October 31, 2018

The Inhabitants

By Stuart Munro-Hay

The population of the Aksumite villages probably resembled closely the inhabitants of the present day; Semitic speakers in the central region (`Aksumites, Habash’) owing something of their cultural tradition to influences from South Arabia in earlier times, with Cushitic speaking peoples on the peripheries of the kingdom. We know that tribal groups if they submitted to Aksum, were left under the control of their local rulers, and probably those not in the immediate vicinity of the capital managed to preserve something of their own social systems. But we also learn from inscriptions that forcible transportation for rebellious tribes was practiced, and by this method, some alien elements must have been introduced. Ezana, for example, removed some 4400 Beja tribespeople to a province called Matlia (Ch. 11: 5), seemingly a march of several months. It has been suggested that this move could have been the origin of the present province-name Begamder (Begameder), or `Land of the Beja’.

No painted representations or statues of Aksumites survive to give us an idea of their appearance; except for the badly damaged picture of an Ethiopian ruler at Qusayr Amra in Jordan, and the pottery heads from jars found during excavations (Munro-Hay 1989: 280). Pirenne has noted that the coiffure of the latter resembles that of figures carved on the decorated roof-beams of the temple of Ma`in in South Arabia (1977: I. 255-7). Another sort of coiffure seems to be represented on a small mask-pendant from Aksum (Tringali 1987: Tav. VIa). No personal descriptions are available either, though one of the Byzantine ambassadors described king Kaleb’s costume and ornaments on a state occasion (Ch. 7: 2). The Kings’ features on the coins are fixed from the very first issues, and tell us little about their actual appearance; the large eyes, straight nose, and prominent lips and chin may owe as much to the die-cutters conventions as to an idea of portraiture. The situation is, curiously enough, different for the pre-Aksumite period. Statues, fragments of statues, and relief sculpture, from the pre-Aksumite Ethiopian sites at Addi Galamo and Hawelti (Caquot and Drewes 1955; de Contenson 1963ii) show elegantly robed female figures represented with tightly-curled hair, large, wide eyes outlined in the Egyptian fashion, and enigmatically smiling mouths.

Two statues from Hawelti show women wearing full-length robes, apparently pleated, and adorned with the heavy triple necklace; they are rather reminiscent of some South Arabian sculptures of goddesses (Pirenne 1977: I. 439, I. 451). Another, from Addi Galamo, wears a fringed robe decorated with a repeated pattern of a dot with eight others set in a circle around it. A male figure carved on an elaborate covered throne from Hawelti wears a shorter knee-length kilt, a cloak knotted over his shoulders, and sports a jutting beard with his close-curled hair. From Matara (Anfray and Annequin 1965: pl. LXIII: 1) came only the fragment of a statue showing one of the heavily outlined Egyptian-style eyes, and tightly-curled hair. Aksum itself yielded, from the Maryam Tseyon area (de Contenson 1963: pl. XIII, d), the remains of yet another head, in basalt, with only the close curls of the hair visible. A human-headed sphinx, a very early example of a type later found in South Arabian art, came from Kaskase, found with inscriptions dating to perhaps the fifth century BC (Pirenne 1977: I. 468-9, fig. 1).

Very likely these pre-Aksumite statues represent much the same people as those who later formed the Aksumite population. We know from Ezana’s `monotheist’ inscription (Ch. 11: 5) that the Aksumites recognized the Black (tsalim) and the Red (qayh) peoples, mentioning also the `Red Noba’; but it is not clear where in these categories they fitted themselves. Littmann (1913) thought that the implication was of the `red’ people of the kingdom of Aksum in contrast to the `black’ Noba (and others), a differentiation which still applies today in the eyes of the northern Ethiopians. Both Drewes (1962: 98) and Schneider (1961: 61-2), whose particular study has been the pre-Aksumite inscriptions, have come to the conclusion that even in the time of the kingdom of D`MT this contrast was used. The expression `the entire kingdom’ was rendered in the geographical sense by the phrase `its east and its west’, while the different characteristics of its population were illustrated by the words `its red (people) and its black (people)’. If this is correct, and the two phrases are intentionally balanced, it might indicate a predominance of the `red’ or criticized population in the eastern and central part of the kingdom, as would be expected given the South Arabian influences apparent from the material remains found there.