Gudit (Tigrinya:
Yodit,
Judith; also known as
Esato and even
Magda or
Makeda, the name of the Queen of Sheba) is a semi-legendary non-
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...
queen (flourished c.960) who laid waste to
AxumAxum or Aksum is a city in northern Ethiopia which was the original capital of the eponymous kingdom of Axum. Axum was a naval and trading power that ruled the region from ca. 400 BC into the 10th century...
and its countryside, destroyed churches and monuments, and attempted to exterminate the members of the ruling Axumite dynasty. Her deeds are recorded in the oral tradition and mentioned incidentally in various historical accounts.
The accounts of Gudit are contradictory and incomplete.
Gudit (Tigrinya:
Yodit,
Judith; also known as
Esato and even
Magda or
Makeda, the name of the Queen of Sheba) is a semi-legendary non-
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...
queen (flourished c.960) who laid waste to
AxumAxum or Aksum is a city in northern Ethiopia which was the original capital of the eponymous kingdom of Axum. Axum was a naval and trading power that ruled the region from ca. 400 BC into the 10th century...
and its countryside, destroyed churches and monuments, and attempted to exterminate the members of the ruling Axumite dynasty. Her deeds are recorded in the oral tradition and mentioned incidentally in various historical accounts.
The accounts of Gudit are contradictory and incomplete. Paul B. Henze wrote, "She is said to have killed the emperor, ascended the throne herself, and reigned for forty years. Accounts of her violent misdeeds are still related among peasants in the north Ethiopian countryside." Henze continues in a footnote,
- On my first visit to the rock church of Abreha and Atsbeha in eastern Tigray
Tigray was a province of Ethiopia. The Tigray Region superseded the province with the adoption of the new constitution in 1995. By the time of its demise, Tigray had absorbed a number of its neighboring provinces, including Semien, Tembien, Agame and Enderta province.- History :Proto-Tigrayans and...
in 1970, I noticed that its intricately carved ceiling was blackened by soot. The priest explained it as the work of Gudit, who had piled the church full of hay and set it ablaze nine centuries before.
There is a tradition that Gudit sacked and burned
Debre DamoDebre Damo is the name of a flat-topped mountain, or amba, and a 6th century monastery in northern Ethiopia. The mountain is steeply rising plateau of trapezoidal shape, about 1000 by 400 meters in dimension, having a latitude and longitude of and an elevation of 2216 meters above sea level, and...
, which at the time
was a treasury and a prison for the male relatives of the king of EthiopiaAn amba is a characteristic geologic form in Ethiopia. It is a steep sided, flat topped mountain, often the site of villages, wells and their surrounding farmland. These settlements were located there because they were very defensible and often virtually inaccessible plateaus.The original term in...
; this may be an echo of the later capture and sack of
Amba GeshenAmba Geshen is the name of a mountain in northern Ethiopia. Located in the Debub Wollo Zone of the Amhara Region, northwest of Dessie, this elevation has a latitude and longitude of . It is part of Ambassel woreda. It is one of the mountains of Ethiopia where most of the male heirs to the Emperor...
by Ahmed Gragn.
The Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini first proposed that the account of this warrior queen in the
History of the Patriarchs of AlexandriaThe History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria is a major historical work of the Coptic Church. It is written in Arabic, but draws extensively on Greek and Coptic sources....
, where she was described as
Bani al-Hamwiyah ought to be read as
Bani al-Damutah, and argued that she was ruler of the
once-powerful kingdom of Damot, and that she was related to one of the indigenous
SidamoThe Sidama people of southern Ethiopia are an ethnic group whose homeland is in the Sidama Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia. They number 2,966,474 of whom 149,480 are urban inhabitants, the fifth most populous nation in Ethiopia...
peoples of southern
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
. This would agree with the numerous references to matriarchs ruling the Sidamo polities.
Bernard Leeman
Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholarship (Westbrook: Queensland Academic Press, 2005), p. 116 and
The Sabaean Inscriptions at Adi Kaweh AFSAAP Conference University of Queensland September 30 - October 2,2009, disagrees that Gudit was linked to Sidamo and points out that Gudit's realm of Damot may have been a successor state to the ancient state or "collective of people" of D'mt in Tigre and Eritrea probably based on Yeha that included Adi Kaweh, Wukro, north of Mekele, where inscriptions recorded by Roger Schneider testify to the ca.700 BCE presence of a mixed population of Sabaeans and Hebrew ('Br) jointly ruled by kings and queens of Sheba ("Deux inscriptions Sudarabiques du Tigré"
Bibliotheca Orientalis 30, (1973): 385-87). Excavations are being undertaken on a promontory 600 metres below Adi Kaweh (Archaeological site Wukro 1, eight kilometres from Wukro town, where Gudit is allegedly buried and where one of Schneider's D'mt inscribed incense burners was discovered. An 8th century B.C.E. Sabaean temple has been uncovered by a joint team from Mekele, Berlin, and Jena universities. Excavations began following protests from villagers when they learned that stones from Gudit's grave were to be used for road construction. The similarity in names between "D'mt" and "Damot" may indicate that the D'mt state was not after all absorbed by Aksum in the pre-Christian era. Unfortunately neither Gudit nor the Zagwe dynasty who succeeded her left relevant records.
If Gudit did not belong to one of the Sidamo peoples, then some scholars, based on the traditions that Gudit was Jewish, propose that she was of the
AgawThe Agaw are a people of Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. They are primarily bilingual, speaking both Agaw languages , as well as Amharic, Tigrinya or Tigre.-History:...
people, who historically have been numerous in Lasta, and a number of whom (known as the
Beta IsraelBeta Israel is the Historical name of Jewish community from Ethiopia, but with most now living in Israel. They are also known as Falasha by non-Jewish Ethiopians, but the Jews consider the term derogatory...
), have professed an Israelite pre-Ezra
JudaismJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
since ancient times. If she was not of Hebrew, Israelite or Jewish origin, she might have been a convert to Judaism by her husband, or
paganPaganism is a word with several different meanings.In its broadest definition, pagan denotes all non-Abrahamic religions, that is to say it denotes all religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.Other usages are:*Paganism may mean Polytheism: The group so defined includes most of the...
. Local traditions around Adi Kaweh where she allegedly died and was buried indicate her faith was pagan-Hebraic,rather than Israelite or Jewish [Leeman 2009].
It was during the office of
Patriarch Philotheos of AlexandriaPope Philotheos of Alexandria was the Coptic Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark .It was during his office that a conflict between Alexandria and the king of Ethiopia that began in the time of Cosmas III ended, helped by the efforts of Georgios II of Makuria...
when Gudit started her revolt, near the end of the reign of the king who had deposed the Abuna Petros. As Taddesse Tamrat explains, at the time "his own death in the conflict, and the military reverses of the kingdom were taken as divine retribution for the sufferings of Abuna Petros."
This chronological synchronicity with the tenure of Patriarch Philotheos, and the intervention of king
Georgios II of MakuriaGeorgios II was ruler of the Nubian kingdom of Makuria. When Jawhar, the governor of Egypt, sent a mission to receive the baqt, he included an invitation to Georgios to embrace Islam...
, provides us a date of c.960 for Gudit. A contemporary Arab historian,
Ibn HawqalMohammed Abul-Kassem ibn Hawqal was a 10th century Arab writer, geographer, and chronicler. His famous work, written in 977, is called Surat al-Ardh ....
, provides this account:
- The country of the habasha
The term Habesha refers to a South Semitic-speaking group of people whose cultural, linguistic, and in certain cases, ancestral origins trace back to the tribes of the Axumite and the Da'amat kingdom...
has been ruled by a woman for many years now: she has killed the king of the habasha who was called Haḍani [from Ge'ezGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
haṣ́ani, modern aṣ́e or atseThe Emperor of Ethiopia was the hereditary ruler of Ethiopia until the abolition of the monarchy in 1974. The Emperor was the head of state and head of government, with ultimate executive, judicial and legislative power in that country...
]. Until today she rules with complete independence in her own country and the frontier areas of the country of the Haḍani, in the southern part of [the country of] the habashi.
Another historian mentions that the king of
YemenYemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia...
sent a
zebraZebras are African equids best known for their distinctive white and black stripes. Their stripes come in different patterns unique to each individual. They are generally social animals and can be seen in small harems to large herds. In addition to their stripes, zebras have erect, mohawk-like manes...
to the ruler of
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
in 969/970, which he had received as a gift from the Queen of al-Habasha.
Taddesse Tamrat has speculated that one effect of Gudit's otherwise ephemeral rule, might be the pockets of various languages related to Amharic scattered across southwestern Ethiopia (e.g.
ArgobbaArgobba is an Ethiopian Semitic spoken in an area north-east of Addis Ababa by the Argobba people. It belongs to the South Ethiopian Semitic subgroup together with Amharic and the Gurage languages...
, Gurage and
GafatThe Gafat language is an extinct Semitic language that was once spoken along the Abbay River in Ethiopia. The records of this language are extremely sparse. There is a translation of the Song of Songs written in the 17th or 18th Century held at the Bodleian Library...
), which could have been Axumite military settlements isolated by her conquests and later Sidamo migrations.
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