The Meroitic Origin of the Oromos, and the Christianization of Africa

The Meroitic Origin of the Oromos, and the Christianization of Africa

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Fresh post-colonial approaches to African History focus on early stages of christianization of Africa, Egypt and Abyssinia, and find there the reasons of the Meroitic emigration to present day (Biyya) Oromo land.

Past theories on the origin of Oromos, and their refutation

Fresh approaches suggesting that the Oromo people may have moved south from Meroe are in direct opposition to past theories, according to which the Oromos came from Asia, or Madagascar, and that they have Caucasian trace. Other scholars had suggested in the past that the Oromos migrated from south to north in Africa, pulling even sevelar Oromo historians and intellectuals to accept such theory. Contrarily to all the past arbitrary approaches, the recent post-colonial reconstruction of the Oromo past relates to historical events that corroborate the entirely fresh approach.

According to this reconstruction, the interest is not in selecting a land of eventual origin somewhere in the north, the east or the south, but states that there has long been attested a very scarce population in the Nile valley in the south of the second cataract (around modern Wadi Halfa), and more particularly in the heartland of the defunct meroitic kingdom, during the period that follows the Abyssinian invasion.

Many sites – even those in parts that were certainly not attacked by Ezana of Axumite Abyssinia – have been abandoned, and if in some sites we find a certain continuity, this is with few or new people and with low level or non-Meroitic material culture. The missing population is very plausible that moved away, rejecting the Christianization evangelized by Ezana, and went towards a destination that would offer survival far from Axumite Abyssinia, and in a rather similar green environment of cultivated lands and pasturelands as that of old Meroe. They could not cross the jungle that was extended until far more in the north than the areas it reaches nowadays, so they followed the Blue Nile valley and, after a certain point, instead of advancing up to the river’s source and the area of Lake Tana, they advanced further towards the present day Oromo country.

According to this reconstruction that attempts to interpret what was called an enigma of the Meroitic History, it happens that this need for survival led fleeing Meroites to the south. South, north and the other cardinal points mean nothing by themselves. What ultimately counts is the environment, the natural setup and the possibilities it offers to the emigrants. Whether this is in the north or the south it matters not.

In the case of the eternal enigma of the Meroitic studies, namely the question about the whereabouts of the fleeing Meroites, since the valley of the Nile from the area of Wadi Halfa down to Shendi and Khartoum seems to have suddenly emptied, there are important parameters that should be taken into consideration.

Fleeing Meroites could not leave the valley and go to find shelter in the desert! They would not have the means of survival; they did not have anything in common with the then existing nomads of the desert, and they could not apply to themselves such an unfamiliar life organization and social system. That is why the modern Beja and Hadendawa cannot originate from the ancient Meroites, although they are also Kushitic in origin.

Neither could the fleeing Meroites cross the jungle, since that was impossible even for strong armies in the antiquity. So there is no way they find their descendents among the Nuer and/or the Dinka of the modern Sudanese extreme south.

Furthermore, there are other issues to be taken into consideration. The social structures, the beliefs, the anthropological data, the movements from place to place, and so on. Someone who studied carefully the geography of Sudan and Abyssinia cannot end up indicating the Nuer or the Dinka as descendents of the Meroites.

Professional historians must not accept preconceived schemes or highly ideologized 'historical' interpretations; it would be therefore wie to advise against the extremist positions about the Oromo coming from the south. The only way for this to be plausible would be that Oromo belonged to the Bantu family that constitutes the bulk of Sub-Saharan peoples. We know of course that this is not the case. We know that in the Antiquity, Bantu were further pressed to the south of the continent, and that they moved towards northern areas in either Western of Eastern Africa.

Furthermore, we have an approximately good basis on the History of Eastern Africa. Especially from the Ptolemaic times down to the Colonial expansion, we have Ancient Greek, Latin, Yemenite, Medieval Greek texts, and of course for Islamic periods we have Arabic and Farsi texts. Nowhere do we find a plausible interpretation of a movement of Kushitic populations or an emigration of Kushitic populations from the south that led to the establishment of the Oromo at the Abyssinian south.

In addition, the number of the population matters to some extent too. The great number of Oromo people testifies to a long past, and to long centuries of relative isolation.

Retracing the Oromo past back to Somalia, or Azania as people were calling the area of the Eastern Somali coast in the Late Antiquity, would contradict all historical sources that provide no reason for, and no information of, such a movement. Discussing a Madagascaran option would rather be relevant of fiction! In either case, it would imply a complete change of environment and social habits, which is not easy to happen, and again when it happens, it is attested through various combinations of sources. A dramatic social-cultural change almost never happens, except within micro-systems. In those cases it leaves traces that we can find.

Among inland villagers of the Moluccas islands of Indonesia we attest to popular nuptial songs referring to arriving ships for the collection of spices; this proves that these villagers were living a coastal life before the arrival of the Dutch, who pushed the indigenous population towards the inland in order to control trade and customs. But it is a micro-system, not the coast of Azania and the south of Abyssinia, which would imply a complete and absurd de-figuration.

Present day Abyssinian Amhara ‘academia’ are taking politically motivated positions that deprive them from any serious background in their argumentation. The level of the dogmatic Amhara-patronized universities of Abyssinia is worse than that of the universities in Sudan and Egypt. To speak frankly the entire Eastern Africa has long been academically partonized by colonial powers and therefore doomed.

Oromo historians had noticed in the past that the Borana branch of the Oromo people who live in Southern Ethiopia and Northern Kenya (so the southernmost parts of the Biyya (land) Oromo) still practice non-withered Oromo culture. In the areas where Oromos came in wide contact with Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians or foreign missionaries, Oromo cultures have been weakened. This approach may be correct but relates rather to Social Anthropology and studies recent data and history. If taken and projected in a millennia long historical delineation, it would drive us to wrong conclusions.

The Meroitic emigration to Oromo land and the Christianization of Eastern Africa

It has to be stressed that, according to the recent reconstruction of Meroitic - Oromo History, the fleeing Meroites did not move away from their homeland ‘because of Abyssinian influence’; They abandoned Meroe in order to escape forced Christianization that would be the result of king Ezana’s victory over Meroe, and destruction of the capital city of Ethiopia.

Since that Axumite Abyssinian king usurped the name of Ethiopia in order to offer himself the basics of a royal propaganda justifying the christening of Abyssinia, it was obvious to the subjugated Ethiopians, the Meroites, that they would be forced to Christianity. The foreign invader had found in the famous Biblical excerpt about Kush (‘Ethiopia’ in the Septuaginta Greek translation of the 70 Elder of Alexandria) a supposed prophecy about accepting Christian faith. This is all irrelevant of course, but one can understand that what mattered to the Meroites - Ethiopians at that time was to reject a faith that had already been imposed with disastrous impact in Egypt, which was part of the Roman Empire. Christianity as imposed religion in Egypt was well known to the Meroites of Ancient Ethiopia (through contacts, reports, etc).

We actually know that acceptance of Christianity by illiterate, uneducated, fanatic, low social level masses in Rome, in Egypt, in Greece, in Anatolia, in Syria, in Judea and elsewhere throughout the Roman Empire prompted the rise of religious fanaticism, intolerance, and barbarism; it actually led to the destruction of thousands of temples, sanctuaries, libraries, scientific laboratories (of those days), observatories, museums, palaces, theaters and all sorts of centers of culture, education, knowledge and erudition.

The rise of Christianity brought about an unprecedented racial discrimination and an ulcerous Anti-Semitism; for three hundred years of Christian rule over Aelia Capitolina – Jerusalem not a single Jew was allowed to enter that city! It is only normal that the highly civilized Meroites - Ethiopians of the Ancient Sudan, who were still building pyramids at Meroe, present day Bagrawiyah in Sudan, wished to escape the fanatic and intolerant rule of the Abyssinian king Ezana.

We have to add all this that, what the Meroites may also have known (but has not survived in any sort of documentation until today) is the setup and the circumstances of the christening of Axumite Abyssinia. Perhaps that was also an alarming waning for them!

Modern scholarship is aware of the famous story about the Syrian monks Edesius and Frumentius, Keddous Faramanatos, who traveled, accompanied their uncle Metropius, to Abyssinia, and when their ship stopped at one of the harbors of the Red Sea, supposedly Adulis, nearby the present day Eritrean city of Massawa, people of the neighborhood massacred the whole crew, with the exception of those who were taken as slaves to the King of Axum. By then, they were young boys, but they managed to gain the favor of the king, who made them free citizens of his country.

After the death of the last pre-Christian king of Axumite Abyssinia, the widow queen convinced them to remain at the court and look after the education of the young prince Erazanes. This was done, and especially Frumentius used his influence to spread his Christian beliefs and ideas. They built the first Christian churches to address the needs of the Christian merchants who were coming to Axum. Following the young prince’s accession to the throne, Frumentius became even more eager to convert Abyssinia to Christianity, and ultimately moved to Alexandria, and requested Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, to send a bishop and priests to Abyssinia. St. Athanasius considered Frumentius as the most suitable person and consecrated him as bishop of Abyssinia. Then, Frumentius returned to Abyssinia, built up the first cathedral of Axum, baptized King Aeizanas, around 340 – 345 CE, and spread Christianity throughout Abyssinia. All this is a nice Christian legend, a myth that we cannot accept at face value, since we have no other non-Christian documentation left, and we are not able to crosscheck sources for a better understanding.

It may well have been a more brutal and excruciating reality, with palatial plots, patricide, conspiracy, bloodshed across the country, with the involvement of foreign merchants and sailors of Christian faith. All this may well have been known to the Meroites of Ethiopia as an evil and atrocious act, and they may have wished to avoid such disastrous adventures, by abandoning their country and moving to quasi-uninhabited areas that would permit them to preserve the basics of life, arable land, cultivation, pastoral life, with less trade and stressed isolation – we must admit.

At this point, it must be stated that modern scholarship has good reasons to believe that the Christianization of Abyssinia involved a lot of blood and even terrible fights among theological fractions and ideological groups. Just before the attack against Ethiopia and the destruction of Meroe (370 CE), the Roman Emperor Constantius addressed a letter to King Aeizanas and to his brother Saizanas that dates back to 365 CE.

Now, we are certainly on historical ground, distancing ourselves from the otherwise pleasant Christian myth of a peaceful christening for Abyssinia. In his letter, Constantius demanded Ezana to substitute the Arian bishop Theophilus for Frumentius (Athanasius, "Apol. ad Constantium" in Patrologia Graeca, vol. XXV, 631). Now, if we only transplant at the area of the Axumite Abyssinia the virulent and venomous fights and polarizations between Arians and their opponents within Christianity, as we know them in Egypt, in Rome and elsewhere, we realize that terrible fratricide fights took place in Axum as well, at the eve of Ezana’s attack against Meroitic Ethiopia. It is even plausible that a Roman letter asked this in the hope of consolidating the situation in the south of Egypt. In the middle of the 4th century CE Christian power in Egypt resided mostly in the north, in Lower Egypt, and non-Christian Egyptians were prevailing in Upper Egypt, Thebes (Luqsor), Syene (Aswan) and further on to the Dodekaschoinos and the Triakontaschoinos buffer zone areas. Nubians and desert nomads like the Blemmyes had made the Christian Roman rule even more unsure and unstable throughout Upper Egypt. All anti-Christian elements could find an excellent shelter in Meroe - Ethiopia, the vast area of the present day North of Sudan. So, the Romans had to eliminate the Meroitic kingdom of Ethiopia that was not Christianized. Busy with their inner problems, and with the wars with the Sassanid Empire of Iran, the other superpower of those days, they may have demanded Ezana to do the job. If this was the case, again the Meroites knew that they had to move away, if they were to avoid forced christening.