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Born in Geza Kenisha in Asmara, the same area where Onesimos Nesib (former name Hika) sought refuge and translated the Holy Bible into Afan Oromo more than a century ago, the anthropologist Asmerom, (Ph.D. Harvard Emeritus Professor) is well known for the relentless efforts he has done to introduce Gadaa system to the world.
Two years ago, Professor Asmerom saw the fruits of his 50 years hard work when the UNESCO adopted Gadaa, the five-century-old constitution of the Oromo of Ethiopia, as one of the world intangible heritages.
The respected professor wrote one of the most quintessential books on the Gadaa system. Read: OROMO DEMOCRACY: An Indigenous African Political System.
WHAT IS GADAA?
Gadaa is a political, economic and social system which the Oromo people have been following in governing themselves. Although the Gadaa system is no longer widely practised, it remains influential in Oromo society at large.
Amazingly, the Gadaa system is a democratic system of governance in which the community as a whole has the opportunities to participate on an equal basis.
Under the Gadaa system, the Oromo people are organized or structured into five grades or strata and assume power in rounds which last for eight years each.
Among the Borana, Gada is graded into Mogiissa, Sabaka, Darara, Fullasa, and Makula. On the other hand, among the Karayu Oromo, the strata are referred to as: Robale , Melba, Birmaji, Michille, and Halchisa. Among the Macha and Tulama, these strata are known as: Horata, Michille, Dulo, Robale and Birmaji.
His visit will be a blessing as he has been to the Oromo nation, whose cultural treasure he helped not stay buried and neglected with no chance to enjoy the recognition and scrutiny it truly deserved.
This article draws attention to the Borana Oromo gadaa system as an Indigenous federation. Gadaa is an Indigenous democratic political system used by the Oromo in which leaders are elected and their term in office is strictly fixed. Data for this research were generated through interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. The findings of this research indicate that the Borana have three gadaa councils at two levels: one at the center for the entire Borana and two named after two Borana clans. The later have relative autonomy under the cardinal law of the Borana gadaa. This structure has been serving as a means of managing conflict, maintaining internal unity, and ensuring better governance and power devolution. Finally, suggestions are made on how to support Indigenous governance systems, which in this case includes acknowledging the values and principles of the gadaa system, as well as designing a legal framework that retains and protects the integrity and legitimacy of the system.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge several individuals and institutes for they contributed to the success of this work. The Volkswagen Foundation sponsored my PhD study through the project entitled “Traveling Models of Conflict Management.” I was able to generate part of the data for this article during my stay in the field as part of my dissertation. Being sponsored by Jimma University, I was also able to attend the 40th Gumii Gaayoo in the summer 2012. Furthermore, Jimma University sponsored a research project entitled “Borana’s Response to Local and Global Changes: Amending Gadaa Law” in 2013/14, which enabled me to collect enriching data on the issue under discussion. I must express my deepest thanks to the Borana Elders and ritual leaders who assisted me accessing important information on Borana gadaa federation. Click here to read the full article: Indigenous Federation: The Case of Borana Oromo, in International Indigenous Policy Journal
Oromo visual artist and activist Yaddi Bojia talks to Jackson Muneza M’vunganyi on using his art as a platform to speak on issues related to Oromo Culture,Social issues,Black Lives Movement etc.’Artists often see their place to provoke, to voice, to enlighten.’
Gada is the traditional governance system of Oromos in Ethiopia and Northern Kenya. Photo: gadasunlightours.comEthiopia’s Oromo people made headlines around the world when peaceful protests turned violent against government land use changes, prompting a state of emergency.
Now Oromo voices are being heard thanks to an entity more often associated with boosting tourism than governance — UNESCO.
Ethiopians rejoiced when the traditional Oromo governance system, known as Gada, was inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. The announcement was made during the 11th session of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, held in Ethiopia.
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is a special agency of the U.N. created to build the defenses of peace in the minds of men.
Built over generations, the traditional Oromo Gada governance system contains regulatory measures for conflict resolution, questions of religion and women’s rights.
“In contrast to the modus operandi employed by the current, authoritarian government, the Gada form of governance contains provisions guaranteeing an effective system of ‘checks and balances,’ the separation of powers and an institutionalized opposition – all of which provides safeguards against totalitarianism and a governmental abuse of power,” according to the U.N.
When UNESCO announced it was listing the Gada system as an intangible cultural heritage, Ethiopians rejoiced, the Ethiopian Herald reported. Sara Dubee, head of the West Arsi Culture and Tourism Office, said the Oromo people have been subjected to marginalization and subjugation during the former regimes. “The day is special to me and the people of Oromo. The day is a most awaited one in the history of Oromo. Oromo people have paid all the sacrifice to see the day.”
Gada has some features that differ from western democracies, according to Waltainfo. One is the distribution of power. Researchers say western democracies are deficient in distributing power. Those in power control most of the authority and wealth of the country. The young, poor and the elders are politically and economically marginalized in Western democracies.
The Oromo make up about 35 percent of Ethiopia’s population, which now exceeds 102 million, according to Worldometers.
Ethiopia already has eight cultural and one natural site designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites — the most of any African country. Morocco has the second highest.
The Gada system developed from knowledge gained by community experience over generations, UNESCO wrote on its website, according to Waltoinfo.com. Gada is practiced in Northern Kenya as well as Ethiopia.
The system serves as a mechanism for enforcing moral conduct, building social cohesion, and expressing forms of community culture.
In addition to distribution of power, another distinctive Gada feature that sets it apart from Western democracy is a testing period for elected leaders. Researchers say Gada believes in rigorous practical testing of candidates before they assume office, unlike western democracy, which relies almost exclusively on election.
Even though the Gada system is considered an intangible heritage, Ethiopians say the UNESCO designation will stimulate tourism.
“The Oromo people have sustained their authenticity for so long. We believe the values attached to the Gada system deserve to be safeguarded, nurtured, shared and spread across the world,” said Hirut Woldemariam, culture and tourism minster, Ethiopian Herald reported.
People can learn from the system, said Lemma Megerssa, Oromia state chief. “The adoption would increase our responsibility of safeguarding and promoting the convention, the system would be a center of tourist attraction.”
Oromo artist Mohammed Tawil said, “Our forefathers should be honored for their priceless endeavors in handing over the culture and identity of the system.”
“The Gada System is the true manifestation of the identity of the Oromo people,” Oromo artist Tadele Gemechu told the Ethioian Herald. “We should preserve it. UNESCO’s inscription could overturn the business-as-usual way of handing the values of the heritage. The government and research institutions should look ways how to bolster and promote the assets of (gada) system.”
The Oromo people have suffered a lot, said Atsede Kadire. “The Oromos have original and unique heritages that could take into account the whole form of life. The Gada system is one of the heritages that binds all. Gada system could be one of the bases for modern democracy.”
The UNESCO designation is a milestone and “a huge step to beef up our tourism industry because the world will come to learn about the Gada system from the community,” Kadire told Ethiopian Herald.
Ethiopia’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites and dates of designation include the following:
Aksum (1980)
Fasil Ghebbi, Gondar Region (1979)
Harar Jugol, the Fortified Historic Town (2006
Konso Cultural Landscape (2011)
Lower Valley of the Awash (1980)
Lower Valley of the Omo (1980)
Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela (1978)
Tiya (1980)
Simien National Park (1978)
Here’s what UNESCO had to say about the Gada system, according to Waltoinfo.com:
Gada is organized into five classes with one of these functioning as the ruling class consisting of a chairperson, officials and an assembly. Each class progresses through a series of grades before it can function in authority with the leadership changing on a rotational basis every eight years.
Class membership is open to men, whose fathers are already members, while women are consulted for decision-making on protecting women’s rights. The classes are taught by oral historians covering history, laws, rituals, time reckoning, cosmology, myths, rules of conduct, and the function of the Gada system.
Meetings and ceremonies take place under a sycamore tree (considered the Gada symbol) while major clans have established Gada centers and ceremonial spaces according to territory. Knowledge about the Gada system is transmitted to children in the home and at school.
Various sources indicated that the Gada system has the principles of checks and balances (through periodic succession of every eight years), and division of power (among executive, legislative, and judicial branches), balanced opposition (among five parties), and power sharing between higher and lower administrative organs to prevent power from falling into the hands of despots. Other principles of the system include balanced representation of all clans, lineages, regions and confederacies, accountability of leaders, the settlement of disputes through reconciliation, and the respect for basic rights and liberties.
UNESCO: Gadaa system, an indigenous democratic socio-political system of the OromoInscribed in 2016 ( at Eleventh session of the Committee) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
UNESCO has inscribed Gadaa System of the Oromo nation as Intangible World Heritage at its eleventh session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage held in Finfinee, Oromia, at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Conference Centre. The Gadaa System is an indigenous and democratic Oromo (Ancient Africa’s) governance institution and social civilization.
‘UNESCO has recognized the ancient Gadaa system that is a democratic system practiced by the Oromo nation. The Gadaa system classifies the Oromo society according to age. During each age classification certain skills are taught in order to gain experience and prepare for leadership of the Oromo society. UNESCO has acknowledged that the Gadaa system is one of the foundations of international democracy.’ OMN ENGLISH NEWS (November 30, 2016).
‘On November 30, 2016, UNESCO announced that the Oromo civilization known as the Gadaa System (which is the overall Oromo’s interconnected institutions of nationhood, including its Gadaa governing institution, the Siiqqee institution of women’s equality, and the Irreecha Oromo festival of cultural and religious significance, among other components of the Gadaa System) was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.’http://finfinnetribune.com/Gadaa/2016/12/oromos-gadaa-siiqqee-irreecha-recognized-by-unesco-as-intangible-heritage/
Badii fi seera malee namoonni keenya mana hidhaatti guuraman yeroo dhihootti akka gadi lakkifaman sagalee tokkoon gaafanna.
Namoonni dhiiga Oromoo taatanii lammii keessan ajjeestanii fi ajjeesaa turtan, waan hamaaf dabarsitanii kennitan sobaaf raga baatan, guyyaa har’aatii kaasee yaa’ii tokkummaa abbootii gadaa oromoo kun maqaa uummata oromoo kabajamaa fi guddaatiin badii darbeef dhiifama gaafattanii,dhugaa lammii keessaniitiif akka dhaabbatan isinii dhaamaa, kanarra kan darbe kana booda gocha kana irra deebitanii yoo raawwattan lafee fi dhiigni ilmaan oromoo, akka safuu fi safeeffannaa Sirna Gadaatiin kan isin gaafatu taha.
Ilmaan Oromoo naannawaa Finfinnee lafarraa buqqaa’an akka deebi’anii manni jirenyaa kennamuuf ni gaafanna.
Irreechi hora Finfinnee akka nuuf deebi’uuf fulbaana 24/2009 ummatni Oromoo fi Abbootiin Gadaa achirratti argamuun akka kabajannu beeksisaa akka nuuf mirkanaa’u ni gaafanna.
Qotee bulaan sababa baballina masterpilaanii magaalaatiinii fi investimentiitiin uummata keenya lafarraa buqqisaa jiraachuun akka nurraa dhaabbatu ni gaafanna.
Hojii dhabdummaa Naannoo Oromiyaatti babal’ataa jiruufi naannoowwan magaalotaa fi Finfinnee jirurratti dargaggoota yuniversitii fi koollejii irraa eebbifamaniif rakkoo hojiidhabdummaatiin dararaman haalli mijachuun deeggersi barbaachisaa tahe akka
godhamuuf ni gaafanna.
Nuti uummatni Oromoo sabaa fi sablammiiwwan jiran waliin nagaan jiraachuu barbaadna. Sababa daangaan keenya sharafamaa jiruuf uummatni keenya sabaa fi sablammiiwwan ollaa jiruun walitti bu’aa jira. Kanaafuu ,mootummaaan kara lachanuu ilaaluun furmaata akka kennuuf ni gaafanna.
Sirni Gadaa Oromoo safuu fi safeeffannaa isaa ganamaa eegee caasaa qabuun akka ijaaramuu fi kan ijaaramee jiru jabinaan akka itti fufu imaanaa guddaa saba keenyaaf kallattii hundaan cimsinee haa hojjennu.
Sirni Gadaa Oromoo Sirna Bulchiinsa Oromoo karaa nagaa fi tasgabbii qabuun rakkoowwa hawaasaa hiikuun aadaa fi duudhaa hawasaa babl’isuun abbaa qabeenyummaa dinagdee hawaasichaa kan mirkaneessudha waan taheef sirni kun jabeeffamuu kan qabuu fi kan ittiin bullu tahuu uumata keenyaaf dhaamsa dabarsiina.
Sirni Gadaa Oromoo faajjii mataa isaa:- Gurraacha, Diimaa Fi Adii kan qabu dha.kanaafuu ummatni Oromoo fi ummatni Ayyaana Irreechaa fuuldura keenyaa kamirratuu kabajamu irratti Faajjii kanaan ala alaabaa dhaaba siyaasaa kamiyyuu qabatee akka hin dhufne ni akeekkachiisna.
Afaan Oromoo afaan hojii federaalaa akka tahu ni gaafanna.
Statement by the Union of Oromo Gadaa Councils on Current Affairs in Oromia
Statement by the Union of Oromo Gadaa Councils on Current Affairs in Oromia
Issued following the conclusion of a three day extraordinary assembly held from 30 August- 1st September 2016 by Abba Gaddas representing all Oromia provinces
Place: Sodere Resort Hotel
We, Oromo Gadaa elders, have been working with the government and the community to solve the societal, economic and political predicaments facing the Oromo nation. Yet, none of the recommendations we presented to the government – particularly on issues that have caused lack of stability in the country- has been implemented. The government’s decision to violently suppress legitimate questions raised in peaceful rallies instead of dealing with them calmly and in accordance with the law has failed to solve the problem. Persecutions, killings and imprisonments as a result of this are worsening, even on mere suspects whose involvements in protest activities have not been established. In the light of this, and while having regard to our earlier recommendations, we have issued the following 13-point resolution.
The people of Oromia- regardless of zones, districts or localities we hail from or our religious & political differences- will stand in unity under the umbrella of The Gadaa and uphold our customs, values and traditions.
The national defense army that should be guarding the outside borders of the country has, in clear contravention of the constitution, entered into the territory of our regional state and stationed in different parts of Oromia. The army’s inability to communicate in the local vernacular and lack of awareness of the customs, culture and traditions has created a huge problem for the people. We would like to state our position that we should be able to resolve any problems within Oromia in line with the principles and structures of the Gadaa constituting the Abbaa Duulaa (a military commander with the highest authority), Kuusaa, dabballe and foollee. We would also like to call on the federal government to withdraw its army from the territory of Oromia.
We demand that the government immediately release innocent people unlawfully held in prisons
To Oromo agents of the government who collaborate/collaborated in killings, betray/betrayed and bore/bear false witness on your own people, we plead with you in the name of the noble people of Oromia to turn from your immoral ways, to plead for forgiveness and to stand with our people from now onwards. If you refuse and continue to stand on the wrong side of history, you will be held responsible for infringement of the moral and ethical order laid down in the Gadaa rules of governance.
We request that the government return the Oromo who have been displaced from areas surrounding Finfinnee back to their land and dwellings.
We demand for the ban on Lake Finfinne as a gathering point for Irreecha (thanksgiving) celebrations to be lifted and for our right to celebrate at this location be respected. We would also like to inform the authorities of the intentions of the Gadaa elders and people of Oromia to celebrate the upcoming Irreecha on the 24th of September 2016 at Lake Finfinne and request for this to be confirmed by the government.
We request that the evictions of our farmers from their ancestral lands with the pretext of investments and city master plans be ceased.
To keep rising levels of unemployment in Oromia, regional towns and Finfinnee in check, we request that the government provide the necessary support to college & university graduates struggling to make a living and create better opportunities for them.
We –the people of Oromia- would like to live in harmony with other nations and nationalities in the country. However, encroachments on our borders are giving rise to skirmishes between our people and other nations and nationalities. We, therefore, call on the government to look into this matter and rectify the problems.
We urge members of the Oromo public to strengthen and take a keen interest in the Gadaa system of governance, which plays a crucial role in terms of dealing with societal challenges in a peaceful and orderly manner, preserving and helping flourish the cultures and values of the Oromo as well as ensuring the society’s resource ownership.
The Gadaa system has its own unique badge: Black, Red and White. We urge the people of Oromia and other Irreecha festival participants not to bring flags representing any political organization in future celebrations other than the Black, Red and White badge.
We request that Afaan Oromo become a federal working language.
(All Africa): Gadaa is a highly independent democratic and egalitarian political system that has guided the religious, social, political and economic affairs of the Oromo people of the Horn of Africa for many centuries. Sources indicate it is a system that organizes the Oromo society into groups or sets (about 7-11 ) that assume different responsibilities in the society every eight years.
Under Gadaa system the power to administer the affairs of the nation and the power to make laws belong to the people. Every male member of the society who is of age and of Gadaa grade has full rights to elect and to be elected. All the people have the right to air their views in any public gathering without any fear.
Last week is a very unique week for Guji Oromo’s who have finalized preparations for inaugurating their new leader (Aba Gadaa).The new leader will serve an eight year term in a system that rotates power between the tribe’s top clans.
Me’ee Bokkoo located in Guji Zone of Sora Woreda is among the most sacred places in which the Gadaa ritual traditions and ceremonies are conducted. The place is special for various reasons including its a sacred place where law is drafted, ratified amended and officially indoctrinated to the community.
Power transfer in Gadaa system is not like a power transfer in Monarchy. People raise fund to campaign for their sons based on their family legacy. In such campaign, the individual capacity of the son is also seriously scrutinized.
According to sources, Gada system is not a system where authority is simply passed from fathers to sons. Of course, the legacy of one’s family and the past accomplishments of a clan councilor has a great influence in the decision that is made to nominate the would be Aba Gadaa and councilors. They must pass through a rigorous training for years about the laws and the customs and the wisdom of leading a society before they take the position of authority in Gadaa.
According to Guji tradition, celebration begins a week before the actual day of power transfer through conducting different activities. The elders at different hierarchy of the system gathered and dressed in beautiful cultural costume to perform dances and musics. The youths have also a unique fashion of dancing style. During the week, communal issues like protection of the environment, wildlife, laws that have to be amended and if there are new laws to be adopted and similar things will be discussed and pass decision accordingly.
For instance, there was a debate by the Gumii, Gumii is the legislative branch of the Gadaa system, about marriage offer the groom has to bring for the bride family. Accordingly, the Gumii passed a new law that will reduce the amount of the offer to be given for the bride family. Aba Gada Bagaja Ganale said that the offer has become an issue of concern because it has been creating trouble among the youth. “The youth of this generation cannot afford to provide that much offer and they demanded change and we were obliged to amend the law, “he added.
Adola Woreda Culture and Tourism Bereau Deputy Head Mohamed Hesa on his part said that Guji Zone is well known for its immense and beautiful cultural heritages. The Zone has finalized preparations to colorfully celebrate the Gadaa power transfer anniversary. The primay aim is to uphold the Gadaa culture not only for the Oromo’s but for the whole of Ethiopia and efforts are underway to register the Gadaa system in UNESCO, he said.
It was learnt that the 74th power transfer ceremony of Guji Oromo Gadaa system will be held today in the presence of senior government officials, Gadaa leaders and other invited guests.
It is doubtful if all those who exalt democracy understand it in the same way. For this reason, let us see if we can find a common ground for Oromo activists. As the son of the last Gadaa practiced in his birthplace, no one, this writer believes, will contest his Gadaademocratic heritage. But so what? What matters is only if he practices and defends it. The word democracy (demockratia), they say, came from two Greek word “demos” for people, and “kratia” for government. The words of Abraham Lincoln in modern times expresses better the Western concept of democracy, which is “a government of the people by the people for the people …” This is notwithstanding the framework in which it is practiced in different countries. From what we observe, genuine democracy is a difficult dream to be realized. Even Gadaa or Oromo democracy, which was more inclusive, was not perfect. Evaluating democracy has to start from structure and function of an organization. An organization is its setup, its kaayyoo and its members who have pledged to struggle for a common cause respecting its laws and regulations; any democratic member or leader is judged by one’s integrity, one’s commitment to the organization, priority one gives for comrades’ concerns, and respect for organizational laws and procedure, and how much one understands national and international human and technological developments.
For this writer, democracy is a way of life where all people are seen as equals irrespective of social position, education, skill, race, ethnicity, etc. All genuine democrats accept the rule of law, encourage participation of members in decision making, and do not try to silence dissenting voices. That distinguishes them from autocrats, oligarchs and totalitarians. Leadership in democracy is based on election with time limit. In certain cases, elected leaders could turn autocratic or oligarchic abandoning organizational rules and objectives that demand all-inclusive teamwork. Autocracy is a rule by an individual. Oligarchy, on the other hand, is a rule by an elite group or clique. In both systems, there are some who initially come through election, but ignoring rules and regulations that had brought them to power, they start to rule by whim. Such usurpation of power cannot be enduring, but the devastation it could cause may be realized later. That is how Hitler came to power, and we know what happened to Germany and the world; Wayyaanee is on the same course and is on its way out. Therefore, there is a lot to worry when someone starts to stray from lawful practices. He or she may get away with it once, but that does no good for the struggle and future member relations unless corrected.
The first schism in OLF was between young brothers who claimed of being more Oromo than the other instead of showing patriotism commensurate with their kaayyoo. The unexpected is, all that came later in senior years who wanted to prove who could faster find out a way to win aliens favor irrespective of own political loss. That is how diaspora Ethiopianists became vocal and daring in a never-seen way. The struggle against oppression is not advancing; individual activists leading it are not materially benefiting yet – and are not searching for a way out. If errors are pointed out, every one is fast to take a position for self-defense and viewing comrades as adversary. What is going on is difficult for a quick analysis. At present, one can smell prolusion in the activist ranks. All the agitation for liberation, all the condemnations of treachery are now forgotten with temptations from colonial masters, even to a great surprise of former pariahs.
All the spilt blood of sisters, brothers and comrades are erased from memory. Some of them are suffering from the struggle’s fatigue; there seems no stamina or honor left in them. It reminds one the two Wayyaanee men and musicians who surrendered and started to give out secrets they held to the Darg during its waning days in return for some protection and comfort. But the fanfare did not last long, the defectors and Darg had to run for their lives. Numbed Oromo politicians are also hurrying to the same end. They will surrender to leaders of the empire and their running dogs to flee again soon, now with their hosts. No one can stay mentally healthy and in peace betraying the Oromo legitimate cause.
Elections usually create bodies that are individually and collectively responsible to the electorate. For that purpose, there is a division of labor and accountability governed by rules and regulations among them. But leaders who have autocratic tendencies break those rules of procedure deceptively and take the law to their hands. In most cases, organizations have executives and a policy-making council or Parliament, which has a supreme power. All power that is not clearly mandated belongs to this council. For autocrats, this mandate is time-wasting and unnecessary. Such autocrats are prone to a third-party influence. Third parties pursuing their own interests prefer partners whose hands are not tied by democratic procedures and accountability. That is how the objective principles of democratic organizations are derailed and distorted by self-seeking individuals in cahoots with sinister interests. For example, that is how Wayyaanee ended up serving individual leaders and foreign interests instead of peoples who elected it.
Legal procedures are laid down so that each division of an entity plays as a check-and-balance on each other. The executive is mandated to implement policies based on guidelines policymakers lay down for it. Chairperson’s duty is to coordinate the work of members of the executive and act as the public face for the organization and do other duties clearly mandated to them by the higher body. That does not mean they cannot suggest new ideas, but it needs approval of their comrades. Members and other functionaries can be asked for their opinions or be informed on the state of their organization, but cannot vote on policy issues outside their competence. Such practice existed only in direct democracy, not representative one.
In representative democracies, leaders may take to the mass members or to those the issue on hand concerns to put pressure on the policymakers though they have no legal significance and do not justify circumventing legally established procedures. However noble the reason for circumventing might be it cannot outweigh abiding by the law in the long run. For instance, in OLF, a body that represents the National Kora as the supreme policymaker is the National Council. If the executive take action on matters that are under council’s jurisdiction without its authorization that does not worth a penny, and is not binding on anyone, but only holds the perpetrator accountable. All deliberations require quorum to be valid. The chairman is a member of the executive committee. Relevant decisions are made through the committee. Such is how decisions are supposed to be made by this organization that has sacrificed so much for democratic rights.
By their oath of office, elected members have committed themselves to be answerable to their constituency individually and severally. And they cannot remain neutral when organizational laws and regulations are transgressed. They ought to struggle for rectification and a redress mechanism when wrongs are done. Disloyalty to the organization and its instruments show contempt for principles it is based on and the goals it aimed at. By doing so, they are making the force behind the organization’s creation irrelevant. That would seem as if they have found a new function and a new loyalty for it. Procedures are laid down to curb authoritarian tendencies which are common to human nature and protect the organization from turning against itself. But that could remain a wish when members are not politically conscious enough, and mobs are turned against to harass them. In Gadaa tradition, elected leaders can be recalled for slight deviations. Not now. The enemy and its agents want Oromo activists to get engaged in internal bickering and schisms, as to make them not bother with the status quo in the empire. This has to be avoided and focus must be on implementation of organizational program in any way possible. The imperial status quo has to crumble whether they like it or not.
If not led by those committed to the cause, it will be naiveté to expect a strong and democratic organization. Without strong organization it will be difficult to win a war or to deliver what one promises. The major causes for weaknesses and dissensions in OLF so far, despite the great potential it could mobilize, are leaders not adhering to organizational objectives, rules and procedures and lacking dedication for the cause. Weak leaders of organizations sometimes seek for strength from external sources rather than internally. That is sure to adulterate all aspects of the organization and its struggle. OLF has a declared anti-colonial agenda. All its relations must be based on this agenda, not on refurbishing the empire state. To remain OLF, understanding current world situation, current Oromo youth demands and maintain independence of the organization is needed.
Unfortunately, devotion to the cause or original kaayyoo, consistency of outlook, unwavering commitment to Oromummaa, determination to sacrifice and valor are becoming rare commodities for many. When OLF shows some hopeful trends, there were those who stampede each other for favors; and when things are not favorable, there are those highly flexible whose conscience doesn’t scratch them a little bit, but hide under faith and region – and try to throw stone at it. On the other hand, Oromiyaa has produced some leaders who are allergic to criticisms – who give ears for alien propaganda, but deaf to members’ comments contrary to theirGadaa heritage. They generally fail to realize that dodging the truth will have always far-reaching consequences for the struggle. For this, no one has more experienced than the OLF. As a remedy, those engaged in the struggle must believe that OLF is greater than anyone of its members and no individual whim can replace it; no one has the right to silence member’s voice from expressing one’s opinion and no one should be hindered from exercising one’s rights and duties. If this is done, there could be internal harmony and there is no reason for the organization not to be strong. Strong organization can approach the world in unison and in one voice, and form alliances in accordance with its political program. But who wants a strong OLF?
A weak organization becomes only an embarrassment for the nation. As a nation with Gadaa heritage, Oromo takes democracy as a way of life where dialog is practiced rather than dictation. Inequality, discrimination, favoritism marginalization, deceit and partiality have no place in democracy. It is a system where the law is supreme over individual’s idiosyncrasies. Leaders and members must reflect democratic Gadaa values at all times in private and official lives. They have to show commitment and dedication for fulfillment of the national Kaayyoo. For a national organization, the motto should always be “Nation’s Interest First.”
The first known democratic system of the world which gave the concept for the government of the people was for equals or free men. Women, slaves and foreigners were not included. It had stayed so for centuries. Voting rights for women did not yet become universal. There is also no perfect model for democracy where people live in harmony with each other and natural environment, enjoying fruits of liberty. Unless the attitudes towards women are changed, it will be like working with one hand amputated. Women are the most important members of human society, and no less productive and resourceful than men. Denying them equal rights with men is probably the most absurd thing that humans have done.
Gadaa system may have no rival – concerning the paying attention to the marginalized, including women in relative terms. That this truth is not mentioned by historians of the world makes history of democracy incomplete. The Oromo do not fit into their classification of society as savage or barbarian. They are shy to call them not civilized like some ignoramus, because in their hearts they know that Oromo civilization precedes theirs. Gadaa is a democratic system ala Oromo that existed from time immemorial.
Oromo society is divided into five Gadaa parties and periods. Each citizen belonged to a Gadaa to which his father belonged. They are those five Gadaa that take responsibility of ruling the nation in turns. Each Gadaa stays in power only for eight years. A Gadaa grade prepares itself from childhood until the stage of Raabaa-Doorii – where it will be ready to take power from the ruling Gadaa orgogeessa Luba before it. Therefore, there is no chance for aGadaa to stay in power a day over eight years without jeopardizing the working of the system. Electing their leaders is the duty and responsibility of each Gadaa.
All male members of the Oromo society are divided into age groups or hiriyaa (peer) separated by eight years. Each hiriyaa group has a social, economic, and political role to play for eight years in aGadaa tier. Grooming for leadership starts at early age and goes own until the time of taking over political responsibility. Thus, all male members are involved in all affairs of their society from birth to death. That is what we call Gadaa democracy. Hiriyaa above 8 years of age are given the roles in aiding adults, serving as scouts, military training and fighting, and ruler ship and administration of justice. Relevant formal and informal education is given at every tear. Thus, an Oromo adult was a well versed person in all aspect of societal knowledge and duties. Now since collective formal and informal education has ceased, one has to use those who got chance to go to modern educational institutions; just like the ancients used the highly enlightened Raagaa.
Women had legal and ritual roles to play in their own right though governing is men’s duty. The Siiqqee institution depicts these roles of women in Gadaa democracy. There are political and social rituals which cannot be completed without their involvement. The Siiqqeeis a sacred stick, symbol of women power through which they find their ways through social webs, and get their human rights respected. Let alone in the ancients, even in modern Western world, women got voting rights relatively very recently. The UN adopted, “Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women” in 1979. Even today, these rights are not recognized by all or are recognized with restrictions. Compared to those, ancient Oromo women were in a better position than them with their Siiqqee prerogatives.
For governance, there were elected legislative and executive bodies. Their functions include also the administration of justice under Gaaddisa (Shade). Though the administration of justice is not separately organized like in modern Western systems, it is said to be the most impartial and well thought. Qaalluu, which was hereditary institution, had also significant role in society. The first two are elected and filled with Luba hiriyaa group. Justice, in most cases, is said not to be left to one Gadaa generation, but mostly entrusted to the hayyuu or jaarsa, wise men of society. Every member of society is bound by law, rules and regulations of finnaa, or state. Oromo had also ethical and moral rules known as safuu. Breaking rules of safuu amounts to renouncing Oromummaa. There are few that tarnish the good Oromo tradition and defame even outstanding Oromo patriots in the name of supporting a group or an outlook. Such groups or individuals in whose name the law ofsafuu is broken by social scums have the moral obligation to officially distance themselves from such acts if they themselves believe in decency. In Gadaa, no individual or group is above the law. Breaking the law, in particular by high level leaders, could lead to uprooting. That was the way of Oromo forefathers. Thus, adherence to democracy, and respecting and causing rules ofsafuu to be respected are marks of Oromummaa.
Oromo lost such marvelous political culture and forced to live under the mercy of an alien colonial rule for more than a century. Those who were mentally liberated organized themselves into a movement defying alien domination and rejecting its laws. But the model under which they were brought up is still haunting some of them. Instead of reverting to Gadaa democratic principles, those found it easy to imitate their masters and mentors. For this reason, consensus on the national kaayyoo is affected. As a result, they are wavering between the independence courses and reducing the struggle to individual rights. That means accepting people’s rights not being more than group rights such as of clubs, associations, etc. in tune with the enemy. The enemy propagates this to oppose decolonization and the right to freedom of Oromiyaa, Southern and Nilotic peoples.
Oromo are being harassed not as individuals alone, but more so as a group for mere reason of being Oromo. That is why they see at both rights in their right perspective. Both individual rights and peoples’ rights are inseparable human rights. No one of them can be fulfilled if the other is denied. The right of Oromo as a nation is denied as not to accept their separate identity from Ethiopia. That the Oromo have different culture, language and history is difficult to be denied by anyone. Therefore, it must be understood that just having more fire power does not give anyone the right to erase the identity of the other to stick one’s own in its place. Oromo identity has survived for more than a century under dire situation, and it will survive for many more.
Peoples right, individual right, democracy and self-determination are all universally recognized (UN Charter of 26 June 1945 – Article 1.2.) – not only a plea of the colonized. See the following:
1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. (UN Resolution 1514 (XV) 14 December 1960, (Article 1.1, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966))
The General Assembly, … Affirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples under colonial and alien domination recognized as being entitled to the right of self-determination to restore to themselves that right by any means at their disposal; (UN Resolution 2649, 30 November 1970)
The General Assembly reaffirms that the universal realization of the right of all peoples, including those under colonial, foreign and alien domination, to self-determination is a fundamental condition for the effective guarantee and observance of human rights and for the preservation and promotion of such rights; (UN Resolution 43/105 December 8, 1988)
It has taken the Habashaa over half a century to recognize rights of the oppressed colonial peoples by Article 39 of their constitution. They did that not because they believed in it, but to cool down Oromo furry in demanding for independence after a century of dependence. Otherwise, they had never practiced freedom and democracy even for their own people. Tigray, Tigriny and Amaaraa elites still maintain that. But they better focus on their own affairs if they want to avoid what their kin and kith say “Stretching to take down what is on the raft, she dropped what was in her armpit.”Habashaa elites are divided in opinion on how to govern the empire. The two schools are that of the Wayyaanee and that of those the Wayyaanee defeated in the battlefields. The Wayyaaneechose to declare Ethiopians and non-Ethiopian subjects of the empire as separate entities that deserve the rights to national self-determination contrary to remnants of the fallen Nafxanyaa and the Eritrean leader. They do not understand that the myth of their colonial empire is ending. Henceforth, they may reorganizeHabashaa Ethiopia, and start negotiating for good neighborliness with Oromiyaa and other colonies. Waaq willing, that will be the last stage of Habashaa Colonialism before the master distorters are all gone.
Gadaa system is among the advanced democracies of the world. Genuine democracy is a difficult dream to be realized. Even Oromo democracy which was more inclusive was not perfect. Human beings are all born equal. Differences after birth, concerning character, class, education, position, skill and other capabilities should not allow anyone to justify being more equality than the other. Thus, democracy is a way of life where all people are seen as equals. Accepting the rule of law distinguishes democrats from autocrats, oligarchs and totalitarians. True Oromo liberation movement is not breeding ground for undemocratic elements. But sometimes, there could be a glitch due to human frailty; if that happens, it should be nipped in the bud. It is only unity of the people and strong independent organization that can lead the struggle to victory and make it a reliable ally for anyone. Over and above their ritual role, it remains for Oromo women to claim full democratic rights. Together Oromo women and men shall throw away shackles of colonialism and finish modernizing the Gadaademocratic process disrupted by the enemy long ago by establishing democratic People’s Republic Oromiyaa. Oromo youth will not abandon Oromo revolution started by their elders. Independent Oromiyaa shall be realized! Gadaa democracy shall revive! Down with reactionary elements in the Oromo struggle!
Kanneen demokraasii ol kaasanii ilaalanhundi, akka tokkott qayyabachuun saanii mamsiisaa dha. Kanaaf mee qabsaawota Oromoof yoo ilaalcha waloo ni arginaaf tahe haa ilaaluu. Akka ilma Gadaa naannaa saatt yeroo dhumaaf shakalameett dhaalmaa demokraasii Gadaa qabaachuu saa, barreessaa kun kan ittiin mormu jiraataa itt hin fakkaatuu. Yoo tahewoo? Kan dhimma baasu yoo ofii shakalee fi utubeen qofa. Qooqi demokraasii (demokratia) qooqota Greekii lama “demos” ummata fi “kratia” mootummaa, irraa dhufe jedhama. Jechi Abraham Lincoln “Mootummaan ummataa ummataaf ummataan …” jedhu bara si’anaa rimsama demokraasii sirriitt ifsa. Kun biyya biyyatt mikkillee inni keessatt shakaIamu utuu hin dagatinii. Waan hubannu irraa demokraasiin dhugaa abju dhugoomuun saa rakkisaa tahe. Demokraasiin Oromoo yk Gadaa kan hunda haammatullee muda hin qabnee mitii. Demokraasii madaluun kan eegalamuu qabu, dhaaba, caasaa fi jiruu jarmaa saa irratii. Jaarmaan dhaaba, miseensota kaasaa waloof qabsaawan, kaayyoo, seeraa fi dambiilee saa kabajuuf kakaa seenan dabalataa. Miseensi yk hogganni demokratawaan kan madaalamu qulqullooma keessa ofii, dudhama dhaabicha qabu, durfannoo dhimmama jaalaa kennuu, seeraa fi tartiiba dhaabaaf ulfina kennuu fi hagam guddina ilmaan namaa fi teknolojii sabaawaa fi sabgiddu akka hubateenii. Leadership in democracy is based on election with time limit. In certain cases elected leaders could turn autocratic or oligarchic abandoning organizational rules and objectives that demands all-inclusive team work.
Barreessaa kanaaf demokraasiin akkaataa jireenya hundi adda addummmaa barumsaan, ogummaa fi dandeettii biraa haa qabaatan malee, walqixummaan walliin jiraatanii. Demokraatoti dhugaa hundi seeraan bulmaata ni fudhatuu, murtii dabarsuu keessatt qooda fudhannaa miseensotaa ni jajjabeessu; akkasumas sagalee mormii ukkaamsuu hin yaalanii. Kanatu ofaangessaa, bulchiyaroo fi halleto’ataan adda isaan godha. Demokraasii keessatt hoggansii kennata yeroo murtaawee irratt hundaawaa. Alii ali hogganooti filaman dambilee fi tartiiba dhaabaa, kan hojii garee hunda hammataa gaafatu lakkisanii ofaangessaa yk bulchiyaroott of jijjiiruu dandahu. Ofaangessaan olhantummaa nama tokkotii. Gara biraan bulchiyaroon murna gurguddoo yk sadootaan gaggeeffama. Sirna lamaanuu keessatt tokko tokko jalqaba kennataan aangott dhufanuu seeraa fi qajeelfama angoott isaan fide lagatanii fedha ofiin bulchuu eegalu. Taahitaa finqilchaan dhufe akkasii hin waaruu. Badiisi sanaan gahus booda hubatama. Hitiler akka sanatt aangoo qabatee, Jarmanii fi addunyaa irraan maal akka gahe argineera; Wayyaaneenis karaa sanan walfakkii irra bu’ee sussukaa jiraa. Kanaaf nammi tokko shaakala seerawaa irraa yoo cehu kan nama yaaddesssu hedduu dha. Al tokko daguun ni dandahama, garuu qabsichaa fi hariiroo miseensaa egereef sirratu malee bayeessa hin tahu.
ABO keessatt baqaqi jalqabaa, jaalbiyyumaa kaayyoo saaniin walgituun utuu hin tahin, obbolaa safila, anatu si calaa Oromoo dha waliin jedhan gidduutt gahe. Kan hin yaadamin kanneen sana booda bara manguddummaa dhufan hedduun, kisaaraa malbulchaa ofii utuu hin hedin, eenyutu shafffisaan karaa leelloon halagaa itt argamutt baha kan jedhan tahani. Akkasittii, si’ana Badii keessatt Itophistooti haala kanaan dura hin beekamnett sagaalee olkaasanii dubbachuu fi ugga agarsiisutt kan kahani. Qabsoon cunqursaa irratt tolfamu achi hin siqne; Qabsaawoti sna gaggeessan mata mataatt bu’aa waatatta argachaa hin jirani garuu karaa keessaa bahanis yoo soqan hin mullatu. Yoo dogoggoratt qubi qabames hundi ofirraa faccisuuf ariitiin bakka qabatee, jaala hunda akka hamajaajiitt laaluutt ka’a. Waanti deemaa jiru xiinxala shaffisaaf nama rakkisa. Si’ana qondaalota qabsoo keessatt fooliin falama ciinca’aa jira. Bilisummaaf dammaqsi tahe hundi, balaaleffannaan gana irratt gaggeeffamaa ture, suduudaan yk harka lafa jalaan kolomsiisa gooftolii koloneeffatoon sadarkaa kanneen dur balaaleffatamaa turan malalchiisutt dagatamaniiru.
Dhiigi obbolaa fi jaallewwan dhagala’an rakkoo malee qaabannoo keessaa haqamaniiru. Kaan kaan bututaa qabsoon dhibamaniiruu; annisaa haatahu ulfinni keessatt hafe kan hin jirre fakkaata . Sun bara Dargii gara dhumaa namoota lamaa fi ogneesitoota harka kennatanii iccitii qaban eegumsaa fi bahsananaa tokko tokkoof dabarsanii kennan nama yaadachiisa. Garuu dhiichisi hedduu hin turree miliqoo fi Dargiin lubbuu ofiif baqa eegalanii. Malbulchesitooti Oromoo hadoodan dhuma walfakkiitt arreedaa jiru. Ammas isaanuma waliin utuu hin turiin baqatt ka’uuf hoggana empayeraa fi kittillayyoo saaniitt harka kennachuuf waga jiru. Kaasaa Oromoo seerawaa tahe ganee eenyuu fayyaa fi nagaa sammuun hin jiraatu.
Kennati yeroo hedduu qaamota abba abbaa fi waloon kan kennateef itt gaafatama qaban uuma. Sanaaf hirmaanni hojii fi itt gaafatammi seeraa fi dambileen bulan jiru. Garuu hogganootii gara abbaa humnummaatt duufan dambiilee tartiibaa sana dagaan cabsanii seera harkatt galfatu. Gara caaluu jaarmoti hojii raawwachiiftuu fi gumii aangoon hunda caaluu imaammata baasu yk Caffee qabu. Angoon taliilaan hin kennamne hundi kan gumii kanaati. abootii humnaaf kenni kun yeroo balleessaa fi hin barbaachifnee dha. Abbaa humnooti akkasii dhiibaa qaama sadaffaaf banamoo dha. Qaammi sadaffaan fedha ofii qofa hordofan miltolii harki saanii tartiiba demokraasii fi itt gaafataman hin hidhamne filatu. Akkasitti kan kan kaayyoon dhaabota demokraatawoo namoota ofjaallatoon fedhoota hamoo waliin tahaniin mucuceeffamanii fi roga dhabsiifamani. Fakkeenyaaf, akkasitt Wayyaaneen namoota isaan filan dhiisanii hogganoota abba tokkee fi fedha halagaa tajaajiluun kan raawwate. Tartiibi seerawaan kan diriirfaman murnaasi addaanjiraato tokkoo akka to’ataa fi madaalaa walgidduutt uumuufii. Humnii Shanee Hoji Raawwachiiftuuf (HR) kenname qajeelfama imaammata kan baasaniin akka sararaa masaka kennameett hojiirra olchuu dha. Dirqammi abbaadha barcumaa jiruu HR qindeessuu, akka fuula dhaabichaatt tajaajiluu fi jiruu qaama olhaanuun ifatt kennamuuf hojjechuu dha. Sana jechuun yaada haaraa hin dhihessu hin dandahu jechuuf mitii garuu walii galte jaallewwan saa gaafta jechuuf dha. Miseensoti yk qondaaloti biraa haala dhaabi isaanii irra jiru iyya’amuufii ni dandaha, garuu qabattee imaammataa dandeettii saanii ala tahett irba hin kennan. Shaakalli akkasii demokraasii suduudaa keessatt malee kan bakka bu’ootaa keessatt hin baramne.
Demokrasii bakka buhootaa keesssatt hogganootii miseensa ballaatt yk kanneen qabateen harka jiru dhimma saanii tahett kanneen imaammata baasan irratt akka dhiibbaa tolchan dhiheessuu ni dandahu taha. Garuu sun seeraan aangoo hin qabatuu yk tartiiba seeraan diriirfame irra cehuuf sababa tahuu hin dandahu. Dhimmisaa hagam barbaachisaa yoo tahellee tartiiba seera finqilchuun wanti gahuu jiraachuu hin qabu. Fakkeenyaaf ABO keessatt Kora Sabaa kan bakka bu’ee shaakalu Gumii Sabaatii. Hayyama malee hojii raawwachistuun aangoo gumii kan taheen tarkaanfii yoo fudhate gatii hin qabu, eenyuu sarmuuf dirqama hin qabu. Garuu kan sana godhetu itt gaafatama. Murtiin marii hunda aangoo qabaachuuf mijuu gaafata. Dura taa’aan/teessuun miseensa HRtii. Murtiin barbaachusu shanicha keessaan darba. Dhaaba mirgoota demokraasiif aarsaa guddaa baase kana keessatt, murtiin akkasitt fudhatamuutu hedama.
Kakaa waajjiraa fudhataniin miseensoti kennataman waliinjiroo saaniif abba abbaa fi waloon gaafataamoo akka tahan of dudhaniiru. Kanaaf yeroo seeraa fi danbileen dhaabaa irra cehaman callisanii ilaaluu hin qabanii. Daba qajeelchuu fi mala hamaan itt sirraawu argamsiisuuf qabsaawuutu irraa eegama. Dhaabaa fi dhooftuu saaf amanamummaa dhabuun tuffii akeekota inni irratt hundaawee fi itt gala inni agammateef qaban agarsiisa. Kanaan humna dhaabicha uumuu duuba turan gatii hin qabnee godhu. Sana gochuun waan jiruu fi amanamummaa haaraa arganiif fakkeessisu. Tartiibi kan diriiraniif abbaa hirrummaa fedha uumaa namaa keessa jiru hankaaksuu fi dhaabichi akka ofitt gara hin galle gochuufii. Garuu sun bakka miseensoti gahaatt ofbara malbulchaa hin qabnett tuutii itti kakaafamanii sodaachisuu waan dandahaniif hawwa duwwaa tahee hafaa. Dudhaa Gadaatt, hogganooti kennataman karaa irra mucucaacha xinnoon deebi’anii waamamuu dandahu. Amma garuu mitii. Diinnii fi keettoliin saa qabsaawoti Oromoo akka qoccolloo fi babbaqaqa keessaatt qabamanii haala empayeraa keessa jiruuf dhimma hin qabanne gochuu fedhu. Kun dhaabbatee, jaallatanis jibbanis karaa dandahamu hundaan xiyyeeffannoon sagantaa dhaabaa irratt tahuu qaba.
Yoo namoota kaasichaaf dudhaa qabaniin hin hogganamne, dhaaba jabaa fi demokraatawaa eeguun gowwummaa dha. Dhaaba jabaa malee waraana injifachuun haa tahu kan irbuu seenaniif dhiheessuun salphaa hin tahu. Hamma yoonaa, humna riphaa guddaa hiriirsu qabatuyyuu, kaasaan dadhabinaa fi gargar ta’inaa ABO keessaa, hogganooti kaayyoo, dambilee fi tartiibota dhaabaatt cichuu fi kaasichaa fi of kenna dhabuu dha. Hoogganooti dhaabaa dadhaboo tahan alii al of keessa dhiisanii jabina madda alaa irraa soqa dhaqu. Sun gara halleen dhaabichaa fi qabsoosaa xureessuu hin oolee. ABOn bu’uura farra kolonii labsate qaba. Hariiroon saa hundi bu’uura kana irratt malee empayera suphuu irratt hundaawuu hin qabu. ABO tahee hafuuf haala addunyaa si’anaa, gaafii dargaggoo Oromo qayyabachuu fi walabummaa dhaabichaa eeguu barbaachisa.
Akka carraa tahe kaasichaa yk kaayyo ganamaaf of kennuun, kan qabanitt cichuu, Oromummaaf dudhama hin daddaaqne, wareegamuuf murteeffachuu fi jannummaan, kaan kaaniif meeshaa hin argamne tahaa jiru. Yero ABOn faara abdachiisaa tokko tokko agarsiisu leelloo argachuuf kan walcaccabsan, yeroo faarri itt badu amantee fi ganda jala dhokatanii kan dhagaa itt guuruu yaalan, seexaan saanii xinnoollee isaan hin quuqne dhommoqina guddaa agarsiisan hedduu dha. Karaa biraammoo Oromiyaan hogganoota qeeqii rifachiisaa taheef; kanneen faallaa dhaalmaa Gadaa saanii alatt, halagaatt gurra yoo qeensan yaada miseensotaaf duuchatan hortee jirtii. Dhugaa jalaa miliquun yeroo hundaa hamaa hin yaadamne guddaa dhaqabsiisuu akka dandahu hubachuu dadhabu. Kana kan ilaalutt ABO caalaa muxannoo kan qabu hin jiru. Akka falaatt kanneen qabsoo keessatt qooda fudhatan ABOn miseensota saa kamuu caalaa guddaa akka tahee fi fedha abba tokkee kamu akka isa bakka buhuu hin dandeenye amanuu qabu. Eenyuu sagalee miseensotaa akka of hin ibsinett ukkaamsu akka hin qabnee fi eenyuu mirgaa fi dirqama saa akka hin shaakalle godhamuun irra hin jiru. Yoo kun tahe atommi keessaa waan jiraatuuf dhaabichi jabaa taha. Dhaabi jabaan tokkummaan addunyaatt bahe dubbachuu fi akka sagantaa dhaabatt kan fedheen walii tumsuu dandaha. Eenyutu ABO jabaa fedha?
Dhaabi dadhabaan saba ofiitii waan qaanii taha. Akka sabaa dhaalmaa Gadaa qabuutt Oromoon demokrasii akka akkaataa jireenyaa, ajaja irra, ilaa fi ilaameen dhimma itt bahamutt fudhata. Wal caalmaa, faanfana, leellifachummaa, moggeessa, sobaa fi loogiin demokraasii keessatt bakka hin qabani. Demokraasiin sirna miira abba abbaa caalaa seerri Olaanaa itt tahe. Hogganootii fi miseensonni yeroo hundaa, dhuunis qondaalamanis seexaa demokraasii Gadaa calaqisuu qabu. Fiixaan baha kaayyoo sabichaaf of kennaa fi dudhama agarsiisuu qabu. Dhaaba sabaawaa fi dhaadannoon saa “Fedhii sabaa haa dursu” kan jedhu tahuu qaba.
Sirni demokraasii addunyaa beekaman dura kan rimsammi “mootummaa ummataa” irraa madde dhiirota walqxootaa fi birmaduufii. Dubartii, garbootaa fi halagaa hin dabalatu ture. Jaarroleef akkasumatt jiraate. Irbi dubaroof ammayyuu gumeessawaa hin taane. Fakmishoon demokraasii mudaa hin qabnee kan namooti atoomaan walii fi naannaa uumaa waliin firii bilisummaan basha’anii jiraatan ammallee hin jiru. Firoomsaan kan itt gaalchan akka jara Lixaa faa jiru. Ilaalchi dubartiif jiru hin jijjiiramu taanaan akka kaan cite harka tokko qofaan hojjechuu taha. Dubaroon miseensota hawaasa ilmoo namaa keessaa hedduu barbaachisoo fi homishaawummaa fi waa maddisiisuuf dhiiraa gad hin taanee. Mirga walqxxummaa isaan dhowwachuun waan ilmaan namaa godhan keessaa kan maljecha hin qabne.
Sirni gadaa firomsaan kanneen moggeeffamaniif dubartoota dabalatee dhimmama agarsiisuutt kan ittiin dorgomu hin jiru taha. Dhugaan kun argaa dhageett addunyaan bira dabamuun seenaa demokraasii haanquu godha. Oromoon hirmaata isaan hawaasaaf akka namdiidaa fi buubaatt ilaalan keesaatt bakka itt sutan dhabu. Akka daallota tokko tokkoo qarooma hin qaban jechuufis garaa saaniitt qaroommi Oromoo kan isaaniin duraa tahuu waan beekaniinf ni qaqana’uu. Gadaan akaakuu demokraasii Oromoo bara hin qaabatamnee kaasee jiru.
Physics and Astronomy Department, University of California, Santa Cruz,at NASA Ames Research Center, Space Sciences Division, M.S. 245-7,
Moffett Field, Calif. 94035, U.S. 20 XII 85
The announcement of a possible first archaeoastronomical site (called Namoratunga II) in sub-Saharan Africa by Lynch and Robbins (1978) and its subsequent reappraisal by Soper (1982) have renewed interest in an East African calendrical system, the Borana calendar, first outlined in detail by Legesse (1973:180-88). I shall here reinterpret the calendar as Legesse describes it in the light of astronomical constraints. The Borana calendar is a lunar-stellar calendrical system, relying on astronomical observations of the moon in conjunction with seven particular stars (or star groups). At no time (except indirectly by way of lunar phase) does it rely upon solar observations. The Borana year is twelve lunar synodic months (each 29.5 days long), 354 days. While it will not correspond to the seasons, this may not be of primary importance for people this close to the equator. There are twenty-seven day names (no weeks), and since each month is either 29 or 30 days long, the first two (or three) day names are used twice in the same month starts on a new day name. The day names are listed in Table 1, the month names in Table 2. The first six months can be identified at the beginning of the month with a particular astronomical observation, whereas the last six months can be so identified only around the middle of the month. The first six months begin with the observation of the new-phase moon in conjunction with six positions in the sky marked by seven particular stars or star groups. Thus the phase of the moon is held constant while its position varies. The last six months are identified by a particular-phase moon seen in conjunction with the first star position. Thus, here, the lunar phase changes and the position is held constant. The seven stars or star groups in order are Triangulum (which I take to mean Beta Trianguli), Pleiades, Aldebarran, Belletrix, central Orion (around the sword), Saiph, and Sirius. They are given in Table 2 next to the months they define.
The New Year starts with the observation of the new moon in conjunction with Beta Trianguli. (The term “new moon” here will be taken to be within two days of zero phase, although the Borana allow up to three “leap” days’ leeway, the astronomical observation determining the correct day to start on. This is indicated in the day nomenclature by the assignment of like prefixes to two or three day names before the approximate time an important astronomical observation is to take place.) Since the new moon can be seen only just before sunrise or just after sunset, twilight makes the observation of Beta Trianguli (a third-magnitude star) in conjunction with a new moon impossible with the naked eye.
Assuming that such an observation, however, was possible, would the next new moon be in conjunction with the next star group. Pleiades? (Conjunction here is taken to mean “rising with” or “setting with,” having the same right ascension. Legesse says (p. 182), “Let us assume that a new moon was sighted last night and that is appeared side by side with the star Sirius, which the Borana call Basa.”) Since the sidereal period of the moon is 27.3 days long, it will arrive back at the Triangulum position more than two days before completing its synodic month. At the sidereal rate of 13.2° per day, the moon will be within 3° of Pleiades when it rises in the new phase again. However, by the time of the third month it rises, not with Aldebarran, the next star, but a little past Belletrix, the fourth star, which is supposed to start the fourth month. By the fourth month the new moon is rising past Sirius, the sixth start, and the calendar is clearly not working as described. It should be added that the right-ascension positions of the stars in the area from Beta Trianguli to Sirius change with time, at the rate of roughly 15° every thousand years. However, the stars stay in approximately the same configuration, and arguments based on their present right-ascension relationships will hold over the past several thousand years as well.
What happens if we take the term “conjunction,” or “side by side,” as Legesse has it, to mean not “rising with” but “rising single-file,” that is, at the same horizon position (in other words, having the same declination)? Examining the idea that it is not the proximity of the moon to the star that is important but its horizon rising (or setting) position with respect to that star’s horizon rising (or setting) position, we immediately find that the first necessary observation, the new moon rising at the horizon position of Beta Trianguli, is not currently possible. Beta Trianguli rises (at the equator) about 35° north of the east point (0° declination), while the moon (on the northernmost average) rises at 23.5° north of east, never rising farther north than 28.5° from the East Point. The earth’s rotation axis is known to precess over the centuries, and while this does not change the lunar orbital positions significantly, it does change the apparent position of the stars. We can calculate the positions of the seven Borana stars at a time when Beta Trianguli was well within the moon’s declination limits to see if the calendar would have worked then. In 300 BC, Beta Trianguli was rising at a declination of +23° north of east. The right-ascension positions at the time still do not allow a “rising with” interpretation of the calendrical system. We can begin by defining the start of the Borana year as the new moon rising at the rising position of 300 BC Beta Trianguli. (The date of 300 BC was strongly suggested by the preliminary dating of Namoratunga II, but it was chosen because +23°, Beta Trianguli’s declination at the time, is the northern average of the moon’s monthly motion. I will take the moon’s motion, for the example here, from theNautical Almanacs for 1983 and 1984.) The next new moon rises at 14° north of east, which corresponds precisely to the 300 BC horizon rising position of Pleiades, the next Borana star. The next four new moons (starting the next four Borana months) rise at +9 degrees, +1 degree, –11 degrees, and –17 degrees declination. These positions correspond to the 300 BC horizon rising positions of the Borana stars Aldebarran. Belletrix, central Orion—Saiph (taken together), and Sirius, respectively (Table 3).
The seventh month should be identifiable 14 or 15 days from its automatic start (about 29 days after the start of the sixth month) by a full moon rising at the Beta Trianguli position, and this is indeed the case. Each subsequent moon rises at this horizon position 27.3 days later (sidereal month) in a phase (synodic month) about two days less waxes (since it is on its way to the full phase again) each time. (Legesse has a waning moon, but this must mean waning with respect to each subsequent monthly observation, not with respect to the Phase State for that month.) On the thirteenth or first month, the moon is seen rising in the new phase again (“new” meaning within a couple of days of zero phase), and another year begins. Tracing the moon’s motion as it arrives at these positions in the sky (which are, however, no longer directly marked by the seven stars), we can derive the calendar (see Table 4). This outline is still general with respect to what is sometimes called the lunar excursion (regression of the line of nodes of the lunar orbit). The three “leap” days the Borana calendar allows for the starting of some of the months just before an important astronomical observation could account for this declination excursion of the moon (± ca. 5° from 23.5° declination on an 18.6-year basis), but this would certainly require confirmation in the field.
The Borana calendrical system as described by Legesse is, therefore, a valid timekeeping system, subject to the astronomical constraints outlined here, and the pillars found in northwestern Kenya by Lynch and Robbins and preliminary dates at 300 BC could, as they suggest, represent a site used to derive that calendar. The calendar does not work in right-ascension sense, but it does work if taken as based on declination. It might have been invented around 300 BC, when the declinations of the seven stars corresponded to lunar motion as the calendar indicates, and the star names would therefore apply to the horizon positions as well. Because the horizon rising positions constitute the important observations (over half of which must be made at twilight), some sort of horizon-marking device would seem to be necessary. Since the calendar is still in use, and the horizon-making pillars can no longer be set up by aligning them with the horizon rising positions of these stars, it would seem that the Borana may be using ancient (or replicas of ancient) horizon markers and this possibility should be investigated. I look forward with great interest to a test of these hypotheses.
Table 1
Borana Day names (Legesse 1973)
Bita Kara
Gardaduma
Bita Lama
Sonsa
Sorsa
Rurruma
Algajima
Lumasa
Arb
Gidada
Walla
Ruda
Basa Dura
Areri Dura
Basa Ballo
Areri Ballo
Carra
Adula Dura
Maganatti Jarra
Adula Ballo
Maganatti Britti
Garba Dura
Salban Dura
Garba Balla
Salban Balla
Garda Dullacha
Salban Dullacha
Table 2
Borana Months and Stars/Lunar Phases That Define Them
(Legesse 1973)
Month
Star/Lunar Phase
Bittottessa
Triangulum
Camsa
Pleiades
Bufa
Aldebarran
Wacabajjii
Belletrix
Obora Gudda
Central Orion-Saiph
Obora Dikka
Sirius
Birra
full moon
Cikawa
gibbous moon
Sadasaa
quarter moon
Abrasa
large crescent
Ammaji
medium crescent
Gurrandala
small crescent
Table 3
Declinations (Degrees) of Borana Stars, 300 BC and Present
Star
Declination
300 BC
Present
Beta Trianguli
+23
+35
Pleiades
+14
+23
Aldebarran
+9
+16
Belletrix
+1
+6
Central Orion
–10
–6
Saiph
–13
–10
Sirius
–17
–17
Table 4
Astronomical Borana-Cushitic Calendar (1983-84)
Borana-Cushitic Day/Month
Gregorian Date
Description
Bita Kara/
Bittottessa
August 7, 1983
New moon rises at Triangulum horizon position
Algajima/
Camsa
September 6, 1983
New moon rises at Pleiades horizon position
Walla/
Bufa
October 5, 1983
New moon rises at Aldebarran horizon position
Basa Dura/
Wacabajjii
November 2, 1983
New moon rises at Belletrix horizon position
Maganatti Jarra/
Obora Gudda
December 2, 1983
New moon rises at central Orion-Saiph horizon position
Salban Dura/
Obora Dikka
December 30, 1983
New moon rises at Sirius horizon position
Gardaduma/
Birra
January 29, 1984
Full moon sets at Triangulum on February 15
Rurruma/Cikawa
February 28, 1984
Gibbous moon sets at Triangulum on March 14
Gidada/
Sadasaa
March 28, 1984
Quarter moon sets at Triangulum on April 10
Areri Dura/
Abrasa
April 26, 1984
Large crescent sets at Triangulum on May 7
Adula Dura/
Ammaji
May 25, 1984
Medium crescent sets at Triangulum on June 3
Garba Dura/
Gurrandala
June 23, 1984
Small crescent sets at Triangulum on June 30
Bita Kara/
Bittottessa
July 28, 1984
“New” moon rises at Triangulum position again, new year starts
References Cited
Legesse, A. 1973. Gada: Three approaches to the study of African Society. New York: Free Press.
Lynch, B. M., and L. H. Robbins. 1978. Namoratunga: The first archaeoastronomical evidence in sub-Saharan Africa. Science 200:766-68.
Soper, R. 1982. Archaeo-astronomical Cushites: Some comments. Azania 17:145-62
ASTRONOMY IN EAST AFRICA
The Borana-Cushitic Calendar and Namoratunga
Laurance Reeve Doyle
Space Sciences Division, N.A.S.A.
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
“While Western thought has always prided itself on scientific objectivity, it has often been found unprepared for such surprises as an intellectually advanced yet seemingly illiterate society. In the face of apparent primitiveness, the possibility of significant intellectual development may not be fully investigated.
This was certainly the case when, in the early 1970’s, Dr. A. Legesse first found that the Borana people of southern Ethiopia were indeed using a sophisticated calendrical system based on the conjunction of seven stars with certain lunar phases. Previous calendrical investigations into the area up to this time had superficially stated that the Borana “attach magical significance to the stars and constellations,” incorrectly concluding that their calendar was based, as ours is, on solar motion.
What Dr. Legesse found was an amazing cyclical calendar similar to those of the Mayans, Chinese, and Hindu, but unique in that it seemed to ignore the sun completely (except indirectly by way of the phases of the moon). The workings were described to him by the Borana ayyantu (timekeepers) as follows.
There are twelve months to a year, each month being identifiable with a unique (once a year) astronomical observation. The length of each month is either 29 or 30 days – that is, the time it takes the moon to go through all its phases. (This time is actually 291/2 days and is called a synodic month, but the Borana only keep track of whole days). Instead of weeks, there are 27 day names. Since each month is 29 or 30 days long we will run out of day names about two or three days early in the same month. The day names can therefore be recycled and for day 28 we use the first day name again, the second day name for day 29, and start the next month using the third day name. Thus each month will start on a different day name. Whether the particular month is to be 29 or 30 days long would depend on the astronomical observations, which are quite ingeniously defined.
The seven stars (or star groups) used to derive the calendar are, from northernmost to southernmost, 1) Beta Triangulum – a fairly faint navigation star in the constellation of the Triangle, 2) Pleiades – a beautiful, blue star cluster in the constellation of Taurus the Bull, and sometimes referred to as the seven sisters, 3) Aldebarran – a bright, red star that represents the eye of Taurus, 4) Belletrix – a fairly bright star that represents the right shoulder of the constellation Orion the Hunter, 5)Central Orion – the region around Orion’s sword where the Great Orion Nebula may be found, 6) Saiph – the star representing the right knee of Orion, and finally 7) Sirius – the brightest star in the night sky and the head of the constellation Canis Majoris, the Great Dog.
The New Year begins with the most important astronomical observation of the year – a new moon in conjunction with Beta Triangulum. (this day is called Bitotesa, and the next month is called Bitokara). The next month starts when the new moon is found in conjunction with the Pleiades. The third month starts with the new moon being observed in conjunction with the star Aldebarran, the next with Belletrix, then the area in between Central Orion and Saiph, and finally with the star Sirius. So the first six months of the calendar are started by the astronomical observations of the new phase moon found in conjunction with six specific locations in the sky marked by seven stars of star groups.
The method is now switched and the final six months are identified by six different phases of the moon (from full to crescent) being found in conjunction with only one position in the sky – the one marked by Beta Triangulum. Thus the whole Borana year is identified astronomically and when the new phase moon is again finally seen in conjunction with Beta Triangulum the New Year will start again. Since there are 12 such synodic months of 29 ½ days each, the Borana year is only 354 days long.
Now, in the latter part of the 1970’s another interesting development was to take place regarding the astronomy of this region. In 1977 Drs. B.M. Lynch and L.H. Robbins, who were working in the Lake Turkana area of northwestern Kenya, came upon what they believed was the first archaeoastronomical site ever found in sub-Saharan Africa. At Namoratunga, it consisted of 19 stone pillars, apparently man-made, that seemed to align toward the rising positions of the seven Borana calendar stars as they had appeared quite some time ago. (their suggested date from the various archaeological considerations, which still requires corroboration, was about 300 BC). Due to precession (the slow, wobbling of the pointing direction of the rotation axis of the Earth), the stars will seem to move from their positions over the centuries, although the moon’s position would not vary on this time scale. (Such an example is the alignment of certain features of the Egyptian pyramids with the star Thuban in the constellation Draco the Dragon, which was the north polar star about 5000 year ago; today it is Polaris and in several thousand years it will be Vega). If the date that Drs. Lynch and Robbins suggested was correct, the site would then correspond to the time of the extensive kingdom of Cush, referred to as Ethiopia in the Bible but actually centered about present day Sudan. One would then conclude that the Borana calendrical system was old indeed, having been developed by the Cushitic peoples in this area about 1800 years before the development of our present day Western Gregorian calendrical system.
In 1982, a number of significant questions arose concerning the site, the calendar, and archaeoastronomy of East Africa in general. The pillars were remeasured by an anthropologist in Kenya (Mr. Robert Soper) and found to be magnetic in nature. The original measurements had to be modified but, again, alignments with the seven Borana stars were found. However, this brought up the question of whether pillar alignments are significant at all, since the Borana ayyantu certainly can recognize the phases of the moon and when it is in conjunction with the appropriate seven stars. It was time to approach the question astronomically, and ask the moon and the stars how the calendar worked.
First, we could take the New Year’s observations, a new moon in conjunction with the faint star Beta Triangulum. What is meant by the term “conjunction” which is astronomically defined as the closest approach between two celestial objects? A new moon means that the moon is very close to the sun, being at best only a very small crescent, and therefore can only be seen just before sunrise or just after sunset. Interestingly enough, it turns out that during this twilight time the sky is too bright to be able to see the star Beta Triangulum so that seeing the new moon next to Beta Triangulum, the most important observation of the Borana calendar, was impossible!
In addition, assuming that the new moon and Beta Triangulum could be somehow seen rising together, the next month’s new moon rises significantly behind Pleiades, the newt conjunction star group. The third new moon rises with Belletrix, having skipped the third star, Aldebarran, completely. This is certainly not how the Borana described their calendar. If we were to continue to try to work the calendar in this way, by the start of the sixth month the new moon would be rising almost four hours after Sirius.
How could the calendar work then? Suppose (as we did), that one takes the term “conjunction” to mean “rising at the same horizon position” instead of “rising horizontally next to at the same time.” Thus one could mark the horizon rising position of Beta Triangulum, with pillars for instance, and once a year a new moon will rise at that position on the horizon. Let us suppose that this astronomical event marks the start of the New Year. We must add that we are taking the horizon rising position of these seven stars as they were in or around 300 BC, since present day Beta Triangulum has precessed too far to the north over the centuries and the moon will never rise there. However, the position of 300 BC Beta Triangulum, as well as the other Borana stars, was quite within the realm of the moon’s orbit.
Now where will the next new moon rise? It turns out to rise at precisely the rising position of Pleiades! The next new moon, marking the start of the third month, rises at the Aldebarran horizon position, the next at Belletrix, the next in between Central Orion and Saiph, and finally the sixth new moon rises at the horizon position that Sirius rose at during the night. During the next six months one can tell what month it is only in the middle of the month, since one has to wait to see what phase the moon is in when it appears at the Beta Triangulum horizon position. During the seventh month, as described, a full moon will be observed at the Beta Triangulum position. The next month a gibbous waxing moon, then a quarter moon, and successively smaller crescents will be seen there until, at the time when the 13th or first month should start the new year again (exactly 354 days later), a new moon is again seen rising at the Beta Triangulum position on the horizon.
It is interesting that one can draw some significant anthropological results from the astronomical derivation of this calendrical system. It would appear that the calendar would have had to have been invented (to use the stars correctly) sometime within a few hundred years of 300 BC, a time when the Cushitic peoples were dominant in this part of the world. Hence we would call it the Borana-Cushitic calendar. In addition, although the seven Borana-Cushitic stars no longer rise in the correct horizon positions to be correctly marked by pillars for observing the monthly rising position of the new moon, the present day Borana people nevertheless use this system of timekeeping. The implication is that the Borana require ancient horizon markers in their present derivation of the calendar.
Concerning the site at Namoratunga, and considering that the use of pillars is apparently necessary to the derivation of the calendar, such horizon markers as are found there may, indeed, have been an ancient observatory. Petroglyphs on the pillars at Namoratunga may also hold the possibility of being ancient and, if Cushitic, may represent the alignment stars or moon. Cushitic script has never been deciphered and any hints as to the meaning of tits symbols could be significant clues with very exciting prospects indeed!
Thus, archaeoastronomy in East Africa is still quite new and many discoveries await. From coming to understand, even in a small way, the calendrical reckoning and observational abilities of the ancient and modern astronomer-timekeepers of this region, Western thought should certainly not again underestimate the ingenuity and intellect present there. As for this Western thinker, this study continues to be a welcome lesson in perspective and humility, taught to him by his astronomical colleagues of long ago.”
This is a summary of a talk delivered at Caltech for Ned Munger’s African Studies class.
The 2015 Commemoration of Odaa-Bultum (One of the Major Oromo Gadaa System’s Administrative Centers)
Finfinne Tribune | Gadaa.com
Oromos from all corners of Oromiyaa have converged at the once-banned Odaa-Bultum, one of the major Oromo Gadaa System’s administrative centers and located in Eastern Oromiyaa, to celebrate Odaa-Bultum and witness the peaceful power-transfer to the newAbbaa-Gadaa; the celebration will last for eight days, starting on January 28, 2015. According to sources, the new Abbaa-Gadaa of Odaa-Bultum will be inaugurated at this week-long celebration.
Odaa-Bultum, together with the other Odaa’s across Oromiyaa, was banned by the invading Habesha army at the end of the 19-century. Though the banning was meant to destroy and erase people’s memory of the Oromo Gadaa heritage, the strong collective societal memory of the Gadaa System continues to propel the ongoing Renaissance of the Gadaa System across Oromiyaa.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislators, administrators, andarbitrators. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining thepolicy of the state. A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political systems and institutions that make up the organisation of a specific government.
On the surface, identifying a form of government appears to be easy, as all governments have an official form. The United States is a federal republic, while the former Soviet Union was a socialist republic. However self-identification is not objective, and as Kopstein and Lichbach argue, defining regimes can be tricky.[7] For example, elections are a defining characteristic of a democracy,[citation needed] but in practice elections in the former Soviet Union were not “free and fair” and took place in a single party state. Thus in many practical classifications it would not be considered democratic.
Identifying a form of government is also complicated because a large number of political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by specific parties naming themselves after those movements; all with competing political-ideologies. Experience with those movements in power, and the strong ties they may have to particular forms of government, can cause them to be considered as forms of government in themselves. Read more at:
Philosopher and Social Anthropologist Prof. Gammachu Magarsaa has so far periodized 9 Gadaa Oromo Governance cycles for the time since 1249BC in which one cycle takes 360 years. We can see as follows:
The intricately curved stones of Xayyaa (Tiya) are the marks of the Gadaa governance of 1249BC – 889BC Xayyaa era, and the Maddillee governance also marked by stone graves in the region. At present, as the Ethiopian regime engaged in denying and erasing Oromo cultural and historical heritages, redistricted this part of central Oromia to neighboring zone.
So, in reading the following article we must refer to the above study.
The Intricately Carved Tiya Megaliths of Ethiopia
January 13, 2015 (Ancient Origins) — The Tiya stones are part of an archaeological site located in central Ethiopia, in an area known as the Gurage Zone. The 46 large, decorated Tiya megaliths have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although the construction of such megaliths is an ancient tradition in Ethiopia, the Tiya stones are fairly ‘recent’, dating to sometime between the 10th and 15th centuries. Remarkably little is known about the Tiya stelae, beyond descriptions of their physical appearance. These large monuments likely had some cultural significance when erected, but their meaning remains unclear and very few efforts have been made towards understanding these magnificent monoliths.
The town of Tiya is found in central Ethiopia, located in the Soddo Region, in an area known as the Gurage Zone. Over 100 stelae can be found scattered across nine distinct megalithic pillar sites within the zone, 46 of which can be found at Tiya.
The pillar sites contain large stelae (monuments) of three types – anthropomorphic, phallic, and non-anthropomorphic/non-phallic. Anthropomorphic stelae are those which are given a human form. Phallic stelae are tall, thin shafts. The final stelae are flat monuments that take on neither an anthropomorphic nor phallic form, yet still take on the same basic form as the other megaliths. Each of these types of stelae are prominent within the nine sites of the Gurage Zone. Additionally, most of the stelae in the Gurage Zone contain elaborate decorations, including symbols that resemble plants, swords, and human figures, standing “akimbo,” with their hands on their hips and elbows turned out.
The monoliths at Tiya are taller than the stelae found elsewhere in the zone, with the tallest reaching over 16 feet (5 meters) high. Thirty two of the Tiya stelae bear decorative symbols.
In April 1935, one of the Tiya stones, engraved with a sword symbol, was discovered during a German expedition. Local residents refer to the stelae as Yegran Dingay, or Gran’s Stone. This is in reference to the ruler of the Adal Sultanate, Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi. In addition to the stelae at Tiya, there have been other finds of archaeological significance. During excavations, several tombs have been found. In the area, researchers have also discovered tools form the Middle Stone Age. Several sets of remains have been found in the area, with the bodies dating to sometime between the 12th and 14th centuries. Upon examination, it appeared that the remains belonged to individuals who were killed in battle. This may be fitting, as some say that the Tiya stones appear to be laid out like a row of headstones. There has been speculation that these are, perhaps, the site of a mass burial for those killed in battle.
The Tiya stelae are similar to stelae found in other areas, such as those that can be found en route between Djibouti City and Loyada. The stelae near Djibouti City include anthropomorphic and phallic stelae, and some of those near Loyada contain a T-shaped symbol. Some of these stelae also contain the symbols found on the Tiya stelae.
The Tiya stones were declared to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is considered to be of special cultural or physical significance. These worldwide sites are protected in hopes of preserving any cultural significance they may hold. The site of the Tiya stones joins many other UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ethiopia, including: Axum, Lalibela, Semien Mountains National Park, Fasiledes Castle, the lower Valley of the Awash River, the lower Valley of the Omo, Muslim Holy City Harar, and the Konso Landscape. Altogether, these sites are the important remains of ancient Ethiopian culture, although it has been said that there has not been enough effort towards understanding the archaeology of Ethiopia.
Fully understanding the purpose and function of the Tiya stones is difficult because of the small amount of research that has been done in the area. Identification as a UNESCO World Heritage Site should be helpful towards learning more about the stelae, but surprisingly little has been done in the past 35 years since that occurred.
Sites such as the Tiya stones should be protected to ensure that any cultural secrets they hold will remain preserved, and perhaps someday be discovered. As a site created by the ancestors of those who live in Tiya and nearby areas, any significance of the megaliths may still apply to those who live there today. By protecting the site, UNESCO and other interested groups can ensure that the stones are preserved for future generations. There is the hope that more research will be undertaken in order to learn more about the amazing megaliths at Tiya, including who constructed them, why they did so, and what significance the monuments hold.
Fulbaana/September 17, 2014 · Finfinne Tribune http://gadaa.net/FinfinneTribune/2014/09/ibsa-ejjannoo-hirmaattota-kora-38ffaa-tbojuosg/ Date: 14-09-2014 TBOJ (UOSG) Tel: 01745994312 E-Mail: tboj.uosg@gmail.com Kora 38ffaa Tokkummaa Barattoota Oromoo Jarmanii (TBOJ) Fulbaana 14 bara 2014 Sa’a booda saatii 12:15 irraa egalee waaree booda amma saatii 18:30 magaalaa Frankfurt, galma Universitii Joon Volfigaang kessatti geggefame. Kaayyoon waliga’ii:- 1ffaa haala qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoo (QBO) yeroo ammaa irratti mariiyatuun hubannoo siyasaa argatuu fi 2ffaa raawii hojii TBOJ/UOSG Caayaa ABO Onkoololeessa 6 bara 2012 amma Fulbaana 14, 2014 gamaagamun booda Koree Hojii Geggesitu (KHG) gadaa ittii aanuu filachuudha. Walga’iin ergaa Eeebbaa Manguddoo Oromoottin tahe boode, faaruu Alaabaa Oromiyaan akkasumas Jaallan QBO irrati otto falmanuu kufaniif yaadannoo godhun banamee. Hogganaa olaanaa ABO mata duree bara 1990 asi “QBO” ABOn gageefamu maal akka fakkaatu fi maal keessa akka darbe fi amma hoo ABO maal akka gochaa jiru akkasumas WBOn maal gochaa akka jiru irratti Ibsaa balaa Miseensoota TBOJ/UOSG kennaniruu. Mata duree kana irratti gaaffii fi deebiin akkasumas Yaada Ijaaroo tahan balinaan kennaniruu. Itti-aansuun gabaasaan raawii hojii Onkoololeessa bara 2012 haga Fulbaana 14, 2014 KHG TBOJ fi KHG damilee TBOJ irraa hirmaatota waliga’iif dhiyaate. Gabaasaa gamaagamuu fi raggaasisun booda KHG gadaa ittii aanuu filachuu fi ibsa Ijjannoo baafatun sagantaan koraa 38ffaa TBOJ milkiin xumurameera. Ibsa Ejjannoo Nuti miseensotiin TBOJ walga’ii kana hirmaannee turre haala siyaasaa QBO irratti ergi mariyanneen booda, ummata Oromoo fi Oromiyaa sirna gabiromfannaa (kolonii) bara ammaa motummaa Habashaa, gartuu wayaaneen (TPLFn) hogganamaa jiru, jalatti gidirfamaa jiru bilisomsuuf qabsoo hadhooftuu hogganummaa jaarmaa ABOn geggefamaa jiru gutummaan tumsaa, gumaata nu irraa barbaadamu gama maraan kennuuf qophii ta’uu kenya ni mirkaneessina! 1. QBO hirmannaa ummata Oromoo fi hogganummaa ABOn geggefamaa jiruu ni deggerra! 2. Qabsoo hidhannoo, siyasaa, fi dipilomasii ABO geggessaa jiru diinagideen ni utubna! 3. Qabsoo fincila diddaa gabirummaa karaa qeerroo Oromiyaa, barattotaa, fi ummata Oromoo geggefamaa jiru waan nu irraa barbaachisu maraan ni tumsina! 4. Sagalee QBO haala hundaa kessatti firotaa fi dinoota ni dhageessifina! 5. Saamichaa Lafa fi Qabeenya Oromoof Oromiyaa akkasumas shororkaa ummata Oromoo irratti dinoti fi farreen QBO raawataa jiraatan injifachuuf hubannoo fi kutannoon sagantaa QBO milkomsuuf heera jaarmaa ni tiksina! 6. Araaraa ABO QC fi ABO giduuti tahe labsamee ni deggerra! 7. Yakkoota dhittaa mirga-namomaa ummata Oromoo irratti karaa motummaa gabironfataa TPLF (Wayaanee) raawatamaa jiru ni balaaleffanna! 8. Hogganummaa motummaa wayaaneen yakkoota dhiittaa mirga namaa ummata Oromoo irratti raawatamaa jiru hambisuuf akka hawaasoti Addunyaa dhibbaa godhan ni gaafanna! 9. Lammii Oromiyaa kanneen meeshaa motummaa TPLF ta’uun yakkoota hiriyaa hin qabne ummata Oromoo irratti raawachisuun sirna motummaa Habashootaa tiksuuf boojiyamtan akka gara moraa QBO makamuun mirga abbaa biyyummaa ummata Oromoo kabachisuuf qabsooftan waamicha ilaalcha Oromummaa hundeefate isiniif erginerra! 10.Master Plan –> Master killer dha! Kana cimsinee morminaa! Injifatnnoon ummata Oromoof! Hirmaattota Kora 38ffaa TBOJ (Jarmanii, Frankfurt – Fulbaana 14, 2014) KHG TBOJ/UOSG Tokkummaa Bartoota Oromoo Biyya Awurooppaa, Damee Jarmanii Union of Oromo Students in Europe, German Branch Postfach 510610 • 13366 Berlin Tel: + 49 (0)151 63727696 e-Mail: tboj.uosg@gmail.com embed]http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUQxnvRrm5Q[/embed]
The Oromo Gadaa System Lecture Tour: By Abbaa Gadaa Bayyanaa Sanbatoo of Caffee Tulama at the OSA Workshop on “Gadaa Research and Renaissance”
Reported Fulbaana/September 4, 2014 By Finfinne Tribune | Gadaa.com
The following is a statement from the President of the Oromo Studies Association (OSA), Ob. Jawar Mohammed. ———————————————————————– SUBJECT: Abbaa Gadaa Bayyanaa Sanbatoo’s Visit to North America You might recall that Abbaa Gadaa Bayyanaa Sanbatoo, due to issues related to his visa, was unable to arrive on time to speak and participate as a distinguished guest at OSA’s 28th Annual Conference that took place at Howard University in Washington, DC on August 2-3, 2014, with the theme, “Gadaa and Oromo Democracy: Celebrating Forty Years of Research and Renaissance.” We are pleased to inform you that he was finally able come to the United States. OSA has extended its theme focusing on the Gadaa democracy through the end of the year, and Abbaa Gadaa Bayyanaa will speak at a series of OSA-organized workshops in various cities in the United States from September 6-27, 2014 – focusing on the ongoing work of reviving the Gadaa system.
He will also participate as a Guest of Honor at several Irreecha celebrations organized by the Oromo in the Diaspora.We invite all who are interested in the Gadaa democratic system, and Oromo culture in general, to attend these workshops and participate in the spectacular Irreecha celebrations to be held throughout September and October 2014.We would like to extend our appreciation to local individuals and institutions – who participated in preparing these events. We are also grateful to the United States Consular Service for the assistance they provided in issuing Abbaa Gadaa Bayyanaa’s travel documents.The attached flyer contains general information about dates and cities where Abbaa GadaaBayyanaa will be speaking.Jawar Mohammed President, Oromo Studies Association
Little Oromia (aka Minnesota) Agust 2014:The Year’s Biggest Diaspora Festival of Oromummaa
http://www.osfna.org/ The Oromo Gadaa Democracy meets the American Congress Democracy. Abbaa Gadaa (Rt.) Aagaa Xanxanoo and Abbaa Gadaa (Rt.) Moonaa Godaanaa meet Senator Al Franken (from the State of Minnesota). (July 20, 2014 (Gadaa) — Minnesota’s Twin Cities, also known as “Little Oromia” for being the home of the largest Oromo population outside of the Horn of Africa, will be the venue for the 2014 OSFNA Sports Tournaments. Less than two weeks are left before this year’s 19th Annual OSFNA Soccer Tournament kickoff on August 2, 2014. First started in 1996, the OSFNA (Oromo Sports Federation of North America) organizes an annual soccer tournament among teams drawn from majorNorth American cities with sizable Oromo expat populations, and the venue for each year’s tournament has been rotating among the participating cities over the last 19 years. Unlike previous years, the 2014 OSFNA Sports Tournaments will include basketball, women’s volleyball and the Abebe Bikila Legacy Two-Mile Race in addition to the soccer tournament, according to information posted on OSFNA.org. What’s more, this year’s Soccer Tournament will also include gameparticipants from Australia. OMN (Oromia Media Network) has also partnered with OSFNA to broadcast the 2014 OSFNA Soccer Tournaments live.
Lasting for a week (August 2, 2014 to August 9, 2014) known as the OROMO WEEK, sports is only one of the activities in Little Oromia. The OROMO WEEK is also a time of heritage (Oromummaa) celebration for the Oromo expats in Little Oromia and those visiting Little Oromia from all over the world. A number of music concerts with Oromo recording artists, the Bakakkaa Oromo
Music Awards (debuting this year), the Mr. and Miss Oromo North America Pageant Show, and community and civic conferences are among the non-sports activities during this year’s OROMO WEEK. In addition, heritage products (such as music CD’s, drama/music DVD’s, drama/music VCD’s, cultural clothes, food, etc.) will be available for purchase at stalls located at/near the event arenas. The following is a mini-schedule of the activities during the 2014 OROMO WEEK in Little Oromia; this section will be updated regularly as new information becomes available.August 2, 2014 – August 9, 2014: OSFNA Sports Tournaments For full content, visit Gadaahttp://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/oromia/little-oromia-aka-minnesota-gears-up-for-the-years-biggest-diaspora-festival-of-oromummaa/
OSA2014: Remarks by Former Abbaa Gadaa Aagaa Xanxano, and Gadaa Scholar Prof. Asmarom Legesse
July 14, 2014 (ONLF Press Release)The Ethiopian security has assassinated three Kenyan civilians and gravely wounded another one in Garissa, Kenya during the last week of June and the first week of July. The latest victim, Mr. Asad Yusuf was shot and killed in the evening of July 9, 2014. He was a Kenyan Somali civilian and was killed because he was assisting refugee from the Ogaden. He was a businessman and had a large family. A week ago another young man was also killed for the same reason and two weeks ago one man was killed and another wounded. Assassin Abdirahman Hajir who was a member of the Liyu Police, the killing squads in the Ogaden, funded and trained by the Ethiopian regime, was apprehended and has confessed that he carried out the last two killings. He also confessed that the Ethiopian security has trained and sent him and a team of 19 assassins and support staff to create chaos in Kenya. They were assembled in Addis Ababa and came through Moyale town. Furthermore, he stated “others were also dispatched to Somali and the Neighbouring countries to assassinate opponents to the regime, including Somali officers in Somalia and Ethiopian opposition figures”. The Ethiopian regime has taken a policy of coercion, extermination and mass execution against the Ogaden People in Ethiopia, so they fled to the neighbouring countries. Many of these refugee sought asylum in Kenya which has been a safe haven for the refugees in the Horn and central Africa, because of their hospitality and for their respect of International and African laws of Refugees. Therefore, since 2009, the Ethiopian government decided to routinely abduct and commit extrajudicial executions, including politically motivated killings in Kenya and so far the action taken by the Kenyan government to protect the refugees it gave asylum was not enough to stop such criminal acts. After failing to deter Somalis from Ogaden to keep seeking refugee in Kenya, despite all these inhumane acts, the Ethiopian regime has now decided to punish the local Somali Kenyans for supporting the refugees and in order to create Chaos and destabilize the North-East Provence of Kenya. Furthermore, the Ethiopian regime is getting bolder in flaunting International law and human rights laws by extending its criminal acts against its victims across international borders and is violating the Human Rights of those who seek asylum from its heinous acts in Ethiopia. The policy of the Ethiopian regime is to create chaos and endanger the stability of the Horn of Africa. If this continues unchecked it will lead to dangerous consequences for all concerned. ONLF condemns the Ethiopian regime and call upon the UNHCR and the Kenyan government to take seriously their responsibility to protect its civilians and the refugees that are under its care. (ONLF)
The following is a press release from the Australian Oromo Community in Victoria, Australia. Ebla/April 22, 2014Australian Oromo Community Association in Victoria Inc. A.B.N. 52 554 165204Press ReleaseSUBJECT: Safeguarding the Rights of Oromo Refugees and Asylum SeekersThe Australian Oromo Community in Victoria Australia (AOCAV), a non- profitable organisation established in 1984 to facilitate community development, preservation of Oromo culture, and promoting cross cultural awareness and harmony between the Australian-Oromo and mainstream Australians, and to serve as voice of the Oromo people, is concerned about the ongoing swoops targeting refugees and asylum seekers in various urban centres in Kenya.Reports from different media indicate that over 6000 refugees and asylum seekers have been arrested in these crackdowns. According to AOCAV’s informant, more than two thousand asylum seekers and refugees have been detained in the Kasarani Stadium in the Capital, as a temporary police station, while some are being held at the Pangani, Kasarani and other police stations. More than 400 Oromos and other Ethiopian immigrants have been arrested in these crackdowns.AOCAV applauds the Government of Kenya for hosting nearly 400,000 refugees from nine African countries, which is an enormous task. We also appreciate the continuing efforts to strengthen security for all persons living in Kenya. While we appreciate these efforts, our concern is that innocent Oromo refugees and asylum seekers have been arrested during the security operation. AOCAV does not support refugees and asylum seekers who engage in criminal activities, but maintains that any such persons should be subjected to proper judicial procedures by the government with due respect to their vulnerability and human rights.We understand that the government’s duty to maintain national security cannot be disputed, however, it is imperative for the State to guarantee the safety and protection of all registered refugees and asylum seekers residing in Kenya. According to the Refugees Act of 2006, the government of Kenya has an obligation to protect the rights of refugees and asylum seekers – which includes the right to seek asylum. Kenya is party to various international and regional conventions governing protection of refugees and asylum seekers, and therefore, it has a duty to protect such persons.AOCAV urges the government to uphold and safeguard the rights of Oromo refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya even as it continues its security operations. It is our stand that recent government’s actions should not negate the gains made by the state towards the protection of refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya. We call upon the leaders of the government of Kenya to guard against making remarks and actions which may jeopardize the protection of Oromo refugees and asylum seekers. AOCAV also requests the governments of the Western countries as well as international organizations to continue interfering in this matter so that the safety and security of the arrested Oromo refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya could be ensured.Sincerely,Yadata SabaPresident, Australian Oromo Community in Victoria Australia120 Race course Rd Flemington, VIC 3031P.O.BOX 2123 Footscray VIC 3011Tel + 61 412 795 909 Tel +61 422 869 709Email: ocaustralia@gmail.com Website: www.oromocommunity.org.au
Gadaa.com: Oromo & Oromia » Safeguarding the Rights of Oromo Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Kenya
Sof Umar Wall, Bale Oromia (Ancient and magnificent past and present)
Parts of ancient kemetic (Kushitic), Egyptian, material culture (fashion accessories), courtesy of British Museum sources
Traditionally, Oromo women wear necklaces with telsum amulets, triangular and crescent shaped pendants protect from the evil eye and attract the power of the moon or to improve fertility.
Oromia: The continuity of farming in Oromo society from ancient Kemetic (Kushitic) to present Oromia
Ancient Oromo culture, Irreechaa from the time before the Pyramid
As some indeed suspect, that the science which we see at the dawn of recorded history, was not science at its dawn, but represents the remnants of the science of some great and as yet untraced civilisation. Where, however, is the seat of that civilisation to be located? (J. W. S. Sewell, 1942)
Conquest and dominations are social phenomenon as are dying elsewhere will die in Oromia (Author’s Remark).
JEL: O5, D2
Oromia: Untwist the Twisted History
The topic is about Oromia’s location in space and allocation in humanity and society. It is concerned with Oromia’s physical position in terms of geography and relational to issues of economic conditions, social justices, cultural values, political history and destiny. Civilisation, Colonisation and Underdevelopment are presented in historical and geo-political perspectives. They capture both the space and time perceptions. They are also representing the economic and social conditions and positions. The portrayal we procure the present of the Oromo nation, the core of the Cush (Cushite/ Kemet)/Ham (Hamite), the children of Noah, in North & East Africa in past age from the phantom of the Solomonic dynasty, the history thought in Abyssinian high schools, their text books and elsewhere in the invaders’ literature, abusive literary and oral discourses is that they were savages and that, though Abyssinians and Europeans overrun their lands and have made mere subjects of them, they have been in a way, bestowing a great favour on them, since they have brought to them the benisons of Christian Enlightenment. With objective analysis, however, this paper obliterates and unmakes that inaccurate illustration, wanton falsifications, immorality, intellectual swindle, sham, mischievous tales, the bent and the parable of human reductionism. Hence, it is the step to delineate an authentic portrait of a human heritage, which is infinitely rich, beautiful, colourful, and varied in the retrograde of orthodox misconceptions. The paper is not only a disinclination itself but also a call for and a provocation of the new generation of historians to critically scrutinise and reinvestigate the orthodox approaches to the Oromo history and then to expose a large number of abusive scholarship authorities on the Oromo and Cushitic studies and it detects that they do not really know the intensity and profoundness of the history of these black African people and nations and the performance these Africans registered in the process of creating, making and shaping the prime civilisations of human societies. The study acknowledges and advances a strict contest to an orthodox scholarship’s rendition of Egypt as a white civilisation, which arose during the nineteenth century to fortify and intensify European imperialism and racism. Depending on massive evidences from concerned intellectual works from linguistic to archaeology, from history to philosophy, the study authenticates that Egypt was a Cushitic civilisation and that Cushite civilisation was the authentic offspring of the splendid Upper Nile/ Oromian legacy. The Greek civilisation, which has been long unveiled as the birthplace of Western philosophy and thought, owes its roots to the Cushites thoughts and achievements. The original works of Asfaw Beyene (1992) and F. Demie (inOromia Quarterly, 1998 & 2000) are giving motivations and also greatly acknowledged. The study also expresses that radical thinkers and multi-genius African historians such as Diop (1991) have not given due attention to the epic centre of Cushitic civilisation, Oromia, the land after and Eastern and South Eastern to Nubia, pre-Aksum central Cush, Aksumite Cush and Cushites civilisation southern to Aksum, etc. The method of enquiry is qualitative and the eclectics of formal and the informal sources, rigorous, casual and careful scholarship argument. Oral history and written documents on history, economy, sociology, archaeology, geography, cosmology and anthropology are based on as references. The paper studies the Oromo history and civilisation in horizontal approach and challenges the reductionist and Ethiopianist (colonialist, racist) vertical approach (topsy-turvy, cookkoo). It goes beyond the Oromo Oral sources (burqaa mit-katabbii) and Africanist recorded studies and western civilisational studies. The approach is to magnify, illuminate and clarify the originality of humanity and civilisation to this magnificent Cushitic (African) beauty. The Origin of Humanity When and where did human life first surface on our cosmos? Who contrived the original and prime human culture and civilisation? Ancient Egyptians contended that it was in their homeland, the oldest in the world, the God modelled the first of all human beings out of a handful of ooze soddened by the vivacity of the life giving sanctified and blessed water, the Nile (see, Jackson, 1995). “The ancient Egyptians called the river Ar or Aur (Coptic: Iaro), “Black,” in allusion to the colour of the sediments carried by the river when it is in flood. Nile mud is black enough to have given the land itself its oldest name, Kem or Kemi, which also means “black” and signifies darkness. In The Odyssey, the epic poem written by the Greek poet Homer (7th century bce), Aigyptos is the name of the Nile (masculine) as well as the country of Egypt (feminine) through which it flows. The Nile in Egypt and Sudan is now called Al-Nīl, Al-Baḥr, and Baḥr Al-Nīl or Nahr Al-Nīl.”http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/415347/Nile-RiverAr or Aur (Coptic: Iaro) is Booruu in modern Afaan Oromo which means turbid in English translations. Lagdi Nayili jedhamee amma waamamu maqaan kun kan akkanatti moggaasameefi, bowwaa jechuudha. Warri kushii, warri biyyaa, waarri durii laga isaanii Aur (Ooruu) jedhanii waamu. Afaan Oromoo amma uni dubbannuutti booruu jechuudha. Booruu (turbid) jechuuni gurri’aacha (Kami) jechuu miti. Booruu (Ooruu, Aur) jechuun kan taliila hin taane kan hin calaliini jechuudha. Dameen laga kanaa kan Moromor (dhidheessa) irraa maddu galaana biroo itti burqan dabalatee biyyoo loolan haramaniin waan booraweef. kaartumitti yoo damee isa (isa taliila) garba Viktooriyaati karaa Ugaanda dhufutti makamu kanasi booressee misiriitti godaana. Dameen Garba Viktooriyaati dhufu iyyuu adii (white) jedhamee mogga’uuni irra hin turre. Bishaani adiini hin jiru. Bishaani hin boora’iini bishaan taliila. Bishaani taliilatu bishaan guri’aacha. Inni ‘Blue’ jedhanisi ‘Blue’ mitti. Bishaan taliilatu, gurri’aacha ‘Blue’ dha. ‘Blue Nile’ jechuu irra ‘Brown’ Nile (Mormor Booruu, Ar, Aur) yoo jedhani ille itti dhiyaata.
The word (Africa) Afrika itself derived from kemetic (Oromo) language. In Oromo, one of the ancient black people (kemet), Afur means four. Ka (Qa, Waqa) means god. Afrika Means the four children of god. It describes the four sub groups of kemet people. Such type of naming system is very common in Oromo even today such as Afran Qallo, Shanan Gibee, Salgan Boorana, Macca Shan, Jimma Afur, Sadan Soddoo, etc. For other theories in this topic please refer to http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/09/23/9-theories-africa-got-name/
One of the oldest Cushites histories to account for the origin and early development of man and his culture survives in a Greek version of the thesis advanced by the ancient Cushites, Oromians and the rest. This marvellous people paraded in golden times in the region called Kush (Punt) in the Hebrew Scriptures and stamped on the present-day upper Nile Oromia (see, Jackson, 1995). Diodorus Siculus, wrote that the Cushites were of the opinion that their country was not only the birthplace of human race and the cradle land of the world’s earliest civilisation, but, indeed, the primal Eden where living things first appeared on Earth, as reported by the Scriptures. Thus, Diodorus was the first European to focus attention on the Cushites asseveration that Upper Nile (Oromia) is the cradle land of world’s earliest civilisation, the original Eden of the human race. Whether by almighty (God) or nature/ evolution (Darwin’s natural selection and survival of the fittest), Oromia was not only the birth place of man himself (e.g., Lucy) but also for many hundred years thereafter is in the vanguard of all world progress (see Diop, 1991 in his African Civilisation; Martin Bernal, 1987). These are also authenticated by the present archaeological inferences in Oromo tropical fields and rivers valleys. The original natives of Egypt, both in old and in the latter ages of development, were Cushite and there is every raison d’être for the discourse that the earliest settlers came from upper Nile Oromia. The original homeland of the Oromians and other Cushites including Chadic, Berber, Egyptian, Beja, Central Cushitic, East Cushitic, South Cushitic, Omotic and Nilotic was the present day upper Nile Oromia. It was from the original Oromo (Madda Walaabu) that the rest of humanity descended diffused to other parts of the world. This can be understood in the analogue of the diffusion of two Oromo families (Borana and Barentuma). While those who expanded to other regions latter taken new family names like Macha, Tulama, Karayyu, etc and those who stayed in original place kept the original name such as Borana. In terms of linguistic, like most scholars, we believe that it is impossible to judge between the theories of monogenesis and polygenesis for human, though the inclination is towards the former. On the other hand, recent work by a small but increasing number of scholars has convinced us that there is a genetic relationship between European, Asian, and African and Cushite languages. A language family originates from a single dialect, proto Cushitic/ Oromo. From such language and culture that must have broken up into Africa, Asiatic, and European and within them a very long time a go. Professor Bernal (1987, in Black Athena, p. 11) confirmed that the unchallenged originality of Oromians and other Cushites nativity to the region and put forward that the latest possibility for initial language break up would be the Mousterian period, 50- 30,000 years Before the Present (BP), however, it may well have much earlier. He further observed that the expansion and proliferation of Cushitic and other Afroasiatic as the promulgation of a culture long pioneered in the East African Rift valley (South Eastern Oromian) at the end of the last Ice Age in the 10th and 9th millennia BC. According to Bernal (1987, p.11) the polar ice caps caged the water within itself, which was during the Ice ages, thus water was significantly less than it is nowadays. He reports that the Sahara and Arabian deserts were even bigger and more inhospitable then than they are presently. In the centuries that ensued, with the rise of heat and increase in the rainfall, greatly the regions became savannah, into which adjoining peoples voyaged. The most successful of these were, the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic from upper Nile Oromia. Bernal further confirmed that these people not only possessed flourishing and effective skills and techniques of hippopotamus hunting with harpoons but also had domesticated cattle and food crops. The following is quoted from Black Athena: ‘Going through the savannah, the Chadic speakers renched lake Chad, the Berbers, the Maghreb, and the Proto-Egyptians, upper Egypt…. With long-term desiccation of the Sahara during the 7th and 6th millennia BC, there were movements into the Egyptian Nile Valley from the west and east as well as from the Sudan. … A similar migration took place from the Arabian savannah into lower Mesopotamia ‘(Bernal, pp.11-12).
The Origin of Civilisation
There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of the historic Egyptians that suggest that the original home of their human ancestors was in the Upper Nile region and the biblical land of Punt/ Kush (Cush) Or Oromia which include the present day of Cushitic North and East of Africa. Hence, historical records showed that the antiquity of upper Nile Cushitic Oromian civilisation had a direct link with the civilisation of ancient Egypt, Babylonian and Greece. Hence, the Egyptian and Babylonian civilisations are part and parcel of the entire Cushite civilisation. As it is described above, there is wide understanding that Cushites = Egyptians + Babylon + Oromo+ Agau + Somalis + Afars + Sidama + Neolithic Cush + other Cush. There is also an understanding that all the Cushites are branched out (descended) from their original father Oromo which can be described as Oromo = Noah=Ham= Cush= Egyptian + Bablyon+ Agau + Somali + Afar + Sidama + Neolithic Cush + other Cush. Boran and Barentuma, the two senior children and brothers were not the only children of the Oromo. Sidama, Somali, Agau, Afar and the others were children of the big family. Wolayita and the Nilotics were among the extended family and generations of the Cushite. As a hydro-tower of Africa, the present Oromia is naturally gifted and the source of Great African rivers and hosts the bank and valleys of the greatest and oldest civilisations such as Nile (Abbaya), Baro (Sobat), Gibe, Wabe, Dhidhesa, Ganale, Wabi-shebele, Omo, and Awash among others. Oromian tropical land, equatorial forest and Savannah have been the most hospitable ecology on the earth and conducive environment to life and all forms of human economic and social practices. According to Clarke (1995), many of the leading antiquarians of the time, based largely on the strength of what the classical authors, particularly Diodorus Siculus and Stephanus of Nabatea (Byzantium after Roman colonisation and Christianisation), had to say on the matter, were exponents of the vista that the Cushite, the ancient race in Africa, the Near East and the Middle East, or at any rate, the black people of remote antiquity were the earliest of all civilised peoples and that the first civilised inhabitants of ancient Egypt were members of what is referred to as the black, Cushite race who had entered the land as they expanded in their geographical space from the their birthplace in upper Nile Oromia, the surrounding Cushite river valleys and tropical fields. It was among these ancient people of Africa and Asia that classical technology advanced, old world science and cosmology originated, international trade and commerce was first developed, which was the by-product of international contacts, exchange of ideas and cultural practices that laid the foundations of the prime civilisations of the ancient world. Cushite Africa and also of the Middle East and West Asia was the key and most responsible to ancient civilisations and African history. It must also be known that there were no such geographical names, demarcations and continental classification at that time. As a whole, Cushite occupied this region; there was the kernel and the centre of the globe, the planet earth, and the universe. African history is out of stratum until ancient Cushites looked up on as a distinct African/ Asian nations. The Nile river, it tributes, Awash, Baro and Shebele or Juba, etc., played a major role in the relationship of Cushite to the nations in North, South and East Africa. The outer land Savannah, Nile, other Oromian rivers with it Adenian ecology were great cultural highways on which elements of civilisation came into and out of inner North East Africa. After expansions, there was also an offshoot, a graft, differentiation, branching out, internal separation, semi-independence and again interactions, interdependence and co-existence of the common folks. Cushites from the original home made their relationships with the people of their descendants in the South, the North, East and the West, which was as both good, and bad, depending on the period and the regime in power they formed and put in place in the autonomous regions. Cushite Egypt first became an organised autonomous nation in about 6000 B.C. In the Third Dynasty (5345-5307 B.C.) when Egypt had an earnest pharaoh named Zoser and Zoser, in turn, had for his chief counsellor and minister, an effulgent grand named Imhotep (whose name means ‘he who cometh in peace”). Imhotep constructed the famous step pyramid of Sakkarah near Memphis. The building techniques used in the facilitation of this pyramid revolutionised the architecture of the ancient world (Clarke, 1995). Of course, Independent Egypt was not the original home of these ancient technology. However, it was an extension, expansion, advancement and the technological cycle of the Upper Nile Oromia, Nubia, Beja, Agau and other Cushites. Ideas, systems, technologies and products were invented, tested and proved in upper Nile then expanded and adopted elsewhere in the entire Cush regions and beyond. . Bernal (1987, pp. 14-15) has identified strict cultural and linguistic similarities among all the people around the Mediterranean. He further attests that it was south of the Mediterranean and west to the Red Sea’s classical civilisation that give way to the respective north and east. Cushite African agriculture of the upper Nile expanded in the 9th and 8th century millennia BC and pioneering the 8th and 7th of the Indo-Hittite. Egyptian civilisation is Cushite and is clearly based on the rich pre-dynastic cultures of Upper Egypt, Nubia and upper Nile, whose Cushite African and Oromian origin is uncontested and obvious. Of course, Cushite Egypt gave the world some of the greatest personalities in the history of mankind. In this regard, Imhotep was extraordinary discernible. In ancient history of Egypt, no individual left a downright and deeper indentation than Imhotep. He was possibly the world’s first mult-genuis. He was the real originator of new medicine at the time. He revolutionised an architect of the stone building, after which the Pyramids were modelled. He became a deity and later a universal God of Medicine, whose images charmed the Temple of Imhotep, humanity’s earliest hospital. To it came sufferers from the entire world for prayer, peace, and restorative. Imhotep lived and established his eminence as a curative at the court of King Zoser of the Third Dynasty about 5345-5307 B.C. (Duncan, 1932). When the Cushite civilisation through Egypt afar crossed the Mediterranean to become the foundation of what we think of as Greek culture, the teachings of Imhotep were absorbed along with the axioms of other great Cushite African teachers. When Greek civilisation became consequential in the Mediterranean area, the Greeks coveted the world to ponder they were the originators of everything in its totality. They terminated to acknowledge their liability to Imhotep and other great Cushites. Imhotep was forgotten for thousands of years, and Hippocrates, a mythical posture of two thousand years latter, became known as the father of medicine. Regarding to Imhotep’s influence in Rome, Gerald Massey, noted poet, archaeologist, and philologist, says that the early Christians cherished him as one with Christ (Massey, 1907). It should be understood that, while the achievements of Cushite Egypt were one of the best, these are not the only achievements that Cushite Africans can claim. The Nubians, upper Nile, central and eastern Cushites (the Oromo, Agau, Somalia, Afar, etc) were continue to develop many aspects of civilisation independent of Cushite Egyptian interactions. These nations and states gave as much to Egypt as Egypt give to them in terms of trade, ideas and technology as well. There was also a considerable Cushite dominion on what later became Europe in the period preceding Christian era. Cushites played a major role in formative development of both Christianity and Islam. Both the Holly Bible and the Holly Quran moral texts are originated from the Oromo and other Cushite oral and moral principles, beliefs, creeds and teachings. There is a common believe and understanding that Abraham, a seminal prophet, believer and recipient of a single and eternal God was from Central Cush of present Upper Nile Oromia. The Oromos believed in a single and eternal God, Black God (Waaqa Guri’acha) also Blue God according to some scholars who translated the oral history. Waaqa also Ka. While the Oromian faith, social structure and policies were the prime and the origins of all, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all the derivatives and originated from the Black God. Waaqayyoo in Oromo is the original, the single, the omnipotent, the prime and the greatest of all the great religions. All aspects of the present day Christian churches were developed in Cushites. One of the more notable of Cushite contributions to the early church was monasticism. Monasticism, in essence, is organised life in common, especially for religious purposes. The home of a monastic society is called a monastery or a convent. Christian monasticism probably began with the hermits of Cushite Egypt and Palestine about the time when Christianity was established as a licit religion (Clarke, 1995). Oral tradition and Arabian records confirm that Bilal, a tall, gaunt, black, bushy-haired, Oromo, was the first High Priest and treasurer of the Mohammedan empire. After Mohamet himself, the great religion, which today numbers upwards of half a billion souls, may be said to have began with Bilal. He was honoured to be the Prophet’s first neophyte. Bilal was one of the many Cushites who concurred in the founding of Islam and later made proud names for themselves in the Islamic nations and expansions. Europe was sluggishing in her Dark Ages at a time when Cushite Africa and Asia were relishing a Golden Age. In this non-European world of Africa and Asian, Cushites built and enjoyed an age of advancement in technology before a period of internal withdrawal and isolation that favoured the Europeans to move a head of them. For more than a thousand years the Cushites were in the ‘Age of Grandeur’ but the second rise of Europe, internal strife, slave trade and colonialism brought the age of catastrophic tragedy, abase and declivity. The early Cushites made spears to hunt with, stone knives to cut with, the bola, with which to catch birds and animals, the blow-gun, the hammer, the stone axe, canoes and paddles, bags and buckets, poles for carrying things, bows and arrows. The bola, stone knives, paddles, spears, harpoons, bows and arrows, bow-guns, the hammer and the axe- all of them invented first by Cushites – were the start of man’s use of power. The present’s cannon, long-range missiles, ship propellers, automatic hammers, gas engines, and even meat cleavers and upholstery tack hammers have the roots of their development in the early Cushite use of (Clarke, 1995). Cushite offered humans the earliest machine. It was the fire stick. With it, man could have fire any time. With it, a campfire could be set up almost any place. With it, the early Africans could roast food. Every time we light a match, every time we take a bath in water heated by gas, every time we cook a meal in a gas-heated oven, our use of fire simply continues a process started by early Cushites: the control of fire. Of course, those early Cushite was the first to invent how to make a thatched hut. They had to be the first because for hundreds of thousand of years they were the only people on earth. They discovered coarse basket making and weaving and how to make a watertight pot of clay hardened in a fire. In the cold weather, they found that the skins of beasts they had killed would keep them warm. They even skin covers for their feet. It was from their first effort much later clothing and shoes developed. Humanity owes the early Cushites much and even much more (Clarke, 1995). The Cushites dociled animals. They used digging sticks to obtain plant roots that could be consumed. They discovered grain as a food, how to store it and prepare it. They learnt about the fermentation of certain foods and liquids left in containers. Thus, all mankind owes to Cushites including the dog that gives companionship and protection, the cereals we eat at break-fast-time, the fermented liquids that many people drink, the woven articles of clothing we wear and the blankets that keep us warm at night, the pottery in which we bake or boil food, and even the very process (now so simple) of boiling water- a process we use every time we boil an egg, or make spaghetti, or cook corned beef. Canoes made it possible for man to travel further and farther from his early home. Over many centuries, canoes went down Baro, the Nile and the Congo and up many smaller rivers and streams. It was in this pattern that the early Cushite civilisation was advanced. From the blowgun of antiquated Cushite, there come next, in later ages, many gadget based on its standard. Some of these are: the bellows, bamboo air pumps, the rifle, the pistol, the revolver, the automatic, the machine gun- and even those industrial guns that puff grains. Modern Scientists certain that by about 3000 B.C., the Cushite farmers in the Nile Valley were growing wheat and barely, cultivating millet, sorghum, and yams. Around 1500 B.C. new crops farming were developed: – banana, sugar cane, and coconut trees and later coffee. The cultivation of bananas and coffees in particular spread rapidly which are suited to tropical forest conditions. Cushites had also domesticated pigs, donkeys, horses, chickens, ducks, and geese, etc. (Greenblatt, 1992). The agricultural revolution brought about a gradual increase in population. Then another development helped expand population still more. The technique of smelting iron innovated by Cushites. Iron working start and then advanced in the Nile valley and then started to spread to other parts of Africa and from who, by way of Egypt and Asian Minor, this art made its way into Europe and the rest of Old World. Iron greatly improved the efficiency of tools and weapons. Iron tools and weapons are much stronger and last longer than those made of stone or wood. Iron axes made it easier to chop tropical trees and clear land for farming. Iron sickles made harvest easier. Iron hoes and other farm tools helped farmers cultivate land more easily. Iron-tipped spears meant more meat. The new technologies boosted the Cushite economy; they increased food production that enabled more people to survive. In addition, iron objects became valuable items in Cushite trade and commercial activities. With his simple bellows and a charcoal fire the Cushite blacksmith reduced the ore that is found in many parts of the region and forged implements of great usefulness and beauty. In general, the Iron technology was instrumental in auguring the rise and expansion of Cushite civilisation (Greenblatt, 1992). Cushite hunters many times cut up game. There still exists for evidences, drawings of animal bones, hearts and other organs. Those early drawings as a part of man’s early beginnings in the field of Anatomy. The family, the clan, the tribe, the nation, the kingdom, the state, humanity and charity all developed first in this region of the cradle of mankind. The family relationships, which we have today, were fully developed and understood then. The clan and the tribe gave group unity and strength. The nation, the common whole was first developed here. It was by this people that early religious life, beliefs, and the belief in one God, the almighty started and expanded. The first formal education of arts, science, astronomy, times and numbers (mathematics) were visual, oral and spoken tradition given in the family, during social and religious ceremonies. Parents, Medicine men, religious leaders, etc were the education heads. Ceremonial Cushite ritual dances laid the basis for many later forms of the dance. Music existed in early Cushite Among instruments used were: reed pipes, single-stringed instruments, drum, goured rattles, blocks of wood and hollow logs. Many very good Cushite artists brought paintings and sculpture into the common culture. The early Cushites made a careful study of animal life and plant life. From knowledge of animals, mankind was able to take a long step forward to cattle rising. From the knowledge of plants and how they propagate, it was possible to take a still longer step forward to agriculture. Today, science has ways of dating events of long a go. The new methods indicate that mankind has lived in Cushite Africa over two million years. In that long, long time, Cushites and people of their descent settled in other parts of Africa and the rest. Direct descents of early Cushites went Asia Minor, Arabia, India, China, Japan and East Indies. Cushites and people of Cushite descents went to Turkey, Palestine, Greece and other countries in Europe. From Gibraltar, they went into Spain, Portugal, France, England, Wales and Ireland (Clarke, 1995). Considering this information, the pre-Colombian presence of Cushite African mariners and merchants in the New World is highly conceivable and somewhat sounds. In this context, the first Africans to be brought to the New World were not in servitude and slavery, which contrary to popular creed. Tormenting references in the Spanish chronicles and other growing body of historical studies advocate that Cushites were the founders, the pioneers and first permanent settlers of America. Commanding authentication as in Bennett (1993, p. 85) cited by Leo Veiner in his work Africa and the discovery of America suggests that African traders founded Mexico long before Columbus. Hence, the Africans influences were extended from Canada in the North to the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilisation in the South America. The Cushite civilisation is therefore the basis of Indian civilisation. Unlike the western Sudan and in Egypt, the people and nations of upper Nile had lost written records of their ancient times and medieval history. These were destroyed and burned during war of conquests. The early travellers to these areas are also mostly not yet known. Notable kingdoms, republics and states did rise in this part of Africa and did achieve a high degree of civilisation of their time. Scholarly undertakings show that Cushite Africans such as Oromos were the first in human history to invent and implement democratic institutions (e.g. Gada system or Gadaa system), democratic forms of government, elections and unwritten constitution. Democracy was first invented in upper Nile Oromia then to Athens, Greek and to the rest. It was not the other way round. Gada, an accomplishment of Oromian social genius in socio-political organisation is one of the most complex, the world wonder and by far superior to so far other humanity’s social and political imagination and civilisation. Gada in its vector of values constitutes, political institution, the power structure, governing constitution, the ideology, the religion, the moral authority, the economic and the whole way of life of the public, the collective, the social and the private individual. Gada is the social civilization of the Oromo in the Nile civilization. Gada is an atonishing and complex social evolution in human social transformation and an Oromo social perfection. In old Egyptian (Cushite, oromo) dialect it means Ka Adaa. Ka means God. Adaa (law). It means the law of God, the law of waaqa (God). It also symbolizes the dawn of not only civilization but also human freedom as civilazation. ‘Gadaa bilisummaa saaqaa.’ Orthodox historians and some archaeologists believe that the civilisation of Egypt is the oldest in the world, while others give that priority to western Asia or India. It has also been suggested that, since all these cultures possess certain points of similarity, all of them may evolve from an older common civilisation. Men of eminent scholarship have acknowledged this possibility. In this regard, Sir E.A. Wallis Budge (1934) indicated: “It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from the Sumerians or Sumerians from Egyptians, but it may be submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological systems from common but exceedingly ancient source… This similarity between the two companies of gods is too close to being accidental.” A pioneer American Egyptologist, Breasted (1936) advanced the following views: “In both Babylonian and Egypt the convenient and basic number (360), of fundamental importance in the division of the circle, and therefore in geography, astronomy and time-measurement, had its origin in the number of days in the year in the earliest known form of the calendar. While its use seems to be older in Egypt than in Babylonian, there is no way to determine with certainty that we owe it exclusively to either of these two countries. A common origin older than either of is possible.” Sewell (1942) said that the science, which we see at the dawn of recorded history, was not science at its dawn, but represents the remnants of the science of some great and as yet untraced civilisation. Where, however, is the seat of that civilisation to be located?” A number of scholars, both ancient and modern, have come to the conclusion that the world’s first civilisation was created by the people known as Cushite (Oromian) and also known by Greeks as Punt (Burnt Faces). The Greeks argued that these people developed their dark colouration since they were adjacent to the sun than were the fairer natives of Europe. In terms of the sources of well-informed modern authority, Herodotus describes the Cushites as in Lugard (1964) as: “ The tallest, most beautiful and long-lived of the human races,’ and before Herodotus, Homer, in even more flattering language, described them as ‘ the most just of men; the favourites of gods.’ The annals of all the great early nations of Asia Minor are full of them. The Mosaic records allude to them frequently; but while they are described as the most powerful, the most just, and the most beautiful of the human race, they are constantly spoken of as black, and there seems to be no other conclusion to be drawn, than that remote period of history the leading race of the western world was the black race.” Alexander Bulatovich (2000, p.53) of Russia in his 1896-1898 travels in Oromia described the Oromo, which is akin to Herodotus’s description as fallows: “The [Oromo] physical type is very beautiful. The men are very tall, with statuesque, lean, with oblong face and a somewhat flattened skull. The features of the face are regular and beautiful…. The mouth is moderate. The lips are not thick. They have excellent even teeth; large and in some cases oblong eyes and curly hair. Their arm bones are of moderate length, shorter than the bones of Europeans, but longer than among the Amhara tribes. The feet are moderate and not turned in. The women are shorter than the men and very beautifully built. In general, they are stouter than the men, and not as lean as they. Among them one sometimes encounters very beautiful women. And their beauty does not fade as among the Abyssinians. The skin color of both men and women ranges from dark to light brown. I did not see any completely black [Oromo].” According to Homer and Herodotus, the Cushites were inhabited in the Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, present Ethiopia, Western Asia and India. In his essay of historical analysis of ancient East Africa and ancient Middle East, roughly in the years between 500BC and 500AD. Jesse Benjamin (2001), brought to our attention that the importance of research focus on global formations, multi- and bi-directional and cultural relations, geopolitical associations, archaeology, linguistics, sociology, cosmology, production, commerce and consumption patterns of these regions. Benjamin (2001) indicates that historiographers have acknowledged and documented that the adored spices, cinnamon (qarafaa in modern Afaan Oromo) and cassia of the Mediterranean sphere produced and come from ‘Cinnamon land.’ The latter is also known in different names as ‘ The other Barbaria,’‘Trogodytica,’Cush, Kush,Upper Nile. or ‘Punt’ but persistently representing the whole environs identified nowadays as the ‘Horn of African’ or that part of Oromia. These show the presence of production, consumption and commercial interactions in the regions. In line with Miller (1969), Wilding (1988), Benjamin (2001) included the Oromian pastoralism, pottery, cosmology and culture in the antiquity and old world civilisation. The identification of the Cushite Oromian civilisation with the present Abyssinia Amhara-Tigre under the name of Ethiopia made by the post civilisation Abyssinian priests translators of the Abyssinian version of the Bible in the 5th and 6th century or some other time, has been a cheating and misrepresentation of true human history. Those Abyssinians who were stealing the history were relatively recent migrant (conquerors) of the region. They occupied the present day Northern Ethiopia (central Cushitic of Agau and Oromo) long after the first human civilisation already originated and advanced in the area and spread to the rest of the world including to Arabia and Mediterranean Europe. The native residents of the region are the Cushite African people (Oromo, Agau, Somali, Sidama, Afar, Beja, Saho, etc). Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) are also Cushite Oromo and Agau who accepted Jews religion. Abyssinian tribes have fabricated their own myth and false history to claim legitimacy to the region and then established a regime truth through continuos fable story, phantom, indoctrination and falsification of the real Cushite history. Semitic immigrants did not found Aksum but the Abyssinians resettled among the Cushites cities and commercial centres in which Aksum was one and latter dominated the ruling power in this very centre of the civilisation of the central Cush. Ge’ez was invented as a language of the centre and latter used as the official language of the church and the colonising Abyssinian ruling class. Ge’ez was initially developed from the mixture of Cushitic and Greek elements that was facilitated by the Cushite trade links to the Greek world. There was also Greek resettlement in Aksum and the surrounding central Cush commercial towns with primary contacts with endogenous Cushite. The earlier rulers of Aksum and Christian converts including Ezana were Cushites. Though Ezana was the first convert from the above (the ruling class) to Christianity, he did not give up his belief in one God (Waqa) (Cushite/ black God). He was also not the first Cushite to be a Christian. In their linkages with a wider world, it is also highly likely and very logical and possible that there were Christians among the civilian Cushite trading communities who had already disseminated their new faith, as so many Oromo merchants were to do latter in the expansion of Islam. The splendid Stella, towers of solid masonry, with non-functional doors and windows at Aksum was not the earliest materialisation but it was the continuity in the manifestation of major indigenous Cushite tradition of monumental architecture in stone, which also later found expression in the rock-hewn churches of the Cushite Agau kings (see also Isichei, 1997 for some of the opinions). Abyssinians were the rulers. They were not the engineers and the builders of the stone monuments. It was the original product and brainchild of Cushite technologist. Of course, their advancement was thwarted with the unfortunate coming of the Abyssinians. Almost all of the original studies of the origin of Cushite civilisation could not penetrate far deep into regions south east to Nubia (Mereo) and could not dig out the other side of the twin, the close link and vast primary sources in present day Oromia. Though the British Museum has collected vast sources on Nubian, it has not kept on or linked any to the sister and more or less identical to the civilisation of the Oromo. For me, as native Oromo with knowledge of oral history and culture, as I observed the Nubian collection in British Museum, what they say Nubian collection is almost identical to Oromia, but in a less variety and quantity. I can say that Nubian and other Cushite civilisations were extensions (grafts) of the vast products of Oromo. I may also be enthused to the inference that the people whose manners and customs have been so thoroughly capitulated by Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo Pliny and other were not Abyssinians and other Black people at all, but the natives of Upper Nile, Oromos, Agau, Somalis, Afar and the rest of Cushitic people of the present Horn of Africa. Sir Henry Rawlinson in his essay on the early History of Babylonian describes Oromos as the purest modern specimens of the Kushite. Thus, Oromo is Kush and Kush is Oromo. Seignobos (1910), in his scholarly works on the history of Ancient Civilisation reasoned that the first civilised natives of the Nile and Tigiris-Euphrates Valleys were a dark skinned people with short hair and prominent lips, they were called Cushites by some scholars and Hamites by others. So Cushite (Hamite) is generally recognised as the original home of human civilisation and culture both beyond and across the Red Sea. They are the original source of both the African and Asiatic (Cushitic Arabian) civilisation. Higgins in 1965 scholarly undertaking discusses: “I shall, in the course of this work, produce a number of extraordinary facts, which will be quite sufficient to prove, that a black race, in a very early times, had more influence of the affairs of the world than has been lately suspected; and I think I shall show, by some very striking circumstances yet existing, that the effects of this influence have not entirely passed away.” Baldwin in his 1869 study of Arab history expressed in his own words the following: “At the present time Arabia is inhabited by two distinct races, namely descendants of the old Adite, Kushite, …known under various appellations, and dwelling chiefly at the south, the east, and in the central parts of the country, but formerly supreme throughout the whole peninsula, and the Semitic Arabians- Mahomete’s race- found chiefly in the Hejaz and at the north. In some districts of the country these races are more or less mixed, and since the rise of Mahometanism the language of Semites, known as to us Arabic, has almost wholly suppressed the old … Kushite tongue; but the two races are very unlike in many respects, and the distinction has always been recognised by writers on Arabian ethnology. To the Kushite race belongs the purest Arabian blood, and also that great and very ancient civilisation whose ruins abound in almost every district of the country.” Poole (in Haddon, 1934) says, “Assyrians themselves are shown to have been of a very pure type of Semites, but in the Babylonians there is a sign of Kushite blood. … There is one portrait of an Elmite king on a vase found at Susa; he is painted black and thus belongs to the Kushite race.” The myths, legends, and traditions of the Sumerians point to the African Cushite as the original home of these people (see. Perry, 1923, pp. 60-61). They were also the makers of the first great civilisation in the Indus valley. Hincks, Oppert, unearthed the first Sumerian remains and Rawlinson called these people Kushites. Rawlinson in his essay on the early history of Babylonian presents that without pretending to trace up these early Babylonians to their original ethnic sources, there are certainly strong reasons for supposing them to have passed from Cushite Africa to the valley of the Euphrates shortly before the opening of the historic period: He is based on the following strong points: The system of writing, which they brought up with them, has the closest semblance with that of Egypt; in many cases in deed the two alphabets are absolutely identical. In the Biblical genealogies, while Kush and Mizrain (Egypt) are brothers, from Kush Nimrod (Babylonian) sprang. With respect to the language of ancient Babylonians, the vocabulary is absolutely Kushite, belonging to that stock of tongues, which in postscript were everywhere more or less, mixed up with Semitic languages, but of which we have with doubtless the purest existing specimens in the Mahra of Southern Arabia and the Oromo.
The Greek alphabet, the script of English today, is based on the Kemetic alphabet of Ancient Egypt/Kemet and the Upper Nile Valley of Ancient Africa. Ancient Egyptians called their words MDW NTR, or ‘Metu Neter,” which means divine speech. The Greeks called it, ‘hieroglyphics”- a Greek word. The etymology of hieroglyphics is sacred (hieros) carvings (glyph). The Oromos (the Kemet of modern age) called it Qubee.
“Chaltu as Helen”, which is based on a novelized story of Chaltu Midhaksa, a young Oromo girl from Ada’aa Barga district, also in central Oromia.
Born to a farming family in Koftu, a small village south of Addis Ababa near Akaki, Chaltu led an exuberant childhood. Raised by her grandmother’s sister Gode, a traditional storyteller who lived over 100 years, the impressionable Chaltu mastered the history and tradition of Tulama Oromos at a very young age.
Chaltu’s captivating and fairytale like story, as retold by Tesfaye, begins when she was awarded a horse named Gurraacha as a prize for winning a Tulama history contest. Though she maybe the first and only female contestant, Chaltu won the competition by resoundingly answering eleven of the twelve questions she was asked.
Guraacha, her pride and constant companion, became Chaltu’s best friend and she took a good care of him. Gurraacha was a strong horse; his jumps were high, and Chaltu understood his pace and style.
A masterful rider and an envy to even her male contemporaries, Chaltu soon distinguished herself as bold, confident, outspoken, assertive, and courageous. For this, she quickly became a household name among the Oromo from Wajitu to Walmara, Sera to Dawara, Bacho to Cuqala, and Dire to Gimbichu, according to Tesfaye.
Chaltu traces her lineage to the Galan, one of the six clans of Tulama Oromo tribe. At the height of her fame, admirers – young and old – addressed her out of respect as “Caaltuu Warra Galaan!” – Chaltu of the Galan, and “Caaltuu Haadha Gurraacha!” – Chaltu the mother of Gurraacha.
Chaltu’s disarming beauty, elegance, charisma, and intelligence coupled with her witty personality added to her popularity. Chaltu’s tattoos from her chin to her chest, easily noticeable from her light skin, made her look like of a “Red Indian descent” (Tesfaye’s words).
As per Tesfaye’s account, there wasn’t a parent among the well-to-do Oromos of the area who did not wish Chaltu betrothed to their son. At 14, Chaltu escaped a bride-kidnapping attempt by outracing her abductors.
Chaltu’s grandfather Banti Daamo, a well-known warrior and respected elder, had a big family. Growing up in Koftu, Chaltu enjoyed being surrounded by a large network of extended family, although she was the only child for her parents.
Recognizing Chaltu’s potential, her relatives suggested that she goes to school, which was not available in the area at the time. However, fearing that she would be abducted, Chaltu’s father arranged her marriage to a man of Ada’aa family from Dire when she turned 15.
Locals likened Chaltu’s mannerism to her grandfather Banti Daamo, earning her yet another nickname as “Caaltuu warra Bantii Daamo” – Chaltu of Banti Daamo. She embraced the namesake because many saw her as an heir to Banti Daamo’s legacy, a role usually preserved for the oldest male in the family. Well-wishers blessed her: prosper like your grandparents. She embraced and proudly boasted about continuing her grandfather’s heritage calling herself Chaltu Banti Daamo.
Others began to call her Akkoo [sic] Xinnoo, drawing a comparison between Chaltu and a legendary Karrayu Oromo woman leader after whom Ankobar was named.
Chaltu’s eccentric life took on a different trajectory soon after her marriage. She could not be a good wife as the local tradition and custom demanded; she could not get along with an alcoholic husband who came home drunk and abused her.
When Chaltu threatened to dissolve the marriage, as per Oromo culture, elders intervened and advised her to tolerate and reconcile with her husband. Rebellious and nonconformist by nature, Chaltu, who’s known for challenging old biases and practices, protested “an alcoholic cannot be a husband for Banti Daamo’s daughter!”
Soon she left her husband and moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to attend formal education and start a new chapter in life.
Trouble ensues.
In Addis Ababa, her aunt Mulumebet’s family welcomed Chaltu. Like Chaltu, Mulumebet grew up in Koftu but later moved to Addis Ababa, and changed her given name from Gadise in order to ‘fit’ into the city life.
Subsequently, Mulumebet sat down with Chaltu to provide guidance and advice on urban [Amhara] ways.
“Learning the Amharic language is mandatory for your future life,” Mulumebet told Chaltu. “If you want to go to school, first you have to speak the language; in order to learn Amharic, you must stop speaking Afaan Oromo immediately; besides, your name Chaltu Midhaksa doesn’t match your beauty and elegance.”
“I wish they did not mess you up with these tattoos,” Mulumebet continued, “but there is nothing I could do about that…however, we have to give you a new name.”
Just like that, on her second day in Addis, Caaltuu warra Galaan became Helen Getachew.
Chaltu understood little of the dramatic twists in her life. She wished the conversation with her aunt were a dream. First, her name Chaltu means the better one, her tattoos beauty marks.
She quietly wondered, “what is wrong with my name and my tattoos? How can I be better off with a new name that I don’t even know what it means?”
Of course she had no answers for these perennial questions. Most of all, her new last name Getachew discomforted her. But she was given no option.
The indomitable Chaltu had a lot to learn.
A new name, new language, new family, and a whole new way of life, the way of civilized Amhara people. Chaltu mastered Amharic in a matter of weeks. Learning math was no problem either, because Chaltu grew up solving math problems through oral Oromo folktale and children’s games like Takkeen Takkitumaa.
Chaltu’s quick mastery amazed Dr. Getachew, Mulumebet’s husband. This also made her aunt proud and she decided to enroll Chaltu in an evening school. The school matched Chaltu, who’s never set foot in school, for fourth grade. In a year, she skipped a grade and was placed in sixth grade. That year Chaltu passed the national exit exam, given to all sixth graders in the country, with distinction.
But her achievements in school were clouded by a life filled with disappointments, questions, and loss of identity. Much of her troubles came from Mulumebet packaged as life advice.
“Helen darling, all our neighbors love and admire you a lot,” Mulumebet told Chaltu one Sunday morning as they made their way into the local Orthodox Church. “There is not a single person on this block who is not mesmerized by your beauty…you have a bright future ahead of you as long as you work on your Amharic and get rid of your Oromo accent…once you do that, we will find you a rich and educated husband.”
Chaltu knew Mulumebet had her best interest at heart. And as a result never questioned her counsel. But her unsolicited advises centered mostly on erasing Chaltu’s fond childhood memories and making her lose touch with Oromummaa – and essentially become an Amhara.
Chaltu spent most of her free time babysitting Mulumebet’s children, aged 6 and 8. She took care of them and the kids loved her. One day, while the parents were away, lost in her own thoughts, Chaltu repeatedly sang her favorite Atetee – Oromo women’s song of fertility – in front of the kids.
That night, to Chaltu’s wild surprise, the boys performed the song for their parents at the dinner table. Stunned by the revelation, Mulumebet went ballistic and shouted, “Are you teaching my children witchcraft?”
Mulumebet continued, “Don’t you ever dare do such a thing in this house again. I told you to forget everything you do not need. Helen, let me tell you for the last time, everything you knew from Koftu is now erased…forget it all! No Irreechaa, no Waaree, no Okolee, no Ibsaa, No Atetee, and no Wadaajaa.”
Amused by his wife’s dramatic reaction, Getachew inquired, “what does the song mean, Helen?” Chaltu told him she could not explain it in Amharic. He added, “If it is indeed about witchcraft, we do not need a devil in this house…Helen, praise Jesus and his mother, Mary, from now on.”
“Wait,” Getachew continued, “did you ever go to church when you were in Koftu? What do they teach you there?”
Chaltu acknowledged that she’s been to a church but never understood the sermons, conducted in Amharic, a language foreign to her until now. “Getachew couldn’t believe his ears,” writes Tesfaye. But Getachew maintained his cool and assured Chaltu that her mistake would be forgiven.
Chaltu knew Atetee was not a witchcraft but a women’s spiritual song of fertility and safety. All Oromo women had their own Atetee.
Now in her third year since moving to Addis, Chaltu spoke fluent Amharic. But at school, in the market, and around the neighborhood, children bullied her daily. It was as if they were all given the same course on how to disgrace, intimidate, and humiliate her.
“You would have been beautiful if your name was not Chaltu,” strangers and classmates, even those who knew her only as Helen, would tell her. Others would say to Chaltu, as if in compliment, “if you were not Geja (an Amharic for uncivilized), you would actually win a beauty pageant…they messed you up with these tattoos, damn Gallas!”
Her adopted name and mastery of Amharic did not save Chaltu from discrimination, blatant racism, hate speech, and ethnic slurs. As if the loss of self was not enough, seventh grade was painfully challenging for Chaltu. One day when the students returned from recess to their assigned classes, to her classmate’s collective amusement, there was a drawing of a girl with long tattooed neck on the blackboard with a caption: Helen Nikise Gala – Helen, the tattooed Gala. Gala is a disparaging term akin to a Nigger used in reference to Oromos. As Chaltu sobbed quietly, their English teacher Tsige walked in and the students’ laughter came to a sudden halt. Tsige asked the classroom monitor to identity the insulting graffiti’s artist. No one answered. He turned to Chaltu and asked, “Helen, tell me who drew this picture?”
She replied, “I don’t know teacher, but Samson always called me Nikise Gala.”
Tsige was furious. Samson initially denied but eventually admitted fearing corporal punishment. Tsige gave Samson a lesson of a lifetime: “Helen speaks two language: her native Afaan Oromo and your language Amharic, and of course she is learning the third one. She is one of the top three students in the class. You speak one language and you ranked 41 out of 53 students. I have to speak to your parents tomorrow.”
Athletic and well-mannered, Chaltu was one of the best students in the entire school. But she could not fathom why people gossiped about her and hurled insults at her.
Banned from speaking Afaan Oromo, Chaltu could not fully express feelings like sorrow, regrets, fear and happiness in Amharic. To the extent that Mulumebet wished Chaltu would stop thinking in Oromo, in one instance, she asked Chaltu to go into her bedroom to lament the death of a relative by singing honorific praise as per Oromo custom. Chaltu’s break came one afternoon when the sport teacher began speaking to her in Afaan Oromo, for the first time in three years. She sobbed from a deep sense of loss as she uttered the words: “I am from Koftu, the daughter of Banti Daamo.” Saying those words alone, which were once a source of her pride, filled Chaltu with joy, even if for that moment.
Chaltu anxiously looked forward to her summer vacation and a much-needed visit to Koftu. But before she left, Mulumebet warned Chaltu not to speak Afaan Oromo during her stay in Koftu. Mulumebet told Chaltu, “Tell them that you forgot how to speak Afaan Oromo. If they talk to you in Oromo, respond only in Amharic. Also, tell them that you are no longer Chaltu. Your name is Helen.”
Getachew disagreed with his wife. But Chaltu knew she has to oblige. On her way to Koftu, Chaltu thought about her once golden life; the time she won Gurracha in what was only a boys’ competition, and how the entire village of Koftu sang her praises.
Her short stay in Koftu was dismal. Gurraacha was sold for 700 birr and she did not get to see him again. Chaltu’s parents were dismayed that her name was changed and that she no longer spoke their language.
A disgruntled and traumatized Chaltu returns to Addis Ababa and enrolls in 9th grade. She then marries a government official and move away from her aunt’s protective shield. The marriage ends shortly thereafter when Chaltu’s husband got caught up in a political crosshair following Derg’s downfall in 1991. Chaltu was in financial crisis. She refused an advice from acquintances to work as a prostitute.
At 24, the once vibrant Chaltu looked frail and exhausted. The regime change brought some welcome news. Chaltu was fascinated and surprised to watch TV programs in Afaan Oromo or hear concepts like “Oromo people’s liberation, the right to speak one’s own language, and that Amharas were feudalists.”
Chaltu did not fully grasp the systematic violence for which was very much a victim. She detested how she lost her values and ways. She despised Helen and what it was meant to represent. But it was also too late to get back to being Chaltu. She felt empty. She was neither Helen nor Chaltu.
She eventually left Addis for Koftu and asked her parents for forgiveness. She lived a few months hiding in her parent’s home. She avoided going to the market and public squares.
In a rare sign of recovery from her trauma, Chaltu briefly dated a college student who was in Koftu for a winter vacation. When he left, Chaltu lapsed back into her self-imposed loneliness and state of depression. She barely ate and refused interacting with or talking to anyone except her mother.
One afternoon, the once celebrated Chaltu warra Galaan took a nap after a coffee break and never woke up. She was 25.
The bottom line: Fictionalized or not, Chaltu’s is a truly Oromo story. Chaltu is a single character in Tesfaye’s book but lest we forget, in imperial Ethiopia, generations of Chaltu’s had to change their names and identity in order to fit in and be “genuine Ethiopians.” Until recently, one has to wear an Amhara mask in order to be beautiful, or gain access to educational and employment opportunities.
Likewise, in the Ethiopia of today’s “freedom of expression advocates” – who allegedly sought to censor Tesfaye – it appears that a story, even a work of fiction, is fit to print only when it conforms to the much-romanticized Ethiopianist storyline.
So much has changed since Chaltu’s tragic death a little over a decade ago, yet, clearly, much remains the same in Ethiopia. Honor and glory to Oromo martyrs, whose selfless sacrifices had allowed for me to transcribe this story, the Oromo today – a whole generation of Caaltuus – are ready to own, reclaim, and tell their stories.
Try, as they might, the ever-vibrant Qubee generation will never be silenced, again.
Origins of the Afro Comb: 6,000 years of culture, politics and identity
Even today, a significant number of mainstream Egyptologists, anthropologists, historians and Hollywood moviemakers continue to deny African people’s role in humankind’s first and greatest civilization in ancient Egypt. This whitewashing of history negatively impacts Black people and our image in the world. There remains a vital need to correct the misinformation of our achievements in antiquity.
Senegalese scholar Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) dedicated his life to scientifically challenging Eurocentric and Arab-centric views of precolonial African culture, specifically those that suggested the ancient civilization of Egypt did not have its origins in Black Africa.
Since some people continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence that indicates ancient Egypt was built, ruled, and populated by dark-skinned African people, Atlanta Blackstar will highlight 10 of the ways Diop proved the ancient Egyptians were Black.
Physical Anthropology Evidence
Based on his review of scientific literature, Diop concluded that most of the skeletons and skulls of the ancient Egyptians clearly indicate they were Negroid people with features very similar to those of modern Black Nubians and other people of the Upper Nile and East Africa. He called attention to studies that included examinations of skulls from the predynastic period (6000 B.C.) that showed a greater percentage of Black characteristics than any other type.
From this information, Diop reasoned that a Black race existed in Egypt at that time and did not migrate at a later stage as some previous theories had suggested.
This paper deals, among others, with the development of Meroitic studies, the Meroitic civilization, the destruction of the city of Meroe, the dispersal of the Meroitic people after the collapse of their state, the Christianization of the post Meroitic states in Ethiopia (i.e. Northern Sudan / it is to be reminded that the modern state of Abyssinia is fallaciously, illegally and criminally rebaptized ‘Ethioipia’), the migration of the remnants of the Meroitic people in the direction of the Blue Nile, and their possible relation of ancestry with the modern Cushitic language speaking Oromo nation. It must be stated clearly at the outset that the issue of Meroitic ancestry of the Oromo nation has not yet been considered, much less published in an academic journal or scholarly books. The paper was first presented in an academic conference organized by the Oromo Studies Association. Footnotes have been added in view of the aforementioned publication (see Pdf).
1. The Development of the Meroitic Studies, the History of Kush and Meroe, and the Efforts to Decipher the Meroitic Writing
Interest in what was Ethiopia for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, i.e. the Northern territory of present day Sudan from Khartoum to the Egyptian border *1, led to the gradual development of the modern discipline of the Humanities that long stood in the shadow of Egyptology: the Meroitic Studies.
Considerable advances had been made in academic research and knowledge as the result of the exploratory trips of the Prussian pioneering Egyptologist Richard Lepsius *2 (1842 – 1844) that bestowed upon modern scholarship the voluminous ‘Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien’ (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), and as the direct consequence of the series of excavations undertaken by E. A. Wallis Budge *3 and John Garstang *4 at Meroe (modern Bagrawiyah) in the first years of the twentieth century, by Francis Llewellyn Griffith *5 at Kawa (ancient Gematon, near modern Dongola, 1929 – 1931), by Fritz Hintze *6 at Musawwarat es Sufra, by Jean Leclant *7 at Sulb (Soleb), Sadinga (Sedeinga), and Djebel Barkal (ancient Napata, modern Karima) in the 1950s and the 1960s, by D. Wildung *8 at Naqah, and by Charles Bonnet at Kerma. The pertinent explorations and contributions of scholars like A. J. Arkell *9, P. L. Shinnie *10, and Laszlo Torok *11 that cover a span of 80 years reconstituted a large part of the greatness and splendor of this four millennia long African civilization.
Yet, due to the lack of direct access to original sources and genuine understanding of the ancient history of Sudan, the legendary and historical Ethiopia of the Greeks and Romans, which corresponds to what was ‘Kush’ for the Hebrews (mentioned many times in the Bible) and ultimately ‘Kas’ for the ancient Egyptians *12 (mentioned in thousands of hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic texts), we face a serious problem of terminology when it comes to Ancient Sudan’s earlier historical periods.
We are confined to such terms as Period (or Group) A (3100 – 2700 BCE), *13 Period B *14 (2700 – 2300 BCE that starts with Pharaoh Snefru’s expedition, *15 which marks indeed the beginning of the time-honored and multi-faceted relationship between Kemet-Egypt and Kush), and Period C *16 (2300 – 2100 BCE), for one millennium of Ancient Sudanese (Ethiopian or Kushitic) History. For the said period, thanks to Ancient Egyptian texts, we have a plethora of ethnic names and state names referring to populations living in North Sudan’s territory (notably Wawat, Irtet, Setjiu,Yam, Zetjau, and Medjay *17); but we fail to correctly establish to whom these names exactly refer as ethno-linguistic groups (Kushitic? Nilo-Saharan? Western Hamitic?).
Subsequent periods of Ancient Sudanese History are also denoted in conventional manner, as this is highlighted by the term Period of Kerma *18 (2100 – 1500 BCE); this period is named after the modern city and archeological site, 500 km in the south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border.
What we know for sure is that, when the first Pharaohs of the New Empire invaded and colonized the entire area down to Kurgus *19 (more than 1000 km alongside the Nile, south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border), they established two top Egyptian administrative positions, namely “Viceroy of Wawat” and “Viceroy of Kush/Kas”. Wawat is the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel or properly speaking, the area between the first and the second cataracts, whereas Kas is all the land that lies beyond. With the collapse of the Kerma culture, comes to end a first high-level culture and powerful state in the area of Kush.
We employ the term ‘Kushitic Period’ *20 to refer to the subsequent periods:
a) the Egyptian annexation (1500 – 950 BCE), which involved a permanent effort to egyptianize Kush that triggered in turn ceaseless Kushitic revolutions against the Pharaohs,
b) the Kushitic independence (950 – 800 BCE), when a separate state was formed around Napata *21, present day Karima, 750 km south of the Sudanese – Egyptian border,
c) the Kushitic expansion and involvement in Egypt (800 – 670 BCE, which corresponds mostly to the XXVth – ‘Ethiopian’ (meaning literally Sudanese) according to Manetho *22 – dynasty of Egypt, when the Theban clergy of Amun made an alliance with the Kushitic ‘Qore’, i.e. the Kings of Napata, who ruled Kush and Upper Egypt based on their two capitals, Napata and Thebes *23, (the alliance was directed against the pact that the Heliopolitan clergy of Ra had made with the Libyan princes who thus strengthened the separate state of Lower Egypt),
d) the Kushitic expulsion from Egypt, following the three successive invasions of Egypt by Emperors Assarhaddon *24 (in 671 BCE) and Assurbanipal *25 (in 669 BCE and 666 BCE) of Assyria, who made an alliance with the Heliopolitan *26 priesthood and the Libyan princes against the Theban clergy and the Kushitic kings, and
e) the subsequent Kushitic state’s decline – period during which took place the successive invasions led by Psamtik/Psammetichus II of Egypt *27 (in 591 BCE) and by the Achaemenid *28 Persian Shah Kambudjiyah / Cambyses *29 (in 525 BCE).
The entire Kushitic period is considered as terminated with the completion of the transfer of the capital city at a much safer (and more distant from Egypt) location far in the south, namely at Meroe, in the area of present day Bagrawiyah beyond the point whereby Atbarah river unites with the Greater Nile. This event occurred at the end of the reign of Qore (King) Nastasen *30 between 335 and 315 BCE.
We call ‘Meroitic’ the entire period that covers almost 700 years beginning around 260 BCE with the reign of the successors of Nastasen, notably Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes *31 (the most illustrious among the earliest ones and the first to be buried at Meroe / Bagrawiyah), and ending with the end of Meroe and the destruction of the Meroitic royal cities by the Axumite Abyssinian Negus Ezana *32 (ca. 370 CE). It is easily understood that the ‘Kushitic’ period antedates ‘Meroitic’ period, but both appellations are quite conventional.
The ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) entered into a period of cultural, intellectual, and scriptorial radiation and authenticity relatively late, around the third century BCE, which means that the development took place when Meroe replaced Napata as capital of the Kushites / Meroites. Before that moment, the ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) used Egyptian hieroglyphic writing for all their scriptorial purposes, be they administrative, economic, religious and/or monumental – royal. The introduction of the Meroitic alphabetic hieroglyphic writing spearheaded the development of a Meroitic cursive alphabetic scripture that was used for less magnificent purposes than palatial and sacred relief inscriptions. The first person to publish copies of Meroitic inscriptions (then unidentified) was the French architect Gau *33, who visited Northern Sudan as early as 1819. Quite unfortunately, almost two centuries after the discovery of the first Meroitic inscriptions, we are left in mysteries with regard to the greatest part of the contents of the epigraphic evidence collected in both scriptural systems.
The earliest dated Meroitic hieroglyphic inscriptions belong to the reign of the ruling queen Shanakdakheto *34 (about 177-155 BCE), but archaeologists believe that this scripture represents the later phase of a language spoken by Kushites / Meroites at least as far back as 750 BCE and possibly many centuries or even millennia before that (hinting therefore at a Kushitic / Ethiopian continuity from the earliest Kerma days at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE). The earliest examples of Meroitic cursive inscriptions, recently found by Charles Bonnet in Dukki Gel (REM 1377-78) *35, can also be dated in the early 2nd century BCE. The latest text is still probably the famous inscription from Kalabsha (Ancient Egyptian Talmis) mentioning King Kharamadoye (REM 0094) *36, which dates back to the beginning of the fifth century CE, although some funeral texts from Ballana *37 could be contemporary or even posterior.
Despite the fact that F. L. Griffith identified the twenty three (23) Meroitic alphabetic writing signs already in 1909, not much progress has been made towards the ultimate decipherment of the Meroitic *38. Scarcity of epigraphic evidence plays a certain role in this regard, since as late as the year 2000 we were not able to accumulate more than 1278 texts in all types of Meroitic writing. If we now add to this fact the lack of lengthy texts, the lack of any bilingual text (not necessarily Egyptian /Meroitic, it could also be Ancient Greek / Meroitic, if we take into consideration that Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes *39 was personally well versed in Greek), and a certain lack of academic vision, we understand why the state of our knowledge about the history of the Ancient Meroites is still so limited.
Linguistics and parallels from other languages have been repeatedly set in motion in order to help the academic research. Griffith and Haycock *40 tried to read Meroitic, through use of (modern) Nubian – quite unsuccessfully. K.H. Priese *41 tried to read the Meroitic texts, using Eastern Sudanese (Beja *42 or Hadendawa *43) languages – also unsuccessfully. On the other hand, F. Hintze *44, attempted to compare Meroitic with the Ural-Altaic group (Turko-Mongolian languages) to no avail. More recently, Siegbert Hummel *45, compared the “known” Meroitic words to words attested in languages of the Altaic family which he believed was a substrate language of Meroitic; as this hypothesis is totally wrong, no result came out of this effort. At times, scholars (like Clyde Winters *46) were driven to farfetched interpretations, attempting to equate Meroitic with Tokharian, after assuming a possible relationship between the names Kush and Kushan *47, the latter being the appellation of a sizeable Eastern Iranian state of the late Arsacid *48 (250 BCE – 224 CE) and early Sassanid *49 (224 – 651 CE) times. However, one has to conclude that the bulk of the researchers working on the Meroitic language never believed that the language of the Ancient Sudanese (Ethiopians) could ever be a member of the so-called Afro-Asiatic group of languages (the term itself being very wrong and quite fraudulent).
So far, the only Meroitic words for which a solid translation had been given by Griffith and his successors are the following: man, woman, meat, bread, water, give, big, abundant, good, sister, brother, wife, mother, child, begotten, born, feet. The eventual equivalence between Egyptian and Meroitic texts was a strong motivation for any interpretational approach, recent or not. More recent, but still dubious, suggestions are the following: arohe- ‘protect’, hr- ‘eat’, pwrite ‘life’, yer ‘milk’, ar ‘boy’, are- or dm- ‘take, receive’, dime ‘cow’, hlbi ‘bull’, ns(e) ‘sacrifice’, sdk ‘journey’, tke- ‘love, revere’, we ‘dog’. It is clear that vocalization remains a real problem *50.
Through the aforementioned we realize why collective works, like Fontes Historiae Nubiorum. Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region (vols. I – IV, edited by T. Eide, T. Haegg, R.H. Pierce, and L. Torok, University of Bergen, Bergen 1994, 1996. 1998 and 2000), are still seminal for our – unfortunately indirect, as based on Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin and Coptic texts – knowledge of Ancient Meroe.
2. The End of Meroe
Amidst numerous unclear points of the Kushitic / Meroitic (Ancient Sudanese / Ethiopian) History, the end of Meroe and the consequences under which it happened still remain a most controversial point among scholars. Quite indicatively, we may mention here the main efforts of historical reconstitution.
A. Arkell, Sayce and others asserted that Meroe was captured and destroyed, following one military expedition led by Ezana of Axum.
B. Reisner insisted that, after Ezana’s invasion and victory, Meroe remained a state under another dynasty tributary to Axum.
C. Monneret de Villard and Hintze affirmed that Meroe was totally destroyed already before Ezana’s invasion, due to another, earlier Axumite Abyssinian raid.
D. Torok, Shinnie, Kirwan, Haegg and others concluded that Meroe was defeated by a predecessor of Ezana, and continued existing as a vassal state.
E. Bechhaus-Gerst specified that Meroe was invaded prior to Ezana’s raid, and that the Axumite invasion did not reach further lands north of Meroe *51.
With two fragmentary inscriptions from Meroe, one from Axum, two graffitos from Kawa and Meroe, and one coin being all the evidence we have so far, we have little to properly reconstruct the details that led to the collapse of Meroe. One relevant source, the Inscription of Ezana (DAE 11, the ‘monotheistic’ inscription in vocalized Ge’ez), *52 remains a somewhat controversial historical source to be useful in this regard. The legendary Monumentum Adulitanum *53, lost but copied in a confused way by Cosmas Indicopleustes *54, may not shed light at all on this event. One point is sure, however: there was never a generalized massacre of the Meroitic inhabitants of the lands conquered by Ezana. The aforementioned DAE 11 inscription mentions just 758 Meroites killed by the Axumite forces.
What is even more difficult to comprehend is the reason behind the scarcity of population attested on Meroitic lands in the aftermath of Ezana’s raid. The post-Meroitic and pre-Christian, transitional, phase of Sudan’s history is called X-Group *55 or Period, and also Ballana Period; this atypical appellation underscores the lack to historical insight that happens once more in the History of Ancient Sudan (Ethiopia).
During the Ballana Period (X-Group) and contrarily to what happened for many centuries of Meroitic History, when the Meroitic South (the area between today’s Shendi *56 and Atbarah *57 in modern Sudan with the entire hinterland of Butana that was called Insula Meroe / Nesos Meroe, i.e. Island Meroe in the Antiquity) was overpopulated comparatively with the Meroitic North {the area between Napata / Karima and Abu Simbel *58 or further in the North, Aswan *59 (the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel was then called Triakontaschoinos *60 and politically, it was divided between Meroe and the Roman Empire)}, the previously under-populated area (i.e. the Meroitic North) gives us the impression of a more densely peopled region, if compared to the previous center of Meroitic power and population density (the Meroitic South). The new situation contradicts therefore the earlier descriptions and narrations by Dio Cassius *61 and Strabo *62.
Furthermore, the name ‘Ballana period’ is quite indicative in this regard, because Ballana is located on Egyptian soil, whereas not far, south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border, lies Karanog with its famous tumuli that bear evidence of Nubian (not Kushitic / Meroitic) upper hand in terms of social anthropology. The southernmost counterpart of Karanog culture can be found in Tangassi (nearby Karima, which represented the ‘North’ for what was the center of the earlier Meroitic power). This means that for the period immediately after the destruction of Meroe (ca. 370 CE), the Meroitic North offers the archaeological evidence that serves to name the entire period (Ballana Period), whereas the Meroitic South seems to have been totally uninhabited.
In addition, in terms of culture, X-Group heralds a total break with the Meroitic tradition, with the Nubians and the Blemmyes/Beja outnumbering the Meroitic remnants and imposing a completely different cultural and socio-anthropological milieu out of which would later emanate the first and single Nubian state in the World History: Nobatia.
Much confusion characterized modern scholars when referring to Kush or Meroe by using the modern term ‘Nubia’. By now, it is clear that the Nubians lived since times immemorial in both Egypt and the Sudan, being part of the history of these two lands. However, the Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethno-linguistic group different from the Hamitic Kushites / Meroites. At the times of X-Group and during the long centuries of Christian Sudan, we have the opportunity to attest the differences and the divergence between the Nubians and the Meroitic remnants.
Following the collapse of the Meroitic state, the epicenter of the Nubian land, i.e. the area between the first (Aswan) and the third (Kerma) cataracts, rose to independence and prominence first, with capital at Faras, nearby the present day Sudanese – Egyptian border, around 450 CE. Nobatia institutionalized Coptic as religious (Christian) and administrative language, and Nubian language remained an oral only means of communication. The Nobatian control in the areas south of the third cataract was vague, nominal and precarious. Nobatia was linked with the Coptic (‘Monophysitic’) Patriarchate of Alexandria.
This means something very important for the Christian History of Sudan (Ethiopia); Christianization did not come from Abyssinia, and there was no cultural or religious impact exercised by Axum on (Ethiopia) Sudan. As in pre-Christian times, Ethiopia remained the absolute opposite of Abyssinia. In the true, historical Ethiopia (Sudan), Christianization came from the North (Egypt). Abyssinia (which cannot be called ‘Ethiopia’ and which has absolutely no right to the name of Ethiopia) was a marginal and isolated, tiny and mountainous state that basically controlled the land between Axum and Adulis (on the Red Sea shore). And King Ezana’s invasion and destruction of Meroe was an occasional and inconsequential event that did not bring forth any immediate major result.
The Meroitic remnants underscored their difference from the Nubians / Nobatians, and the depopulated central part of the defunct state of Meroe rose to independence only later, in the first decades of the sixth century. Its name, Makuria, is in this regard a linguistic reminiscence of the name ‘Meroe’, but we cannot know its real origin and meaning. The remnant of the Meroitic populations inhabited the northern circumference of Makuria more densely, and the gravitation center revolved around Old Dongola (580 km south of Wadi Halfa), capital of this Christian Orthodox state that extended from Kerma to Shendi (the area of the sixth cataract), so for more than 1000 km alongside the Nile. But beyond the area of Karima (750 km in the south of Wadi Halfa) and the nearby famous Makurian monastery at Al Ghazali we have very scarce evidence of Christian antiquities. The old African metropolis of Meroe remained at the periphery of both, the Kushitic Ethiopian states of Makuria and Alodia and the Semitic Abyssinian state of Axum.
Makurians highlighted their ideological – religious divergence from the Nubians, by adopting Greek, not Coptic, as religious language. They even introduced a new scripture for their Makurian language that seems to have been a later phase of Meroitic. Makurian was written in alphabetic Greek signs. Risen at a time of Christological disputes and theological conflicts that brought about a forceful polarization between the Greek Orthodox and the Coptic ‘Monophysitic’ Patriarchates of Alexandria, the state and the Christian church of Makuria sided with the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria, in striking opposition to the Nobatian state and church that allied themselves with the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria.
Further in the South, Alodia has long been called by modern scholars as the ‘third Christian state’ of Sudan, but recent discoveries in Soba, its capital (15 km at the east of Khartoum), suggest that Alodia rose first to independence (around 500 CE) and later adhered to Christianity (around 580 – 600 CE), following evangelization efforts deployed by missionary Nobatian priests (possibly in a sort of anti-Makurian religious diplomacy). In general, we know little about Alodia (or Aluwah or Alwa), and we actually don’t know whether they used a particular Alodian writing system.
The later phases of the History of Christian Ethiopia (Sudan) encompass the Nobatian – Makkurian merge (around 1000 CE), which was necessary for the two Christian states to defend themselves against the Islamic pressure coming manly from the North (Egypt), the islamization of Makkuria in 1317, and finally, the late collapse of Christian Alodia in 1505.
The question remains unanswered until today:
– What happened to the bulk of the Meroitic population, i.e. the inhabitants of the Insula Meroe, the present day Butana? What occurred to the Meroites living between the fourth and the sixth cataracts after the presumably brief raid of Ezana of Axum, and the subsequent destruction of Meroe, Mussawarat es Sufra, Naqah, Wad ben Naqah, Basa and all the other important cities of the Meroitic heartland?
3. Reconstruction of the Post-Meroitic History of the Kushitic Oromo Nation
Certainly, the motives of Ezana’s raid have not yet been properly studied and assessed by modern scholarship. The reasons for the raid may vary from a simple nationalistic usurpation of the name of ‘Ethiopia’ (Kush), which would give a certain Christian eschatological legitimacy to the Axumite Abyssinian kingdom, to the needs of international politics (at the end of 4th c. CE) and the eventuality of an Iranian – Yemenite (Himyaritic) – Meroitic alliance at the times of Shapur II (310 – 379), aimed at outweighing the Eastern Roman – Abyssinian bond.
Yet, this Iranian – Sudanese political alliance may have been only the later phase of a time-honored Iranian infiltration that could have taken the form of an (easily assessable by both civilizations and nations, the Meroites and the Iranians) heliocentric theology and imperial ideology. No less than 300-350 years before Ezana’s raid and destruction of Meroe, the famous Jebel Qeili reliefs of Shorakaror mark an impressive penetration of Mithraic artistic and religious concepts and forms.
Whatever the reasons of Ezana’s raid may have been, we can be quite sure, when it comes to the destruction of Meroe, about two determinant points that impose a fresh approach and interpretation of the historical development:
a) the absence of any large-scale massacre is evident, and
b) the impressive scarcity of population in the old, central Meroitic provinces is a fact for the period that follows Ezana’s raid and the destruction of Meroe.
The only plausible explanation is that the scarcity of population in the Meroitic mainland after Meroe’s destruction must be due to a large scale migration to safer areas far from the reach of the king of Axum.
The only explanation to match the historical facts and the archeological evidence is that, following Ezana’s raid, the Meroites in their outright majority (at least for the inhabitants of Meroe’s southern provinces) fled and migrated to areas where they would stay independent from the Semitic Abyssinian kingdom of Christian Axum. This explanation hinges on the best utilization and interpretation of the already existing historical – archaeological data.
From archeological evidence, it becomes clear that during X-Group phase and throughout the Makurian period (so for many long centuries) the former heartland of Meroe remained mostly uninhabited. The end of Meroe is definitely very abrupt, and this makes obvious that Meroe’s driving force had gone elsewhere. The correct question would then be ‘where to’?
There is no evidence of Meroites sailing the Nile downwards to the area of the 4th (Karima) and the 3rd (Kerma) cataracts, which was earlier the northern circumference of Meroe and remained totally untouched by Ezana. There is no textual evidence in Greek, Latin and/or Coptic to testify to such a migratory movement toward the North. Christian Roman Egypt would certainly be an incredible direction, but if this had been the case, the migration would have been recorded in some texts and monuments due to its importance. To the above, we have to add the impossibility of marching to the heartland of Abyssinia, because this must have been for the migrating Meroites the only direction to avoid, and again if it had occurred, it would have been mentioned in some historical sources, Ge’ez, Coptic, Syriac, Greek or Latin.
Having therefore excluded all the migration alternatives as per above, we can examine the remaining possibilities. The migrating Meroites could therefore have a) gone either to the vast areas of the Eastern and the Western deserts , b) entered the African jungle or c) ultimately searched for a possibly free land that, being arable and good for pasture, would keep them far from the sphere of the Christian Axumites.
It would be very erroneous and highly unlikely to expect settled people to move to the desert. Such an eventuality would be a unique oxymoron in the History of the Mankind. Nomadic peoples move from the steppes, the savannas and the deserts to other parts of the steppes, the savannas and the deserts or preferably to fertile lands and settle there, at times crossing really long distances. However, settled people, if under pressure, move to other fertile lands that offer them the possibility of cultivation and pasture. When dispersed by the invading Sea Peoples, the Hittites moved from Anatolia to Northwestern Mesopotamia, crossing long distances; they did not cross shorter distance to settle in the small part of Central Anatolia that happened to be desert. The few scholars, who may think that Meroitic continuity can be found among the present day Beja and Hadendawa, are oblivious to the aforementioned reality that was never contravened throughout World History. In addition, the Blemmyes had never been friendly to the Meroites. Every now and then, they had attacked parts of the Nile valley and the Meroites had had to repulse them thence. It would rather be inconceivable for the Meroitic population, after seeing Meroe sacked by Ezana, to move to a land where life would be far more difficult and, in addition, enemies would wait them!
At this point, we should briefly examine Meroe’s surrounding environment, how it is today, and how it was before 1650 years, at the times of king Ezana’s raid. Modern technologies help historians and archeologists better reconstruct the ancient world; paleo-botanists, geologists, geo-chemists, paleo-entomologists, and other specialized natural scientists are of great help in this regard. It is essential to stress here that the entire environmental milieu of Sudan was very different during the times of the Late Antiquity that we examine in our approach. Butana may look like a wasteland nowadays, and the Pyramids of Bagrawiyah may be sunk in the sand, whereas Mussawarat es Sufra and Naqah truly demand a real effort in crossing the desert. However, in the first centuries of Christian era, the entire landscape was dramatically different.
During the Meroitic and Christian times, the entire Butana region, delineated by the rivers Atbarah in the northeast, United Nile in the north-northwest, and Blue Nile in southwest, was not a desert, but a very fertile and extensively cultivated land. We have actually found remains of reservoirs, aqueducts, various hydraulic installations, irrigation systems, and canals in Meroe and elsewhere. Not far from Mussawarat es Sufra there must have been an enclosure where captive elephants were trained before being transported to Ptolemais Theron (present day Suakin, 50 km south of Port Sudan) and then further on to Alexandria. Desert was in the vicinity, certainly, but not that close.
We should not imagine that Ezana crossed desert areas, moving from the vicinities of Agordat, Tesseney (both cities being located in Eritrea), and Kessala (in Sudan) to Atbarah and Bagrawiyah, as we would do today. These lands were either forested or cultivated and used as pasturelands. For what the Meroitic Ethiopian state was in the middle – second half of the 4th c. CE, its capital was located quite close to the Abyssinian borders in the mountains beyond the modern Sudanese city of Kessala; the distance between the two capitals, Meroe and Axum, was much smaller than the distance between Meroe and its northern borders with the Christian Eastern Roman Empire.
In fact, the end of the Meroitic state is a historical irony; it was established with the transfer of capital from Napata to Meroe, ca. 750 years earlier, an act which was due to defense reasons and imposed only after the 6th c. BCE attacks that originated from the North (Egypt). By transferring their capital far to the southeast, the Ancient Kushites / Meroites of Ethiopia (Sudan) made it impregnable from the North; but by so doing, they exposed their capital to an attack from the southeast. However, one has to admit that, at the times of the Ethiopian – Kushitic capital transfer to the southeast (5th – 4th c. BCE), the presence of the Yemenite tribe of Habashat in the African coast land of Eritrea was insignificant and Axum did not exist.
Further expanding on the natural environment of the Ancient Meroites, we have to add that it would be highly unlikely for anyone to attempt to cross at that time the lands south of present day Khartoum, alongside the White Nile. In ancient times, impenetrable jungle started immediately in the south of Khartoum, and cities like El Obeid, Kosti, Sinnar, and Jabalayn are today located on deforested soil.
Contrarily to the aforementioned improbabilities (desert, jungle), the southernmost confines of the Meroitic state offered a certain possibility for migration, since pasturelands and arable land could be found alongside the Blue Nile Valley. Reaching that area, they would achieve safety from Axumite Abyssinia due to the greater distance.
Jungle signified death in the Antiquity, and even armies feared to cross forests and be forced to stay overnight there. We therefore have good reason to believe that, following Ezana’s raid, the Meroites, rejecting the perspective of forced christening, moved first southwestwards up to Khartoum. From there, they proceeded southeastwards alongside the Blue Nile in a direction that would keep them always safe and far from the Axumite Abyssinians whose state did not expand at those days as far in the south as Gondar and Tana Lake. Proceeding in this way and crossing successively areas of modern cities like Wad Madani, Sennar, Damazin, and Asosa, and from there on, they expanded in later times over the various parts of Biyya Oromo.
We do not imply that the migration was completed in the span of one lifetime; quite contrarily, we have reasons to believe that the establishment of Alodia (or Alwa) is rather due to the progressive waves of Meroitic migrants who settled first in the area of Khartoum that was out of the southwestern confines of the Meroitic state. Only when Christianization became a matter of concern for the evangelizing Nobatians, and the two Christian Sudanese states of Nobatia and Makuria were already strong, the chances of preserving the pre-Christian Meroitic cultural heritage in the area around Soba (capital of Alodia) became truly poor. Then, perhaps more than 100 years after the first migration, another wave of migration took place with the early Alodian Meroites proceeding as far in the southeast as Damazin and Asosa, areas that remained always beyond the southern border of Alodia (presumably between Khartoum and Wad Madani). Like this, the second migratory Meroitic Alodian) wave may have entered around 600 CE in the area where the Oromos, descendents of the migrated Meroites, still live today.
A great number of changes at the cultural – intellectual – behavioral levels are to be expected, when a settled people migrates to faraway lands. The Phoenicians had kings in Tyre, Byblos and their other cities – states in today’s Lebanese and Syrian coast lands, but they introduced a democratic system when they sailed faraway and colonized various parts of the Mediterranean. In their colonies, there were no more kings.
Ezana’s raid ended up with the extermination of some garrison and the Meroitic royal family. The collapse of the Meroitic royalty was an unprecedented event and a greater shock for the Nile valley. The Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia were all ruled by kings whose power was to great extent conditioned and counterbalanced by that of the Christian clergy.
With the Meroitic royal family decimated by Ezana, it is quite possible that high priests of Apedemak and Amani (Amun) took much of the administrative responsibility in their hands, inciting people to migrate and establishing a form of collective and representative authority among the Meroitic – Alodian Elders who thus retained the sacerdotal heritage without a royal – palatial contextualization. They may even have preserved the royal title of Qore within completely different socio-anthropological context and thus made it known to the ancestors of today’s Somalis when the next waves of migration brought the two Kushitic nations close to one another; and the Somalis preserved the term a Boqor within their language until our times.
4. Call for Comparative Meroitic-Oromo Studies
How can this approach, interpretation, and conclusion be corroborated up to the point of becoming a generally accepted historical reconstitution at the academic level? On what axes should one group of researchers work to collect detailed documentation in support of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos?
Quite strangely, I would not give priority to the linguistic approach. The continuity of a language can prove many things, and at the same time, it can prove nothing. Today’s Bulgarians are of Uralo-Altaic Turco-Mongolian origin, but, after they settled in Eastern Balkans, they were linguistically slavicized. Most of the Greeks are Albanians, Slavs, and Vlachians, who were greecized linguistically. Most of the Turks in Turkey are Greeks and Anatolians, who were turkicized linguistically.
People can preserve their own language in various degrees and forms. For the case of languages preserved throughout millennia, we notice tremendous changes and differences. Within the context of Ancient Greece, Plato who lived in the 5th – 4th c. BCE could never understand the Achaean Greek dialect which was spoken 800 years earlier at Myceanae and written by means of what we call today ‘Linear B’ (a syllabic, not alphabetic, writing system).
Egyptian hieroglyphics as a Holy Language (the Ancient Egyptian name of this writing system was ‘medu netsher’ which meant ‘the words of the God’) and as a sacerdotal scripture favored a certain archaism and a constant linguistic purification. However, we can be sure that for later Pharaohs, like Taharqa the Kushite (the most illustrious ruler of the Kushitic – Sudanese / Ethiopian dynasty), Psamtik and Nechao (the rulers of the ‘Libyan’ dynasty), and Ptolemy II and Cleopatra VII (of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty), a Pyramid text (that antedated them by 1700 to 2300 years) would almost be incomprehensible.
A. National diachronic continuity is better attested and more markedly noticed in terms of Culture, Religion and Philosophical – Behavioral system. The first circle of comparative research should encompass the world of the Kushitic / Meroitic and Oromo concepts, anything that relates to the Weltanschauung of the two cultural units/groups under study; this should involve a religious-historical comparison between the Ancient Kushitic / Meroitic religion and Waaqeffannaa. A common view of basic themes of life and a common perception of the world, same virtues and values, shared concepts and principles would bring a significant corroboration of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos. So, first it is a matter of history of religions, African philosophy, social anthropology, ethnography and culture history.
B. Archeological research can help tremendously too. At this point, one has to state that the critical area for the reconstruction of the suggested Meroitic migration did not attract the interest of Egyptologists, and of archaeologists specializing in Meroitic and Sudanese Antiquities. The area was indeed marginal to both civilizations, and to some extent it is normal that it did not attract scholars who could easily unearth other monumental sites elsewhere and have more spectacular results. The Blue Nile valley in Sudan and Abyssinia was never the subject of an archeological survey, and the same concerns the Oromo highlands. Certainly modern archeologists prefer something concrete that would lead them fast to a great discovery, being therefore very different from the pioneering 19th c. archeologists. An archeological surface survey would therefore be necessary in the Blue Nile valley and in the Oromo highlands in the years to come.
C. A linguistic – epigraphic approach may bring forth even more spectacular results. It could eventually end up with a complete decipherment of the Meroitic, and of the Makurian. An effort must be made to read the Meroitic texts, hieroglyphic and cursive, with the help of Oromo language. Meroitic personal names and toponymics must be studied in the light of a potential Oromo interpretation. Comparative linguistics may unveil affinities that will lead to reconsideration of the work done so far in the Meroitic decipherment.
D. Last but not least, another dimension would be added to the project with the initiation of comparative anthropological studies. Data extracted from findings in the Meroitic cemeteries must be compared with data provided by the anthropological study of present day Oromos. The research must encompass pictorial documentation from the various Meroitic temples’ bas-reliefs.
To all these I would add a better reassessment of the existing historical sources, but this is not a critical dimension of this research project.
I believe my call for Comparative Meroitic – Oromo Studies reached the correct audience that can truly evaluate the significance of the ultimate corroboration of the Meroitic Ancestry of the Oromos, as well as the magnificent consequences that such a corroboration would have in view of
a) the forthcoming Kushitic Palingenesia – or Renaissance if you want – across Africa,
b) the establishment of a Post -Colonial African Historiography, and – last but not least –
c) the Liberation of Oromia and the Representation of the Ancient Kushitic Nation in the United Nations.
Notes
1. To those having the slightest doubt, trying for purely political reasons and evil speculation to include territories of the modern state of Abyssinia into what the Ancient Greeks and Romans called ‘Aethiopia’, the academically authoritative entry Aethiopia in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopadie der klassischen Altertumwissenschaft consists in the best and irrevocable answer.
4. Mythical figure of the British Orientalism, Garstang excavated in England, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and the Sudan; Albright, William Foxwell: “John Garstang in Memoriam”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 144. (Dec., 1956), pp. 7-8; Garstang’s major articles on his Meroe excavations are the following: ‘Preliminary Note on an Expedition to Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 3 (1911 – a), ‘Second Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia, I. Excavations’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 4 (1911 – b), ‘Third Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 5 (1912), ‘Forth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 6 (1913), and ‘Fifth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 7 (1914). His major contribution was published in the same year under the title ‘Meroe, the City of Ethiopians’ (Oxford). A leading Meroitologist, Laszlo Torok wrote an entire volume on Garstang’s excavations at Meroe: Meroe City, an Ancient African Capital: John Garstang’s Excavations in the Sudan.
5. Griffith was the epigraphist of Grastand and had already published the epigraphic evidence unearthed at Meroe in the chapter entitled ‘the Inscriptions from Meroe’ in Garstang’s ‘Meroe, the City of Ethiopians’. After many pioneering researches and excavations in various parts of Egypt and Northern Sudan, Faras, Karanog, Napata and Philae to name but a few, Griffith concentrated on Kerma: ‘Excavations at Kawa’, Sudan Notes and Records 14.
6. Basically: http://www.sag-online.de/pdf/mittsag9.5.pdf; among other contributions: Die Inschriften des Loewentempels von Musawwarat es Sufra, Berlin (1962); Vorbericht ueber die Ausgrabungen des Instituts fuer Aegyptologie der Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin in Musawwarat es Sufra, 1960-1961 (1962); ‘Musawwarat es Sufra – Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Institute of Egyptology, Humboldt University, Berlin, 1961-1962 (Third Season)’, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary Note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1962′, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1963′, Kush 13 (1965)
7. As regards my French professor’s publications about his excavations at Sudan: Soleb and Sedeinga in Lexikon der Aegyptologie 5, Wiesbaden 1984 (entries contributed by J. Leclant himself); also J. Leclant, Les reconnaissances archéologiques au Soudan, in: Etudes nubiennes I, 57-60.
8. His recent volume Sudan: Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, Paris/New York (1997) contains earlier bibliography.
9. Some of his most authoritative publications: ‘A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821′, 1961 (2nd Ed.), London; ”The Valley of the Nile’, in: The Dawn of African History, R. Oliver (ed.), London. Arkell is mostly renowned for his monumental ‘The Royal Cemeteries of Kush’ in many volumes.
24. Basics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assarhaddon; the edition of the Assyrian emperor’s annals by R. Borger (Die Inschriften Assarhaddons, Koenigs von Assyrien, AfO 9, Graz, 1956) remain our basic reference to formal sources. More recently, F. Reynolds shed light on private sources, publishing ‘The Babylonian correspondence of Esarhaddon, and letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-Sarru-Iskun from Northern and Central Babylonia’ (SAA 18, 2004).
25. For the Greater Emperor of the Oriental Antiquity:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurbanipal; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamash-shum-ukin;http://web.utk.edu/~djones39/Assurbanipal.html; until today we have to rely mostly on the voluminous edition of Assurbanipal’s Annals by Maximilian Streck (Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Koenige bis zum Untergang Niniveh, Leipzig,1916); see also M. W. Waters’ Te’umman in the neo-Assyrian correspondence (Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1999, vol. 119, no3, pp. 473-477)
26. Heliopolis (Iwnw in Egyptian Hieroglyphic, literally the place of the pillars; On in Hebrew and in Septuagint Greek) was the center of Egyptian monotheism, the holiest religious center throughout Ancient Egypt; it is from Heliopolis that emanated the two foremost Ancient Egyptian theological systems, namely the Isiac ideology and the Atum Ennead. Basic readings: the entry Heliopolis in Realenzyklopaedie and in Lexikon der Aegyptologie; more recently:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_%28ancient%29.
28. Hakhamaneshian is the first Persian dynasty; it got momentum when Cyrus II invaded successively Media and Babylon. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_dynasty(with selected bibliography); the 2nd volume of the Cambridge History of Iran is dedicated to Achaemenid history (contents: http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/c … 0521200911.
29. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II_of_Persia (with bibliography and sources). Cambyses invaded Kush and destroyed Napata at the times of Amani-natake-lebte, but his embattled army was decimated according to the famous narratives of Herodotus that still need to be corroborated. What seems more plausible is that, having reached in an unfriendly milieu of the Saharan desert where they had no earlier experience, the Persians soldiers, at a distance of no less than 4000 km from their capital, faced guerilla undertaken by the Kushitic army remnants and their nomadic allies.
30. Nastasen was the last to be buried in Nuri, in the whereabouts of Napata. Contemporary with Alexander the Great, Nastasen fought against an invader originating from Egypt whose name was recorded as Kambasawden. This led many to confuse the invader with Cambyses, who ruled 200 years earlier (!). The small inscription on the Letti stela does not allow great speculation; was it an attempt of Alexander the Great to proceed to the south of which we never heard anything? Impossible to conclude; for photographical documentation:http://www.dignubia.org/bookshelf/ruler … 00017&ord=. Another interpretation:http://www.nubia2006.uw.edu.pl/nubia/ab … 94e6349d8b.
32. For Abyssinia’s conversion to Christianity: http://www.spiritualite2000.com/page.php?idpage=555, and http://www.rjliban.com/Saint-Frumentius.doc. The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezana_of_Axum) is written by ignorant and chauvinist people, and is full of mistakes, ascribing provocatively and irrelevantly to Ezana’s state the following territories (using modern names): ‘present-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, northern Somalia, Djibouti, northern Sudan, and southern Egypt’. This is just rubbish. All this shows how misleading this irrelevant ‘encyclopedia’ can at times be. Neither southern Egypt, nor northern Sudan, nor northern Somalia, nor Djibouti, nor Yemen, nor southern Saudi Arabia ever belonged to Ezana’s small kingdom that extended from Adulis to Axum. It is only after that king’s victory over Meroe that his kingdom included also a tiny portion of modern Sudan’s territories, namely the region between Kessala, Atbara and Bagrawiyah where the site of Ancient Meroe is located. But this was quite precarious and soon the Abyssinian control over that part of Ethiopia (: Sudan) ended.
33. Richard A. Lobban, ‘The Nubian Dynasty of Kush and Egypt: Continuing Research on Dynasty XXV’: http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:4F … clnk&cd=2; these inscriptions were published as early as 1821: E. F. Gau, Nubische Denkmaeler (Stuttgart). Other early publications on Meroitic antiquities: E. Riippell, Reisen in Nubien, Kordofan, & c. (Frankfort a. M., 1829); F. Caillaud, Voyage a Meroe (Paris, 1826); J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, e5fc. (London, 1819); G. Waddington and B. Hanbury, Journal of a Visit to some parts of Ethiopia (London, 1822); L. Reinisch, Die Nuba-Sprache (Vienna, 1879); Memoirs of the Societe khediviale de Geographic, Cairo.
34. Readings: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/candace.html;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanakdakhete; more analytically:http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … graphy.htm. The only inscription giving her name comes from Temple F in Naga (REM 0039A-B). The name appears in Meroitic hieroglyphics in the middle of an Egyptian text. See also: Laszlo Torok, in: Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, Vol. II, Bergen 1996, 660-662. The first attempts to render full Meroitic phrases into hieroglyphs (not only personal names, as it was common earlier) can be dated from the turn of the 3rd / 2nd century BCE, but they reflect the earlier stage of the development.
35. C. Rilly, ‘Les graffiti archaiques de Doukki Gel et l’apparition de l’ ecriture meroitique’. Meroitic Newsletter, 2003, No 30: 41-55, pl. IX-XIII (fig. 41-48).
38. His publications encompass the following: ‘Karanog: the Meroitic Inscriptions of Karanog and Shablul’, (The Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia VI), Philadelphia, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions, I, Soba to Dangul, Oxford, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions part II, Napata to Philae and Miscellaneous’, Egypt Exploration Society, Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Memoirs, London, 1912; ‘Meroitic Studies II’, in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 3 (1916).
40. B. G. Haycock, ‘The Problem of the Meroitic Language’, Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, no.5 (1978), p. 50-81; see also: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … nology.htm. Another significant contribution: B. G. Haycock, ‘Towards a Data for King Ergamenes’, Kush 13 (1965)
41. See: K. H. Priese, ‘Die Statue des napatanischen Koenigs Aramatelqo (Amtelqa) Berlin, Aegyptisches Museum Inv.-Nr. 2249 in: Festschrift zum 150 jaehrigen Bestehen des Berliner Aegyptischen Museums, Berlin; of the same author, ‘Matrilineare Erbfolge im Reich von Napata’, Zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 108 (1981).
43. Basic reading: Egeimi, Omer Abdalla, ‘From Adaptation to Marginalization: The Political Ecology of Subsistence Crisis among the Hadendawa Pastoralists of Sudan’, in: Managing Scarcity: Human Adaptation in East African Drylands, edited by Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed and Hassan Abdel Ati, 30-49. Proceedings of a regional workshop, Addis Ababa, 24-26 August 1995. Addis Ababa: OSSREA, 1996 (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/ossrea/ossreabiblio.html).
45. In various publications; see indicatively: ‘Die meroitische Sprache und das protoaltaische Sprachsubstrat als Medium zu ihrer Deutung (I): Mit aequivalenten von grammatikalischen Partikeln und Wortgleichungen’, Ulm/Donau (1992).
61. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio_Cassius; see details of the early Roman rule over Egypt here: Timo Stickler, ‘Cornelius Gallus and the Beginnings of the Augustan Rule in Egypt’
In most of Africa, indigenous African religions have been pushed to the margin because of a number of factors. The implied and open relegation of indigenous African religions to the levels of inferiority and inconsequentiality in world affairs by colonial powers and post-colonial contemporary African states not only undermines and stereotypes the examination of the unique contributions of these religions to peacemaking, but also discards with them unique mythologies, values, laws, cultures and meaning-making systems. I argue that applying North American conflict resolution models, without considering African religious values that existed for many millennia before the arrival of world religions, will be an enormous hindrance to building lasting peace from the bottom-up in the vastly rural and agrarian Africa that is still steeped in traditions and rituals.
Contributing to a range of negative stereotypes about African religions (example, uncivilized, barbaric and conflict-generating) is the fact that many of them have been orally transmitted from generation to generation and lack written major holy books unlike the world religions. The purpose of this paper is to shift attention from common misconceptions about African religions to a productive examination of the constructive roles they can be made to play.
I will focus on the case of Waaqeffannaa, an Oromo indigenous religion of East Africa, and its core values and laws. It will be significant to examine Waaqeffannaa’s complex concepts, such as concept and view of Waaqaa (God), Eebba (prayers and blessings), safuu (the place of all things and beings in the cosmic and social order), issues related to cubbuu (sin) and other religious and ritual practices. Although there is no holy book forWaaqeffannaa thus far, I will obtain my data from published ethnographic books, journal articles, periodicals, relevant reports and press releases. The interactions between Waaqeffannaa and other organized religions, such as Christianity and Islam, will be examined in context.
The paper will seek answers to three related questions:
What are the contributions or lack thereof orally transmitted values and laws of Waaqeffannaa to peacemaking and relationship-building? If there are any contributions, how can they be compared to other forms of conflict resolution? What will be the role of Waaqeffannaa in peacemaking in the ever changing global and local contexts of religious diversity and difference?
The Concept of God in Waaqeffannaa’s Monotheistic System
In order to examine the hermeneutic advantages and disadvantages of Waaqeffannaa and compare it to modern or Western conflict resolution methods, it is essential to examine the concept of God (Waaqaa) in the religion in its own right. There is a consensus among researchers and observers of Waaqeffannaa—the most prominent of whom are pre-colonial European missionaries, explorers and anthropologists and local religious leaders and scholars—that Waaqeffannaa is one of the ancient indigenous African monotheistic religions.[1] The Oromo, the Cushitic African people of Ethiopia, among whom this religion emerged and developed, call their one God Waaqaa or more intimately and endearingly Waaqayyoo (good God). It is difficult to capture with one definition the complexity of the ways in which the followers of this religion (Waaqeffataas) relate to God and make sense of God (not gendered) is hard to capture just with one definition. The question o
Sites such as the Tiya stones should be protected to ensure that any cultural secrets they hold will remain preserved, and perhaps someday be discovered. As a site created by the ancestors of those who live in Tiya and nearby areas, any significance of the megaliths may still apply to those who live there today. By protecting the site, UNESCO and other interested groups can ensure that the stones are preserved for future generations. There is the hope that more research will be undertaken in order to learn more about the amazing megaliths at Tiya, including who constructed them, why they did so, and what significance the monuments hold.
He will also participate as a Guest of Honor at several Irreecha celebrations organized by the Oromo in the Diaspora.We invite all who are interested in the Gadaa democratic system, and Oromo culture in general, to attend these workshops and participate in the spectacular Irreecha celebrations to be held throughout September and October 2014.We would like to extend our appreciation to local individuals and institutions – who participated in preparing these events. We are also grateful to the United States Consular Service for the assistance they provided in issuing Abbaa Gadaa Bayyanaa’s travel documents.The attached flyer contains general information about dates and cities where Abbaa GadaaBayyanaa will be speaking.Jawar Mohammed President, Oromo Studies Association
Annual Oromo Sports Event in UK, 23rd August 2014 held in Leeds, England. 
The Oromo Gadaa Democracy meets the American Congress Democracy. Abbaa Gadaa (Rt.) Aagaa Xanxanoo and Abbaa Gadaa (Rt.) Moonaa Godaanaa meet Senator Al Franken (from the State of Minnesota). 
(July 20, 2014 (Gadaa) — Minnesota’s Twin Cities, also known as “Little Oromia” for being the home of the largest Oromo population outside of the Horn of Africa, will be the venue for the 2014 
Prof. Asmerom Leggese, Lecturing Gadaa System 
The Oromo Abbaa Gadaa -Abbaa Gadaa of Tuulama Oromo, two Yubas (EX-AbbaGadaas-Aagaa Xinxanoo and Moonaa Godaanaa) with other Gadaa leaders arrived in DC on 30 July 2014 to attend the OSA Conference 
Below is Bakkalcha TV’s 2-part interview with Oromo recording artist Lencho Abdishakur. Also, check out Lencho Abdishakur’s new album, titled 
