BULLETIN OF

The New York Public Library

Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

VOLUME 32

JULY, 1928

ETHIOPICA AND AMHARICA

NUMBER 7

A LIST OF WORKS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Compiled by GEORGE F. BLACK, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

HE population of Abyssinia is composed of three races, Semitic,

TH

Hamitic, and Negroid. The first, now the dominant race holding the reins of power and ruling the others, is an intruder from south-west Arabia (Yemen). They are now much mixed in blood with the older Hamitic stock and further modified by an infusion of negro blood due to the long-standing institution of domestic slavery. The race is purest in the north, the home of the ancient kingdom of Aksum, the blend with Hamite and negro increasing towards the south. To the Semitic race, says Littmann, Abyssinia is indebted for what civilization it possesses. "They founded an empire, they built temples, palaces, and entire cities, as well as dams and reservoirs; they originated and carried on the only literature that Abyssinia ever had. When they came, they were, of course pagans, but after some centuries, they became Christian." It is impossible to say when the immigration of the Semites into Abyssinia commenced but it must have been several centuries B. C., and it has continued almost to the present day. Littmann mentions that an Arab tribe, the Rashaida, has crossed to the western side of the Red Sea within recent years, "and is beginning to be nationalized in Africa; they still speak Arabic, but have commenced to use the Tigre as well."

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The indigenous tribes with whom the Semitic invaders had to contend were mainly Hamitic, probably akin to the ancient Egyptians. One large section of this race, the Agaw or Agao, the Athagaoi of the Adulis inscription (1st cent. A. D.) and the Agaioi of Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. 550 A. D.), still inhabit the province of Agaomedir (i. e., "the land of Agao”). In the beginning of the sixth century they were already subject to the Semitic kings of Aksum. The Agaw tribes have different designations according to the territory they occupy, e. g., Waag, Lasta, Fālāshā, Hamāra, etc. The Fālāshā, or Bēta Esrā'ēl (“House of Israel") as they call themselves, pace M. Faïtlovitch, are almost certainly a branch of the Agaw. The other main tribes of the Hamitic race are the Somalis, Muhammedans, occupying nearly the whole of the eastern horn of Africa, the "land of Punt" of the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions; the Gallas (or Oromos), partly pagan and partly Muhammedan, occupying a large extent of territory to the south of Abyssinia; the Afara (Afar in singular, called Danakil by the Arabs, Dankali in singular), mainly Muhammedan, in the east; the Sahos, Muhammedan nomads, in the north-east; and the Bogos (or Bilin, after the name of their language), partly Christian and partly Muhammedan, who occupy the ranges north of the plateau of Abyssinia. For the last three hundred years the Gallas have been steadily encroaching on the southern and central provinces of Abyssinia, and Islam is making considerable headway in the same places.

Of the various settlements formed by the invading Semites the most important was that of Aksum, whose port was Adulis, the modern Zulā, near Annesley Bay. Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. 550 A. D.) copied two long Greek inscriptions at Adulis, the originals of which are now lost. The first records the conquests of Ptolemy Euergetes, and shows that on the African side of the Red Sea he had extended his Graeco-Egyptian empire to that place (B. C. 247-223). In the second, the beginning of which, bearing the name of the king who caused the inscription to be carved, was lost when copied by Cosmas, the king describes his conquests in the territory around Aksum, and says "I alone of the kings of my race made these conquests." That he was a pagan is shown by his rendering thanks "to my mighty God, Ares, who begat me," and offering sacrifice for his victories to "Zeus, and to Ares, and to Poseidon." The date is probably in the first century A. D. The next earliest document is the trilingual inscription of Aeizanes, the Greek version of which was discovered by Henry Salt in 1805, the

Sabaean by Theodore Bent and the old Ethiopic by Littmann. The date is about 350 A. D. This king was also a pagan, as he speaks of his Gods Mahrem, Astar, and Medr, i. e., war, heaven, and earth. Two inscriptions of about 450 A. D. belong to the reign of a king named Ezānā or (Tā)zānā -the first syllable of the name is doubtful. In the first his throne is dedicated to Astar, Beher, and Medr, i. e., heaven, sea, and earth, and thanks are rendered to Mahrem (=Ares) the god "who begat the king." In the second the king has changed his worship to the Christian God, 'Egziabeher. For this change he has been called the "Constantine of Abyssinia."

The next event of importance was the arrival, c. 500, of the "Nine Saints," so celebrated in the history of Abyssinia. Their names are as follows: (1) Za-Mīkā’ēl Aragāwī, (2) Pantaleon, (3) Isaac Garīmā, (4) Afsē, (5) Gūbā, (6) Alef, sometimes called 'Os, (7) Mata' or Yem❜ātā, (8) Liqānos, (9) Sehmā. The first three are the most renowned, and extraordinary miracles have been attributed to them. Their arrival riveted the hold of Christianity on the country, and to this day their names are held in the utmost reverence. They are said to have come from "Rum," i. e., from Byzantium, but Weld Blundell says "from the resemblance of their names to those of well-known monasteries in Syria have been proved to be members of that Church and natives of that country." (Royal Chronicle, p. 518.)

The kings of Aksum in their inscriptions in the fourth and fifth centuries claim to be kings of Aksum, Himyar (the Homerites or Himyarites), Raidan, Habashat (the Ethiopians), the Sabaeans, of Silhen, of Tsiyamo, of Bega and of Kasu. This claim implies possession of territory on both sides of the Red Sea, but much of it was soon after lost by them. In 525 a king of Aksum, named Kaleb in the native records, El-Esbaha (“the blessed") in Greek and Arabic chronicles, organized an elaborate expedition against the king of the Himyarites, whom he conquered and killed. In this invasion he was aided by ships furnished by Justinian, Emperor of Byzantium. The Muhammedan conquest of Arabia soon after put an end to all the Abyssinian possessions there, and their later conquest of Egypt in the middle of the seventh century cut the Abyssinians off from the civilized world. Gibbon the historian has remarked that "if a Christian power had been maintained in Arabia Mahomet must have been crushed in his cradle, and Abyssinia would have prevented a revolution which has changed the whole civil and religious state of the world." And referring

to the isolation of the Abyssinians after the Muhammedan conquest of Egypt he says: "Encompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten." From this time till 1270 the history of the kingdom of Aksum or Abyssinia is shrouded in darkness. There is a brief notice of a war between Abyssinia and Nubia about 687, and at the end of the tenth century there is on record a letter to George, son of Zakarya, king of Nubia, referring to the oppression of the Christian population by the usurping Jewish queen Judith who drove the Menelik dynasty from northern Abyssinia and established the line of Zague. About 1270 the Solomonic line was again re-established in the person of Yekūno Amlak, king of Shoa, a descendant of the king driven out by Judith, with the title of Negusa nagast za-Ityopya, "King of kings of Ethiopia." The great national saint Takla Haymanot ("Plant of the faith") is credited with having brought about the restoration.

The search for the kingdom of Prester John, reported by Marco Polo, brought the Portuguese into contact with Abyssinia in the closing years of the fifteenth century. In 1490 Pedro de Covilham and Alfonso de Payva were selected to make the search. Payva died in Cairo, but Covilham reached Abyssinia, where he remained till his death. He appears to have sent back to Portugal some information about the country, its church, etc., and in 1520 an embassy under Father Francisco Alvarez reached the country and established relations with the Negus. The determined attempts of the Portuguese to convert the Abyssinians to the Catholic Church met with fierce opposition from the native clergy, and finally in 1634 all Jesuits and Roman Catholics were expelled from the country. From that time till 1714 no Europeans were allowed into Abyssinia. Meanwhile in the first half of the sixteenth century Abyssinia was sore beset by a large Muhammedan army from the south under the Emir of Harrar, Ahmed ibn Ibrahim el Ghazi, better known as Grañ, i. e., the left-handed. Between 1528 and 1540 he overran the country, burning, destroying, and conquering everywhere. He sacked Aksum, the holy city, and nearly succeeded in extinguishing Christianity and establishing Muhammedanism. The Negus or king of Abyssinia appealed to the Portuguese, who sent him some help by the aid of which the Christian cause was victorious, Grañ being killed in battle in 1543. In the middle of the nineteenth century the so-called Solomonic dynasty came to an end, and Kasa or Kassai, afterwards known as Theodore after defeating several of the native princes had himself crowned as Negus

of Abyssinia in 1855. He reigned prudently at first but soon became extremely tyrannous. He committed suicide in 1868 when his fortress of Magdala was captured by the British. John, an under king of Tigre, was allowed to assume the throne and ruled till 1889 when he was killed fighting the Mahdi. Menelik of Shoa succeeded and reigned till 1914. Lidj Yeassu, his grandson, succeeded, and by the influence of German and Turkish advisers was persuaded at the beginning of the Great War, to become a Muhammedan. The Abūna at once excommunicated him and declared him deposed from the throne. In the civil war that ensued Lidj Yeassu and his father were killed. Zaodito, daughter of the late Menelik II., is the nominal empress, but the Ras Tafari Makonnen, Prince Regent, a well educated and broad-minded man, is the actual ruler. Ethiopic or lesana Ge'ez "tongue of the emigrants" is closely related to the ancient Sabaean of Southern Arabia, but that does not mean that the latter is the language from which it is descended. As Nöldeke says: "The historical intercourse between the Sabaeans and the people of Axum does not prove that those who spoke Ge'ez were simply a colony from Sabaea; the language may be descended from an extinct cognate dialect of South Arabia, or it may have arisen from a mingling of several such dialects." The alphabet is a modification of the Musnad or Himyaritic alphabet, and differs from all the other Semitic alphabets in being written from left to right. It consists of twenty-six consonantal characters. There are seven vowels, each of which is attached to a consonant, and as the language is never written without vowels the alphabet is in fact a syllabary of 182 characters, or counting the numerals and certain other modifications, and the additional letters required in Amharic, a total of 267 characters. The native name, Ge'ez, is usually explained as meaning "free," though more probably the meaning is "migration," "emigrants." From the expression "nation of Gaze" (Taïn čovos) in the Greek inscription at Adulis recorded by Cosmas Indicopleustes, the word might be understood as the ethnic name of the South Arabian emigrants. The native language does not appear to have been used for literary purposes till some time after the introduction of Christianity into Abyssinia in the fourth century. The earliest Ethiopic coins have Greek legends and the earliest monumental records of Abyssinian history (1st cent. A. D.) are also in Greek. The many Greek and Coptic words in the language were introduced under the influence of Coptic missionaries. The lesāna Ge'ez ceased to be spoken about the beginning of the fourteenth century, being suppressed by a decree of Yekuno Amlak, but like Latin in the