In an earlier article – refutation of Mammo Muchie’s report on the Horn of Africa Conference (http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article23512), we unveiled the historical falsifications and the political – ideological bias entrenched in his text’s introduction and first part. The article under the title ‘The Horn of Africa Conference Clique, and their Dark Plans for Egypt, Sudan, 'Ethiopia', and Somalia’ consisted in the first of a series, and can be found here: (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=38050).
In the present article, we will reveal Mammo Muchie’s incredibly outrageous forgeries of the Horn of Africa History, on which the Horn of Africa Conference organizers, and the dark groups hidden behind them, intend to set their monstrous geopolitical projects for a Unified Cemetery of African Peoples from Egypt’s southern border down to the Kenyan coast; this colonial project antedates Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt and provides for a Coptic Republic of Ethiopia – being intertwined with inscrutable search fro the Ark of Covenant.
We will analyze the issue in another series of articles, but here we will mostly focus on the second part of Mammo Muchie’s inconsistent and irrelevant text. That part is entitled ‘Myth of Origin’ and presents an incredible record of bogus-academic and totally unscholarly standpoints over the History of the Horn of Africa region and its wider periphery; in addition, Mammo Muchie provides us with the most convincing documentation of his dramatic ignorance of rudimentary points pertaining to the History of Eastern Africa.
We will first publish the second part of Mammo Muchie’s text, and then its refutation point per point. Numbers encrusted in Mammo Muchie’s text refer to points of refutation.
Myth of Origin (Unite the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean) by M. Muchie
“Looking back far ahead at the possible birthdates of the names Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia, 1 one finds a remarkable history that they more or less originated in the same area 2 and the forces that shaped each one has shaped the other. 3 If we look back thus to the myth of origin of these entities, 4 we find that it argues for their unity and composition rather than their division and fragmentation. 5
If we take the Pre-Judaic, Pre- Christian and pre-Islamic phases of historical evolution, 6 again the same thing transpires: the same forces that shaped each have shaped the others. 7
If we take the Judaic, Christian and Islamic periods 8 respectively, we see a history of interaction, 9 communication, 10 migrations, 11 wars, 12 and a shared civilisation 13 and extensive contact through trade with the outside world of Europe, India and China. 14 We see not only did these entities from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean communicate through mutual subjugation and the brutalities, injustices and oppressions recorded in history from the outside medieval and ancient worlds, 15 but also through the migration of their own civilisations 16 through the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, even the Atlantic and other outlets. (Shihan de S Jayasuriya & R. Pankhurst (eds.) The African Diaspora in The Indian Ocean, 2003) 17
The division of these entities into the states as we know them as they are arranged now came during the notorious period of the European Scramble for Africa. 18 During this period in the 19th century the people of this region were divided 19 or mutilated 20 and their determined resistance against the colonial encounter was largely and on the whole, though heroic, was unsuccessful. 21 Even the Ethiopian 22 kings that appeared to have been able to snatch and retain a territorially carved Ethiopian state formation that waxed and waned territorially over time from the jaws of the European scramble 23 only were able to maintain and retain on the whole a tenuous grip. 24 Their states have been constantly threatened by perfidious imperial humiliations 25 through unequal treaties 26 and unrealistic and unfair border demarcations 27 that imbedded the seeds of all sorts of conflicts and antagonisms that have undermined state and unification in Ethiopia. 28 The imperial-colonial pressure was victimising rather than building. 29 Ethiopia emerged scathed with the scars and threats of the imperial agenda of the time falling prey 30 to it once more by those it defeated, for example, at Adwa in 1896 31 and falling under fascist occupation 32 between 1936 and 1941 under the Italians colonial adventures. 33
Whilst it is very clear to any sober person that Ethiopia suffered as an oppressed country, 34 and whatever it managed to recover from the imperialist onslaught 35 is gained through huge sacrifice and resistance, a particularly sinister reading and twist was given to its role during the Scramble for Africa, as if it was part and parcel of the Great Powers, and indeed a great power itself!! 36 Nothing can be furthest from the truth than this preposterous claim that Ethiopia was part and parcel of the imperial and colonial system. 37 Ethiopia was a victim of the colonial-imperial order 38 and cannot be considered as part and parcel of the imperial system 39 even if it were to have allied with one sort or group of imperial powers 40 locked in rivalries with each other to retain a partially 41 carved state from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea.
In the Conference in Lund some delegates who should know better 42 tried to spread some unusual tales claiming that the current Somali invasion by the Ethiopian Government 43 was a continuation of the imperial colonial project of the Scramble for Africa 44 where they alleged Ethiopia participated by sending a delegation to the Berlin 1885 infamous meeting. 45 Even if Ethiopia sent an observer, it is a far cry from exaggerating such a presence into a role that Ethiopia was part of the forces that carved the African continent. 46
Conceptually such a claim is outrageous and bankrupt. 47 The Ethiopian emperor was clear that the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean are historically and culturally connected. 48 But he lamented the fact that the imperial project disrupted their unity 49 and appealed to God to restore their unity at some possible time in the future. 50 That prescient insight by emperor Menelik has nothing to do with a colonial project. 51 It has everything to do with redressing great power imperial and colonial injustice 52 visited upon not only on the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, but also Africa from the Mediterranean to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. 53
In Ethiopia those who have legitimate demands to decentralise the states of the region particularly in Ethiopia by localising authority at the grassroots 54 by devolving power and empowering ordinary citizens 55 went overboard and created false ideologies 56 of Ethiopia as a’ colonial’ power. 57 This thesis has been loosely spread by books such as Addis Hiwot’s From Autocracy to Revolution, London, published by the Review of African Political Economy group, 1975, Bereket Habte Selassie, Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa, MRP, New York, 1980, A . Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict 1868-1992, Lynne Reinner, 1992, Sisay Ibsa et al The Invention of Ethiopia, Trenton, Red Sea press 1991. There are many articles and pamphleteering from the various fronts from the TPLF to OLF, ONLF, Sidama Liberation Front and others that spread loosely the false conception of Ethiopia ’s relations with the various communities both inside and outside the region as a colonial relation. 58 This sinister anti-intellectual 59 and devious misconstruction 60 must be rejected and the precise concept that truly characterises relations of oppressions involving the peoples of the region re- formulated by mounting an unsparing criticism of so much of the propaganda masquerading as science. 61 Ethiopia’s relations with Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti or Sudan has never been colonial 62 and is not colonial in the sense of a relationship that Britain, Italy or France had with these various states including Ethiopia. 63”
Refutation of Mammo Muchie’s Myth of Origin (Unite the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean)
Point 1
Valid for the targeted states, Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia, as well as for any historical country and state, the term ‘birth date’ is erroneous; it is rather relevant of Political Sciences, and to some extent it would be normal to accept it for technical entities like Vanuatu and Tuvalu that represent artificial administrative constructions. However, it is extremely irrelevant and comical to speak about the birth date of Assyria or Rome.
Now, if we speak of ethnic and geographic terms, national names the Antiquity of which is lost in millennia, we should be more careful; names have no birth dates, either we deal with an Asiatic, African, European or American state, country or nation.
‘Ethiopia’ – which is attributed to the geographical area of Northern and Eastern Sudan and to the Kushitic nation that dwelled and developed civilization there – goes as back as the 2nd millennium BCE, when the first reference is found in the Mycenaean Linear B writings. The earliest term described the people, the Ancient Kushites, the ancestors of the Modern Oromos and other Kushitic peoples of modern Eastern Africa.
Red Sea – Erythra Thalassa – Eritrea
‘Sudan’ and ‘Somalia’ as terms emerged in the early Islamic times, in the second half of the 1st millennium CE. Djibouti was coined as term during the middle Islamic times, whereas Eritrea consists in a modern term reflecting Italy’s colonial plans. The term consists in the Italianization of the Ancient Greek adjective ‘erythros’ (‘erythra’ in the feminine), which stands for ‘red’. It was selected out of the context of the Ancient Greek text ‘Periplus (circumnavigation) of the Red Sea’ (in Ancient Greek: Periplous tes Erythras Thalasses) that was written ca. 70 CE by an anonymous Alexandrian Egyptian captain and merchant who had sailed throughout most of the area that was then called Red Sea.
Although Eritrea is the newest of the five erratically selected names, the History of the land goes back to the 1st millennium BCE. However, it would be essential to clarify at this point that our ‘Red Sea’ does not correspond to the area the Ancient Greeks called ‘Erythra Thalassa’, and the Romans named ‘Mare Rubrum’. What in the Antiquity was called by this name encompassed a far wider area than what we call today Red Sea, namely the sea, the islands and the continental coasts between the Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandeb straits.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans called ‘Red Sea’ the entire coastal and maritime region that includes the following sections (according to modern terminology):
1. the Red Sea,
2. the Persian Gulf,
3. the Gulf of Aden (between Yemen and Somalia),
4. the Arabian Sea (between Oman, Pakistan and India), and
5. the Indian Ocean, in its entirety.
Quite indicatively, when Agatharchides (Peri tes Erythras Thalasses / About the Red Sea) writes in the middle of the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, and narrates a natural phenomenon as reason for that sea’s apparently odd name, he locates the phenomenon in an area that corresponds to today’s Eastern Yemenite and Western Omani coast.
Point 2
‘A remarkable history that they originated in the same area’: this sentence is meaningless in English. Beyond the poor editing, Mammo Muchie’s text is full of historical distortions.
It is ridiculous to call a wide area full of different origin peoples, varied religions, unrelated (despite the existing exchanges of course) cultures, dissimilar civilizations, separate historical evolution, independent political concepts and practices, disparate languages, distinct scriptures, diverse systems of world conceptualization, autonomous political history, unconnected social-behavioural systems, and strikingly opposite artistic idiosyncrasies as “same area”.
It is unscholarly, erratic, and inane; even if it said for countries, peoples, cultures, religions and civilizations with important affinities and extensive interconnectedness, it sounds pathetic. What if we say that f. i. Assyrians and Phoenicians “originated in the same area”? It would look idiotic; Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean coast are not ‘the same area’; even worse for as disparate locations as Darfur in Sudan, Oromia, and Ras Hafun in the Somali coast!
The expression - by itself - introduces a concept of vagueness, ambiguity, and inaccuracy; these characteristics are certainly very negative for a scholar. Practically speaking, every ‘area is different, even within the same country!
Point 3
Far worse than just the syntax of Mammo Muchie’s text are the real historical mistakes. What are the forces that shaped the names and the civilizations throughout the erroneously selected countries? The author probably refers to the peoples of those different areas in their historical evolution and their interconnection with others and with themselves.
Conclusively, the forces that shaped civilization and historical developments in Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, ‘Ethiopia’, and Somalia are very, very, very different.
Viewing the aforementioned area diachronically, we immediately identify the following major acting forces:
Kushitic Ethiopians – primary factor of Civilization in Sudan
In Sudan, the Kushites formed, under heavy Egyptian impact, the various stages of Pre-Christian, Christian, and Islamic civilizations. Nilo-Saharan inhabitants of the area, although incessantly present and differentiated, did not have but limited impact in the cultural and political developments.
Although there was a continuous cultural and political interaction between Sudan and Egypt, respectively Kas and Kemet, in their ancient languages that were written in Hieroglyphic scriptures, there was a great part of antipathy, rivalry, impact and friendship at the same time. As Egyptians intermingled with various Semitic peoples (Phoenicians, Aramaeans and Hebrews), Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans, as well as Kushites and Libyans, in later periods of History, Sudan remained more genuinely Kushitic than Egypt. Yet, at its very beginning, 5000 years ago, Egypt was the authentic center of all Kushites.
For the most important phases of civilization in Sudan before the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, the Kerma Kingdom, and the Napatan Kingdom are interludes of Egyptian occupation of Sudan; the latter rises in power at the moment of Egypt’s division into two countries, Upper (South: around Luqsor) and Lower (North: around Delta and more particular Tanis), and by striking an alliance with the Theban priesthood of Amun, it controls a vast empire encompassing the southern half of today’s Egypt, and all the Sudanese North. However, the moment Kushite Pharaoh Taharqa (King of Napata and King of Thebes) prevails in Delta, the Assyrian imperial army invades Egypt in three successive turns (671, 669 and 666 BCE), putting an end to the Kushitic control of Egypt.
If the Assyrians stopped at the area of Aswan and the First Cataract, after destroying Thebes, others advanced far more. Following the invasions led by the Libyan Pharaoh Psamtek (Psammetichus) II (591 BCE) and the Achaemenid Shah of Iran Kamboujiyah (Cambyses. 525 BCE), who had annexed Egypt to Iran, Napata (in the area of today’s Karima) were sacked twice. Then, the capital was transferred further to the South, at today’s Bagrawiyah, which became famous throughout the Late Antiquity world as Meroe, Capital of Ethiopia.
This is the real Ethiopia, not today’s Bogus-‘Ethiopia’, which has to be properly referred to as Abyssinia.
Makkuria – Africa’s Largest, Most Important, and Longest Lasting Christian Kingdom
Following the destruction of Meroe at around 360 – 370 CE, and the depopulation of the country that indicates a massive migration of Meroitic, Kushitic Ethiopian populations alongside the Blue Nile, the Kushitic remnants contribute to the rise of two out of the three Christian states that existed for many centuries on Sudanese soil. At those days, the Nubians formed their first and last independent state that comprised territories immediately in the south of the Roman imperial border of Egypt: Nobatia.
Nobatia’s capital was at Faras, on today’s Egyptian – Sudanese borderline, and the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria was the source of doctrine for the Faras Cathedral’s priesthood.
Further in the south, around Donqula Agouza (650 km in the south of Faras), the Kushitic Ethiopians who had adhered to Christianity formed their capital, and in opposition to the Nobatian clergy they associated themselves with the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria. Their country, Makkuria, has been the most important Christian African Kingdom that later on – to efficiently face the Islamic threat coming from the North (Egypt) – merged with Nobatia, with capital always at Old Donqula (Agouza), and survived until around 1350 BCE.
The same language of the Kushitic Ethiopians of Meroe that was written in Hieroglyphics around 300 CE has been found in Greek characters on mosaics and epigraphic evidence 300 years later.
At this zenith, Makkuria controlled a territory larger than today’s Amhara / Tigray controlled fake ‘Ethiopia’ (the entire North of Sudan, and the South of Egypt, with the exception of the Red Sea coast). One should never forget that although Axumite Abyssinia rose to power as Christian state one century earlier than Makkuria, the Abyssinian kingdom disintegrated following the Islamic expansion in the early 7th century. Axum was abandoned as early as 750 CE (if not earlier). Makkuria lasted twice as long as Christian Axum.
Further in the south of Makkuria, Alodia rose to power around Soba (a few km in the south of Khartoum). We are poorly documented about this, third, Christian Kushitic kingdom of Sudan, but we know that its collapse is due to the expansion of the Muslim Kingdom of Funj as late as 1600.
The various Kushitic migrations to the south of the modern state of Abyssinia signified a later expansion of Kushitic culture in that area that was almost uninhabited before their arrival. By Kushitic migrations, we do not refer only to that occurred in the aftermath of the Axumite invasion of Meroe (360 – 370 CE), but also to the Christian Makkurian migration to Alodia and further in the south during the 14th and the 15th centuries.
South Semitic Yemenites – primary factor of Civilization in Abyssinia
The modern states of Sudan and Abyssinia are technical entities that must be dissolved as soon as possible; they do not correspond but to vicious colonial plans and false identities, fake cultures and oppressive realms. In Abyssinia, the totalitarian monarchical regime carried out an unprecedented scale usurpation of Cultural – National Name and Identity, by stipulating ‘Ethiopia’ as official name of Abyssinia.
If we do not count the oppressed Oromos, Ogadenis, Sidamas, Afars, Shekachos, Kaffas, Gambellas, and other minor nations whose lands have been illegally invaded and thence occupied contrarily to their will, in Abyssinia today live the descendents of the Axumites, the Amharas and the Tigrays.
They are the only peoples among whom radiates the Abyssinian Axumite Heritage of the heretic Monophysitic Christianity. This Heritage does not concern the rest, i.e. the vast majority of that tyrannical state.
Abyssinian Culture: a meager phenomenon of limited radiation
Out of the country’s 1100000 km2 total surface, Abyssinian Heritage and Culture radiate ethnically, linguistically, culturally and religiously over a territory slightly larger than 210000 km2, which corresponds to the area of the two provinces, Amhara and Tigray.
Wherever outside this circumference one may encounter aspects of Abyssinian linguistic, cultural, religious and socio-behavioural radiation, one must consider that this is an imposed radiation, namely the result of illegal and criminal violation of International Law, and Human Rights, and the consequence of the colonial expansion of the anemic and barbaric kingdom of Menelik II.
We cannot afford to let the illegally diffused Abyssinian culture persist throughout non Abyssinian lands; it would signify acceptance of Nazi culture in post-WW II Hungary and Romania.
If we want to appreciate the Abyssinian culture true radius, we have to include part of Eritrea, namely the North, where the Tigrinya and Tigre speaking people live.
However, the factor of this culture that only partly influenced the Kushitic Agaws in later periods is not of indigenous origin; contrarily to the Kushites in today’s Sudan, who have been indigenous since times immemorial, the Abyssinians are outlandish to Africa. They originate from North Yemen where pre-Islamic epigraphic evidence informs us about the Abyssinians’ earliest stages of History, namely the period they were just an oppressed tribe, named Habashat, in the confines between Sheba, Qataban and Himyar.
Their migration across the Bab el Mandeb straits seems to have involved various stages, different generations, and an early expansion in the area of Adulis, around today’s Massawa in Eritrea, and then further on up to Axum. The Axumite kingdom even at its zenith never comprised areas adjacent to lake Tana in its small territory that turned around Massawa, Axum, Danakil and Assab (Avalites).
Even when the heretic, pseudo-Christian king Caleb attempted his ill-fated expedition in Yemen, Axumite Abyssinia did not encompass territories of modern Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan.
King Ezanas’ destruction of Meroe and annexation of less than 20% of Ethiopia’s territory was also a very ephemeral phenomenon.
Kushitic Punt – Diachronic Somalia
Known as Punt already at the times of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, so for more than 4000 years, Somalia crossed a long and tormented History; Yemenite expansionism, commercial exchanges, and navigational exploits throughout the Indian Ocean brought about the Yemenite colonization of Azania, vast country stretched from the Horn of Africa, Cape Guardafui (Akroterion Aromaton), down to Rhapta (today’s Dar es Salam in Tanzania).
The phenomenon is extensively discussed by the author of the Periplus of the Red Sea, and it is unrelated to modern aspects of 19th – 20th century colonialism; it involved political annexation but there were extensive mixed marriages, and a certain respect for the local cultures, as the Yemenites learned the local language, if they wished to stay there. There was clearly an economic exploitation of natural resources ‘recompensed’ through an export of administration and technical prowess.
Another part of Somalia had already achieved independence in the area between today’s Djibouti and the Horn of Africa, known as ‘The Other Berberia’ (He Alle Berberia, in Greek), with capital at Malao (today’s Berbera).
Somalis seem to have interacted extensively with Yemenites, Indians and Indonesians who sailed on rhapta boats to Dar as Salam, the ancient name of which is precisely due to the frequent rhapta (sewn) boats of the Malays sailing from Chryse (- ‘Golden’, as the Greeks were collectively calling Indochina and Indonesia).
Although for many centuries the Somali trade was an exclusive matter of Yemenite mercantilism, the Roman naval attack on Aden (Arabia Felix) around 26 BCE changed the trade direction, and the Somali coastland products reached many places in the Mediterranean basin, beyond Alexandria. The increased interconnectedness of the entire Eastern African coast with the Mediterranean is attested in Ptolemy Geographer’s works where we have further details about the area that was certainly better known in the 2nd century CE Mediterranean world.
The Roman expedition to explore the sources of the Nile, as narrated by Strabon, seems to have had commercial stimuli, namely the discovery of possible inland routes between Meroe and Azania through areas presently inhabited by Oromos, Shekachos, Kaffas, Sidamas and Gambellas.
After the rise of Christianity, it seems that the area lost some importance comparatively with India and Sri Lanka, and this is highlighted within the famous opus ‘Christian Topography’ of Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Aramaean monk who lived in Alexandria, and traveled as far as India and Taprobane (Sri Lanka). This phenomenon has to do with the Roman – Iranian confrontations that turned Central Asia, India, Yemen, Arabia and Axum into the periphery of a frontal battle that lasted more 400 years, and drove the two opponents to collapse.
Contrarily, the rise of Islam and the Yemenite monopoly in the navigation throughout the Indian Ocean, matched with the isolation and collapse of Axum in the mountains of East Africa, underscored the importance of East African coast due to its natural resources; subsequently, the interactions between the heirs of Azania and the Yemenites, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Indians and the Malays contributed to the further diffusion of Islam in Eastern Africa. Indicative of the interactions, the Yemenite Banaadiris constitute one of the most significant components of the modern Somali national life.
Through all this we come to the conclusion that the forces that shaped Sudan (real Ethiopia) did not shape Somalia, the forces that shaped Abyssinia did not shape Sudan, and the sources that shaped Somalia did not shape either Sudan or Abyssinia. Contrarily to Mammo Muchie’s unqualified statement.
Point 4
“Myth of origin of these entities”! How come! I do not know any specialized (on the History of Sudan, Abyssinia and Somalia) scholar who would seriously call these ancient civilizations ‘entities’. Even worse, there are no ‘myths of origin’ of these peoples, countries or entities, according to Mammo Muchie.
He wants probably to say ‘the historical origins of these civilizations’ but his erratic language reveals a grave case of ignorance and barbarism that disqualify for further consideration.
Point 5
As a matter of fact, there is no historical evidence duly interpreted and fully accepted by modern scholarship that would argue for the “unity and composition” of Sudan, Abyssinia (comically re-baptized as ‘Ethiopia’), Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia “rather than their division and fragmentation”.
There is not a single Meroitic, Makurian, Axumite, Abyssinian, Somali, Yemenite, Arabic, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Aramaic, Coptic or Sanskrit source to mention anything related to possibly common origins of the peoples of the targeted 5 (five) countries; and there is no historical source to refer to that area as having ever been united or as having the prerequisites and the qualifications for this.
It is all in the falsifying and distorting, unscholarly and uneducated ‘text’ of the forger Mammo Muchie. We will dedicate further articles to refute his numerous aberrations, as we believe that all the tyrannized peoples of Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti and Abyssinia must learn in detail his execrable mistakes, premeditated inconsistencies, and deliberate lies in order to accurately perceive the serious threat against their Peace, Progress, Freedom and Life that forger Mammo Muchie impersonates.
Note
Bas relief from the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahari. The text and the pictures narrate the Expedition to Punt - Somalia (ca. 1480 BCE). We see Puntites, i.e. Somalis living before 3500 years. By then, there was not a single Abyssinian, ancestor of today's Amharas and Tigrays, on African soil. The Habashat tribe of Yemen has limited historicity on African soil - compared to Somalis, Kushites and Egyptians.