Post – Colonial African Historiography: from Royal Meroe to ‘Gada’ Oromo Republic

Post – Colonial African Historiography: from Royal Meroe to ‘Gada’ Oromo Republic

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

The fascinating post-colonial reassessment of African History leads us to delineating Meroitic continuity down to present day Oromos. Beyond eventual linguistic, religious and ideological affinities, Social Anthropology sheds light on the most dramatic institutional change in Africa: emigrating from their destroyed capital at the aurora of the Christian Africa, the Meroites developed the most venerated form of traditional African Republic: the Gada system, which continues down to our times.

Meroitic – Oromo linguistic affinities
Several words, names and toponymics relevant of the area of Ancient Meroe (Northern Sudan), such as Naga, Basa, Naqa, seem to have meanings in Oromo language. Naga means peace, health, among others. Basa could mean pay price, get them out or mount. Naqa means take the cattle to water at a river or refers to making drinks such as traditional beer. This is already an indication that linguistic comparative studies between Ancient Egyptian, Meroitic and Oromo should be thoroughly undertaken.

To best describe the case, one should stress that later phases of Egyptian Hieroglyphic, Demotic or Coptic are not expected to help much in this regard, because strong Semitic (Phoenician, Aramaic, Jewish), Greek and Latin influences have been exercised over the Egyptian language already since the 1st millennium BCE. So, to find the most authentic Kushitic forms of the Egyptian language, modern scholarship has to go back to the New Kingdom (2nd half of the 2nd millennium), or even better to Middle Kingdom (beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE) which is the period of the Classical Egyptian that is taught through the famous method of the ‘Egyptian Grammar’ of Sir Alan Gardiner.

The worst difficulty in our effort is due to the fact that there are no bilingual texts to help modern scholarship advance decisively in the decipherment of Meroitic, the language of the ancient Ethiopians, the Kushitic people of Sudan, which was written in two separate alphabetic systems (one hieroglyphic and one cursive) that were in use for approximately 800 years (450 BCE – 370 CE). The characters have been identified but the meaning remains obscure. Few words have already been deciphered (mostly Onomastica), and all this must become the object of a vast linguistic comparative study, Meroitic - Oromo. All the Meroitic epigraphic evidence must be re-viewed and re-read through in the light of Oromo vocabulary and Grammar.

Furthermore, the few saved Makkurian texts must be also taken into consideration, studied, and used in this comparative linguistic approach. The Makkurian language and scripture testifies to the linguistic development of the Meroitic during the Christian periods of Sudanese History; it covers a period going from the beginning of the 5th century CE until the 14th century CE. A Makkurian – Oromo linguistic approach would help establishing closer parallels. Makkurian was written in Greek characters, since cursive and hieroglyphic Meroitic writings have been abandoned following the Axumite Abyssinian invasion by king Ezana, and the destruction of Meroe. From the time of the last Makkurian inscriptions until the aurora of the modern Oromo history the distance is just 100 – 200 years.

Archeological survey would also help in clarifying the path of the emigration (probably alongside the Blue Nile, until it turns to the North within present day Abyssinia), as well as earlier Oromo settlements going back to 1500 CE. History of Religion is another field that plays an important role in this regard, especially when it comes to symbol interpretation, cosmological concepts, and approaches to the world of Divine.

Many significant conclusions will come out of a parallel study here. Such an academic background research would be the ultimate corroboration of the historical interpretational scheme that extends the Oromo History back to the 3rd millennium BCE.

Oromo Democratic culture and systems: ‘Gada’, ‘Guddifacha’ and ‘Guma’
In terms of combined Social Anthropology and History of Religion more parallels may be supported and confirmed. Certainly, one cannot expect to find cultural milieus such as the Oromo ‘Gada’, ‘Guddifacha’ and ‘Guma’ systems in Ancxient Kush / Meroe.

Scientists like Dr. Marco Bassi of Bologna University in Italy have agreed that the Gada system is one of the most structured and democratic institutions in the world. Guddifacha relates to adoption. Guma can be roughly stated as the price paid in kind for capital crime. One of the most interesting aspects of Guma is its ability to bypass capital punishment for capital crime. In the US, people are still debating whether capital punishment is the right way to address capital crime. Some people suggest that the Guma approach is better than the approach of capital punishment. When it comes to delineating the Oromo emanation from Meroe, it would be enough to discover sperms of these systems and/or the unveil the circumstances in which such systems have been set up among the fleeing Meroites, the plausible ancestors of the Oromos.

Kingdom and Democracy in the Antiquity
One has to bear in mind that in the Antiquity, there was not a single country that was ruled by democratic rules and methods. This is the basic statement. But, of course, there are exceptions and conditions to all that. First, and quite contrarily to this ‘basic statement’ for the Antiquity, the rise of sophisticated urban structure at the dawn of civilization took place in a rather democratic environment. When religion did not mean something deeply cultic and absolutely separate from power, we had a king, a high priest and the elder of the city; this is Sumer in southern Mesopotamia, in present day Iraq. Of course, it was not yet a big country. The aforementioned situation concerned separately Eridu, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Lagash, and the other early Sumerian cities-states.

Then, the opposition and polarization king vs. priest brought about the royal form of state, and at the same time shaped ‘religion as an establishment, as an administrative form of hierarchy. But this early situation concerns Sumer, not Egypt! Elam, Sumer’s neighbor and rival, seems concerned as well, but more centralized authority seems to rise early at Susa. When the rise comes later to other parts of the world, Canaan, Anatolia, Greece, Iran, Rome, there you have royal – monarchical states, and the closer the link with the earlier heroic tribe is, the stronger the centralizing royal power appears.

Democracy does not appear first in Greece, as the debased colonial historiography stipulated in their racist effort to alter World History to their profit, but in Elam. Uncultured and foul-mouthed statesmen like Valery Giscard d’ Estaing, the former French President, should know that! It is in Elam around 1850 BCE, when the forefathers of the Indo-European Greeks were still structured in semi-barbaric and possibly cannibalistic societies, that we attest the system of the elected Sukkalmahhu, the Elamite mayors’ council that rules Elam in present day SE Iraq and SW Iran without the existence of a king. The Elamite democratic system of a republican state lasted some 500 years, much more than the Athenian case for which too much of ecstasy has been deployed by modern European ignorant and falsifying ‘intellectuals’ and politicians.

How the Phoenicians became the Fathers of Western Democracy
Then comes the Phoenician connection. This is what concerns us most; not because it consists in the real origin of the democratic system among the Athenians – we must not forget that most of the other Ancient Greek states were ruled by kings – but because it has to do with eventual changes of rule and of administrative structure among the Kushites. Here, one has to make a parallel and then stress that what occurred among the Phoenician and Carthaginian seafarers may have also taken place among the Kushitic Ethiopians of Sudan, when they were fleeing from their destroyed (370 CE by Ezana of Axumite Abyssinia) capital Meroe.

The Phoenicians were all ruled by kings, whose power extended up to the limits of their small cities-states, Tyr, Byblus, Arwad, Sidon, etc. But their limited land capabilities pushed to extensive seafaring; they became the greatest navigators of the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, whereas they were not irrelevant of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, they became the first real colonizers. They colonized the Libyan coast, the Aegean Sea. It is needless to refer to Cyprus, since the Phoenicians were always there and Cyprus is virtually speaking Phoenician land. The Phoenicians were also present at the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea. At 800 BCE they established Kart Hadasht, Carthage, the New City as its name means in Phoenician, at the area of present day Tunis. That city took the Phoenician ideals further on to the Tyrrhenian Sea, Sicily, Sardinia, the North-Western African coast in the Mediterranean, the Iberian coasts either in the Mediterranean or in the Atlantic, and the Atlantic coasts of Northwestern Africa.

But what is the concept of becoming a colon? How close can the contact with the metropolis and its administrative structure be kept? What does a king mean to 3000 colons who erect a new city 3000 km away? One may understand that, if Uruguay was able to become independent from Spain, the same could occur and actually did occur earlier to Carthage, which became independent from Tyre, and further on to Carthaginian colonies that in turn became independent from Carthage. You cannot control so far away areas, and modern successful exceptions are few; Canada, Australia, New Zealand became all independent states. Only French Polynesia remains as the exemplary relics of the colonial times in the Pacific still subjugated by France. They do not import Coca Cola from nearby New Zealand but from France, and it costs an entire fortune!

From Meroitic Kingdom to Oromo Republic
As it can be easily understood, when 400 people leave their place of origin together and go to settle in a faraway place, there are few chances that one among them may attempt to become a king! The exception in this rule is the case of heroic fights that are won because of a brave warrior who later becomes king. But if this exception does not happen, the moving community introduces basic democratic attitudes, since all feel weak in the faraway place, and prefer to take decisions in equilibrium of responsibility, which leaves place only to a ‘primus inter pares’ (first among the equal ones). This is the very practical beginning of the republican and democratic systems.

If we now transfer the ancient colonies’ model to the emigrating peoples’ case, we can immediately realize that it applies very well. It is only normal - when a settled population leaves its place of origin and escapes foreign domination - that they set up among them a certain beginning of democratic community; the king may have lost his credibility or the entire royal family decapitated. More than that, the emigrating people’s social structures differ tremendously from those of a settled society. What palace, what temples, what castles and fortresses, what public buildings can migrants aspire to have? A straw hut does not perform the role of a palace very convincingly, after all! Even worse, if the previous majestic palace had left a stamp on the memory of the first generation of emigration.

It is very different for the genuinely nomadic peoples, where the leader is a chieftain able to kill a wild animal, and then be raised to an early concept of ‘prince’. You have it everywhere; later when the nomadic people are obliged to move across great distance, the old chieftain becomes the heroic ancestor ready to be at times deified. If all this leads to a final settlement in another country, the chieftain may have the chance to turn to a civilized king! Timur Leng and the Huns were like that. Such a structure never leads to a democratic society because the ‘primus’ has no ‘pares’, his likes, so it can never turn out to be even a ‘primus inter pares’ (first among the equal ones) system!

This situation bears witness to the entire theory of the Meroitic past of the OromoS. And it is not very common in Africa. The earliest long text reference to a non-Egyptian, African, society and state we have dates back to the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE. It is the famous text of Queen Hatshepsut ‘Expedition to Punt’. Punt was a small country at the area of the northern coast of Somalia and the Bab al Mandeb straits. But there were a king and a queen, no democratic affinities…

In the case of the Oromos, after the first generations of emigration, the Meroitic Qore and Kandake, kings and queens, have been forgotten. Quite interesting and somehow convincing is the fact that for the Meroites, who did not emigrate but remained in the area of Ancient Ethiopia, we do not find a notion of strong Christian king in Alodia, Makkuria, and Nobatia. We attest a less monarchical and rather priestly society, as the Christian priests had the upper hand there too.