The Idea of Ethiopia: Ancient Roots, Modern African Diaspora Thoughts

Ayele Bekerie, PhD

Africana Studies and Research Center

Cornell University

September 23, 2006

The idea of Ethiopia is conceived, developed, and propagated by African diaspora

intellectuals in response to colonial oppression.1 It was an idea intended to challenge the

falsification and silencing of the African past as part of colonization. At the same time, it

was also conceived in an attempt to invent symbolic languages, as Stuart Hall puts it, “to

describe and appropriate their own histories.”2 Their own histories refer to the histories of

the African diaspora. The idea is rooted in the ancient history of Ethiopians, particularly

the history of the Nubians from the time period of the Twenty-fifth Egyptian Dynasty.3

The Twenty-fifth Egyptian Dynasty had Nubian pharaohs who ruled both Egypt and

Nubia for about eighty-eight years. The Twenty-fifth Dynasty, which is also called an

Ethiopian Dynasty, is a subject of Greek and Roman histories, mythologies, arts, and

other narratives. The idea is also a subject of several verses in the Bible. These sources

made mostly positive reference to African people who lived in Egypt and south of ancient

Egypt. The idea later broadened its geographical breadth and historical scope by

including the histories of Meroe in the Sudan and Aksum in Ethiopia. The idea is further

extending its time dimension by adding the contemporary history of the present-day

Ethiopia, particularly the victory against the Italian colonizers at the Battle of Adwa in

1896, the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930, and the Italo-Ethiopian War

(1935–1941) to its frame of reference and cultural projections.

The genesis of the idea of Ethiopia is linked with the intellectual history of the African

diaspora. The idea started in the African diaspora by a wide range of thinkers who

actively sought a way out of colonial oppression. The thinkers were striving to define and

delineate the imaginary and real boundaries of the African diaspora. The thinkers of the

idea, in part, are responsible in fashioning a sense of identity and historical recovery by

millions of Africans who were forcibly removed from their homelands and endured

centuries of human degradation.

The ideas that may have begun with the people known as Kushites or Nubians and their

historical accomplishments reached the thinkers of the African diaspora through the

writings and arts of ancient Greeks and Romans. By the time their deeds and fame

reached the Greeks, about seventh century B.C.E., they were called Ethiopians. The

diaspora intellectuals researched these ancient roots and transformed them in chains of

thoughts needed to counter bondage and to build the castle of freedom. Mythological

testimonies, imaginary representations, and battlefield feats from ancient roots are closely

examined to extricate and weave the idea of Ethiopia. The narratives and tales of Greek

classical writers, such as Homer, Herodotus, Xenophanes, Aeschylus, Hesiod, Isocrates,

Socrates, Plato, and Arctinus became handy to the framers of the idea of Ethiopia.

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Ancient Ethiopians are also addressed by Roman writers such as Diodorus, Strabo,

Vergil, Seneca, Ovid, Philostratus, Pliny, and Heliodorus. It is the scope of this study to

look into how the idea eventually becomes a source of inspiration to the African diaspora

throughout the world to resist and free themselves from all forms of colonialism. The

idea has shaped religious and cultural movements in the Caribbean, South Africa, West

Africa, and the Americas. The idea invokes greatness, goodness, and sheer humanity

among Africans. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to look into an intellectual

history of the idea from ancient roots to the development of modern African diaspora

thoughts, such as Ethiopianism, Pan-Africanism, and Ras Tafarianism. It also critically

examines the limitations and other interpretations of the idea, particularly in the context

of racial type construction.

Ethiopia of ancient roots reminds the African diaspora of the historic accomplishments of

African people long before the onslaught of enslavement and colonialism. It provides

them substance of hope and freedom. The Bible, Greek art, the poetry of Homer, and the

report of Herodotus are cited as evidence of the positive qualities associated with

Ethiopians. At the same time, the ancient sources served as a foundation to formulate

what is labeled as the Ethiopian type, a racial category against which “races” are

compared and classified. I will get to this point later.

Even though Ethiopia is widely mentioned in great classical mythologies, art, sculptures,

poetry, and war narratives, it has always been difficult to establish the country or its

people in concise geographical and historical contexts on the basis of these sources.

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Moreover, Ethiopia’s location has varied since the ancient times. Broadly speaking, the

Ethiopians are from warm climatic regions. They are found in southern Egypt, in Libya,

North Africa, south India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa.4

Ali Mazrui, in an interview conducted at Cornell University, states that “the name

Ethiopia—biblically speaking—was equated with the name Africa—land of Black

people.”5 He further explained that ancient Libya was as big as ancient Ethiopia and yet

Libya never fired the imagination of the African diaspora as much as Ethiopia did.6 The

name Ethiopia is originally attributed to Homer. It was supposed to have been derived

from the Greek word Aethiops, which means “the Glowing” or “the Black.”7 The other

names, some more ancient than the Greek period, for Ethiopia include Taseti, Punt,

Kerma, Napata, Kush, Meroe, Nubia, Abyssinia, Agazia, Agau, and Aksum.8 These are

names of reputed ancient civilizations and cultures of Northeast Africa, presently

comprising the countries of the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen.

According to Ethiopian sources, Abyssinia is derived from Habisi, who was the son of

Kush. Aleqa Asras YeneSaw emphatically rejected the link between the Arabic word

Habesh and Abyssinia.9 Recent archival research that I conducted in the National Library

of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa suggests that the name Abyssinia may be ancient and

precedes the name Ethiopia.

St. Clair Drake, who reportedly coined the term “Ethiopianism,” believes that ancient

Ethiopia, which is mentioned in the Greek legends, extended westward to the Ethiopian

(now called Atlantic) Ocean, eastward to Elam near the mouth of the Tigris and

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Euphrates rivers. In ancient Ethiopia, again based on Greek mythology, Perseus rescued

Andromeda from the sea monster. Andromeda is the immortal daughter of King Cephus

and Queen Cassiopia of Ancient Ethiopia. Andromeda married Heracles, the son of Zeus,

and they had a child. Her name is immortalized because stars visible in the summertime

are named after her. It is indeed Andromeda who has inspired W. E. B. Du Bois to write

the following prose: “We owe it to Africa and ourselves to release Andromeda and place

her free and beautiful among the stars of the sky.10

Ancient Ethiopia was also the land south of ancient Egypt below the first cataract,

including eastern Ethiopia. Ancient Ethiopians during the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570–

1320 B.C.E.) provided troops to Amenhotep III, who was the father of Amenhotep IV or

Akhenaton, who was the founder of a monotheistic tradition.

In the Old Testament, Ancient Ethiopia is referred as Kush. Kush, according to the

Israelites, settled in Africa and he had descendants in Mesopotamia and Arabia as well.

By the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (750 B.C.E.–300 B.C.E.), Kush refers to the

Ethiopians of Napata, the capital at the third cataract of the Nile. Napata was one of the

first great civilizations of the Sudan. Napata’s rulers, such as Taharka, ruled Egypt and

Nubia for about eighty-eight years. In 284 B.C.E., the seventy religious scholars of Syria

replaced the word Kush with Ethiopia when they translated the Old Testament from

Hebrew to Greek.

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Meroitic Ethiopia was the land of the great Kandake women rulers for almost four

hundred years (284 B.C.E.–C.E. 115), just before the rise of Aksum Ethiopia.11 The word

“Candace” is a corruption of the Meriotic title “kdke,” a title that all royal female

members carried. According to some historians, Meroe remained strong for about one

thousand years, ruled by both men and women rulers. It is also important to note that

“Herodotus had visited Egypt and based on the information gathered from historians,

travelers, priests, had divided Ethiopia into Eastern Ethiopians and Western Ethiopians.

He also identified Asiatic Ethiopians.”12

Aksum Ethiopia is known for, among other things, Ge’ez language (a nonethnic

foundational language of a free people) and the Ethiopic writing systems.13

William Leo Hansberry, an eminent African American historian and Ethiopianist scholar,

referred to ancient Ethiopia as “the original Eden of humankind.” Leo Hansberry’s

proposal has been supported by a whole set of fossil evidence gathered from northeast

Africa, including the present-day Ethiopia. Arnold Herman Heeren, a nineteenth-century

historian, narrated the significance of ancient Ethiopian roots as follows:

Except the Ethiopians there is no aboriginal people of Africa with so many claims

upon our attention as the Ethiopians; from the remotest times to the present, one

of the most celebrated and the most mysterious of nations. In the earliest

traditions of nearly all the most civilized nations of antiquity, the name of the

distant people is found. The annals of the Egyptian priests were full of them; the

nations of inner Asia on the Euphrates and the Tigris have interwoven the fictions

of Ethiopia with their own traditions of the conquests and wars of their heroes,

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and poised equally remote, they glimmer in Greek mythology. [Arnold Herman

Heeren quoted in Huggins, Willis N. and Jackson, John G., Introduction to

African Civilizations with Main Currents in Ethiopian History (New York: Negro

University Press, 1973), p.53.QUERY: PLEASE INSERT CITATION]

The Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was founded by Marcus Garvey,

composed what the Association calls an “Ethiopian Anthem” by referring to the ancient

roots of Ethiopia. It refers to Ethiopia as the land of their fathers where the gods loved to

be. Garvey, among other African diaspora intellectual leaders, succeeded in weaving the

Ethiopian theme into the common discourse of their followers— five million strong in

the United States and the Caribbean.

Since antiquity, Ethiopia has borne great meaning for the African world as a whole. The

most cherished quotation from the Bible among African people is the quotation from

Psalms 68:31: “Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands to God.” Besides this widely

used biblical verse, the Africans have identified over sixty verses that make reference to

Ethiopia, mostly in positive terms. The biblical prophecy concerning Ethiopia was

incorporated into African social, religious, cultural, political and economic movements.

As Magubane aptly puts it, for a people whose history had been deliberately starved of

legend, Ethiopia linked the African, thanks to the intellectual works of the African

diaspora, to the glory of the ancient times.

On the other hand, the idea has become an instrument to establish “scientific” racism.

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The Ethiopian type has been established as Negroid with a fixed physical description.

Modern racism since the fifteenth century grafted the Ethiopian type in its racialized

hierarchy to define the other. The Ethiopian type is described only in terms of skin color

and facial features: black skin, curly hair, and flat nose. Ancient sources are subjected to

racist interpretations in order to justify and perpetuate the Ethiopian type, which is

described as childlike, grotesque, ugly, lazy, and numerous other negative

characterizations. The Ethiopian type became the opposite of the European type, which is

the desired type, the in-group, the chosen, the privileged, and the powerful. The Ethiopian

type is inferior and dependent. Beardsley’s The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilizations

is perhaps an excellent example in the making of a racial type called Ethiopian.14

According to Snowden, “Aithiops (Aethiops), the most common generic term in the

Greek and the Roman world applied to blacks from the south of Egypt and from the

southern fringes of northwest Africa, highlighted the color of the skin. The word meant

literally a ‘burnt-faced person,’ a ‘colored’ person from certain regions of Africa, and in

origin was a reflection of the environment theory that attributed the Ethiopians’ color as

well as their tightly coiled hair to the intense heat of the southern sun.”15

While Snowden’s comprehensive research to affirm the humanity of African peoples is

commendable, he tends to endorse the so-called Ethiopian type. In other words, he relied

on physical anthropology, just like Beardsley and others, to make his case, which of

course is substantively different from the racialists’. Snowden’s type is not superficial; it

is an attempt to interpret the Black image of the Greek art, thereby demonstrating the

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humanity of the Africans.

I argue that while the European scholars use the Ethiopian type to scientifically castigate

and justify the physical exploitation of the Africans, the intellectuals of the African

diaspora have utilized the Bible and religion to extricate Africans from servitude, slavery,

and colonialism. The Greek sources on Ethiopia are used by white scholars to come up

with scientific racism. The Africans, however, utilized religion to seek freedom, to break

the chains of bondage.

As a result, the question of who were the Ethiopians and from where were the Ethiopians

should be examined in the context of place, languages, cultures, and other traditions.

Physical anthropology should be deemphasized, for it is an unreliable and unscientific

way to establish the identity of a people.

The ancient Greek and Roman writers have documented cultural attributes of the

Ethiopians, such as food habits, facial scarifications, hunting skills, rituals, beliefs, and

governance. Therefore, Ethiopia’s enduring significance should be investigated within

historical and cultural frameworks.

MODERN AFRICAN DIASPORA THOUGHTS

Ancient and contemporary Ethiopia, apart from their restorative and inspirational values

for resistance and identity, have served as a foundation and reference point for Pan-

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African movements and organizations throughout the African world. Given the many

references to them in so many circles, it is fair to say what I call the idea of Ethiopia was

a catalyst for reputable and historic movements, such as Garveyism, Rastafarianism, and

Ethiopianism from Harlem to Kingston to Johannesburg.

Ancient Ethiopia’s reference in the Bible and ancient classic literatures generated a

powerful symbol and a source of inspiration to African peoples throughout the world.

The aspiration for freedom linked the enslaved, colonized, and oppressed Africans to

contemporary Ethiopia, which is a sacred symbol of African peoples’ power and

independence. Virginia Lee Jacobs, in her book Roots of Ras Tafari, outlines

contemporary Ethiopia’s four symbolic significances: Ethiopia as a symbol for Africa’s

struggle for independence from European colonialism; Ethiopia as the shrine enclosing

the last sacred spark of African political freedom; Ethiopia as the impregnable rock of

African resistance against white invasions; and Ethiopia as a living symbol, an

incarnation of African independence.16 In other words, Ethiopia’s long and successful

history of freedom and independence has served as a model to resist and fight against

colonialism.

Joseph E. Harris further asserted that African Americans were inspired by the

contemporary Ethiopian symbolism and they felt that Ethiopia was part of their

heritage.17 Magubane added: “The quest for dignity and identity has for many years

received a classic exemplification in the Blacks of the United States.”18 In his seminal

work, A Study of Afro-American and Ethiopian Relations: 1896–1941, William R. Scott

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concluded that identification with Ethiopia has been a constant theme in African

American national and religious thoughts. This identification was so firmly embedded to

inspire the most dramatic manifestation of Pan-Africanist sentiments in African

American history.19

MODERN ETHIOPIA AND PAN-AFRICAN MOVEMENTS

As much as ancient Ethiopia inspired Pan-Africanist movements and organizations

throughout the African world, contemporary Ethiopia’s history also has its significance in

the dynamics of Pan-Africanism. Contemporary Ethiopia20 was particularly brought to the

African world’s attention in 1896 when Ethiopia, an African country, defeated Italy, a

European country, at the battle of Adwa.21 According to Donald Levine, “the Battle of

Adwa qualifies as a historic event that represented the first time since the beginning of

European imperial expansion that a nonwhite nation had defeated a European power.”22

The Berlin Conference of 1885 found its most important challenge in this famous battle.

European strategy to carve Africa into their spheres of influence was halted by Emperor

Menelik II and Empress Taitu Betul at the Battle of Adwa. The Europeans had no choice

but to recognize this African (not European) power.

The African world celebrated and embraced this historic victory. In the preface to the

book An Introduction to African Civilizations With Main Currents in Ethiopian History,

Huggins and Jackson wrote: “In Ethiopia, the military genius of Menelik II was in the

best tradition of Piankhi and Sheshonk, rulers of ancient Egypt and Nubia, when he drove

out the Italians in 1896 and maintained the liberties of that ancient free empire of Black

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men.”23 Huggins and Jackson analyzed the victory not only in terms of its significance to

the postcolonial African world, but also in terms of its linkage to the tradition of ancient

African glories and victories.

Adwa symbolizes the aspirations and hopes of all oppressed people. Adwa catapulted

Pan-Africanism into the realm of the possible by reigniting the imaginations of Africans

in their quest for freedom throughout the world. Adwa foreshadowed the outcome of the

anticolonial struggle. Adwa is about cultural resistance; it is about reaffirmation of

African ways. Adwa was possible not simply because of brilliant and courageous

leadership, but also because of the people’s willingness to defend their motherland,

regardless of ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences. Adwa was a story of common

purpose and common destiny. The principles established on the battlefield of Adwa must

be understood and embraced for Africa to remain centered in its own histories, cultures,

and socioeconomic development. We should always remember that Adwa was won for

Africans. Adwa indeed is an African model of victory and resistance.24

The 1930 crowning of Haile Selassie as an Emperor of Ethiopia was received with great

enthusiasm in the African world, particularly in Harlem and Jamaica. According to

Horace Campbell, the crowning of Haile Selassie was “a welcome diversion from the

constant reminder of the portrait of the White king and his wife, which graced the walls

of all public buildings in Jamaica.”25 In fact, the news of Haile Selassie’s coronation

provided the basis for the founding of the Ras Tafari movement, a powerful cultural and

religious movement. The movement became more solidified after the 1935 Italian

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invasion of Ethiopia.

African Americans of all classes, regions, genders, and beliefs expressed their opposition

to and outrage over the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia in various forms and various

means. The invasion aroused African Americans—from intellectuals to the common

person in the street—more than any other Pan-African–oriented historical events or

movements had done. It fired their imagination and brought to the surface the organic

link to their ancestral land and people.26

African Americans, for the most part, interpreted the 1935 Italo-Ethiopian war as a racial

war. They looked at the Italian aggressors as White aggressors against Black Ethiopians,

whom they considered ancestral relatives. In Roy Ottley’s view, “The Italian assault on

Ethiopia, at long last, was some sort of tangible idealism—certainly a legitimate issue—

around which the Black nationalist could rally, and, indeed, rally a great section of the

Black population. . . . Almost immediately it put the nationalist organizations on sound

agitational footing and increased their membership considerably.”27

Contemporary Ethiopia sought partnership with European powers of the time. It signed

several treaties with France, England, and Italy beginning in 1889. In 1903, a little more

than one hundred years ago, it established official relations with the United States of

America.28 While Ethiopia regarded treaties and diplomatic relations as peaceful and

internationally binding means to preserve its sovereignty and independence, the

Europeans, particularly Italy, considered the treaties as a tactical weapon to colonize

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Ethiopia.29 As a result, Menelik II and Haile Selassie I had to expend their considerable

energy and resources and the Ethiopian people sacrificed much to ward off the European

colonial ambition for Ethiopia. It appeared that the strategy the leaders chose in order to

preserve Ethiopia’s sovereignty was that of manipulating and cajoling European powers,

seeking royal solidarity with the British royal family, and signing concessions with

France and Italy. It also came at enormous cost to the people of Eritrea. Further, the

African world did not enter into their vision or strategy until it was too late. According to

Mazrui and Tidy, Ethiopians did not regard themselves as Black Africans in this period.30

It was the invasion and rape of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy that forced them to “re-

Africanize” themselves.31

Even though Pan-African visions did not play a primary role among the contemporary

Ethiopian leadership, attempts were made to recruit African American “farmers,

engineers, mechanics, physicians, and dentists.”32 Ethiopia sent delegates to the United

States for this purpose. According to Roi Ottley, in 1927, Doctor Workineh Martin, later

Ethiopian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James in

London, came to the United States and invited African Americans to settle in Ethiopia.33

Among those who accepted the invitation were Doctor John West of Washington, D.C.,

who was appointed as a personal physician of Emperor Haile Selassie and John

Robinson, a Chicagoan, a personal aviator, and Rabbi Arnold Ford and Mignon Ford.34

Following the path of his parents Arnold and Mignon Ford, Professor Abiy Ford has

resigned from his full professorship position at Howard University and decided recently

to move and settle in Ethiopia for good. He is now serving as the Dean of the School of

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Journalism at Addis Ababa University. A number of World War I veterans were given

commissions in the Ethiopian Army.35

Ethiopian-Inspired Movements in the African Diaspora

In an attempt to break the cycle of racial domination or paternalism associated with

European Christianity, African Americans sought to forge liberation ideologies for “a

distinct and particularistic Black version of Christianity.”36 This new conception of

religion and culture in the nineteenth century is known as “Ethiopianism,” a term coined

by the great African American sociologist St. Clair Drake.37 Ethiopianism was

conceptualized in order to resist white domination in all aspects of Black life, particularly

in the spiritual and cultural realms.

Some historians believe that Ethiopianism or religious independence and distinctiveness

“cradled Black nationalism and nurtured political resistance to White supremacy and

racial inequality.”38 The Biblical source of Ethiopianism, as mentioned earlier, was a

now-famous passage in Psalms 68:31, which prophesied that “Princes shall come out of

Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God. Sing unto God, ye kingdom

of the earth.”39 According to religious historian Albert Raboteau, it was “without doubt

the most quoted verse in Black religious history.”40 The Ethiopian prophecy was directly

associated with freedom from enslavement or racial discrimination for Africans in

America. According to Frederickson, “the suffering of captivity and slavery, a miraculous

emancipation, the wandering in the wilderness, and the return to the promised land—to

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Ethiopia or Africa—provided an intellectually and emotionally satisfying narrative

structure for Black hopes and aspirations. It also planted the seeds of Pan-Africanism.”41

In fact, African Americans as far back as the eighteenth century began to look at the

biblical references to Ethiopia.42

According to Hutton and Murrel, expressions of Ethiopianism among the African

diaspora are associated with the spiritual or physical repatriation to Africa, which in turn

means struggle for freedom. The biblical references to African states and peoples served

as an important current in abolitionist thoughts. Embracing Ethiopianism means

embracing the struggle for freedom and redemption.43

Frederickson argues that the idiom of Ethiopianism was central to the rise of a literature

of Black political protest in the nineteenth century in the United States. “In 1829 Robert

Alexander Young, a Black New Yorker, published at his own expense The Ethiopian

Manifesto, Issued in Defense of the Black Man’s Rights in the Scale of Universal

Freedom. Addressed not simply to American blacks but to all those proceeding in descent

from the Ethiopian or African people, it paraphrased the biblical prophecy to make it an

explicit affirmation of black nationality,” writes Frederickson.44

Young’s revised conception of the biblical reference is as follows: “God . . . hath said

‘surely hath the cries of the black, a most persecuted people, ascended to my throne and

craved my mercy; now behold! I will stretch forth mine hand and gather them to the

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palm, that they become unto me a people, and I unto them their God.’”45 He also

predicted the coming of black people as a nation, thereby pioneering the conception of

Black nationalism.

Similar conception of Black nationalism through the reformulation of the biblical

reference was developed in 1830 when David Walker published his Appeal to the

Colored Citizens of the World. In Appeal, he writes: “the God of the Ethiopians has been

pleased to hear our moans and the day of our redemption from abject wretchedness

draweth near, when we shall be enabled . . . to stretch forth our hands to the LORD Our

GOD, but there must be a willingness on our part for GOD to do these things for us, for

we may be assured that he will not take us by the hairs of our head against our will and

desire, and drag us from our very, mean, low, and abject condition.”46 Walker recognized

the need for self-determination and the biblical text becomes handy to advance secular

nationalist causes.

The Reverend Highland Garnet, in his 1848 address, The Past and Present Condition,

and the Destiny of the Colored Race, interpreted the biblical prophecy as a sign of

optimism. Garnet writes, “It is said that ‘Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia

shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.’ It is thought by some that this divine

declaration was fulfilled when Phillip baptized the converted eunuch of the household of

Candes, the Queen of Ethiopians. In this transaction, a part of the prophecy may have

been fulfilled, and only a part.”47 To Garnet, the complete fulfillment of the prophecy

meant the liberation of African people from enslavement and their striving to become

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fully human again. It is also important to note that Garnet’s Ethiopia was Meroitic

Ethiopia. Kandake queen rulers governed Meroe in the Sudan for about four hundred

years prior to the rise of Aksum Ethiopia.

Some scholars believe that Ethiopianism attained “its highest level of intellectual

complexity in the writings and sermons of Edward Blyden and Alexander Crummell.”48 It

is also with their writings that the Ethiopianist thoughts were increasingly tied to the

causes of Liberia, in particular and West Africa, in general. This means that they saw the

redemption of Africa through the agency of African spirituality and solidarity. They were

also responsible for transforming the thoughts into a transatlantic or Black Atlantic

perspective, which later was recognized as Pan-Africanism. In fact, Du Bois reinforced

the position of his mentors, Blyden and Crummell, by delineating the tenets of modern

Pan-Africanism. He saw a role for African Americans in it. He also led the struggle to

decolonize Africa. His Pan-Africanism was political and its aim was freedom from

European domination and exploitation.

While the Ethiopianism of the nineteenth century is primarily a source of religious

autonomy and self-affirmation, the Ethiopianism of the early twentieth century gave birth

to Ras Tafarianism, a movement with both secular and religious agendas with the intent

to advance the just causes of oppressed people. In addition, Ras Tafarianism is directly

linked to Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia.

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Even though Ethiopianism surfaced in Jamaica as early as 1784 with the establishment of

the Ethiopian Baptist Church, it was the coronation of Ras Tafari in 1930 as Emperor

Haile Selassie that sealed the significance of Ethiopia to Jamaican Ethiopianism and,

more specifically, to the Ras Tafarian movement.49 As Bedasse puts it, “the crowning of a

Black king in Ethiopia came to represent a radical reversal of the European Christianity

to which Jamaican Blacks had been exposed and the support they found in the Book of

Revelations (5:2, 5 and 19:19-20) was proof that Haile Selassie was indeed the Messiah.

With the coming of the Messiah to the land of Africans, the roots of the Ras Tafarian

religion were firmly planted.50 The Ras Tafrians believe that the Jesus spoken in the Bible

is Haile Selassie.51 Bedasse provided an excellent explanation of the symbolic importance

of Haile Selassie and Ethiopia to Jamaicans. In her words, “the crowning of Haile

Selassie symbolized a religious triumph for the Blacks of Jamaica and it boosted their

political stance against White domination. It confirmed their interpretation of the Bible

and it gave them a true sense of power and pride as they struggled to assert their

worthiness in a colonial society.”52

In spite of these positive linkages and identification with Ethiopia, the internal dynamics

and contradictions of Ethiopia have brought some “race” questions to the surface.

Europeans reinvented Ethiopians as “whites” in order to perpetuate divisions between

Ethiopians and the rest of the African world. This classification was necessary in order

“to rationalize Ethiopia’s historical achievements and successful stand against European

colonial rule when prevailing theories classified all [Africans] as inferior, uncivilized

beings.”53 The American consul in London wrote: “These distinguished Abyssinians

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[Ethiopians] wear their native costume and have refined faces and are easily

distinguished from the ordinary Negroid type familiar in the United States.”54 Refuting

this distortion, J.A. Rogers wrote: “Ethiopians are not white. There are probably more

light-skinned Africans in the U.S. than Ethiopia. If skin color is a measure of race, then

more Africans would qualify as Whites than Ethiopians.”55

“After thirty years of observations of the Negroid type throughout the world,” J. A.

Rogers concluded “Ethiopians are much closer to the ‘pure’ Negroid type than the

average African American.”56

CONCLUSION

In the nineteenth century, as far as the African diaspora is concerned, religion was a

much more progressive intellectual tool than science. While science, particularly physical

anthropology, insists on their type, which is described in negative terms, such as ugly,

grotesque, and inferior, religion serves them as an important source of humanizing

verses, such as Psalms 68:31, which they effectively used to map out secular movements

for freedom and cultural autonomy. It is true that scholars including Snowden and Diop

have also embraced science or perhaps counters science to expose the bankruptcy of

“scientific racism.” But the majority of the thinkers relied on religious knowledge to fight

the scourge of colonialism, including enslavement.

With regard to the question of why African diaspora thoughts remain short of bringing

total freedom, including social, economic, and political progress, the issue may be traced

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back to the fact that the idea of Ethiopia was not cultivated in conjunction with the

intellectualization of enslavement and its consequences. In other words, Ethiopianism

may have offered some reprieve and avenues of cultural progress, but it was not

sufficient by itself to bring about complete liberation. In the new century, we have to

come up with an intellectual equation that contains both the idea and detailed

documentation and interpretation of enslavement, from the shores of Africa, to the

Middle Passage, to the plantations of the Americas. It is only by combining the

experience and knowledge of colonialism with the idea of Ethiopianism that we might be

able to see the unscrambling of the African world.

The highest stage of Ethiopianism among African Americans, in my estimation, is the

founding of the Black churches, which are significant institutions within the Black

community. The Black churches have served as one of the most secure safe spaces for the

Black people to maintain their social coherence, individual development, and spiritual

sustenance both in the Antebellum and Post-Antebellum periods. Biblical verses are

reconfigured to generate a discourse of struggle against slavery and racism. Richard

Allen, Absalom Jones, Frederick Douglass, Maria Stewart, and other prominent Black

intellectual thinkers were versatile in their use of verses.

In the Caribbean, the highest stage of Ethiopianism is Ras Tafarianism, a global

countercultural movement. One of its main attractions is the Reggae music, which is

widely popular throughout the world. Reggae music has become a new banner to young

people in the industrialized world against the push of globalization. In Germany, Japan,

21

Russia, the United States, Poland, and Israel, youth flock out in thousands to attend

Reggae concerts.

Ethiopia’s identity and its multiple interpretations have contributed both to the rise and

decline of Ethiopians. Ethiopia’s leaders lacked the visions to integrate the African

diaspora’s passionate love for Ethiopia into their leadership. The autocratic nature of their

leadership and the emphasis on royal solidarity forced them to embrace the Pan-African

movement coolly and very cautiously. The movement’s mass orientation as well as

democratic principles were negations to their autocratic rule in Ethiopia.

Therefore, Ethiopianism waned since the 1930s and a much larger Pan-African

movement whose epicenter was Accra, Ghana, under the able leadership of Kwame

Nkrumah, replaced it. Ethiopia, particularly in the narrow sense, provided the symbol for

the emergence of Black nationalism in the United States. Unfortunately its realities

remain to be connected to the movement. The African world has a lot to offer to Ethiopia,

insofar as Ethiopia has been a concrete source of inspiration to millions of people

throughout the world. As the poet Langston Hughes put it, Ethiopia has to lift its face and

realize its ripeness.57 We ought to dig up our past in order to build a better future. After

all, as Diodorus Siculus wrote more than two thousand years ago, we are a people of

greater antiquity.

22

1 The word colonial is understood in its broader terms, including enslavement. See Eze’s African Philosophy for a comprehensive treatment of the subject.2 Stuart Hall, “Myths of Caribbean Identity,” The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas About Culture and Identity, Nation and Society (Compiled and Edited by D. Nigel Bolland). Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2004, p. 588.3 Ancient Egyptian chronology was developed by an Egyptian priest/scholar in the third century B.C.E. during the Ptolemic period. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew about the Nubians prior to the emergence of the Egyptian chronology.4 See D. Neiman, “Ethiopia and Kush: Biblical and Ancient Geography,” The Ancient World 3 (1980) 35–42. (Quoted in Snowden, Frank M. Jr., Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p.21., find the reference.) [QUERY: FIND THIS REFERENCE.]5 An Interview with Ali Mazrui, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (March 6, 1989). Mignon Ford, the founder of the first girls’ school in Ethiopia, has also associated the name Ethiopia with Africa (interview conducted on April 30, 1989).6 An Interview with Ali Mazrui, March 6, 1989.7 Joseph E. Harris, ed., Africa and Africans as Seen By Classical Writers: William Leo Hansberry African History Notebook Volume Two. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981, p. 5.8 See Chris Prouty and Eugene Rosenfeld, Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia. London: The Scarecrow Press, 1982; A.H.M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Abyssinia. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969.9 Asras YeneSaw, Tibe Aksum Menu Anta? Addis Ababa: Commercial Printing Press, 1958, p. 79 (in Amharic).10 W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa. New York: Viking Press, 1947, p. 259.11 Drake, St. Clair, Black Folk Here and There Vol 1. Los Angeles: Center For Afro-American Studies, 1987, p. 272.12 Drake, p. 273.13 Asras YeneSaw, Tibe Aksum, p. 79.14 G. H. Beardsley, The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization: A Study of the Ethiopian Type. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, [QUERY: CONFIRM PRESS] 1929.15 Snowden, M. Frank, Jr., Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 7. Snowden’s analysis is based on the works of Herodotus 2.22; Aristotle Problemata 10.66898b; Lucretius 6.722, 1109; Vitruvius De architectura 6.1.3-4; Manilius Astronomica 4.758-759; Ovid Metamorphoses 2.235-236; Pliny Naturalis historia 2.80.189; Lucan 10.221-222; Seneca Quaestiones naturals 4A.2.18; Ptolemy tetrabiblos 2.256.16 Jacobs, Virginia Lee (1985), Roots of Rastafari. San Diego: Slawson Communications, p. 68.17 Harris, “Race and Misperceptions,” TransAfrica Forum, p. 16.18 Magubane, The Ties That Bind, p. 7.19 William R. Scott, A Study of Afro-American and Ethiopian Relations: 1896–1941, (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1971), p. 13.20 According to Tsegaye Tegenu, the contemporary history of Ethiopia is a product of “full internal dynamism as a result of migrations, demographic consequences and changes in the structure of power.” See his excellent analysis on the meaning of Ethiopia in “Ethiopia: What Is in a Name?” Ethiopia in Broader Perspective Vol. II (Papers of the XIIIth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies and Edited by Katsuyoshi Fukui et al., Kyoto, 12–17 December 1997, p. 165.21 For a comprehensive treatment of the Battle of Adwa, see Pamela S. Brown and Fassil Yirgu’s edited book ONE HOUSE: The Battle of Adwa 1896–100 Years. Chicago, IL: Nyala Publishing, 1996.22 Brown and Yirgu, ONE HOUSE, p. 1.23 Huggins, Willis N., and John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations with Main Currents in

Ethiopian History. New York: Negro University Press, p. 11.24 Ayele Bekerie, “How Africa Defeated Europe,” ONE HOUSE, pp. 27–28.25 Horace Campbell, Rasta and Resistance, p. 64.26 Ayele Bekerie, “African Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War,” Revisioning Italy: National Identity and Global Culture (Edited by Beverly Allen and Mary Russo). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (1997), pp. 116–117.27 Roy Ottley, New World A-Coming. New York: Literary Classics (1943), p. 105.28 See a reprint of Robert P. Skinner’s The 1903 Skinner Mission to Ethiopia and A Century of Ethiopian American Relations. Los Angeles: Tsehai Publishers, 2003, and Negussay Ayele’s US Ethiopia Relations. San Jose: 0Copy Publications, 2003. [QUERY: CONFIRM PUBLISHER]29 Work, Ernest F., “Italo-Ethiopian Relations,” The Journal of Negro History 20, 4 (October 1935): p. 438.30 Mazrui and Tidy, p. 29; in an interview with the late Mignon Ford, Ethiopia’s leaders’ close association with Europeans is characterized as misguided. New Orleans, Louisiana, April 30, 1989.31 An interview with Ali Mazrui, March 6, 1989.32 Joseph E. Harris, “Race and Misperceptions,” p. 16.33 Roi Ottley, p. 439.34 Ibid.; An interview with Mignon Ford (April 30, 1989).35 Roy Ottley, p. 439.36 Frederickson, George M., Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 58.37 Ibid.38 Frederickson, p. 59.39 Ibid., p. 61.40 Ibid., p. 75.41 Ibid., p. 63.42 See Monique Bedasse’s “Rasta Evolution: The Twelve Tribes of Israel in Transition.” MPS Thesis, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, 2002, p. 20.43 Quoted in Monique Bedasse’s MPS Thesis, p. 20.44 Frederickson’s Black Liberation, p. 63.45 Quoted in Frederickson’s Black Liberation, p. 63.46 Quoted in Frederickson, pp. 63–64.47 Quoted in Frederickson, p. 65.48 Frederickson, p. 67.49 Monique Bedasse, pp. 22–23.50 Bedasse, p. 22.51 Leonard E. Barrett, The Rastafarians: A Study in Messianic Cultism in Jamaica. Puerto Rico: University of Puerto Rico (1968), p. 130.52 Bedasse, p. 23.53 Joseph E. Harris, “Race and Misperceptions,” p. 15.54 Ibid.55 J.A. Rogers, The Real Facts About Ethiopia, p. 6.56 Ibid., p. 7.57 See Arnold Rampersad’s The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, p. 184.