THE FIRST ETHIOPIANS
THE FIRST ETHIOPIANS
The Image of Africa and Africans in the Early Mediterranean World
Malvern van Wyk Smith
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
Copyright© Malvern van Wyk Smith 2009
First published 2009
ISBN (print) 978 1 86814 499-0
ISBN (EPUB - IPG) 978-1-86814-834-9
ISBN (EPUB - ROW) 978-1-86814-835-6
ISBN (PDF) 978-1-86814-634-5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder and the publisher.
All photographs taken by the author unless otherwise indicated. All images remain the property of the copyright holders. The author and Wits University Press gratefully acknowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in the illustrated section for the use of the images therein. Every effort has been made to locate the original copyright holders of the images reproduced here; please contact the Press at the above address in case of any omissions.
Edited by Helen Moffett and Rustum Kozain
Design and typesetting by Electric Book Works (electricbookworks.com)
Index by Adrienne Pretorius
Cover photograph by Malvern van Wyk Smith
Major headings and some text set in Fontin Sans and Fontin
(by Jos Buivenga, www.exljbris.nl)
Body text and minor headings set in Warnock Light 10/14
Printed and bound by Creda Communications, Cape Town
From South and East, and from my West
(The sandy desert holds the North)
We look across a vast continent
And blindly call it ours.
You are not a country, Africa,
You are a concept,
Fashioned in our minds, each to each,
To hide our separate fears,
To dream our separate dreams.
—Abioseh Nicol, ‘The Meaning of Africa’
CONTENTS
Ethiopia, Egypt and the Matter of Africa
African Resonances in Predynastic Egypt
Proto- and Early-Dynastic Manifestations
Ethiopians in the Greek and Ptolemaic World
The ‘Ethiopia’ of the Early Christian World
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
This book has been some thirty years in the making, although its effective composition could only begin once I had retired from Rhodes University in 2002. Over the previous decades the project had, however, grown substantially from what would have been little more than