c. 980–400 BCE kingdom in Eritrea and fringes of northern Ethiopia
For the medieval kingdom located in western Ethiopia, see Kingdom of Damot.
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Tigray region of Ethiopia. The exact dates of its existence remain unknown. However, a timeframe spanning from the end of the 8th century BC to the 6th century BC is a hypothesis.[1] Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom survive, and very little archaeological work has taken place. As a result, it is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before the Kingdom of Aksum's early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Kingdom of Aksum, possibly around 150 BC.[6]
Given the presence of a large temple complex, the capital of Dʿmt may have been present-day Yeha, in Tigray Region, Ethiopia.[2] At Yeha, the temple to the god Ilmuqah is still standing.[7]
Sabaean-influenced due to the latter's dominance of the Red Sea, while others like Joseph Michels, Henri de Contenson, Tekle-Tsadik Mekouria, and Stanley Burstein have viewed Dʿmt as the result of a mixture of Sabaeans and indigenous peoples.[8][9] Some sources consider the Sabaean influence to be minor, limited to a few localities, and disappeared 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.[10][11]
Archaeologist Rodolfo Fattovich believed that there was a division in the population of Dʿmt and northern Ethiopia due to the kings ruling over the 'sb (Sabaeans) and the 'br, the 'Reds' and the 'Blacks'.[12] Fattovich also noted that the known kings of Dʿmt worshipped both South Arabian and indigenous gods named 'str, Hbs, Dt Hmn, Rb, Šmn, Ṣdqn and Šyhn.[12]
After the fall of Dʿmt, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller unknown successor kingdoms. This lasted until the rise of one of these polities during the first century BC, the Aksumite Kingdom.[13]
Known rulers
The following is a list of four known rulers of Dʿmt, in chronological order:[9]
^Stuart Munro-Hay (2002). Ethiopia: The Unknown Land. I.B. Taurus. p. 18.
^Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, p. 57.
^ abNadia 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.
Avanzini, Alessandra (2016). By land and by sea: a history of South Arabia before Islam recounted from inscriptions. L'Erma Di Bretschneider.
Further reading
Prioletta, Alessia; Robin, Christian Julien; Schiettecatte, Jérémie; Gajda, Iwona; Nuʿmān, Khaldūn Hazzāʿ (2021). "Sabaeans on the Somali coast". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 32 (S1): 328.
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