Despite Gadaa being an egalitarian social system, women were excluded from passing through age-sets and generation-sets. Gada effectively enforced a gender-based division of labor in Oromo society, although it allowed two equally important separate and interdependent economic domains. Explaining how the Gadaa system brought these two domains together by establishing mechanisms of balancing, regulating and […]
by E.A. Wallis Budge, [1932] King Solomon swore to the Queen SOLOMON answered and said unto her, “I swear unto thee that I will not take thee by force, but thou must swear unto me that thou wilt does not take by force anything that is in my house.” And the Queen laughed and said unto him, “Being […]
The object of the author, or compiler, and the later editors of the KEBRA NAGAST (no matter what its original form may have been), was to glorify ETHIOPIA by narrating the history of the coming of the “spiritual and heavenly ZION“, the Tabernacle of the Law of the God of Israel, of her own free will from JERUSALEM to ETHIOPIA, and to make it […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay 1. The Site Aksum was built on gently sloping land which rose, north and east of the city, to two flat-topped hills, now called Beta Giyorgis and Mai Qoho respectively. The hills around the town are formed from a granitic rock, nepheline syenite (Littmann 1913: II, 6; Butzer 1981). Between Beta Giyorgis […]
14-1. Social Classes By Stuart Munro-Hay We have remarkably little information about the stratification of Aksumite society, but some suggestions can be made using indications from archaeological and other evidence. Mobility between classes, inheritance, marriage status or other family arrangements is all at present quite outside our knowledge. Polygamy can perhaps be assumed by analogy with […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay Military equipment is shown on certain stelae at Aksum. The so-called `Stele of the Lances’ is now known to be part of Stele 4 (after the DAE notation), whose apex is to be found elsewhere in the town (Chittick 1974: 163); on it two spears, one with a long blade and one […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay No Aksumite painting, beyond that on pottery, has survived, and much of the decorative material which has been found is of uncertain provenance. Some of it may have originated in Egypt or Syria, or even South Arabia. Surviving metal-work objects, such as small images of an ibex, the Three Graces, and a […]
The suggestion that some Aksumite kings took colleagues on the throne has already been mentioned. The examples of this practice, frequent in the Roman and South Arabian ruling dynasties, might have encouraged the kings to hope that such a system could help overcome succession crises and make the king’s day to day tasks in ruling […]
India with its deeply religious people has given two great religions to the world. Buddhism and Brahminism are typical of the intermingled races from which they have come. Buddhism arose from the more ancient civilization. The older temples, of India, are to Buddha. His worship was anterior to that of Brahma. In the Ramayana, they […]
By Stuart Munro-Hay The process of development of the Aksumite state is obscure. The earliest surviving literary references to Aksum, in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Huntingford 1980) and Ptolemy’s Geography (Stevenson 1932), together with some finds of early date from the site itself (Munro-Hay 1989), indicate that the city was probably established at the […]
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