African Cooking

The Ancient World of Ethiopia - Section 1 of 8 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 )

The Great historian Edward Gibbon dismissed the history and the culture of Ethiopia with the words: "The Ethiopians slept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten." Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Wiser - if less famous - historians always knew that Ethiopia was in some way crucial to the history of Africa, and through the centuries artists and poets of the Western world never lost touch with the mastery of that land, at least in their imaginations. (Its other name of Abyssinia derived from Habesh, as it is still called in the Arabic-speaking world, after the Habashat tribe of Arabs who entered the country from Yemen across the Red Sea sometime before 500 B.C. In southern Africa, 3,000 miles away, we were always intensely aware of the fabled kingdom to the north, and we were certain that our history would have been utterly different had it not been for the long, persistent pull of both a known and a mythical Ethiopia on Mediterranean and European minds.

A young priest of the Ethiopian Church bears an ornate filigree cross in a solemn religious procession in Gondar. Ethiopia's adherence to Christianity dates back to 340 A.D. A separate branch of the faith, Ethiopian Christianity is related to Egypt's Coptic Church but distinct from Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

We knew that the main reason for our presence in southern Africa was the European search for a route to the spice trade of India and the Far East, and knew also that this search had been stimulated in part by the belief that somewhere down in Africa there existed a land of immense riches. The 15th Century Portuguese explores thought that this land and Ethiopia were one, that this opulent realm was a Christian country ruled by a king called Prester John, and that they could deal profitably with this king on their voyages. These beliefs of the Portuguese were fantastic, of course, but they had a very profound effect on African history, and on my youthful dreams of exploring the whole of my continent.

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