A quick post on social media by historian Marcos Leitão de Almeida, an expert in African history, revealed a completely unsuspected world to me, and I believe it is worth sharing this little nugget of gold with the blog’s readers. Almeida cited a study that shows how the ancient monarchical tradition of Ethiopia ended up using a justification of biblical origin, very similar to that used by Europeans in the Colonial Era, to enshrine their right to enslave neighboring peoples.
To quickly refresh the memory of those who haven’t read the book of Genesis for a while: after the flood, Noah (yes, the one from the ark) plants vines, uses the grapes to make wine and gets drunk, leaving himself naked in his tent. Of his three sons, named Shem, Ham and Japheth, only Ham is careful not to notice his drunk father’s nakedness, while the other two cover him from behind, so as not to disrespect him. Result: when he recovers from his drunkenness, Noah curses Ham and says that his descendants will be slaves of Shem and Japheth.
It turns out that in Hebrew tradition, the peoples supposedly descended from Ham include African groups, such as the Egyptians and the Nubians (but also nations of the Near East). The Israelites, on the other hand, are said to be descended from Shem (which is where the word “Semite” comes from, of course).
Because of the association between the “cursed” Ham and Africa, some Europeans began to ideologically justify the slavery of African peoples based on the biblical account. Black skin, in fact, was seen as a sign of this curse. At the same time, however, something similar had already been formulated by the Christian empire of Ethiopia, which had already adopted monotheism and its reverence for the text of the Bible since the 4th century AD.
This is what Jonathon Glassman, from Northwestern University (USA), argues in this 2021 study, cited by Almeida. He recalls that the Christian Ethiopian kings described themselves as “the seed of Shem” and descendants of King Solomon, son of David, who had married an African queen. In fact, some of the inhabitants of the Ethiopian plateau spoke Semitic languages, a sign of ancient contacts between Africa and the Near East.
The Semitic and “Davidic” origin of the monarchs was seen as a justification for subjugating peoples further away from this cultural sphere. Among them, the “shankilla” stood out, the name given to shepherds who spoke languages of the Nilo-Saharan group (completely different from the Semitic linguistic family). For the Ethiopian sovereigns, they could only be slaves and their “blackness” (the intensity of the black tone of their skin) was a sign of degradation.
Justifications for despotic domination and hierarchization of peoples, unfortunately, exist all over the world, and Africa is no exception — which, of course, is no reason to justify the impact of the slave trade across the Atlantic practiced for centuries by Europeans.
(This may be just the beginning of a series on Ethiopian history here. The place’s past is fascinating.)
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