Ethiopia Photographed

Historic Photographs of the Country and its People Taken Between 1867 and 1935

Richard Pankhurst, Denis Gerard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415593427
• eBook ISBN: 9781136786105
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Following the very successful Ethiopia Engraved, an illustrated book of engravings by foreign travellers from 1681 to 1900, Ethiopia Photographed covers the period from the inception of photography in the country up to the Italian Fascist invasion in 1936. The people, terrain, buildings and rulers of Ethiopia - such as Emperor Melenik, Lej Iyasu and Emperor Haile Selassie - make it a highly photogenic country, as this lavishly illustrated book reveals.

Situated in lofty, often inaccessible mountains between the Red Sea and the Blue Nile, and extending far into the Horn of Africa, it is a complex and mysterious country which as always exercised an extraordinary fascination for the outside world. The book begins with an introduction which gives a brief history of Ethiopia in this period, and describes the role of photography at this time. The richly captured images of Ethiopia Photographed bear witness to many personalities and places not previously seen and, in many cases, now lost for all time but for the photogenic memories recorded here.

INTRODUCTION

IMAGES OF THE COUNTRY AND ITS HISTORY

HISTORIC ETHIOPIA, situated in lofty, often inaccessible, mountains between the Red Sea and the Blue Nile, and extending far into the Horn of Africa, was an ancient country, internationally long renowned. Since time immemorial it exercised an extraordinary fascination on the outside world. Ethiopia was also a complex, and at times mysterious country, which many foreigners found, and indeed still find, impossible to understand. The country appeared moreover to different peoples - and at differents times - in different, and frequently changing, guises. At the same time it was - and remains to this day - a highly photogenic country, as we hope the following pages will reveal.

Before looking at the photographs, and at the history of the photographers who took them, we attempt to introduce the reader to a few highlights of Ethiopia’s long history, and see how foreign images of the country, as in a kaleidoscope, underwent many a great transformation.

Ethiopia owed its importance in ancient times to the fact that it was the land where the mighty Nile had its source, and lay beside one of the world’s most important international trade routes - the route through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a route which linked the Mediterranean, and hence the West, with India, China and other countries of the East.

The ancient Egyptians, who provide our first important testimony on the region, knew the area on both counts. The Ethiopian highlands, they realised, were the source of the Nile, to whose water - and silt, Egypt owed its very existence. At the same time the low and arid country towards the coast constituted the core of the Land of Punt, whence the Pharaohs obtained myrrh and other gums and resins necessary for their devotions, on which account they spoke of the country as God’s Land. The region was so important that many Pharaohs despatched naval expeditions to its coast. One of the most famous was sent around 1495 B.C. by Queen Hapshetsut. She records in hieroglyphs on the walls of her great temple at Thebes in Upper Egypt that she had been commanded by the god Amon to obtain and plant myrrh trees, and thereby “establish a Punt for him” in her own country. The expedition, as depicted in her temple, returned home with the produce of the area: ivory, gold, incense, and animal skins, as well as some local people, perhaps as slaves.

Trade with the Ethiopian and Horn of African region seems to have continued into Biblical times. This is suggested by the fact that Ophir, whence King Solomon is said in the Book of Kings to have sent an expedition in quest of gold, incense and precious stones, was very probably in the area.

Ethiopia and the Ethiopians also figure in the Bible, which contains no less than thirty-three references to the country or its inhabitants. In one poetic passage in the Book of Zephania, God speaks of lands “beyond the rivers of Ethiopia”, while Psalm 68 contains the long to be emotive prophecy: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God”.

The Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt in the half millennium B.C., were likewise deeply interested in the southern Red Sea coast of Africa, to which they, like the Pharoahs before them, despatched numerous expeditions. These were sent largely in quest of elephants, which were needed for war, and have aptly been called the “tanks of the ancient world”.

The ancient Greeks were also well aware of the region. Long before the Christian era they invented the name Ethiopia, and used it to refer to the country inhabited by “burnt”, or sun-tanned, people south of Egypt. Homer in the ninth century B.C. spoke of the people of Ethiopia as “the most distant of men”, living “at the earth’s two verges, in sunset lands, and lands of the rising sun”. He believed, like many of his compatriots, that the Ethiopians were the best people in the world. He referred to them as the “blameless Ethiopians”, and claimed that their country was visited by the Gods, who “lingered delightedly” there.

Meanwhile in North-East Africa itself the half millennium or so before the birth of Christ witnessed the rise of an important, and highly developed civilisation in what is now northern Ethiopia. The inhabitants of this area accepted the same pantheon of gods as were worshipped in South Arabia, including the sun, the moon, and the goddess Venus. The first capital in what is now Ethiopia was, as far as we know, at a place called Yeha, which was in its day a settlement of considerable size and significance. This is evident from the city’s huge stone temple, measuring twenty metres long by fifteen wide, whose ten metre high walls can be seen - and photographed - to this day.

The centre of political power subsequently shifted a few days’ journey westwards to nearby Aksum, which developed as an even greater city, and the capital of an extensive kingdom, destined to become the most important state between the Roman Empire and Persia.

The Aksumite realm, which had access to the sea at the Red Sea port of Adulis, was a major commercial kingdom. It traded with lands as far afield as Arabia, Egypt, Persia, India, and even Ceylon. Aksum for several centuries also produced its own currency in gold, silver and bronze, with inscriptions in either the local Aksumite language, Ge’ez, or else in Greek, the then international language of the Red Sea area. Most of these coins bore effigies of the ruling monarch, and sometimes representations of a sprig of grain, and popular slogans, such as “May it Please the People”.

The first glimpse of Aksumite foreign trade is provided by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, an early Graeco-Egyptian commercial text written in the first century or so of the Christian era. This work shows that Aksum’s exports, via the Red Sea port of Adulis, included ivory and rhinoceros-horn, as well as tortoise-shell from the coastal waters, while the Roman author Pliny at about the same time also mentioned the export of slaves. Imports, according to the Periplus, consisted of large quantities of Indian cloth, besides iron and brass, plates, knives and cups, and sundry other manufactured and luxury goods, mainly from India, Egypt and the Mediterranean area.

The Aksumites were remarkably skilled artisans. They built magnificent palaces, temples and churches, a large dam, several great funeral vaults, and numerous obelisks, in some instances beautifully carved. One of the latter, no less than thirty-three metres long, has the distinction of being the longest block of stone ever excavated by man. Over the centuries these great stelae have been regarded with admiration by countless visitors, many of whom took excellent photographs of them. One, looted in 1937 on the personal orders of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, was taken to Rome, and, despite Ethiopian requests for its restitution, has thus far not been returned.

Because of its external relations the Aksumite kingdom came into contact with Christianity at a very early period. Ethiopian church tradition holds that some Ethiopians were already converted at the time of the Apostles. Be that as it may, there is irrefutable evidence that Christianity had become the state religion of the kingdom by around A.D. 300. The country’s main conversion took place, according to early Byzantine evidence, when a ship carrying a group of Syrian Christians returning from India was boarded off the Red Sea coast on account of an earlier dispute. Virtually all the voyagers were put to the sword, but two young boys survived, and were found studying, doubtless the Bible, under a tree. They were brought to the Aksumite king, who appointed one of them his cup bearer, and the other, by name Frumentius, as his secretary and treasurer.

The king, we are told, died shortly afterwards, leaving his wife with an infant as the heir to the throne. She begged the two young men with tears in her eyes to stay with her to help her govern the kingdom, at least until her son should come of age. They duly agreed. Frumentius, who later reportedly held the reins of government, sought out visiting Christian merchants, and together with them established Christian churches, and did much to expand the new religion.

Frumentius subsequently travelled to Alexandria, then the principal centre of Christianity in the East, where he informed the great Patriarch Athanasius what had thus far been done for the faith at Aksum, and begged him to despatch a Bishop. Athanasius, having heard what Frumentius had already done, replied, “What man can we find other than you, who can accomplish these things?” He thereupon consecrated the young man as Ethiopia’s first bishop. Frumentius then returned to Aksum, where he adopted the name of Abba Salama, or Father of Peace.

The young monarch whom Frumentius had helped govern was apparently King Ezana. He was, as far as we know, the first Aksumite ruler openly to avow the Christian faith. This is evident from the fact that some of his coins, thought to be the earlier ones, bore representations of the old South Arabian deities, the sun and moon, while others, doubtless struck after his conversion, bear the Cross of Christ. They are of special interest in that they were the first coins in the world to bear that symbol. The coming of Christianity is also apparent in Ezana’s inscriptions, the earliest of which referred to pagan gods while a later one paid homage to the presumably Christian Lord of the Universe.

At this time, and in the next few centuries, the Bible, and other religious texts, were translated into Ge’ez.¹ The development of Christianity also owed much to the coming, in the late fifth and early six centuries, of the so-called Nine Saints, holy men from Syria and its environs, who founded a number of important monasteries in what is now northern Ethiopia. Church schools, which were to remain the basis of the country’s education for a millennium and a half, were also established around this time.

This period also witnessed extensive church building, which included a particularly characteristic Ethiopian phenomenon: the excavation in Tegray and elsewhere of underground or semi-underground churches cut out of the living rock.

Ezana and the kings who followed him undertook a number of major military expeditions, which greatly expanded the frontiers of the Aksumite state, particularly southward and westward. Ezana, a great warrior king, on one occasion marched far into what is now Sudan up to the Nile. He recorded his victories in a number of stone inscriptions, which can be viewed in Aksum to this day. Some are written in Sabaean, the old language of South Arabia, others in Ge’ez or Greek. King Kaléb, one of his successors, later despatched a no less notable sixth century expedition across the Red Sea into South Arabia.

One of many foreign merchants to visit both Aksum and the port of Adulis in this period was a Greek-speaking Egyptian, Kosmas Indicopleustes, who later became a monk. A man of scholarly disposition he wrote an important work, the Christian Topography, which was, and remains, of unique interest. It gave the outside world its first eye-witness account of Ethiopia, which was then, its author insists, an integral part of the Christian world, as well as a major commercial emporium, trading with countries as far away as Egypt, Persia, India and Ceylon.

The Aksumite kingdom was particularly well known to the Arabs on the opposite side of the Red Sea, who referred to it, and to Ethiopia in general, as Habash. The term was derived from the name of a coastal tribe, the Habashat, and was in turn the root of the English word “Abyssinia”, the French “Abyssinie”, the German “Abessinen”, and similar names in other European languages. Since the Arabic word habash also means “mixed” Ethiopians tended to consider the name derogatory, and by and large never spoke of their country as Abyssinia, but always as Ethiopia.

The Prophet Muhammad was one of many Arabs familiar with Habash. He had been brought up by his grandfather, Abdal Muttalib, who had travelled to the country on business, and his nurse was reportedly an Ethiopian, who taught him some words of Ge’ez. Later, when his early followers were being persecuted in Arabia, the Prophet, according to Muslim tradition, pointed towards Abyssinia, and, echoing the ancient Greeks, declared, “There, is a land where no one is wronged, a land of righteousness. Go there”, he added, “and remain there until it pleases the Lord to open the way”. A small band of Muslims duly made their way to the Aksumite kingdom, where their enemies despatched an embassy with costly gifts to demand their extradition. The then Aksumite ruler, King Arman, however, interrogated the exiles, and apparently finding no harm from his point of view in their ideas, turned to the emissaries from Arabia, and replied in a justly famous riposte, “Even if you would offer me a mountain of gold I would not give up these people who have sought refuge with me”.

The Prophet, according to Muslim tradition, later requested Armah to betroth him to one of the woman refugees, Umm Habibah. The monarch did so, and gave her a golden dowry. From her and another of his wives, Umm Salma, who had also found asylum in Ethiopia, Muhammad is said to have learnt of the beauty of Aksum’s principal church, St Mary of Seyon, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Tradition also holds that the Prophet, when condemning the representation in painting of the human form, placed his hand over an icon of the Virgin, which in all probability had come from Aksum, and thus protected it from the ban. After Armah’s death he reportedly prayed for the Aksumite king’s soul, and commanded his followers to “leave the Abyssinians in peace”, thereby exempting them from the Jihad, or Holy War.

Ethiopia’s close relationship with early Islam also found expression in Muhammad’s choice of an Ethiopian, by name Bilal, as his first Muezzin, who called the faithful to prayer. The Prophet spoke of him endearingly as “the first fruit of Abyssinia”. Contact between Ethiopia and Islam is likewise graphically reflected in the Qoran which contains a number of Ge’ez loan-words.

Abyssinia in later centuries was well known to the great Arab geographers of the Middle Ages. Several referred to the country in their writings, and provided the outside world with valuable glimpses of the country, and more especially of the up to then little known Muslim sultanates, among them Ifat and Adal, located to the east of the Christian empire.

This period, and the centuries which followed, coincided with major changes in Ethiopia. The Aksum kingdom began to decline around the middle of the seventh century, and coins ceased to be minted. Later, around the tenth century, the centre of political power shifted southwards to the mountains of Lasta, where a new ruling dynasty, the Zagwé, emerged as the inheritors of the Aksumite Christian kingdom. Situated however much further from the sea the Zagwé state had far fewer contacts than the Aksumites with the outside world.

Perhaps the greatest of the Zagwé rulers was King Lalibela, who, reputedly wishing to make his land-locked capital, Roha, replace Jerusalem as a place of pilgrimage, built eleven remarkably fine rock-hewn churches. Several of them deliberately embodied Aksumite motifs, and one of them, Madhané Alam, was perhaps designed as a replica of the old church of St Mary of Seyon. After his death, Roha was renamed Lalibela in his honour. His churches, which have been ranked among the wonders of the world, remain to this day a great, and very photogenic, tourist attraction.

Power in Ethiopia later once more shifted south, when around 1270 the Zagwé were overthrown, and replaced by a new dynasty based in Shawa, the province in which Addis Ababa is now situated. The new ruling family claimed descent from the Biblical King Solomon and his son, by the legendary Ethiopian Queen of Sheba.

This Solomonic period, as it has been called, witnessed a great new flourishing of Ethiopian Christian civilisation. Several major works of Ge’ez literature were written at this time. They included the first of the royal chronicles, which described the reigns of successive Ethiopian emperors, and the country’s traditional code of law, the Fetha Nagast, or Law of the Kings, which was translated from an Arabic text by an Egyptian Copt, and proclaimed the Divine Right of Kings.

No less important was the Kebra Nagast, or Glory of Kings, written by a priest from Aksum, which became the country’s national epic. This work, which did much to reinforce royal authority as specified in the Fetha Nagast, told the story of the Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian woman ruler called Makeda, who reputedly travelled to Jerusalem to learn of the wisdom of Solomon. The text relates that the Biblical monarch tried to seduce her, but that she refused his advances. He thereupon promised that he would not take her by force, provided that she for her part promised not to steal anything from his palace. To this she readily agreed. He then prepared the famous spicy banquet, and, after eating it, they both went to bed, separately. Not long afterwards the queen awoke, ver...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I Historic Personalities: from Téwodros to Haile Sellassie
• II Historic Towns: North, South, East and West
• III Addis Ababa: the “New Flower”
• IV Economic, Social and Cultural Life: Tradition and Diversity
• V Innovation and Modernisation
• VI Preparing to Resist the Impending Invasion
• Photographic Sources