#gurage — Public Fediverse posts

Trying to learn more about Ethiopia(n Semitic languages), I just finished reading William A. Shack’s The Central Ethiopians. Amhara, Tigriňa and related peoples (1974; London: International African Institute). It’s 50 years old, many of the sources it uses are over 100 years old, and I’m sure it’s full of inaccuracies I didn’t recognize besides the ones I did, but it’s a place to start.

On the traditional religion of the Western Gurage, Shack writes (p. 113):

Yəgzär is the supreme god of the Gurage, the creator of the world. However, there is no cult addressed to Yəgzär, as there are to lesser deities, the most important of which are the cults of Waq, the male “Sky-god,” of Dämwamwit, the female deity, and Božä, the ‘Thunder-God.” Each clan has its own local Waq; Dämwamwit and Božä are central deities for the säbat bet federation. … In Gurage belief, Yəgzär handed over to Božä the responsibility of regulating the daily conduct of Gurage and affording ritual protection against theft and the destruction of property by arson.

Two things stand out to me here:

1. The creator god as a “high god” who is not the most commonly worshiped one and has handed over control to another god, specifically the god of thunder. This mirrors the relationship between Ilu and Ba’lu at Ugarit. But also compare Kronos and Zeus in Greek mythology, or maybe Odin and Thor in Germanic religion.
2. “Each clan has its own local Waq“.1 This sounds very Iron Age West Semitic to me. Think of Israel and Judah worshiping YHWH, the Ammonites worshiping Milkom, the Moabites and Kemosh, the Edomites and Qaws… We also find this in Ancient South Arabia, as I learned from Imar Koutchoukali during the last Leiden Summer School: there, everyone venerated Athtar, but each kingdom again had its own particular tutelary deity, like Almaqah for the Sabaeans and Wadd for the Minaeans. We seem to have an explicit description of this theology in Deut 32:8–9:

When Elyon apportioned the nations,
    when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
    according to the number of the children of God;2
YHWH’s portion was his people,
    Jacob his allotted share.

(adapted from NRSV)

Feature (1) occurs in some shape or another in a lot of religions, especially ones from the Near East, and it may well have spread through contact. The Gurage Zone is far enough away, though, that I wonder whether this points to an inheritance from Proto-West-Semitic times. Feature (2) seems less common to me, although that could just be my ignorance speaking. Also, I’m not really sure how the difference between a thunder god and a sky god works out in practice; maybe I should read the other publications by Shack he refers to in this passage. But for now, creator-god-appoints-thunder-god-as-ruler and each-political-unit-has-its-tutelary-sky-god as reconstructible elements of Proto-Semitic religion makes for an exciting hypothesis.

1. The name Waq is borrowed from (Lowland?) East Cushitic, but from what I’ve read on Wikipedia he’s more important there and the localized aspect may be missing. ↩︎
2. MT: “the children of Israel”; commonly reconstructed like this based on LXX “the angels of God” ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/10/20/gurage-evidence-for-proto-semitic-religion/

#AncientSouthArabian #Bible #Cushitic #Deuteronomy #Gurage #Hebrew #ProtoSemitic #religion

Bit of a posting spree this week, but I’m looking for feedback on something that’s been bothering me for several years now.

The terms Ethiosemitic, Ethio-Semitic and so forth have a big downside: they tend to (understandably!) trigger Eritreans, who make up a considerable share of the people speaking these languages. Hence, it would be nice if we could settle on an alternative. Afro-Semitic sounds kind of cool, but could be misinterpreted as including North African, Egyptian, and Sudanese Arabic, maybe even Punic. Something deriving from the Horn of Africa would be more precise, but I don’t see any elegant way to turn that into a single adjective. So my leading candidate is Abyssinian.

Pros:

• based on an endonym, Habesha
• used both in Antiquity and in the present
• unquestionably refers to speakers of the three biggest/most studied languages in this group: Ge’ez, Amharic, Tigrinya
• covers languages from both Ethiopia and Eritrea and from both main linguistic groups (South and North/non-South if North isn’t a valid category by itself)
• already an existing English word
• some history of linguistic usage
• not literally the same word as Habesha so there’s some liberty to use it differently

Cons:

• sounds kind of old-fashioned and colonial to me (maybe unrightfully so)
• often limited to predominantly Christian groups (Amharic and Tigrinya speakers), may exclude predominantly Muslim groups (Tigre, Harari speakers); isolated (mostly Christian) Gurage speakers seem like an edge case from what I can find online
• may be a loaded term given recent ethnic tensions in Ethiopia

So, what do you think? Is it worth going back to an outdated term in an attempt to make some people feel included and stop them from getting mad, with the risk of excluding another group of people and making them mad?1 I would especially love to hear from anyone with a relevant ethnic background—Habesha, Ethiosemitic speakers, what have you—but all input is very welcome.

1. But note that the biggest relevant non-Habesha group, Tigre speakers, are also excluded by Ethiosemitic. ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/08/08/ethiosemitic-or-abyssinian/

#Amharic #GeEz #Gurage #linguistics #Tigre #Tigrinya

Bit of a posting spree this week, but I’m looking for feedback on something that’s been bothering me for several years now.

The terms Ethiosemitic, Ethio-Semitic and so forth have a big downside: they tend to (understandably!) trigger Eritreans, who make up a considerable share of the people speaking these languages. Hence, it would be nice if we could settle on an alternative. Afro-Semitic sounds kind of cool, but could be misinterpreted as including North African, Egyptian, and Sudanese Arabic, maybe even Punic. Something deriving from the Horn of Africa would be more precise, but I don’t see any elegant way to turn that into a single adjective. So my leading candidate is Abyssinian.

Pros:

• based on an endonym, Habesha
• used both in Antiquity and in the present
• unquestionably refers to speakers of the three biggest/most studied languages in this group: Ge’ez, Amharic, Tigrinya
• covers languages from both Ethiopia and Eritrea and from both main linguistic groups (South and North/non-South if North isn’t a valid category by itself)
• already an existing English word
• some history of linguistic usage
• not literally the same word as Habesha so there’s some liberty to use it differently

Cons:

• sounds kind of old-fashioned and colonial to me (maybe unrightfully so)
• often limited to predominantly Christian groups (Amharic and Tigrinya speakers), may exclude predominantly Muslim groups (Tigre, Harari speakers); isolated (mostly Christian) Gurage speakers seem like an edge case from what I can find online
• may be a loaded term given recent ethnic tensions in Ethiopia

So, what do you think? Is it worth going back to an outdated term in an attempt to make some people feel included and stop them from getting mad, with the risk of excluding another group of people and making them mad?1 I would especially love to hear from anyone with a relevant ethnic background—Habesha, Ethiosemitic speakers, what have you—but all input is very welcome.

1. But note that the biggest relevant non-Habesha group, Tigre speakers, are also excluded by Ethiosemitic. ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/08/08/ethiosemitic-or-abyssinian/

#Amharic #GeEz #Gurage #linguistics #Tigre #Tigrinya