Common Factors Uniting the Peoples of Ethiopia

February 17th, 1994 |  |  1 Comment

By Fikre Tolossa
“The Tigreans had Aksum, but what could that mean to the Gurage? The Agew had Lalibela, but what could that mean to the Oromo? The Gonderes had castles, but what could that mean to the Wolayita?” Meles Zenawi
When I read the above statement made by the President of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia, Ato Meles Zenawi, in an interview with Professor Donald Levine (ER, September 1992). I started wondering whether it had some germs of truth. I asked myself, “In spite of their differences, don’t all Ethiopians have a sense of togetherness, some objects of pride which they share and common factors which bind them together or unite them, such as history, religion, culture, language, geography, socio-economic and political life? My answer to this question was in the affirmative.
For the sake of clarity, I will divide the peoples of Ethiopia into their two major component parts: Semitic and Hamitic, and see how they relate to each other. I will take the Tigre, the Amhara and the Gurage as examples of the Semitic group; the Oromo, the Somali, the Afar, and the West Sidama or Ometo as examples of the Hamitic. When we observe these groups closely, we realize that they are directly or indirectly related to each other.
The Tigre, the Amhara and the Gurage share the same ancestors. They are close relatives, so to speak. Northern Ethiopia, the original home of the two major Semitic Ethiopians, the Amhara and the Tigre, however, had been inhabited by Hamitic Ethiopians for at least three thousand years before the South Arabians, the other ancestors of the Tigre and the Amhara, immigrated from South Arabia to Northern Ethiopia, to what we today call Tigre and Eritrea.
The indigenous inhabitants of Tigre and Eritrea 4000 years ago were Hamitic Ethiopians. The Agew and the Beja, for instance, are the descendants of such Hamitic Ethiopians. Not only these Hamitic Ethiopians had their own civilizations built on kingdoms, according to some experts of African history, they were also the forefathers of the Pharaoes and the founders of the Egyptian civilization. Whether this is a fact or myth, one thing remains true. These Hamitic Ethiopians had their own civilization and a close relationship with the ancient Egyptians and the South Arabians. These Ethiopians had formed governments, wrote in their own alphabets and built stone houses, altars and statues. They worshiped their own and foreign gods and were engaged in commerce. According to Sergew Hable Selassie in his book, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270. they exported to Egypt rare minerals such as Lapis Lazuli, electrum, silver, eye cosmetic known as kool (in both Ethiopian and Egyptian languages), gold, gold dust and antimony, as well as animals and their byproducts. Moreover, they exported to Egypt wood and wood byproducts such as incense, myrrh, balsam, boomerangs, ebony, gums, cinnamon and frankincense.Continued