Dʿmt

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Dʿmt (ESA: ) was a kingdom located in current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom exist, as very little archaeological work has taken place. As a result, it is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before Aksum's early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Aksumite kingdom possibly around the beginning of our era.^[1]

The capital is thought to have been Yeha. It developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons.

Most modern historians like Stuart Munro-Hay, Rodolfo Fattovich, Ayele Bekerie, Felder, and Isaac consider this civilization to be indigenous, although Sabaean-influenced due to the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea, while others like Michels, de Contenson, Mekouria, and Burstein view Dʿmt as the result of a mixture of "culturally superior" Sabaeans and indigenous peoples.^[2][3] Nevertheless, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language spoken in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in ancient times, is now known to not have derived from Sabaean, and there is evidence of a Semitic speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at least as early as 2000 BC.^[4][5]Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Aksumite state.^[6] After the fall of Dʿmt in the 5th century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms, until the rise of one of these kingdoms, the Aksumite Kingdom, ancestor of medieval and modern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia (a.k.a. Abyssinia) during the first century, which was able to reunite the area.^[7]

[edit] Known rulers

List of four known rulers in chronological order^[3]

Term	Name	Queen	Notes
Dates from ca. 700 BC to ca. 650 BC
	Mlkn Wʿrn Ḥywt	ʿArky(t)n	contemporary of the Sabaean mukarrib Karib'il Watar.
	Mkrb, Mlkn Rdʿm	Smʿt
	Mkrb, Mlkn Ṣrʿn Rbḥ	Yrʿt	Son of Wʿrn Ḥywt, "King Ṣrʿn of the tribe YGʿḎ [=Agʿazi, cognate to Ge'ez], mkrb of DʿMT and SB'"
	Mkrb, Mlkn Ṣrʿn Lmn	ʿAdt	Son of Rbḥ, contemporary of the Sabaean mukarrib Sumuhu'alay, "King Ṣrʿn of the tribe YGʿḎ, mkrb of DʿMT and SB'"

[edit] See also

• History of Ethiopia
• History of Eritrea
• Kingdom of Aksum
• Land of Punt

[edit] References

1. ^ Uhlig, Siegbert (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. pp.185.
2. ^ Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, pp.57.
3. ^ ^{a b} Nadia Durrani, The Tihamah Coastal Plain of South-West Arabia in its Regional context c. 6000 BC - AD 600 (Society for Arabian Studies Monographs No. 4). Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005, p.121.
4. ^ ibid.
5. ^ Herausgegeben von Uhlig, Siegbert. Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, "Ge'ez". Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005, pp. 732.
6. ^ Munro-Hay, Aksum, pp.57.
7. ^ Pankhurst, Richard K.P. Addis Tribune, "Let's Look Across the Red Sea I", January 17, 2003.