ANCIENT ETHIOPIA

Lioness Attacking an Ethiopian in a Papyrus Grove, ivory plaque with gold overlay revealing Egyptian influence, ninth to eighth century BC.

In East Africa, the Nile vanishes into the highlands of Abyssinia, into an ancient land that may be the place of origin of all human beings. Ethiopia is a country with an rich diversity in people, culture and religion, with a history that dates back as early as the 8th Century B.C.E. The Axumite Kingdoms that rose in the first century can be considered the first line in a series of successor Kingdoms that remained uninterrupted until modern times. Even so the traditional cultures of Ethiopia retain much form their ancient past, including the founding of one of the first Christian Kingdoms in the world, and possibly retaining a form of Christianity very similar to the early Judeo-Chrsitian traditions that have since changed tremendously elsewhere, yet remain vibrant in Ethiopia today.

One of the many large Obelisks at Axum

in Ethiopia one of the largest single stones quarried by human labour It testifies to the magnificent self-esteem of the unknown ruler who had it extracted and dragged several kilometres to its final site, and to the skill and artistry of those who prepared and decorated it. Over thirty-three metres tall, the stele represents a thirteen storey tower

Around the eighth century BC, a kingdom known as D'mt was established in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, with its capital at Yeha in northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilization to be indigenous, although Sabaean-influenced due to the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea,while others view D`mt as the result of a mixture of "culturally superior" Sabaeans and indigenous peoples. a very small minority even views the kingdom as wholly Sabaean and Ethiopians as the descendants of ancient Sabaean immigrants . However, there is archaeological evidence to prove that at one point in time a region in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea was called Saba. However, most modern scholars often refer to it as Ethiopian Saba since it had a separate entity than the Saba in Yemen.
After the fall of D`mt in the fifth century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms, until the rise of one of these kingdoms during the first century BC, the Axumite Kingdom, ancestor of medieval and modern Ethiopia, which was able to reunite the area. They established bases on the northern highlands of the Ethiopian Plateau and from there expanded southward. The Persian religious figure Mani listed Axum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time.