Egyptologists Debate Book’s Claims of Amara and Akele-Gezai Founding Ancient Gebts
After the release of the new book, “Amarigna & Tigrigna Qal Hieroglyphs for Beginners,” Egyptologists at the HallofMaat.com Egyptology forum have begun debating the book’s revolutionary claims that ancient Amara and Akele-Gezai merchants founded ancient Gebts. The book, available on Amazon.com and at the publisher’s site (books.ancientgebts.org), is an introduction to Amarigna and Tigrigna written in hieroglyphs dating as far back as 5100 years ago. Its claims go against nearly everything that has been written about Amarigna, Tigrigna, as well as ancient Gebts.
“The ancient Gebts language is generally considered to be a ‘dead’ language by Egyptologists,” says Legesse Allyn, the book’s author, “so I can see how they couldn’t quite understand why I would claim it to be surviving in two living languages, Amarigna and Tigrigna, spoken by over 30 million people today. Even Ethiopians and Eritreans believe Amarigna and Tigrigna to be only several thousand years old,” he says. “It just must have been a real surprise for everybody to read that the founding languages of ancient Gebts came from ancient merchants traveling to Gebts from today’s regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea.”
Legesse goes on to say how interesting the debate at the HallofMaat.com forum is. “The Egyptologists there, more than anything, sound outraged and even personally insulted that the ancient Gebts language could be attributed to ancestors of today’s Eritreans and Ethiopians,” he states. “They kept telling me I had to prove to them this or that, when by learning Amarigna and Tigrigna for themselves, they can prove to themselves the validity of my research findings.”
According to Legesse, the purpose of the book is not for everyone just to simply say, “Okay, he’s right.” The book is meant to lead Ethiopians and Eritreans to learning to read hieroglyphs and for Egyptologists to learn the Amarigna and Tigrigna languages — to help understand what happened
5100 years ago in ancient Gebts. And reading the postings in the forum, at least one of the forum’s Egyptologists posts that she is now, in fact, learning Amarigna for that very purpose.
“Not only are Egyptologists learning Amarigna and Tigrigna,” Legesse says, “but it seems that everyday I receive e-mails from enthusiastic Ethiopians and Eritreans who tell me they have bought the book and are now learning to read hieroglyphs. Nobody, it seems, wants to be left behind, especially Eritreans and Ethiopians who are snapping up the book in both its print and instant downloadable version.”
(For more information or to buy the book visit ancientgebts.com)
37 thoughts on “Ethiopian book ignites scorn, outrage among Egyptologists”
Don’t understand why this author is ignoring more than 4 million Guraghes, who were the center of Axumite civilization and in fact root back to Gura, Akele-Gezai.
this is interesting i have seen a few egyptian symbols and heiroglyphs and heard how it sounds it has the tone and the dialect rhythem of Amharic and Tigrina
Elias tnx for posting this article pls keep it going.
also i want to know what role the Agew and Geeaz have in this theory
Two things:
First, There is ample historical evidence that the Guraghes did infact originate from the present day Eritrea a few centuries ago. The cultural, religious(mostly) and language similarities, however indicate that their origin is the lands inhabited by the Tigre (as opposed to Tigrinya). The popular claim that they’re from the small village of Gurae in Akele Guzai stems from nothing more than the Phonetic proximity between Gurae and Guraghe.
Second, there is no such region as Akele-Gezai. It’s Akele-Guzai. Seemingly a simple typographical error, but a very significant difference especially for the natives of the region.
Selam, Tenkir:
Thanks for mentioning Gura.
This first book does not include proper names, so therefore it does not include Gura. But people will be interested to read what I will be writing about Gura in relation to ancient Gebts and the hieroglyph for Gura. It is very exciting!
Thanks again.
Legesse
http://www.ancientgebts.org
We have always known that Mr. Legesse. Our people (forefathers) are the people that built the Giza pyramids. It is a matter of time once again before they credit us for having to bring civilization to the world.
Tenkir here we go again lol what about Guraghes ? where were they in this picture?
Have you read the book?
Elias I am regular visitor of your site. Please, try to assess some facts about the history of the Gurage language in relation to Tigrigna and Amarigna in particular and in relation to Sematic in general. It will be fine if you consult some historians.
Thankyou in Advance!
How on earth an egypt (Gebts or Misr) who ruled ethiopian orthodox since 1950s is founded by amhara and tigre? The converse could be true, due to some historical relation between Yeman (of arab origin) and Egypt, egypt dominated the socio-political and religion of amhara and tigre (of arab origin). This does not mean amhara and tigre dominated daily life of Egypt. This is simply inferiority complex and trying your best to reverse the course of history. Moreover, ancient Gebst language is kushitic but amahara and tigre is purely semetic.
Legesse,
Thanks. Hope your next book will not leave out others who speak geez affiliated languages if you really want to research geez.
Anonymous,
I exactly understand why you want to claim the Guraghes originated from Eritrea “a few centuries ago”. Grow up!
well its amazing,the relationship betwe en the two amarigna and tigrigna languages with anciant egyptian.its a great honor and credit to the book author.as a tigrigna language speaker i found many words exactly the same .thank you Dr. for your reserch and hard work.
Ato legesse did his best and he is the first person to bring this thing to light. If one of you thinks he hasn’t done well or you feel left out. Please do your own research or shut up otherwise. Speak out of your knowledge not out of your ignorance. First buy his book if you want him does more research and then wait what he will bring forth in the future. If you have documents that you think helps him in his research send him your document in his e-mail, don’t bother otherwise. We just developed a habit to criticizing every one prematurely …. What a culture…. What a generation
What a load of rubbish this is,to claim amhara 5100 yrs?who you fooling?the geez language is strictly related to the agazians..last time i checked no one in ethiopia are desandants of the agazian tribe which were known by many names upto 6000 years ago (sumerian,pre-cannanites,tigrete,xasa,agazian),how could a mix of agaw based ethnic group with a flavour of al-habshat tribe adopting the geez language in 300ad (time of ezana),amhara (agaw +geez at the time of za-agwe rule)then adopting the tigrigna language in 1500’s after the defeat of gragn come and claim the to be desandants of the agazians?there is no mensai or other famous agazian subclans lineage south of the mereb this is a disgrace for the author to claim the agazian ancestory,he wrote a book by collecting few false theories on the internet,this guy is insane obviously he hasnt been to eritrea for a trip to the north east and a chat with an mensai habab elder would tell him what he needs to know…IM JUST P***ED OFF HE MENTIONED ERITREA ALONG WITH HIS STUPIDITY TO HAVE AN ARGUMENT,THE ANCIENT EGYPTIONS HAS ALWAYS BEEN AN ALLY AND ONLY FRIEND OF THE AGAZIANS,they were known as sumerians and were considered the closest kins )through canaan/ham and egytpions through myzriam ham)to the anceint egyptions,they were allied when they invaded babel and thats when the name was given to them as its a kurdish name and the river tigris was named after them,they adopted the semitic tongue of the conquered place (babel) and mixed with the babylonians,chaldeans,assyrians but according to the ancient egyptions they were considered the same race as the beja and phonecians with almost the same language,when the assyrians took babel few hunderd years later they allowed them to stay but slowly moved west then east along the western arabian coast to yemen hence they called themself “agazian” agee-zay which means “nomads” in tigre language they also were the one’s along with the ancient egyptions who freed jureslem in 700ad from the assyrian invasion ,between 3000-3500 yrs ago the crossed the red sea into eritrea with the last clan to cross over was the bani amer al hidarbi or HIDAREB just under 1000 years ago,YOU CANT BE AGAW+ALHABESHAT THEN BE BEJA/AGAZIAN TOO THEY ARE COMPLETELY 2 DIFFRENT ETHNIC GROUP WITH COMPLETELY 2 DIFFRENT ANCESTORY/LANGUAGE AND ANCEINT HISTORY.HALENGA+BANI AMER+HABAB+KABESA TIGRIGNA+ASA WURTA ETC.=AGAZIANS ANCESTORY,AMAHARA=AGAW+AL HABSHAT..who cares about ancient egyptions and why is everyone trying to claim a link with them?they are dust and voiceless rocks THEY HAVE FAILED TO PASS THEIR CULTURE.
10#don’t twist says:
Election fever!
Well the whole hoyaa hoyee is not about any real historical facts at this particular time but is only wild propaganda to claim Kushitic history as semitic grandeur for robbing the dying empire.
I have found out that even Japanese language professes more similarities on the issue than Amharic and Tigrigna. Don’t cheat us.
“While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.” Lewis Hine
Lewis Hine :)
Someone like Legesse, who has the patience to research and publish books, should have the stamina for feedback/critique and that is what he did. However what defines Ethiopia is “elites” who are “know it all” type and don’t feel somebody can provide feedback or if their domain is represented that others don’t count. We know where that definition of Ethiopia took us.
Thank you, Teyimu.
Legesse
[email protected]
Ato Legesse thank you for bringing this information to our attention. Please don’t read the negative comments.And keep up the good job.
More supporting info for Legesse. Twenty years ago, after observing the physical similary between south Egyptian (Nubians)and Ethiopian, I asked some Nubians about their cultures. I found out that Ethiopians and Nubians have a lot in common. Food, clothing, and behaviors. Nubians live in south Egypt or the banks of lower Egypt. Please, try to read a bit about Nubians. A lot is gonna come supporting Legesse.
Tenkir:
You are so right.
And some people, who never did a single independent research on their own, other than reading books written by or influenced by the West, immediately want to start quoting old, misinformed, crunchy, dead guys.
It takes a lot to do independent research, not influenced by the West. It takes a lot to have your own mind and decide for yourself.
It takes a whole lot less to depend on Wiki. And it takes even less to shout and scream out old, crunchy ideas whose monopoly on the truth is over with. These are the same things I told the people in the Egyptology forum. Read for yourself…
http://debate.firstwrittenlanguage.com
http://debate2.firstwrittenlanguage.com
Stop relying on old, crunchy, and often racist dead guys who want to make everyone believe that everything great in Africa came from outside of Africa. Ta_Xasa and Don’t Twist, have some pride in yourselves!
I’m so tired of hearing and reading the lies about what and who came from Yemen, and Sabeans, Semetics, and everything, everyone, and everyplace else. Ta_Xasa and Don’t Twist, if you want to be from somewhere else, please go there.
Don’t any Ethiopians and Eritreans believe that ANYTHING originated in the regions of today’s Ethiopia and Eritrea? Everything came from somewhere else???
SMH…
Legesse
dont twist,what the hell are you talking about,you are the one who is suffering from infirierity complex,take it easy man,Egypt had never colonized habesha poeple.try to read more about real history.
Why do so many Egyptologists forgoe studying languages like the Gebts? It beggars belief. If anyone would like to get in touch with me about writing on the subject for our site at Heritage Key, my email’s [email protected]. It’s a fascinating subject and one which needs a lot more coverage than it gets.
To be fair and balanced…..A modern alphabetical letter of Geez can not preceed a more ancient symbolic gibts letter.
But credit should be given to geez alphabet for introducing a modernized form of alphabet of which ancient manuscripts were stolen from DebreBizen monastery in Eritrea by the Europeans in the late 19th century and Haileselassie cleaned it up after them . but there is one thing that stays put for millenia….The truth.
Legesse,
Many many thanks for your fascinating and awesome research. Ethiopians should be really proud, just as “Dinknesh/Lucy” was discovered in Ethiopia as the origin of mankind, that one of ours is reaffirming our ancestry. I am also so proud of your positive attitude. Please ignore those who try to denigrate your work. They are unknowingly revealing their own ignorance. There is also an unfair attack on ‘elitists’ above. It is really sad that Ethiopians often find it in themselves to criticize the competency of others.
Legesse, I wish you much success in your future endeavours.
Legesse,
Are you affiliated with one of US research universities, btw? You need to know there are Semitic research centers in many schools including ivy leagues….and a proposal from you will attract them. I guess you can contact VOA and other Ethiopian media to promote this book more….Good luck
When we say about Egyptians, we have to be clear about who is an Egyptian?
Before, they were Ethiopians there and they created the first well developed human civilization ever (Gebet Civilization). Giza Pyramid which is the biggest and the most dynamic where King Khufu body was rested (because of he was a black man, his body was stolen from the tomb in order to hide the truth that the Egyptian civilization was created by blacks) is called Giza. Giza means in Amharic/Geez/, “Rule”. Therefore, the best known and biggest Pyramid in Egypt is called with Amharic name, many thousands years back before any immigrant including the Arabs and Ottomans came there.
Because of Gebet was the centre of the earth, all immigrants came from all over the world. The First mass immigrants were the Greeks. Egypt means Nile in Greeks. All modern egypt name are given by Greeks. The Greeks changed the name gebet To Nile (Egypt); knowing Egypt existence was/is 100% lying on the Nile. Then, the Romans, Then after the birth of Mohammed (623?) the Arabs to spread Islam (in the name of Islam), then since the 11/12 century, the Turks Immigrants came there as slave labourers. They served as slaves for 300 years. And then they allied with Turkey (back home) and they occupied Egypt and the entire places all over the world in the name of Ottomans.
Less than 10% of Egyptians are today Arabs/Arab Descendents. The rests are: The Coptics, Blacks/Black descendents, Turks, Syrians, Romans, Palestinians and the likes. But mistakenly we think the Egyptians are Arabs, No. They are not. The Arabs came there less than 1300 years A GO. Pyramid, pharaoh, EGYPTIANS CIVILIZATION AND TEH LIKES Were THERE FOR 5000 YEARS. So, the LATE COMERS HAve NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Destroying ALL IMAGES THAT ARE telling the truth that blacks were/are the owners of the Egyptians civilization will not be hidden forever. The truth will never disappear.
How it is possible almost all Egyptian civilization images do have dreadlocks (Ras Tafarians hair style), if they were naturally with long hair?
How do you identify human race? Is it with the colour of the skin? No. Skin color is like a cloth, it can change its colour even with sun heat.
Eyes and hair colours are the two very basic natural phenomenons deciding about the human race. What kind eyes and hair colours did have the ancient Egyptians? Of course, brown eyes and black hair like you, me and many of us.
Let them discuss to hide the truth. But the truth will never diaper but resting until it gets its time.
Selam, Tenkir:
Maybe you can e-mail me more about what you are suggesting. My e-mail is [email protected]. Thanks!
Legesse
Great information, Genanew!
It is true that Gebts went through all kinds of name changes over these 5000 years.
Today, most people think Gebts is officially named “The Republic of Egypt”, but it is not. Its official name today is…
“The Arab Republic of Egypt”
Did you read that? The “Arab Republic”.
So forget for a minute what I write about 5100 years ago. This is 2009 and who knew that little tidbit of information about our neighboring African country to the north?
The point is, with all of our modern media we have today (TV, print, satellite, radio, Internet) we don’t even know the important facts about Gebts today (and most Americans don’t know there are cities in African countries).
So if we don’t know the present, how are we expecting to know the past?
I believe we get to our future by knowing our past, because it is in our past that we know how great our capability for the present and future really is.
Legesse
Legesse needs to do a more thorough research to back Up his sweeping claim that tigrigna and amharic are the same language ancient egyptians spoke. Among the things he can do to strengthen his claim is to immerse himself in learning and being fluent in hieroglyphics reading and writing( which is not the case at the moment). egyptologists won’t consider him and his claims legit until he cAn definitely show that he has near total mastery of the subject matter he is talking about. Cherry-picking and mix-matching words words from one language to another another is not going to cut it.
His claims are suspect at best considering the amount of linguistic research done on Amharic and tigrigna showing their linguistic bloodlines from geez as recently as 7 AD.
Abebe:
You say…
> egyptologists won’t consider him
> and his claims legit until he cAn
> definitely show that he has near
> total mastery of the subject matter
> he is talking about.
First of all, I have nothing to “prove” to Egyptologists. My book is not intended for Egyptologists and its not written for them. Frankly, I don’t care if a single Egyptologist buys or reads the book. I am not interested in that.
“Egyptology” means “the study of Egypt”, where “Egypt” is a foreigner’s mispronunciation and misspelling of “Gebts”. I’m not interested in studying Gebts from a foreigner’s perspective or through the foggy lens of foreigners. Maybe you are interested in that.
Maybe you even believe in the Egyptologist-created myths, such as the one “Ra the Sun God.” Nobody from ancient Gebts prayed to the Sun. These are made up lies about the great ancient civilization to dehumanize them and make them look crude.
Now, if Egyptologists eventually support and expand my research fine, but that is not why I published the book. But it is not Egyptologists — foreigners — who need to expand my research. We are the ones who should be looking into it. We are the ones who have something to gain when proved accurate.
Why do we always wait for the West’s approval??? hahaha… What a joke. Have some pride in yourself.
Second, Egyptologists already know how to read hieroglyphs, at least to the extent they know how to. They are the ones who need to prove to themselves my claims by learning Amarigna and Tigrigna, like at least one HallofMaat.com Egyptologist has said to be doing.
In doing so, they’ll learn to accurately read hieroglyphs and thus the ancient Gebts inscriptions. They will also be able to truly understand the people, the story, and the real history of Gebts, who were regular everyday people like you and me. And they won’t have to keep making things up.
So please don’t come in here with all their “prove your existence to me” talk. It is ridiculous.
As for you, I’m sure you probably know Amarigna (because of your nick). Now all you have to do is learn to read hieroglyphs to prove my research to yourself one way or another. But be careful that the teacher doesn’t learn from the students.
Scratching your head? Let me clarify…
If the hieroglyphs are in fact Amarigna and Tigrigna as my research shows, you’d be making a big mistake learning to read hieroglyphs from people who want the ancient Gebts language to be a “dead” language. People who only say it is a “dead” language so they can keep it a “mystery”, keep us from seeing it is our language, and keeping their monopoly on a language that isn’t even theirs — cultural colonization.
Only Africans can say whether it is “dead” or living — not Westerners. Ancient Gebts was, after all, African and the language can only exist in an African language.
And seriously, Abebe, being on the West’s dog leash does you nor us any good. So keep barking if you want.
Legesse
Im disappionted that my 3 replies hasnt been approved by the admin…really shame not to let myself heard in this unrealistic fantasy this discussion is about..ill even be more suprised if this post makes it…the writer of this book has no idea about what he wrote,neither he speaks tigrigna or an expert in that language or its history..its just a shame we are having loose ethiopian individuals writing about this subject without knowing what they talking about,and its a shame involving “ERITREA” to try make his argument more debatable without consenting with expert eritrean and eritrean lingusitic professors on this matter just rather shooting his ideas with few bits and pieces he finds on blogs in the internet to make a book.his main argument is there are many words familiar with the ancient egyptions while there are around 10 languages that is much closer,tabdawi is 70% IDENTICAL to ancient egyptions and not words BUT SENTENCES,the fidal-lita is originally from hylographics not the other way around passed mostly by the meriotic (24 characters) writing system and 4 characters from the sabeans writing systems,of which 2 were dropped to make it 26 over the years…SAD SAD SAD to whoever wrote this book YOU ARE THE LAUHING STOCK OF THE ACADEMIC ELITE NOW AND NO WONDER YOUR ARE NOT SELLING ANY COPIES YOUR RESEARCH,ANGLE,FACTS is a disgrace.
Ta-Xasa:
Here’s a challenge I don’t think you can handle…
… Your turn to write a book on the subject.
Think you can handle that? Or do you just blabber on and on and complain your ridiculous posts are not approved?
Write a book like I did. I’ll be the first to buy it if you do. But we know you never will. Talking is easier for you.
Legesse
Ta Xasa:
The book is selling fine. Sorry to disappoint you and your negative attitude.
You sound like a child.
I hate to even have to respond to your silliness.
Legesse
Thank you for the writer
But I didnot read the book.Because it is inacceessible here in ethiopia.It is very unfortunate for me and i real feel disappointed as not to participate in my own history.Please the writer,try to distribute here in ethiopia with our standard.
My understanding is that ever since any non African started writing about Africa, it was with the intention to show ignorance and luck of civilization. It is a collective prejudice against the Continent. If anything magnificent as the Pyramids is found, then it is attributed to non-Africans. This has been the trend for the past 2,000 years. Of course Ethiopians and other Africans have had their glories days and I am not surprised that Ethiopians were in Egypt.
Its sad to see how brainwashed some fellow Habeshas are. If you read this book and an ACTUAL non Eurocentric book while taking into consideration the book of Genesis and Arab history you find that several sons of Joktan, son of Shem, son of Noah, traveled across the Red Sea into present day Djibouti & Eritrea and traveled down the Nile and created Gebts. The sons of Mizram, son of Ham, son of Noah, were the first to occupy Egypt but got forced out and moved into the desert and became a tribe of Berbers. Now I don’t know if amaringa & tirgriyna were spoken at that early of time or maybe if it was 2 dialects of Ge’ez that would develop into 2 related languages later on in history. After the Persians conquered Egypt, most of the population moved to their ancestral home “the land of punt” (Eritrea/North Ethiopia) and created the kingdom of Sheba, Axumite Empire, etc. The remaining Habeshas mixed with the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, and Arabs and became the Copts. All the different languages that were established throughout the years corrupted there Ge’ez and made the Coptic language.
It would make more sense to connect Hieroglyphs with Ge’ez than Amharic or even Tigrinya
It’s pretty well known Tigrinya didn’t show up until the 10th century AD with Amharic following a little after
What are your thoughts on this Legesse?