Axum and Ethiopia

The following text is a response sent to an email dispatched to me by the Chairman of the exiled Oromo Parliamentarians who struggle for the Independence and Self-determination of the 5 millennia long Kushitic Ethiopian Nation of the Oromos.
The Hamitic - Kushitic Oromo Nation - due to criminal, inhuman and evil persecution conceived by the colonial powers (France, England and America) and executed by the colonially promoted barbaric and incestuous pseudo-Christian Abyssinians - lost their kingdoms and were engulfed within the Cemetery of Nations Fake Ethiopia, which consists in the world's most tyrannical realm and the location of the world's more abhorrent, more enduring, and more multifaceted genocides. There are more than 45 million Oromos in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia) and Kenya today, despite the notorious and pathetic falsehood propagated by Wikipedia.
The present text enumerates all the major points of historical distortion and falsification carried out and diffused by the colonial academia, mass media, and diplomats, as well as by their local agents and criminal executioners, i.e. the barbaric, incestuous and Anti-Christian tribes of Amhara and Tigray (: the Abyssinians), who usurped the fair name of Ethiopia, which historically denotes the land of North Sudan and the Kushitic Nation that prospered there either in the Antiquity or in the Christian Era. Both, the Oromos and the Arabic-speaking (but not Arab) populations of Northern-Central Sudan are the descendants of Ancient Sudan's (i.e. Ancient Ethiopia's) Kushitic populations.
Representative photographic documentation was herewith added to the text in order to better illustrate the topic.

Refutation of historical forgeries propagated by European colonials and incestuous Abyssinians
First published here:
https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/kushitic-oromos-ancestry-in-ethiopia-ancient-sudan-semitic-amharas-tigrays-abyssinians-ancestry-in-yemen/

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

First discovered in 2001, and fully published in 2012, a corpus of more than 200 graffiti from the cave Hoq on ancient Dioscourides, modern Socotra, constitutes an invaluable resource shedding a rare light on trade routes of the ancient Indian Ocean. Whereas more abundant evidence has previously been available to document the activities of Roman merchants, while evidence attesting the role of their Indian counterparts has been comparatively scarce, it now becomes possible to move beyond the traditional bias towards ‘Romano-centric’ narratives, thus, providing a fuller account of ancient long-distance trade in the region. Specifically, the graffiti introduce us to traders and travellers, Buddhist monks and Yavanas, hailing from Roman Egypt, Palmyra, Axum, Hadramawt, Western India, Bactria and Gandhara. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to appraise the importance of the Hoq graffiti for Indian Ocean studies, analyse the import of the evidence for our knowledge about the organisation of trade, and outline the resulting corrigenda to the orthodox picture of ‘Indo-Roman trade’.

K. Grønlund Evers, ‘Cave of Revelations: Indian Ocean trade in light of the Socotran graffiti,’ in "Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology" 10–11 (2014–15): 19–37.

Note1: This is a digital version 2.0 differing slightly from the printed article in that it contains some corrections and, most importantly, full references to graffiti.
Note2: This digital v.2.1. further corrects a minor misreading on p. 25, so that the corrected reference now reads "Burrows 1940: #324."

September – October 2004 – Total: 35200 words

Interview with Professor Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
http://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/index_interview.htm

Part I Background and Motivation (posted 25/9/2004) – page 1 
http://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/Interviews/Interview_Mega1.htm

Part II Abyssinia (posted 2/10/2004) – page 12 
http://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/Interviews/Interview_Mega2.htm

Part III Oromo / Kush / Meroe (posted 9/10/2004) – page 26 
http://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/Interviews/Interview_Mega3.htm

Part IV The Future of Oromo/Kush and Abyssinia (posted 15/10/2004) – page 46
http://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/Interviews/Interview_Mega4.htm
Professor Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis has been a prolific writer on Ethioindex’s Medrek forum. He has extremely rich knowledge of the history of the Middle East and Eastern and Northern Africa regions. He brought to light the often-confusing history of the Horn of Africa for the average public. Voice Finfinne is very pleased that Professor Megalommatis accepted its invitation to interview him on different issues.

The ancient East African kingdom of Aksum gradually adopted Christianity from the early- to mid-fourth-century reign of Ezana onwards. The well-known narrative of the late Roman church-historian Rufinus relates a top-down process of conversion, starting with the ruler himself. The report, corroborated by the adoption of Christian symbolism on Ezana’s late coinage, and monotheistic as well as overtly Christian references in royal inscriptions, is generally considered trustworthy. While not challenging the significance of charismatic and powerful individuals, this article argues that Christianity was present in the region before Ezana, and that the introduction of Christianity should be situated within the context of early Red Sea/Indian Ocean commerce. Trade was the carrier of ideological impulses from communities in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean worlds and created the social infrastructure that expatriate believers, early converts, and later, church officials and local elites could draw upon.

The article is open access, and can be downloaded at
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-014-9172-5

This article deals with the Sudanese–Ethiopian conflict (1885–89) from a Mahdist perspective, in the wider context of the European scramble for Africa. Focusing on Sudanese representations of Ethiopia as well as on the causes underlying the conflict, I confront a Mahdist chronicle of particular historiographical significance with a range of historical sources. Departing from a purely jihadist framework of analysis, I highlight various Mahdist conceptualizations of Christian Ethiopia as well as historical, political, military, and economic processes conducive to the outbreak of an armed confrontation between the two independent African states. I argue that the Sudanese ruling elite resorted to jihadist discourse as a legitimizing device rather than as an inflexible policy and examine more specific rhetoric instruments meant to justify Mahdist attitudes toward the Christian kingdom. Whereas prophetic visions were used to make the khalifa's Ethiopian policy acceptable to Mahdist eyes, the ambivalent legacy of early Muslim–Aksumite contacts was reactivated in the framework of a dialogue with the Ethiopian enemy.

A figura da Virgem Maria possui um local central na teologia, liturgia e devoção dos cristãos afro-orientais, membros de antigas comunidades de origem apostólica, que insistiram sempre mais em seu caráter de Mãe de Deus como forma de enfatizar a união hipostática das Naturezas humana e divina na Pessoa de Jesus Cristo. Essa centralidade se expressa também na arte religiosa e em numerosos textos, entre os quais se incluem canções populares, poemas devotos, homilias comemorativas, tratados teológicos e coletâneas de milagres atribuídos à Virgem. Um dos mais impressionantes destes escritos é a "Anáfora de Santa Maria", tradicionalmente atribuída a Abba Ciríaco (ou Heráclito) de Behnesa (el-Bahnasa ou Oxirrinco), utilizada na Divina Liturgia da Igreja Etíope algumas vezes por ano - nas mais importantes festas marianas, na véspera do Natal, na véspera e no dia da Anunciação e na comemoração do mesmo São Ciríaco. Como bem se sabe, a liturgia etíope deriva em larga medida da liturgia copta, em função da ligação milenar entre as Igrejas de Alexandria e da Abissínia, mas desenvolveu uma série de características originais a partir da absorção de elementos autóctones, do peso de sua herança semítica e de significativas influências siríacas. A "Anáfora de Santa Maria" de Abba Ciríaco de Behnesa é justamente uma das peças originais da Etiópia cristã, pois em nenhuma outra das liturgias hoje conhecidas preservou-se uma oração eucarística que faz menção à Virgem de modo tão específico. O objetivo deste artigo é, partindo de uma contextualização histórica, apresentar este texto e identificar como nele aparece figurada a Mãe de Jesus.

Präsentation für einen Vortrag im Jüdischen Institut für Erwachsenenbildung (Praterstern 1, 1020 Wien), 21.11.2018 , 18:30-20:00 Uhr: https://www.vhs.at/de/k/288465264

Mit der sagenhaften Königin von Saba wurden schon früh Beziehungen zwischen Israel und Südarabien hergestellt. Ab dem 3. Jh. n. Chr. übernahm das Reich Himyar die Vormacht in dieser Region. Damals begann auch ein religiöser Wandel, bis sich im 6. Jh. Könige Himyars zum Judentum bekannten. Ihre Regierung war kurz und wird deshalb oft übersehen, obwohl sie auch Auswirkungen auf die Entstehung des Islam hatte.

The lack of secondary scholarship, and presence of primary sources, on the late antique Ethiopian empire (Axum) is examined in contrast to the abundance of secondary scholarship on the Byzantine and Persian empires in Early Islamic Studies.

Les fouilles réalisées en 1999 à l’emplacement de la stèle
2 du site antique d’Aksum, dans le nord de l’Éthiopie, ont permis de documenter la fondation de cette stèle emportée à Rome en 1937 et de préparer son retour sur place en 2005 et sa réérection en 2008 à l’endroit exact où elle se dressait au IIIe ou IVe siècle de notre ère. Elles ont également permis de renouveler la perception que l’on a des trois stèles géantes du site, de leur conception jusqu’à leur destruction en passant par leur mode d’érection.

Arabs and Empires before Islam collates nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources which, from a variety of different perspectives, illuminate the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than 20 international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history, provide detailed commentary and analysis on this diverse selection of material. Richly-illustrated with 16 colour plates, 15 maps, and over 70 in-text images, the volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date examination of what ancient sources had to say about the politics, culture, and religion of the Arabs in the pre...

Initially published on 30th July 2005 in Buzzle
This article is the fifth of a series of nine (9) articles about the Oromo/Cushitic/Ethiopian - Amhara-Tigray/Semitic/Abyssinian divide; for these articles I used material earlier published in the polarization and the discussions posted first in Ethioindex’s Medrek forum during the first half of 2004. The first four articles are here:
https://www.academia.edu/43070555/The_Oromos_Abyssinias_oppressed_majority_on_its_way_to_Independence_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43076507/The_Oromos_Abyssinias_Oppressed_Majority_in_search_of_Post-Colonial_Historiography_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43082345/The_Oromos_Cultural_Clash_with_the_Semitic_Amhara_Abyssinian_State_Culture_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43087440/Post_colonial_African_Historiography_from_Royal_Meroe_to_Gadaa_Oromo_Republic_-_2005

Excerpt:
At this point, it must be stated that modern scholarship has good reasons to believe that the Christianization of Abyssinia involved a lot of blood and even terrible fights among opposite religious - theological fractions and conflicting tribal groups. Just before the attack against Ethiopia and the destruction of Meroe (370 CE), the Roman Emperor Constantius addressed a letter to King Aeizanas and to his brother Saizanas that dates back to 365 CE. 

With the existing textual documentation, we certainly find ourselves on historical ground, taking some distance from the otherwise pleasant Christian myth and the propaganda about the 'peaceful' christening of Abyssinia. In his letter, Emperor Constantius demanded Ezana to substitute the Arian bishop Theophilus for Frumentius (Athanasius, "Apol. ad Constantium" in Patrologia Graeca, vol. XXV, 631). This is quite enough for us to get an approximate idea!

Now, if we only transpose at the area of the Axumite Abyssinia the virulent and venomous fights and polarizations that occurred between Arians (the followers of Arius who rejected Official Roman Christianity) and their opponents (the supporters of the official Roman Christian dogma) across the Roman Empire, we realize that terrible fratricide fights took place in Axum as well, at the eve of Ezana's attack against Meroitic Ethiopia. The clashes between the Arians (considered as heretic Christians by their opponents) and the supporters of the official Roman Christian dogma are very well documented; they were frequent in many parts of the Roman Empire and remained legendary for their ferocity.

Original text written in 2003 and revised in May 2018.
This research material deals with a historical sound collection from Axum-Ethiopia consisting of 37 recorded songs and instrumental pieces on wax cylinders. The recordings were made by the German physician Erich Kaschke during the Axum expedition  carried out in 1906. The major part of this historically valuable collection contains traditional songs of the Tigray and the Amariña whereas two further songs  are performed in Arabic language.

Translated from German into English 2003/ The original recording of the Wax Cylinder collection preserved in the Berliner Phonogrammarchiv

Este ensaio tem por objetivo pensar uma “Antiguidade Tardia Multipolar”
a partir de postulados da História Global e dos Sistema-Mundo. Para tanto, selecionou-se um estudo de caso específico – a embaixada de 496 EC vinda provavelmente de Axum até Constantinopla acompanhada de duas girafas e um elefante – como caminho de investigação. A partir dele, argumentase que a diplomacia pode ser entendida um elemento de coesão estruturante para um Sistema-Mundo tardo-antigo, e que a linguagem diplomática nos permite pensar políticas de reconhecimento multipolar. Neste sentido, é preciso incluir a África (especialmente em suas porções ao sul do Saara) neste cenário amplo, e uma forma de fazê-lo é a partir da compreensão de que animais específicos, como girafas e elefantes, operam formas simbólicas de linguagem diplomática e, portanto, nos permitem vislumbrar protagonismos africanos em um âmbito mais global.

The Shay culture, whose first clues were discovered from 1998 onwards, is characterised by its collective funeral structures: tumuli, dolmens (passage graves) and hypogea. Its discovery fills a historical gap, that affected until then the Ethiopian Early/High Middle Ages, between the VIIth and the XIIIth centuries. By its very discovery, it also modifies the perception of the relationships between these  « Pagans » and the Christian and Muslim societies of those times. This chapter hence offers an overview of the sources available for the period, revealing to what extent the continuist historical narrative produced by the Christian Solomonide dynasty (from the end of the XIIIth century onwards) contributed to hide the political diversity that existed in the previous period. This documentary survey also reveals a challenge, that of conceptualizing Pagan societies that are now beginning to be documented on an archaeological level. It also offers the opportunity to cast a new light on the famous episode of Queen Gudit, in the Xth century, seeing it as an episode of Pagan « reaction, » as well as the « Pagan »  kingdom of Damot.

Two famous rupestrian sculptures of felines, one found near Kombolcha (the “lion” of Kombolcha) and the other one close to Aksum (the "lionness” of Gobedra), have been known for long. These two monuments are here described in depth, allowing detailing their morphological, technological and taphonomical features. The lion of Kombolcha, having non-realistic traits, takes part within the variability of a mythological leonine figure represented in the ancient Near and Middle-East. As for the "lionness" of Gobedra, it appears as a leopard. In addition, the description of these monuments allows supporting (on the contrary of previous suggestions) the likely association of these figures with those of a cross and to suggest their chronological attribution to the Aksumite period during the earliest times of Christian influence. Keywords: lion, leopard, feline, rock art, Aksum, paleochristianity.

Beads, next to pottery, are the most abundant archaeological material in Northeast Africa, often constituting the only evidence for direct and indirect trade contacts in archaeological records. While the connection of Northeast Africa to the Mediterranean world is well recognised, its link with Asian cultures is less known. This paper presents the chronological and spatial distribution of Indian glass beads in the territories of ancient Egypt, Nubia and Aksum during a time of intensive Indian Ocean trade. Chemical compositional analysis of selected samples confirms the provenance of monochrome and bichrome drawn and rounded beads to be of South Indian/Sri Lankan origin. Looking for a more comprehensive picture of South Indian/Sri Lankan glass bead imports to Northeast Africa, many museum and site bead collections were macroscopically studied. As a result of this research, some Indian beads are traced to Egyptian Red Sea ports in the Early Roman period that is between the first century BCE and the third century CE. However, large-scale glass bead imports are evident at sites on the Red Sea Coast and in the interior of Northeast Africa in Late Antiquity, i.e. between the fourth and the sixth century CE.

Initially published on 1st August 2005
This article is the seventh of a series of nine (9) articles about the Oromo/Cushitic/Ethiopian - Amhara-Tigray/Semitic/Abyssinian divide; for these articles I used material earlier published in the polarization and the discussions posted first in Ethioindex’s Medrek forum during the first half of 2004. The first six articles are here:
https://www.academia.edu/43070555/The_Oromos_Abyssinias_oppressed_majority_on_its_way_to_Independence_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43076507/The_Oromos_Abyssinias_Oppressed_Majority_in_search_of_Post-Colonial_Historiography_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43082345/The_Oromos_Cultural_Clash_with_the_Semitic_Amhara_Abyssinian_State_Culture_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43087440/Post_colonial_African_Historiography_from_Royal_Meroe_to_Gadaa_Oromo_Republic_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43092501/The_Meroitic_Origin_of_the_Oromos_and_the_Christianization_of_Africa_-_2005

https://www.academia.edu/43098041/Exploring_the_Socio-historical_divide_Semitic_Amharas_and_Cushitic_Oromos_-_2005

Excerpt:
Last but not least, Ezana's control did not reach further in the north, the old Kushitic capital of Napata (present day Karima), let alone Meroitic territories north of Napata, i.e. Dongola, Kerma and the 3rd and 2nd cataracts' area. A few successors to Ezana may have kept that part of Ethiopia (: Sudan) under their control, but after the middle of the 5th century and the rise of the three Christian Ethiopian kingdoms in Sudan, i.e. Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia, the Axumite kingdom of Abyssinia did not control any area on the present day territory of Sudan or, to put it otherwise, any area belonging to the ancient Meroitic kingdom of Ethiopia.

Consequently, the Abyssinians had – already by that time – lost any legitimate right to the name of 'Ethiopia'; we know of course that the kings of Axum kept using it among their royal titles, but this propaganda was related to the Christianization of their state. The use of the name 'Ethiopia' that they were making was rather a distortion of Biblical dimensions, since according to their erroneous and falsified interpretations the christening of Abyssinia was 'prophesized' long ago by means of the Biblical verse stating that Kush (rendered as 'Ethiopia' in the Septuagint Greek translation of the 70 Jewish elders whom Ptolemy II invited in Alexandria for the purpose of translation) "will extend its hand to the Lord".

Of course, all this is just medieval non-sense! You cannot make 'use' of a verse stating that another country will accept a faith, and pretend that this verse refers to you because you accepted that faith, whereas the other country did not! Either you invade the other country or not, you prove nothing! Whereas it is evident that there were state reasons for the Abyssinian invasion of Ethiopia (Meroe), a theological dimension cannot be denied to that attack of Ezana. In any case, it is only a degenerate, childish attempt to attempt to vindicate the Biblical prophecy about Ethiopia (: Sudan) for Axum (: Abyssinia). For both, the Old Testament and the New Testament, Axumite Abyssinia simply does not exist!

Two famous rupestrian sculptures of felines, one found near Kombolcha (the “lion” of Kombolcha) and the other one close to Aksum (the "lionness” of Gobedra), have been known for long. These two monuments are here described in depth, allowing detailing their morphological, technological and taphonomical features. The lion of Kombolcha, having non-realistic traits, takes part within the variability of a mythological leonine figure represented in the ancient Near and Middle-East. As for the "lionness" of Gobedra, it appears as a leopard. In addition, the description of these monuments allows supporting (on the contrary of previous suggestions) the likely association of these figures with those of a cross and to suggest their chronological attribution to the Aksumite period during the earliest times of Christian influence. Keywords: lion, leopard, feline, rock art, Aksum, paleochristianity.

Στα Απρόσιτα Βουνά και τα Αχανή Οροπέδια της Αβησσυνίας και του Θρύλου

In Search of the Lost Ark
In Abyssinia’s Legendary, Unreachable Mountains and Vast Plateaus

Άρθρο του Μουχάμαντ Σαμσαντίν Μεγαλομμάτη στο περιοδικό Τρίτο Μάτι, 36 (Ιούνιος 1994), σελ. 48-55
Article by Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis in the monthly review Trito Mati (Third Eye), 36 (June 1994), p. 48-55

First published online on 7th June 2021 here:
https://profmegalommatistextsingreek.wordpress.com/2021/06/07/αναζητώντας-την-χαμένη-κιβωτό-της-δια/

Abyssinia, Ethiopia, Axum, Meroe, Yemen, History and current Politics
By Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Several misconceptions diffused by colonial historians and totalitarian governments need immediate refutation.

Ancient Ethiopia and its borders

Part of the Abyssinian state propaganda advances the idea that in the Antiquity “the Cushites populated the whole of Eastern Africa” and that “the majority lived in present day Abyssinia”. Even worse, these falsifiers diffuse the idea that at those days “Sudan and Ethiopia were one country” to add that “Abyssinians were just a few Sabaean (Yemenite) refugees who intermingled with the Cushite population”.

This is absolutely wrong, although there are some correct elements in it. In addition, it is said in a very misleading way! Even more, it is self-contradictory.
First published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 21st April 2004
Republished in the present form on 13th January 2010 by
http://betterlesson.com/community/document/329273/american-chronicle-abyssinia-ethiopia-axum-meroe-yemen-history-and-modern-politics-pdf

Paper presented as speech in several academic conferences

"Die Walzensammlung „Kaschke-Abessinien“ beinhaltet insgesamt 37 Tonaufnahmen, die 1906 in Axum, Äthiopien  entstanden sind. Die Aufnahmen beinhalten traditionelle Gesänge überwi
egend in Tigriña und Amariña. Zwei weitere Gesänge „mohamedanischer Schüler in einer Koranschule“  (Walzenaufnahmen 13 und 14; IDs 6 und 7) wurden in arabischer Sprache ausgeführt. Es sind Gesänge, die sowohl solistisch als auch im Wechsel zwischen einem Vorsänger und einer Gruppe vorgetragen werden, u.a. Liebes-, Kriegs-, Jagd-, Hochzeits-, Feiertags- und Unterhaltungsgesänge.
Die zur Begleitung von einem Teil der Gesänge verwendeten Musikinstrumente sind zum einen die einsaitige Kasten-Spießlaute Masinqo  und zum anderen die Trommel Kebero . Weitere Begleitungen wurden durch das Klatschen und das Trillern (Walzenaufnahmen 8 und 11, Ids 3 und 4) ausgeführt. Ferner sind zwei auf der Flöte, Washint, gespielte Instrumentalstücke in der Sammlung enthalten."

The “Berliner Phonogram Archiv” which was established in 1900 possesses one of the earliest sound documents on wax cylinders collected with a phonograph from the end of the 19th until the mid of the 20th Centuries. These historical sound documents were recorded during expeditions carried out at different times and in various countries of the world. One of these collections refers to sound materials from Ethiopia like for instance  the collection of the German Diplomat Friedrich Rosen recorded in 1905 comprising 46 recordings, the collection of Dr. Erich Kaschke recorded in 1906 consisting of 37 recordings, the collection of Weiss recorded between 1921 and 1924 consisting of ca. 35 recorded materials, the collection of Grühl recorded in 1926 consisting of 6 sound documents as well as the collection of Dr. Erich Kaschke consisting of about 37 songs and instrumental pieces from Axum, the capital of the North Ethiopian region, Tigray in 1906. In this paper this collection will be discussed. Dr. Erich Kaschke was neither a musician nor an ethnomusicologist. However, on the Axum expedition, lead by Professor Enno Littman, Kaschke was one of the active participants, namely a staff physician and a collector of ethnographic, zoological and phonographic items simultaneously (Littmann 1913). With regard to Kaschke’s activities during the Axsum expedition, it is predictable that he might already have taken general guide lines about the collecting methods and field research in Germany before leaving for Axum.

A 1996 paper directing a new way to obtain the restitution of the Mussolini stolen Axum Obelisk. Success: a protest organised by Richard Pankhurst in London, not Rome, was the turning point of the campaign. I was, then, the only foreigner, Italian, in the Obelisk return committee, and presented a repeatedly televised proposal on the same note to the Ethiopian Parliament.

Description and Date of MS:

This unique manuscript, in the Old Scots tongue, contains one of the largest redactions of the 'Life of and Martyrdom of St.Matthew'. There are a number of earlier manuscripts of his life from the 11th and 12th century written in the Old English or Latin, however most are much shorter accounts. The life is a first century account written contemporaneous to the events and personages who are named and appear therein.

Brief overview of account:

The account itself  draws out the apostolic sojourn of the Apostle and First Evangelist St. Matthew, who is the first gospel writer and first evangelist to leave the Asian continent (Asia Minor). The scene is set in Æthiopia in the royal and capital city of the time. A city which was located on expedition by the author in 2011 G.C. The focus of the text is to establish events that occurred in Æthiopia at the hand of the Apostle, including the conversion of the people and nobility, the establishment of the Æthiopian (Orthodox) Church, and finally the Martyrdom of the Apostle of Æthiopia himself.

Contents of book:

The Translator makes the first known translation of the Unique 14th century Old Scots text. He also edits the text and collates it, dividing the work into books, chapters &c. Explanatory, etymological and historical notes also accompany the text and translation. The original text appears on one page with the translation on the other. The volume also contains a full microfilm copy of the entire text in its manuscript form.       

This work is of the chiefest interest to the Old Scots language and literature, Early Judaeo-Christian and Apostolic history, Æthiopian studies and Geography and Archaeology, and ancient Ægyptian History and so on.

[ 'Life & Martyrdom of S. Matthew, the Apostle of Æthiopia: Translated, Edited & Collated from a significant Unique 14th Century Old Scots Manuscript in the Cambridge University Library, with explanatory and historical notes and exposition' Translated by Rev. Dn. Gabra 'AGZI'AABHIR JR (forthcoming)]

"Mediterranean Sea – Red Sea." Summary: The article discusses the shipping from Mediterranean countries to India through Red Sea and in antiquity based on the analysis of the document "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea” (Περίπλους τῆς ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης).