By Paulos Milkias, Ph.D.
Professor of African Politics
Concordia University
QUEEN [NUBIA] TO `My AXUM YOUR AXUM’
My fathers built
A heritage of songs and laughter
Your fathers built
Monuments of wars
An historic mass of ruins.
Your sinners came
Crossed our red water fortress
To make our innocents repent.
They insulted our Ra, god
And the memories of Meroe.
Chains of feud rose between our peoples
Till we smoked the incense of peace
Conducted the rites of marriage
And you let our Noble Serpent be.ψ
By Poet Lauriet of Ethiopia: Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, “Your Axum’/`My Axum” [From COLLISION OF ALTARS: A Conflict of the Ancient Red Sea Gods] Emergences, Volume 10, Number 1, 2000
Ethiopia as the Cradle of Humankind
The going convention is that each and every one of us is a singular, unmatched and unique human being. But we are all Ethiopians regardless of whether we are of African, European, Asiatic, Oceanian or Amerindian origin.
There is, however, a narrower definition of Ethiopia, for the term stems from the Greek words “aitho”, burn, and “ops”, face which together mean “burnt face.” Thus, in the English dictionary, it is, in fact, interchangeable with “Blacks” or “Africans.” 1 —Paulos Milkias -Shattering the Myth – 2004 PDF (1)