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)