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

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.