The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
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| The frankincense trees (varieties of the Burseraceae family) have become fully naturalised in the Hadhramaut but myrrh (Balsamodendronmyrrha), as Bruce observed and Freya Stark(1) confirmed, has not succeeded there. The balsam tree (Commiphora opobalsamum), too, whose resin is used to make balm and was very highly prized as a medicament in ancient times, originated in Abyssinia and, says Bruce, was transplanted into Arabia and thence to Palestine, where it came to be known as Balm of Gilead. This was one of the products which was being carried from Gilead (east of the Jordan) to Egypt by the Ishmaelite camel caravan which purchased Joseph from his brothers after he had been thrown into a pit, as recounted in Genesis 37:25. Josephus mentioned a popular belief that the-plant had been brought to Israel by the Queen of Sheba as a gift for Solomon, (2) while Strabo describes a park for growing balsam at Jericho.(3) Another Arabian agricultural import from Abyssinia was the coffee plant, which is a native of the province ofKaffa, from which some say it derives its name(4) and which came into European languages through the Arabic Kahwah. Until the end of the seventeenth century Yemen was the sole supplier of coffee on the world market, exporting it through the Red Sea port of Mocha, whose name came to be associated with the product itself Yet another native Abyssinian plant which has become naturalised in the Yemen is the 'baneful little Qat tree'(5) (Catha edulis) whose leaves are chewed in vast quantities, especially in south-west Arabia, as a drug. The generally held opinion that the ancient Abyssinian building technique, as expressed in the magnificent monuments of Axum of the fourth century AD, was introduced from southern Arabia is also undergoing a radical revision. Here again, modern scholarship had been anticipated to some degree by Bruce, who detected Egyptian influence at work, though admittedly he was far out in attributing the giant stelae to Ptolemy Euergetes, who ruled from 247 to 221 BC. Bruce may have been misled by the Greek inscription which both he and the French traveller Charles Poncet reported that they had seen at Axum, and which read 'Ptolemaioy Euergetou Basileos'.(6) There can be no doubt that Ptolemaic-Egyptian influences made themselves strongly felt in the Axumite kingdom and we know that both Ptolemies II and III organised (1) The Southern Gates of Arabia (1936), p. 298. See also N. Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh (1981). |
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