The deep past
Human history in Eritrea begins far earlier than any kingdom. In the Danakil Depression, the Buya locality has yielded fossils of early Homo close to Homo erectus, dating to roughly one million years ago, alongside Acheulean stone tools. Long afterwards, on the plateau around Asmara, thousands of obsidian blades at Sembel record one of the earliest known highland occupations in the region, from around 8000 BCE — a stone-age world that predates the pyramids of Egypt by millennia.
The Land of Punt (c. 2500 – 1493 BCE)
Egyptian records from the Fifth Dynasty describe expeditions to a fabled land of gold, frankincense and myrrh they called Punt, Ta-Netjer, 'the God's Land'. The most celebrated voyage came under the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, around 1493 BCE, and is carved in relief on the walls of her temple at Deir el-Bahri: five ships arriving, the chief's house raised on stilts, and frankincense trees carried home in baskets to be replanted on the Nile. The goods, the flora, the sailing times and the coastal geography have led most scholars to place Punt on the western shore of the Red Sea — the coast of modern Eritrea and eastern Sudan.
D'mt and Yeha (c. 980 – 400 BCE)
D'mt is the earliest kingdom known by name in the highlands. Its name appears in inscriptions carved on both sides of the Red Sea, and its rulers left records in a script adopted from South Arabia. Its great centre was Yeha, where the Great Temple of dressed stone, raised around 700 BCE and still standing, is the oldest building in the region. Whether D'mt was a Sabaean colony or an indigenous highland kingdom that absorbed South Arabian writing, architecture and gods is still argued; modern excavation tends to favour the second view. Out of that borrowed script came the letter forms of Ge'ez. By the fifth century BCE the inscriptions thin out and stop, and power moved south toward Aksum.
Adulis and the Aksumite Empire (c. 100 BCE – 600 CE)
Adulis, on the Gulf of Zula, was the great port of the Eritrean coast. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek merchant's handbook of the first century CE, calls it a port established by law, with its customs house at Gabaza and a road inland to the capital at Aksum. It exported ivory, tortoiseshell and rhinoceros horn and drew ships from Egypt, Arabia and India. Under Aksum the port became the sea-gate of a power that minted its own gold coinage, raised enormous obelisks and adopted Christianity in the fourth century under King Ezana. In the early sixth century more than sixty ships sailed from Adulis for Himyar in southern Arabia under Emperor Kaleb. The port was sacked by raiders around 640 CE and abandoned as Aksum faded; its remains now lie buried beneath the coastal plain.
The medieval highlands (c. 1135 – 1550 CE)
After Aksum, the highlands drifted beyond the reach of the Zagwe dynasty and then of the resurgent Abyssinian Empire. From the contested coast emerged the Kingdom of Medri Bahri, 'the land by the sea', between the Red Sea and the Mereb River. Its ruler, the Bahri Negassi or King of the Sea, shifted between vassal, ally and rebel against Abyssinia. His royal capital was Debarwa, in the Seraye district, where the Portuguese embassy of 1520 was received. In the 1560s the Ottomans seized Massawa and pushed into the highlands, and in the following century the Bahri Negassi's residence moved to Tsazega — the close of the era this archive covers.
Key names and dates
- Buya
- Fossils of early Homo, c. 1 million years ago, in the Danakil Depression.
- Sembel / Asmara
- Obsidian toolmaking on the plateau, c. 8000 BCE.
- Punt
- Egypt's 'God's Land', on the western Red Sea coast, c. 2500 – 1493 BCE.
- D'mt
- The first named kingdom of the highlands, centred on Yeha, c. 980 – 400 BCE.
- Yeha
- Its Great Temple, c. 700 BCE, is the oldest standing building in the region.
- Adulis
- The Red Sea port of the highlands, on the Gulf of Zula, later Aksum's sea-gate.
- Ge'ez
- The script developed in these highlands; still in use today.
- Ezana
- The Aksumite king who adopted Christianity in the 4th century.
- Kaleb
- The emperor whose fleet sailed from Adulis for Himyar, c. 525 CE.
- Medri Bahri
- The medieval kingdom of the highlands and coast, ruled by the Bahri Negassi.