Amara and Tigre of today’s Ethiopia and Eritrea, were the founders of ancient Gebts over 5100 years ago for the primary purpose of selling goods and produce. For more information and lists of ancient Amarigna and Tigrigna words written 5100 years ago,
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13 thoughts on “Video: Amarigna/Tigrigna – 1st written language of commerce”
aye Elias, why do you embarass yourself with this kind of nonsense. Everybody knows Tigres and Amharas came from South Arabia – Yemen, to be spesific. On the oter hand the original Ethiopia belongs to Oromos and Kushitic Oromos used to live in Mereo and also were the 3rd and 12th dynasty in Egypt.
http://wysinger.homestead.com/12thdynasty.html
Ya let us also claim the Persian civilization to be influenced by us. hahahahaha
By the way Amharic and Tigrigna sprung out of the much older and well developed Geez. During the Egyptian periods of the pharos, our fore-fathers spoke Geez, Sabean and Greek; though, Greek was spoken by the elite in the Ethiopian empire who have come to appreciate the helinistic culture as an enlightened one. To suggest that Amharic and Tigrigna were commonly used during the B.C eras in Ethiopia let alone in lower and upper Egypt is nothing but a day dream perhaps with some pipe filled with marijuana. Amharic and Tigrigna came to existance well after christianity arrived to Ethiopia which is around the 4th century A.D and that’s why we had the holy bible interpreted into Geez and in those times, Egypt had become a christian state as well with paganism still prevalent. In our height as a powerful Etiopian empire, we may have influenced some Egyptian civilization and perhaps we may even have benefited from their civilizaion however, if there was such intermingling of culture and civilization, it could only be when Ethiopia was in her might as a powerful empire and that period was well before the arrival of amharic and tigrigna which is after the begining of the 6th century A.D and by then Ethiopia’s significance had started to decline as Islam had started to spread across the middle east, north Africa and east Africa. Therefore, when you present a case, need to produce the evidence other wise, it may not even be qualified to get a response. We have a history that we are proud of and a history that is the bedrock of the Ethiopian civilization; we know what is ours and we know what is not and we are grateful of what our fathers handed down to us.
“Amara and Tigre of today’s Ethiopia and Eritrea”
Who said Amara and Tigre of today is the same 5.1k years ago? What about Gurage and others?
Very intersting disstoration of history. There was no a country ” eritrea” before 1889. An italian’s parliament gave the name ” ERITREA” IN 1889. AND RAS ALULLA ABANEGA WAS THE FIRST ADMINITRATOR OF ERITREA, BEFORE ALL TEGERGNA SPEAKERS WERE TOGETHER.
This is complete hogwash.
First and foremost, Amharic and Tigrigna are new languages in fact not older than a thousand year (give and take one or two hundred years).
2nd, when Egypt was a colossal super power, the Amharas and the Tigres haven’t even yet emerged as distinct linguistic class of people. In fact most of the highlands that are now the land of the Amhara and Tigre, were perhaps the lands of some of the Pigmoid or Nilotic tribes.
3rd, Amharas and Tigres have never been a naval force or sea traders. In fact Amharas and Tigres are terrified of the sea. Of course the Axumites were famous for their naval exploits and trades to the Far East, but Axumites were not Amharas or Tigres. The Amahara and the Tigres haven’t yet emerged. When they did, Axum was no more the power and center of slave-owning civilization it once was. In fact the decline and fall of Axum was the very reason for the emergence of Amhara and Tigre – linguistically Semetized Cushitic people.
4th, the Egyptian script, has no roots south of Aswan. Any Egyptian script seen it present day Sudan, actually had their origins in Egypt. Besides, the Egyptian civilization was the source of inspiration to the Ancient Ethiopians. Any relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia, had to do with their close and long lasting relationships, even conquests. For example, the Ancient Ethiopians, managed to conquer Egypt at least a couple of times. The 18th and 25th Egyptian dynasties were actually Ethiopian. Here, don’t confuse ancient Ethiopia with modern day Ethiopia. Those Ethiopians were the Black skinned southern Egyptians and North Sudanese, who were largely related to modern day tribes like the Nubians of the Sudan and Egypt. But, for all the exhaustive researches, no one still was able to document the early development of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. In China for example, they have found pro-Chinese scripts, in Mesopotamia, the pre-modern scripts of all the Semitic languages, back to the days before the Phoenicians and Babylonians or the Acadians/Sumerians. But not the development of Egyptian. To this day we don’t know how Egyptian developed over the millenniums. It couldn’t have suddenly emerged out of the blue fully developed. But, that is also another reason to count out the modern day Amharas and Tigres. The ancient Egyptian origin was buried deep into the cradle of human prehistoric period, way before our Amhara and Tigre ancestors. In those days, let alone the Amharas or Tigres, even the Sabeans and Agazeans – whose language and culture immensely influenced Amharas and Tigres – haven’t yet became a distinct culture or tribes They haven’t enven arrived to the present day Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia. The acestors of this Southern Arabian tribes were still in north Arabia near the twin rivers of Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and Tigres.
5th, even though, Ancient Egyptian was part of the Afro-Asiatic family group, it is not a Semitic language, whereas Amharic and Tigrigna are now classified as Semitic languages. Ancient Egyptian was more related to other Hametic and Cushitic groups like the ancient Libyan and Berber languages, which are all north African in origin. No southern link, mind you. Ok, recently there is a tendency towards theorizing Ethiopia to be the origin of Semitic languages. But still, it doesn’t say anything about the origin of ancient Egyptian, a non Semitic language(recently I heard some argue it was Semitic). Even if that is true, we are talking about the country, Ethiopia. Not the people, Amhara and Tigre. You see land and people of Ethiopia, are ancient, but Amhara and Tigre are modern, as a distinct ethnic group, I mean. But their ancestors lived in this land, we now call Ethiopia, right from the beginning of time. Could Ethiopia might have been the origin of ancient Egyptians, yes, absolutely possible. Could Amharas or Tigres be its ancestors, NO way, Chronologically impossible. It is like saying a grand daughter gave birth to her own grand mother.
6th, Ancient Egyptians may have other origins in Africa. Like the Wolof of Senegal. Just go and do some research, you will be surprised by the relationship of these two languages. Mind you, Wolof is not even referred as one of the Afro-Asiatic languages, not that I know of. The similarity in Grammar and syntax is overwhelming. A lot of people said so much about the similarity. Go and surprise yourself.
I could go on. But, I am tired and bored to write on.
Actually, I agree with the clip. It may be true and reflects the facts on the ground. The only mistake may be, not using the word Geez, denoting the ancient langauge that most of the afro-semetic people shared including: Amharic, Tigrigna, Tigre, Gurage and others.
Given the word “Ethiopia” according to the ancient Greeks representing all dark skinned people south of the old Egypt, it represents correctly most of the Nubians, present Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.
However, this is one theory among many because the other one includes the issue of Sabaens in present Yemen and the Geez characters of Yemen.
I actually agree with most of the guys commented here but only one point that I can’t accept, Ethiopians were not Nubians ormodern day Sudans, in Ethiopian history, there are accounts that clearly puts that the Nubian Kingdom was destroyed by the Ethiopian King, then how can a Nubian destroy a Nubian? The history puts it as “Ethiopians destoyed Nubians”. And yet again, we don’t have a single trace of Egptian bloodline, the only reason that made Ethiopia and Egypt to co-exist without huge problem is the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s dependence on Coptic Church, see of St Mark since the Ethiopian “SinkSar” orders Ethiopns not to have own Popes but that the head of these sister Churches must be the Pope on the Seat of St Mark, founder of the African Christianity. Other than this, Ethiopia as never been influenced by the civilization of Egypt or anything since our own civilizations are our own that the rest of the world was not able to mimic it. Plus most of the early civilization traces and evidences were destroyed by Yodit Gudit and Mohammed Gragn, ut still the remaining evidences show that our civilizations were orginally ours, one of the people who commented here said that the Original Ethiopian are Oromos and Kushitic Oromos, I really don’t know from where he found this ignorance from but with all due respect to my Oromo brothers and sisters, Oromos have never predated the other Ethiopian ethincities, I am Amhara myself even though I hate to call myself other than Ethiopian but I know that even the Amharas can’t claim early settlement, the first Amhara tribe in Shewa (Menz and Merhabete) was co-ordinated by King Lalibela, so, its safe to say that we all Ethioian ethnic groups have emerged from the North of Ethiopia, Tigray province, from the civilization of Axum even though we might trace some bloodlines from other orgins, whether we like it or not, so we are safely entitled to be called real Ethiopians as long as we believe we are and we don’t have a room that can separate us from the North of Ethiopia where the roots of Ethiopian nationalism has grown from, just because bandas like Meles are from Tigray, we can’t deny ourselves. And yes, Amarigna/Tigrigna is not the appropriate or historical definition for Ethiopian early language or civilization but the beautiful language called Geez, which is now liturgical language of Ethiopia.
Thanks for your time
Tullu,
Sorry to deflate your confidence but even GEEZ won’t work. See, Geez is still another young offshoot of Sabean. Geez cannot be more than a little over 2000 years old. And sabean, its parent language, couldn’t have been much older than 3000 years. So you see, even sabean is much too young to be a parent language for ancient Egyptian, let alone Geez.
Besides, Sabean like its offspring, Geez, used script fundamentally different. Sabeans are inheritors of the ancient Mesopotamian scripts (look at the similarity between, for example, the languages of Phoenician, Babylonian, Assyrian, Aramaic, Sabean and Geez. There is no doubt you will clearly see these languages emerged from same ancestral language. Compare the scripts, too. But the Egyptian script is completely, thoroughly and fundamentally different. Not unlike the Aztecs or the Chinese scripts. Virtually no evidences survived or found to accurately determine its early development, even today, the lack of any proto-Egyptian script is a source of confusion and disinformation by people with bits and pieces of conflicting or unsupportable evidences, like the authors of this clip.
Regarding your assertion that the ancient Ethiopia included Modern day Ethiopia, Eritrea (as if those are a different people from Ethiopians), Somalia and etc., I would say you are stretching it. But sorry buddy, I have to disappoint you once more. In the old days, When the Greeks started to flock to Egypt in search of wisdom and enlightenment, millenniums before the great classical Greek civilization started, the Greeks met this black people whom they referred to as Ethiopians. Read the Great Historian, Herodotus’ description of the Ethiopian contingent of the Persian Imperial Army, for your own enlightment. They bear no resemblance to us. But they completely resemble the modern Nubians and other tribes in northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They were talking about Nilotic people or some other people who have an uncanny resemblance to the Nilots of ancient Africa. Besides, it is important to understand, history is very precise in terms of time and space. At that time and place, we simply didn’t exist. As Amhara or Tigre, we should be proud of our own accomplishment without envying others, and pretending to be them.
Furthermore, When the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, and later, when Rome was the undisputed master of Egypt, the Greco-Roman civilization started to penetrate deep down south along the Nile and the Red sea, finally reaching Axum. The greatness of Axum is greatly tied to the Greek and Roman world. When these Hellenized people from Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor started to flock to Axum, they started to call the indigenous people of Axum as Ethiopians. To them it is the same as saying Black. But not to the indigenous people, who considered it as a slighting and a racist term, like calling a black person Nigro. Hundreds of years had passed before these people started to accept the term, but only after they had been converted to Christianity. As you know the Bible, which was a Greek translation to Geez in those days(as still is), mentions Ethiopia (Kush) more than a dozen times. So they figured if Ethiopians were good enough to end up being mentioned in the bible, so they figured, it should be okay for them to claim the name Ethiopia as their own. Still it took more than a millennium for Ethiopia to be associated with us, the modern day Ethiopians.
And to Ethiopian man,
You have it wrong. Ethiopia didn’t destroy Nubia, but Axum did. Axum destroyed Meroe, the capital.
Axum wasn’t Ethiopia. Neither Nubia was, at least not at that particular period. Time is very important. When we say Ethiopia conquered Egypt, we are not talking about Axum or Nubia of the six century. The Ethiopian dynasty in Egypt happened back in the 2nd millennium B.C, almost 2000 years before the period of the Axumite invasion of Nubia.
Moreover, When we say Ethiopia in Antiquity, we are using the terminology of the historians who left as their writing. But if you could ask the people themselves, I am sure none of them would claim to be Ethiopian. They tell you their tribal name, nothing else. Ethiopia is the name Greeks gave to the black people they first met, in Egypt and that part of the world, not us. But gradually, as I described in my previous comment, they started to include us and all black people of Africa.
Some of the information is out of touch, both Tigrigna and Amharigna came from a language called Geez, and as the poeople go down toward south the language continue to shift toward other form. For example Gondere Amharic has many Tigrigna words in it, as one descend down the langiage continue to grow into other form, essentially telling us all that the first Semetic that cross the red sea may have landed in the northern highlands and descend downwards, perhaps for trade purposes. Their reasoning to live in highlands can be explained in tow ways, to avoid giving enemy advantage, and perhaps to escape from animal attacks.
Just coming with one word Matet-Mihtat-Metut cannot be enough justification to draw conclusion that they are two distinct languages formed for trade purpose. This conclusion is absurd and I would not use it for any thing other than to boost the moral both competing groups. The truth is both languages came from Geez and Tigrigna is closer to Geez than Amarigna, better yet, Tigre (third competing tribe found exclusively in Eritrea) is closely related to Geez, and loosely related to Tigrigna.
I would like to point out that the Amarigna language is a late comer; it was never part of the original metamorphosis of the Semitic languages, Aramaic, Hebrew, Ge’ez, Tigre, Tigrigniya, and Arabic, among others. Amharignia is a pidginized Tigrigniya and Ge’ez that became popular after 1270 A. D. when Yukuno Amlak, a shifta from northern Showa amassed Oromo outlaws and Amharas to usurp power from the Zaguwe dynasty. He killed the last Zaguwe King, NeAkuto LeAb, at the Saint Qerulious Church in Tegulet(?) NeAkuto LeAb was one of the saintly kings and a grandson of Lalibela. He was defended by his loyal troops from Seraye, Tigray, Akele Guzay, Hamassien, and Gonder defended him valiantly. I believe the Amharas have succeeded in creating a myth about their language. I am afraid the post you presented at dehai is an example.
Like all works that needed to be thoroughly researched, it is taking for Eritrean scholars to correct the myth. It is coming soon.
one Ancient Greek historial thought that Adulis(Ancient axum port) was settled run-away Ancient Egyptians who run from greek or persian slavery in their homeland in Egypt. There may be some blood between modern Ethiopians, Erittreans and ancient Egyptians, but nooooooooooooooo tigrinas or amharas were not the settlers of Ancient Egypt. we might be cousins. By the way, we habehas and somali,,,are not sabeans, they are our cousins too, we developed own writing system, which is a combination of African mixed with south Arabian. that is why axum was very strong b/c it was a combination of two great peoples at that time and it was able to conqure all of modern yemen, sudan, southern Egypt and parts of Saudi Arabia.
im interested to know what was the original language of egypt?
Thank you! ^.^