11: 5) from which we can gain some impression of Aksumite ideas and policies from their own records.

In addition, uniquely for Africa, they produced a coinage, remarkable for several features, especially the inlay of gold on silver and bronze coins (Ch. 9). This coinage, whose very existence speaks for a progressive economic and ambitious political outlook, bore legends in both Greek and Ge`ez, which name the successive kings of Aksum for some three hundred years. The coinage can accordingly be used as a foundation for a chronology of the kingdom's history (Ch. 4: 2).

It may be as well to outline briefly here Aksumite historical development, and Aksum's position in the contemporary world, discussed in detail in later chapters (Chs. 4 & 3: 6). Aksumite origins are still uncertain, but a strong South Arabian (Sabaean) influence in architecture, religion, and cultural features can be detected in the pre-Aksumite period from about the fifth century BC, and it is clear that contacts across the Red Sea were at one time very close (Ch. 4: 1). A kingdom called D`MT (perhaps to be read Da`mot or Di`amat) is attested in Ethiopian inscriptions at this early date, and, though the period between this and the development of Aksum around the beginning of the Christian era is an Ethiopian `Dark Age' for us at present, it may be surmised that the D`MT monarchy and its successors, and other Ethiopian chiefdoms, continued something of the same *`Ethio-Sabaean'* civilisation until eventually subordinated by Aksum.

A certain linguistic and religious continuity may be observed between the two periods, though many features of Aksumite civilisation differ considerably from the earlier material.

The Aksumite rulers became sufficiently Hellenized to employ the Greek language, as noted quite early on by the Greek shipping guide called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Ch. 2: 2), a document variously dated between the mid-first and third centuries AD with a consensus of modern opinion favouring the first or early second centuries. Somewhat later, Greek became one of the customary languages for Aksumite inscriptions and coins, since it was the lingua franca of the countries with which they traded.

The Aksumites grew strong enough to expand their military activity into South Arabia by the end of the second or early third century AD, where their control over a considerable area is attested by their Arabian enemies' own inscriptions (Ch. 4: 3 & 4); a direct reversal of the earlier process of South Arabian influence in Ethiopia already mentioned.

As the consolidated Aksumite kingdom grew more prosperous, the monuments and archaeological finds at Aksum and other sites attest to the development of a number of urban centres (Chs. 4 & 5) with many indigenous arts and crafts (Chs. 12 & 13: 3) demonstrating high technological skills, and a vigorous internal and overseas trade (Ch. 8).

The inscriptions and other sources imply a rising position for Aksum in the African and overseas political concerns of the period. In the towns, the lack of walls even at Aksum seems to hint at relatively peaceful internal conditions, though the inscriptions (Ch. 11: 5) do mention occasional revolts among the subordinate tribes. Exploitation of the agricultural potential of the region (Ch. 8: 2), in places probably much higher than today and perhaps enhanced by use of irrigation, water-storage, or terracing techniques, allowed these urban communities to develop to considerable size. Perhaps the best-known symbols of the Aksumites' particular ideas and style are the great carved monoliths (Ch. 5: 6), some of which still stand, erected to commemorate their dead rulers; they also record the considerable skill of the Aksumite quarrymen, engineers, and stone-carvers, being in some cases among the largest single stones ever employed in ancient times.

…second quarter of the fourth century,…Aksumite inscriptions from this period are in three scripts and two languages; Ge`ez, the local language, written both in its *own cursive script* and in the South Arabian monumental script (Epigraphic South Arabian, or ESA), and Greek, the international language of the Red Sea trade and the Hellenized Orient.

Pre-Akxum

“This period is not of major concern to us here, and in any case we have very little information about it; but some consideration should be given to the situation in Ethiopia before the rise of Aksum, since the source of at least some of the characteristics of the later Aksumite civilisation can be traced to this earlier period…

Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon in this respect is that by around the middle of the first millenium BC — a date cautiously suggested, using palaeographical information (Pirenne 1956; Drewes 1962: 91), but possibly rather too late in view of new discoveries in the Yemen (Fattovich 1989: 16-17) which may even push it back to the eighth century BC — some sort of contact, apparently quite close, seems to have been maintained between Ethiopia and South Arabia. This developed to such an extent that in not a few places in Ethiopia the remains of certain mainly religious or funerary installations, some of major importance, with an unmistakeable South Arabian appearance in many details, have been excavated. Among the sites are Hawelti-Melazo, near Aksum (de Contenson 1961ii), the famous temple and other buildings and tombs at Yeha (Anfray 1973ii), the early levels at Matara (Anfray 1967), and the sites at Seglamien (Ricci and Fattovich 1984-6), Addi Galamo, Feqya, Addi Grameten and Kaskase, to name only the better-known ones. Fattovich (1989: 4-5) comments on many of these and has been able to attribute some ninety sites altogether to the pre-Aksumite period.

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).

It appears that there were undoubtedly some South Arabian immigrants in Ethiopia in the mid-first millenium BC, but there is (unless the interpretation of Michels is accepted) no sure indication that they were politically dominant. The sites chosen by them may be related to their relative ease of access to the Red Sea coast. Arthur Irvine (1977) and others have regarded sympathetically the suggestion that the inscriptions which testify to Sabaean presence in Ethiopia may have been set up by colonists around the time of the Sabaean ruler Karibil Watar in the late fourth century BC; but the dating is very uncertain, as noted above. They may have been military or trading colonists, living in some sort of symbiosis with the local Ethiopian population, perhaps under a species of treaty-status.

It seems that the pre-Aksumite society on the Tigray plateau, centred in the Aksum/Yeha region but extending from Tekondo in the north to Enderta in the south (Schneider 1973: 389), had achieved state level, and that the major entity came to be called D`MT (Di`amat, Damot?), as appears in the regal title `mukarrib of Da`mot and Saba'.[/b] The name may survive in the Aksumite titulature as Tiamo/Tsiyamo (Ch. 7: 5). Its rulers, kings and mukarribs, by including the name Saba in their titles, appear to have expressly claimed control over the resident Sabaeans in their country; actual Sabaean presence is assumed at Matara, Yeha and Hawelti-Melazo according to present information (Schneider 1973: 388).

The inscriptions of mukarribs of D`MT and Saba are known from Addi Galamo (Caquot and Drewes 1955: 26-32), Enda Cherqos (Schneider 1961: 61ff), possibly Matara, if the name LMN attested there is the same as the .MN from the other sites, (Schneider 1965: 90; Drewes and Schneider 1967: 91), Melazo (Schneider 1978: 130-2), and Abuna Garima (Schneider 1973; Schneider 1976iii: 86ff). Of four rulers known to date, the earliest appears to be a certain W`RN HYWT, who only had the title mlkn, king, and evidence of whom has been found at Yeha, Kaskase, Addi Seglamen; he was succeeded by three mukarribs, RD'M, RBH, and LMN (Schneider 1976iii: 89-93)…

Accepting, with the modern consensus of opinion, that the Periplus dates to the mid-first century AD, we find that at this stage Aksum, under the rule of king Zoskales, was already a substantial state with access to the sea at Adulis. Zoskales is the earliest king of the region known to us at the moment (though Cerulli 1960: 7; Huntingford 1980: 60, 149-50 and Chittick 1981: 186 suggested that he was not king of Aksum but a lesser tributary ruler).

Aksumite Domestic Architecture

The general style of the élite domestic buildings of Aksum has been described above (Ch. 5: 2), and reconstructions have been attempted (in Littmann 1913; and, more modestly, by Buxton and Matthews 1974). The pavilions in their domestic enclosures are the most typical examples of the unique Aksumite form of construction, and embody most of the characteristics of Aksumite architecture.…

It is possible that the original inspiration for the design of the decorated stelae came from the South Arabian mud-brick multi-storey palaces familiar to the Aksumites from their involvements in that country, rather than from Ethiopian examples. On some of the Aksumite podia there could conceivably have been erected high tower-like structures of mud-brick around a wooden frame, such as that found at Mashgha in the Hadhramawt (Breton et al. 1980: pls. VIII, X) looking rather like the great stelae. But no evidence for such Yemeni-style buildings actually survives in Ethiopia, nor is there any archaeological indication there for mud-brick architecture. Alternatively, and more probably, the stelae could have been exaggerated designs based on the Aksumite palaces; and here there is archaeological support, since the structure called the `IW Building' partly cleared by the excavations of Neville Chittick (Munro-Hay 1989), included just such wood-reinforced walls.

…The origins of the stelae are very difficult to disentangle. Attributions of stelae in Ethiopia to the pre-Aksumite period, though customarily accepted (Munro-Hay 1989: 150), are not necessarily correct (Fattovich 1987: 47-8). A stele tradition appears nevertheless to have existed in the Sudanese-Ethiopian borderlands, and in parts of northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in pre-Aksumite times. Fattovich suggests, plausibly enough, that stelae belong to an ancient African tradition. In the case of the stelae at Kassala and at Aksum — despite the difference in time and the difference in the societies which erected them — he sees a similarity in several features. These include the suggestion that `the monoliths are not directly connected with specific burials' (Fattovich 1987: 63). However, this is questionable as far as the Aksum stelae are concerned, now that it has been possible to analyse the results of Chittick's work. Though it is not yet easy to identify tombs for all the stelae, it does seem that, at the Aksum cemeteries, wherever archaeological investigations have been possible there is a case for suggesting that stelae and tombs are directly associated.

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Further reading on the possible formation of Aksumite State, go to:
http://users.vnet.net/alight/aksum/mhak1.html

Earlier post from: http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/Forum8/HTML/001519.html

Definately fascinating but the Jewish influence is certainly evident and shouldn't be denied due to political reasons. Europeans do not deny Jewish influence in their culture but still disdain Jews as inferior (while worshipping a Jewish God that they need to recreate into their own image).

The Aksumite (or Axumites) were indeed Jewish converts and apparently this was due to contacts with the Sabean people of Southern Arabia and the state of Israel. It is this contact which is the best path to investigate how the Fallasha and the Lemba made it to East Africa.

Clearly there was some cultural exchanges in Egypt during pre-dynastic times. However, I have never heard that Egyptians considered themselves a mixed people? There is no stories of Queens going to Mesopatamia and coming back pregnant. No elite groups claiming Asiatic heritage. Therefore there is little evidence to support the claim that Egypt is not of pure African origin. If anyone knows of a story similar to the Amharas in regards to Egypt and Asiatics like me, I would be interested obviously.

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Originally posted by osirion:

You should actually read some Afrocentric books. You'll find that many of them are actually written by White people. I find these conversations rather stimulating but it really doesn't mean anything. Egypt is not a good example for Blacks anyways. Ethiopia is a far better example since they maintained their indenpendence, sovereignty and RESPECT. Though poor they were able to defeat the Egyptians, Sudaness, Italians, Turks and so on. The battles that the Ethiopians fought against Muslim and European invaders should be made into a movie.

Egypt is just mulatto land today because of Mulatto Arabs.

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I think the armies of the sudan in the 1800's was not defeated by ethiopia but just withdrew.

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Originally posted by kenndo:
I think the armies of the sudan in the 1800's was not defeated by ethiopia but just withdrew.

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The Egyptian army was practically anhilated at the battle of Gundat. Not sure how you call that a withdrawal, it was a retreat with their tails between their legs.

Ex-Confederate soldiers being killed in Ethiopia is rather ironic don't you think?

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
why would it be ironic that ex-confederate soldiers were killed in northeast Africa? Many of them fought in mexico as well, and some went to South America.

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