Cyber Ethiopia

Today we consider the history of Ethiopia’s largest living animals!

Interest in Ethiopian elephants was first generated in Egypt at the time of the Ptolemies around the third century BC - that is about two or three centuries after the establishment of the great northern Ethiopian city of Yéha, and a little over half a millennium after the time of the Biblical King Solomon.

Babylonians then ruled by the Seleucid dynasty, was then the main enemies of the Ptolemies, and were then making use of Indian elephants. These animals have aptly been termed the “tanks” of the ancient world – and were soon involved in an old-times arms race.

Rostovtzeff, the historian of the ancient world, observes that the Ptolemies “could not remain inferior in this respect”. The “starting point” of Ptolemaic policy was therefore “to have their own war elephants”, for, without a supply of them, their army would be “hopelessly inferior” to that of their rivals. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ethiopia and Yemen, two historic countries on either side of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, have been in contact since almost the dawn of time. This is scarcely surprising. The intervening strip of sea between South Arabia and the Ethiopian Horn of Africa is at its closest little more than fifty miles wide, and is believed ten thousand years ago to have been only eleven miles wide. This narrow stretch of water could be crossed, throughout the historic period, by the simplest of vessels, including rafts, within little more than a day.

The highlands of the Yemeni and Ethiopian regions, as the archaeologist David Phillipson notes, have “much in common physically and environmentally”. They form part of a wide region which, Walter Raunig observes, has “not only very close geographical, climatic, zoological and botanical connections”, but also “cultural links [which] have always been equally, at times exceptionally strong”. Read the rest of this entry »

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We turn today to Emperor Tewodros, and to his Cannon “Sevastapol” - about which more must be said anon.

The story of the gun, like everything to do with Emperor Tewodros, is, so to speak, larger than life.

Tewodros, as you will remember, dear reader, was one of Ethiopia’s major protagonists of modernisation, albeit a tragic and largely unsuccessful figure.

Objectives

Wanting to modernise the country, he sought to break the power of the feudal chiefs, to curtail what he considered excessive ownership of land by the Church, and to abolish the old system whereby unpaid soldiers looted the peasantry. He wished also to build roads, to put an end to the slave trade, to foster the use of the vernacular tongue Amharic in place of the old ecclesiastical language Ge’ez, and to open up diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

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Lebna Dengel and Portugal
Early in the sixteenth century Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia (1508-1540), sent King Manoel I of Portugal what may be termed, in modern parlance, an important request for technical assistance.
He wrote:
“Send masters who can make figures of gold and silver, iron, tin, and lead, and send me gold leaf for the churches; and masters of gilding with gold leaf, and of making gold leaf, and do this soon, and let them come to remain with me here and in my favour. And when they may wish to return at their desire, I will not detain them, and this I swear by Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God”. Read the rest of this entry »

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