UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
As a result of the influence exerted by Christianity and other monotheistic
religions in Ethiopia and Arabia, these countries evolved a monotheistic
outlook peculiarly their own, which is reflected in the Ge'ez
inscriptions: for instance, those of Ezana that concern the Nubian campaign
{DAE n), and of Abreha Täklä Aksum from Wadi Menih 67 (a
personage not to be confused with king Abreha), and the same is true of
later Sabaean inscriptions from southern Arabia.
No irreconcilable contradictions existed between this form of monotheism
and Christianity; Ezana in the aforementioned inscription, Wa'azab
in a newly discovered inscription and Abreha, king of Himyar, in his inscriptions
use the terms and concepts of an 'indefinite monotheism' for the
propagation of Christianity.
As a result of foreign cultural influences, the subculture of the Aksumite
monarchy was not only national but also international in character. Side
by side with Ge'ez, the Greek language was used as a state and international
language. Apparently, kings like Za-Hekale and Ezana knew Greek (the
Periplus reports that 'king Zoscales' was literate in Greek, and Ezana's
mentor, a Graeco-Phoenician, Frumentius, later the first bishop of Aksum).
The majority of Aksumite kings of the third and fourth centuries minted
coins with Greek mottoes. We know of six royal Greek inscriptions of
Aksum.
We have no reason to think that Sabaean was one of the official languages
of the early Aksumite kingdom. One of the three texts of Ezana pseudotrilingual
(in fact, Ge'ez Greek bilingual) is written in later Himyaritic
script and has some exaggerated peculiarities of Sabaeo-Himyaritic
orthography. The same script is used in three other royal inscriptions
of Aksum by Ezana, Kaleb and Wa'azab. 68 Thus together with an inscription
at Tsehuf-Emni (Erythrea) 69 we have five 'pseudo-Himyaritic'
texts from Ethiopia. Their language is Ge'ez with very few Sabaean
words.
It is not clear why Aksumite kings used the 'pseudo-Himyaritic' texts
side by side with those of normal Ethiopie in their inscriptions of definitely
official character. But in all cases it is evidence of south Arabian influence.
Perhaps the use of the Himyaritic script as well as that of vocalized
Ethiopie, and the introduced figures, were innovations of Ezana's rule, and
these innovations were inter-related.
The basic principles of vocalized Ethiopie script have no analogy in the
whole Semito-Hamitic world, but are typical of Indian alphabets. In
the nineteenth century B. Johns, R. Lepsius and E. Glaser connected
the Ethiopie alphabet with India. In 1915 A. Grohmann pointed out the
principal similarities between the idea of the vocalized Ethiopie alphabet
67. E. Liftman, 1954, pp. 120, 121.
68. DAE 8: 18-19; R- Schneider, 1974, pp. 767-70.
69. C. Conti-Rossini, 1903.
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