Grants:IdeaLab/Creating Religious Content carefully and check all Religious Content by Religious Scholars

Not quality religious content available on internet, but it is a basic fundamental right for everyone. Because Wikimedia provides many types of knowledge, it is duty of it as an organization.|{{Probox summary=Not quality religious content available on internet, but it is a basic fundamental right for everyone. Because Wikimedia provides many types of knowledge, it is duty of it as an organization. |affiliate=cseir |summary=proposal to renovate some old building into palace for Kaw Te family. |target=English Wikipedia |goal=Improve quality |start_date=The Project Start on the August 22, |start_year=2016 |end_date=February 15, |end_year=2017 |amount_local=980,000,000.00 Ghc |amount=1,000,000.00 USD |contact=qchichiwachi@wikimedia.org |grant_type=Group |organization=Gua We |contact2=cseir gh@wikimedia.org |website=http:cseir.wikiworldwide.org |nonprofit=No |status=DRAFT |portal=PEG |translations=Probox/PEG/Content |more_participants=NO |contact=alauddinjutt@gmail.com|image

== Project idea == Kwa Te

Religious people of Kwa want to see any more content online about Kwa Religious teachings when they need it in AFRICANS OF ANCIENT ROME The Negro expressive bust in 400 BC Ancient European traders including Italy, such as Sicily and Olbia which was founded by the descendants of the black son of Ham who were the Canaanite known as the Phoenicians. The love of black Zeus. Phoenician princess Europa is the source of the continental name Europe! In later times, Italy tribes entered what is now Italy producing a population that now included whites. African by physical appearance gods were many in Rome including Silenius (1) Zeus (2) Baccus, Hercules. Few historical figures are better known than Attila the Hun. Portrayed in his lifetime in Rome as African. THE BROWN-SKINNED AND HEAVILY CURLED HAIR 200 BC, WOOLLY-HAIR BLACK ZEUS 300 BC, A WOOLLY-HAIRED VALENTINIAN STANDING WITH HIS FOOT ON THE WOOLLY HEAD OF ATTILA THE HUN IN A COIN MINTED IN ROME WHILE ATTILA WAS YET ALIVE. IRONICALLY, ATTILA WAS DEFEATED BY THE ROMAN GENERAL AEITUS, WHO WAS RAISED BY ATTILA AND WHOM HE TOUGHT THE ART OF WARFARE. FROM 700 BC WITH PLAITED HAIR IN LAYERS LIKE A TILED-ROOF IS A NUBIAN. HAIR LIKE BALLS OF WOOL FROM 400 BC.

Explanation

In these days, many people searching for Religious articles and content, but resources of this type of knowledge are offline, therefore researchers face problems and difficulties during religious research. It is best for them to avail all important and needed content online. The sailors from Portugal began to explore the coast of West Africa for trade prospect in 1434. Later, sailed past West Africa, South Africa to the coast of East Africa and across the Indian Ocean to India through other parts of the Far East. Their journeys was not only for trade prospect but to send their religion to other part of the world, especially Africa. The Portuguese were strong Christians traders brought their religion and Roman Catholic priests with them in 1471. These priests preached in Elmina and in the nearby villages, until 1642 when they have left the country. Since they did not leave their priests behind to look after the people whom they have converted to become Christians. Dutch and other European traders remained after the Portuguese had left, did not bother to preach Christianity and no priests to help them to keep the right form of Portuguese worship gradually changed in to their own Ancestors practice. In the year 1752, Rev. Thomas Thompson arrived in Cape Coast, over a hundred and more years after the Portuguese had left with their Roman Catholic priests and Christian religion. These man belonged to Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) a Church of England Missionary Society. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) became the Anglican Church in Ghana, Rev. Thomas Thompson opened a Church in Cape Coast Castle and felt that the people understand and believe that the objects preaching of Christian religious service had magical powers of their own.

Philip Kwa Kue returned to Cape Coast in 1765, He became a chaplain in Cape Coast Castle. These enable him to look after the Christian Merchants in the castle as their priest. He then went out, too, to preach to the people in the town and the villages around Cape Coast. He ran a school for the children of the people in the castle and other children from the town and died in 1816.

The Rev. Philip Kwa Kue was made a chaplain. He became a schoolmaster, without school children he had to work hard it wasn’t easy finding or getting children to join his class of twelve. But slowly, the school grew from twelve to seventy. Under his leadership of these very small number of school children! produce ministers of region and leaders who have played vital role in the leadership of the country. The school continued to grow after Rev. Philip Kwa Kue’s death. Later, the Government took it over, and it became the famous Cape Coast Government School (“Adisadel College”) an Anglican Secondary School at Cape Coast. Due to his marvelous work, it has been renamed ‘Philip Kwa Kue School’. The government Girls’ school in Cape Coast has also been renamed after this great priest. Rev. Philip Kwa Kue was member of Kwa Te Family of Gua, the Asere linage that who possess their own traditions and even where Kwa Family of Gua as member of Asere Family they share a Ga language with their neighbor , Ga dangbe speakers. It is the diversity of local belief that look surprising rather than the evidence of a common heritage.

The Anglican Church After the death of Philip Kwa Kue in 1816 many others from the Church of England missionary society continued his good work in education, but the Anglican Church did not spread quickly to other parts of the country for as long as at 1906 when the Anglican missionaries started to preach and to open branches of the Church throughout southern Ghana and Asante as well remained in few towns in the big towns. But there was another Church which also worked very hard and only in the villages as well as in the smaller towns, right from the very beginning. This was Basel Mission, which took over by the Church of Scotland Mission during the First World War, and became the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in 1927. The Basel Mission came to Ghana in 1827 with its missionaries started work first at Osu in Accra. Then, in 1835, the Rev. Andreas Riis opened a branch at Akwapim Akropong were the missionaries started Spreading their work to many towns and villages, especially in the Greater Accra Region and in the Eastern Region on the same year the first Methodist missionary arrived in Ghana. The Basel Mission, started schools in Accra, Akwapim and other places in the Eastern Region. The Bremen Mission, started work in the Volta Region in 1847 and opened schools in that area. These two missions later became Presbyterian Churches. The Rev. Andreas Riis moved up from Osu to Akwapim. Over ten years later, in 1848, the Presbyterians started a college at Akropong in Akwapim. At first, they trained preachers and catechists. Their duty was to help the missionaries to spread Christianity. Later, the college trained other men to teach in schools. The teacher training college at Akropong is the oldest of the colleges in the country and today it is also one of the largest. There was a Rev. Minister Joseph Dun well who died after his hard work, but his followers continued work in Cape Coast just as Presbyterians. His followers soon opened branches of their missionary society in the Central Region. In 1838, three years after the arrival of the Rev. Joseph Dun well, then came Rev. Thomas Birch Freeman to Ghana. Whose father was African and his mother was English and was known as African, Birch Freeman understood the people much better than any other missionaries could. Shortly after his arrival, he opened a Methodist mission as far inland as Kumasi and did great work in Ghana. Most of the early Basel missionaries were Germans, and very strict people in their customs. This is why today some people call a person who has received a strict training! as one with a “Presbyterian training “. Another branch of the Presbyterian Church was started by missionaries from Bremen in Germany. They started work in Ewe land in 1847, The Bremen Mission later became the Ewe Evangelical Presbyterian Church. May God Richly Blessed All Missionaries in their service by using them as the main Instrument in Establishing the Churches and Strict Education. Kwa language family of the south and Gur language family of the north. The Kwa languages spoken in the south include Akan (in its many dialects), Nzema, Guan, Ga-Dangme and Ewe, and other smaller languages. The Gur or Kwa languages spoken in the northern savannah regions of Ghana include Gonja, Dagbani, Dagaare and Wali among others. Estimates of the number of indigenous languages spoken vary from 30(Spencer 1971) to over 81 languages (www.ethonologue.org). Two languages À Hausa and English À serve as lingua francas throughout the country: of these, English is the official language of government, business, education and the media. Pre-independence efforts at mother tongue education Busia (1964, 13) described the situation before the advent of the Europeans in the following terms: The young were taught how to cope with their environment; how to farm, or hunt, or fish, or prepare food, or build a house, or run a home. They were taught the language, manners, and generally the culture of the community. The methods were informal; the young learnt by participating in activities alongside their elders. They learnt by listening, by watching, by so doing. In many practical ways they learnt how to live as members of their community. The early merchants and missionaries, knew to develop more formal education, and were quick to see the potential of local languages for the purposes of trading and also for the conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity (Graham 1971; Mc William and Kwame na-Poh 1975; Mfum-Mensah 2005; Owu - Ewie 2006). Initially, the merchants, travellers and missionaries trained a small number of natives of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) to act as interpreters and intermediaries. However, they soon realized that knowledge of the native tongues, both written and spoken, was essential to progress in education, trade and evangelization (Graham 1971). The Basel mission schools, formal schools established by German missionaries in the nineteenth century, made the vernacular the medium of instruction. Between 1859 and 1871, Johann Gottlieb Chris taller translated the Four Gospels, the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs and then the entire Bible into Twi. Another German missionary, J.B. Schlegel, had also, in 1859, written the first Ewe grammar (Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany 2011). A Wesleyan minister who visited Basel dominated communities in the Gold Coast was said to have lauded the works of the Basel missionaries and in 1873 wrote to the Secretaries to Wesley for the Church that: ‘The children read the scriptures, studied their histories, learnt geography, ciphered, wrote and sang all in their respective dialects’ (Graham 1971, 125). In due course, Wesleyan missionaries who settled along the southern coast where Fante is dominant used this language as the medium of instruction in their schools. The use of the vernacular by the missions, as has already been said, was not aimed at developing and promoting the languages and cultures of the people, but rather at converting local peoples to Christianity (Mfum-Mensah 2005). In addition, in 1883, the Basel missionaries introduced a trilingual newspaper À the Christian Messenger, written in English, Ga and Twi, which continues to this day (Chatry- Komarek 2008). There cognition of local languages received a significant boost from the British colonial Governor of the Gold Coast from 1919 to 1927, Sir Gordon Guggisberg (Graham 1971; McWilliams and Kwame na-Poh 1975) who viewed education as the first and

Language and Education 

For most step in the social and economic development of the Gold Coast. In 1920, he appointed an education committee to ‘investigate past educational efforts in the country and the reasons for their success or failure, and to report on the methods, principles and policy governing the progress of education in the country’ (Graham 1971, 156). Guggisberg vision to preserve the national characteristics of the people and to ensure that education does not alienate the‘ educated Africans’, served as the framework for the committee (Mc William and Kwame na-Poh 1975,54): We want to give to all Africans the opportunity of both moral and material progress...our aim must be not to denationalize them...for, without preserving their national characteristics and sympathy and touch with the great illiterate masses of their own people, no person can ever become a leader in progress, whatever sort of leader they may become. The Guggisberg education committee recommended that English should be introduced as early as possible as a subject of instruction in primary schools, but that the vernacular should be the medium of instruction. They also made recommendations about the preparation of vernacular school books as a result of which a special Publications Officer was appointed (Mc William and Kwame na-Poh 1975). In 1925, Guggisberg announced what became known as Sir Gordon Guggisberg’s Sixteen Principles of Education (Mc William and Kwame na-Poh 1975) to the Gold Coast Legislative Council. The 12th of these principles was that: ‘Whilst an English education must be given and must be based solidly on the vernacular’. Though efforts at genuinely developing the local languages by the missionaries and the colonial governments were minimal, some progress had been made and by the time of independence in 1957, foundations had been laid for further development of written versions of major local languages such as Twi, Fante, Ga and Ewe ( Owu-Ewie 2006). Chatry- Komarek (2008), for instance, points out that Twi and Ga, in particular, owe their development precisely because of the availability of text books in these languages. Attempts to develop vernacular education sometimes attracted largely negative attention from both Europeans and Africans. Mc William and Kwame na-Poh (1975) wrote that a number of the early European travellers, missionaries and even Africans who had the privilege of studying in Europe could see value in developing the vernacular as a written language. In addition, some Africans suspected that the encouragement of the vernacular might be a deliberate attempt by the British to provide Africans with inferior education, likely to hold back progress in secondary and tertiary education. Language in education policy in post independent Ghana’s language-in-education policy since independence in 1957 has been vacillating from English-only to early-exit MTBE (Owu-Ewie 2006). After independence in 1957, the first President of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, advocated for a unitary government; as one of the requirements of that system of governance, he discouraged the elevation of any one particular local language to the status of a national language. Nkrumah preferred English-only language-in-education as well as the use of English for official business transactions and the media (Bamgbose 1991;Mfum-Mensah 2005). He saw the local languages as important part of cultural heritage rather than as tools for education and development (Mfum-Mensah 2005; Owu-Ewie 2006), and supported their maintenance predominantly through cultural displays, dance, drama and recitals during official public gatherings.

TRIBE Most tribes wonder about the open plains, herding cattle’s and hunting, raise crops or fertile riverside clearings amid dense equatorial jungle. West Africa as part of the continent with the greatest concentration of different peoples, since between the Senegal river and the head waters of the Congo River which covers about 2000 known languages and dialects of tribal groupings almost all African peoples believe was their spirituality as their identity and all believe in a supreme God who is Omniscient and Omnipresent. In the Akan language in Ghana refer to this deity as Bre kyin Hunuade, he who knows and sees all. In the Ga language refer to this deity as Aye moomo Aye he who is Omnipresent and Omniscient. The Gua deity or Gua stool which Rev. Philip Kwa Kue belong and his father Kwa Te who his Gua priest was thought as father, mother, grandfather, elder, supreme ancestor, friend and companion State Stool. Since Gua priest hereditary powers come from one clan or Kwa Te family who are medicine men trace back for ten generations to the first man prayer, which is in daily communication with him through dreams, trances and signs. His sanction, through them one must obtained for any important action. Under the protection eye of experienced initiates in the sacred ways unfolds the pattern of tribal life; birth, marriage, the coming of age and death. Nii Kwa Te Kpakpa Gua priest gave his son to Rev. Thomas Thompson to study Christian Religion. Rev. Philip Kwa Kue return to succeed their father as a priest with Christian Religion and not as wulomo after his death in 1816. Kwa Te or Quar tey family heritage, genealogy has a family trade mark as Owu traders, a history non in West Africa, North Africa, from East Africa to South Africa. These is not a tale of adventure or courage for creating trade route as it been told, the history of any person who survived in such difficult conditions which these ancestors survived as pioneers who settle family in smaller groups across Africa and survived the gamut of Owu traders.

Heritage And Customs The People, Language, and Culture

The people of Ga are part of a larger group of people known as Kwa found in the central part of Southern Ghana. They are part of a larger ethnic group of people classified as Akans in Ghana. The language spoken by the people is Kwa. People who belong to other Ethnic groups and are mostly the Ewes, Gas, Adas, Krobos, Nzemas, Twi-Speaking Akans, and others from the Northern Ghana reside in the Municipality as farmers, fishermen, traders, government workers, commercial drivers, fishermen, traders, government workers, commercial drivers, and artisans, among others. The entire Municipality constitutes one traditional area with the Gua as the paramount Stool.

The patrilineal system of inheritance is practiced. The extended family, otherwise known as “ebusua”, “we” or clan, is the basis of their social structure. The “odikro”, “mantse” or chief is the political head of a town or village. The main festival celebrated in the Municipality is the Homowo Festival, which is celebrated in the second Saturday of July every year, is watched by people from all walks of lives, both far and near.

Centre For National Culture The Cape Coast Center for National Culture moved into its present premises in 1994. It is located on the Accra – Takoradi main highway, directly opposite the Parks and Gardens’ offices.

Objectives: (A) To promote, preserve and project Ghanaian Culture. (B) To provide facilities for recreation and entertainment. The main units of the Centre are an audio visual consult, gramophone museum, eco-tourism consortium, a library, and a theatre for performance.

The Centre has, in addition, telephone services, a reception, and conference rooms, facilities for performing artists and offices for the personnel. The Centre also hosts the Biennial Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival (PANAFEST), which brings Africans both at home and in the diaspora together.

The Centre normally rents out the theatre for commercial programmes at going economic rates.

Ga Homowo This is the annual festival of the people of Ga mashi (Ga Traditional Area). The origin of Ga Homowo dates back to the Ga Kingdom of the 12th century. The climax is observed on the second Saturday of July of every year, but every other year, it is merged with the Asere Homowo festival observed on the first Saturday of August of every year Celebration.

It is usually a eight weeks long celebration that precedes from Shi Baa, Nmaa Dumo, Nmaa Faa harvest season Odadaa. Its main purpose is to fast, pray and give thanks to almighty as well the spirits of Ga religion for the plentiful catch from the sea and the fruits of the earth, and for their ancestors guidance and protection in the past year.

Activities / Functions: The ‘Homowo’ has its spiritual, cultural and social significance. Spiritually, it is a time for pouring libation to the 99 gods for the harvests from the mother earth and the Nile River; a period of spiritual renewal for the Ga mashi community; and a period for the renovation for the sacreed shrines.

Culturally, however, it is a period for exposition and outdooring of all traditional / social organizations.

Thus, the Tween Festival, in all homes join a cultural spiritual canival, in their multitude of white and colourful arrays, troop through the streets of Korle Wonkoo (Foreast), with their acrobatic flag bearers and Asafohenfo youths, or youth battalion, drumming and dancing and contorting to intricate drum rhythm. Again, on first Friday before Ga Homowo Festival, there is singing, drumming and dancing in the streets of Korle Wonkoo – a real festive occasion for the entire Ga mashi community. Socially, it is a time for friends and family re-union. These was also a hole day-long period of carnival and merrymaking celebration. The festival has taken a new look in modern times, with visitors from all over the world being permitted to participate. This means, a much larger number of people converging into Ga mashi and its surrounding towns and villages for the eight week long ceremony.

Regalia of Chiefs Regalia of chiefs are important artifacts in the Chieftaincy institution and in Ghanaian society. The use of regalia (ornaments of gold and other items of splendor) make the chiefs look unique when they sit in state on occasions such as a durbar of chiefs, Homowo festival celebrations and other social gatherings.

VALUES / CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS Drumming and Dancing Drumming and dancing form an integral part of the lives of the people in the Greater Accral Region, Accra Municipalitan Assambly and its environs. There is no durbar of chiefs that drumming and dancing do not take place to crown the occasion. Similarly, it will be incomplete for the annual Homowo Festival, “Ga Homowo” of Ga Traditional Area to be celebrated without “asafoatsemei” and their companies trooping out in procession attired in their colourful splendor. Starting from company posts, with their acrobatic banner bearers and Asafoatsemei, or battalion commanders, they drum and dance contorting to intricate drum rhythms. The drums talk, and the banners are tale-teller of ancient glories. This offers entertainment to the community and visitors who are largely tourist. There are various kinds of drums used by the Ga (Ga mashi) which are played on different occasions.

Birth and Outdooring In the Kwa traditional society in Ghana, the growth of man is marked by birth, childhood, marriage, death and life after death. After the birth of baby go through childhood into a young adult and then to adulthood. The Adult then marries, brings forth children, grows old and dies or join the anceastors. In all these periods comes with religious rites and ceremonies which are performed for each of them. The birth of a child in Kwa society is a joyous moment in the lives of Kwa family members and the community at large, the birth is marked with a customary ceremony which is call in Ga mashi in particular as outdooring ceremonies in high esteem. Because on that day the child who has been kept indoor for six day is out door on the seven day in public view is brought out. Its also called ‘Naming’ because it is the day on which the child be given a name as identity as Kwa and member of his ethnic group as Ga. The naming ceremony, takes place in the early hours of the eight day after birth. It is an Akan custom to present the new born child to the community on the eighth day following the birth. The Kpodziemor or “outdooring” and naming ceremony starts when an elder of the father’s family pours libation. The child is placed on the lap of the family elder who dips a finger three times into two glasses of water and gin or schnapps (the preferred libation offering) and puts drops on the tongue of the baby. Each time he drops the liquid, water or alcohol on the tongue of the child the elder says “nsu a Nsu”, Nsa a Nsa”, meaning if water, water, if drink, drink. This statement exhorts the child to be truthful, honest, objective and firm, calling a spade, a spade. The elder also exhorts the child to live an honest and upright life. He then announces the child’s name publicly. The child then receives the gathering’s congratulation; gifts are presented and food and drinks are shared among the gathering.

Funeral Rites The funeral of the dead are highly revered and deemed inseparable from the lives of Ghanaians. Death is seen as a natural phenomenon which is everywhere and a part of the cycle of life. An Akan proverb confirms this: “Owu adar nndow faakor”, meaning, “the cutlass of death does not weed in one place”. The communities’ mortuary practices are characterized by a prolonged period of mourning and a series of rituals that mark the transition of a deceased from the living members of the family and the community to a revered ancestral spirit, whose ties to the living are very much intact. In contemporary Ga community (Southern Ghanaian) mortuary rites, it is common practice for the body to lie in state for a day or more days (though modernity is changing the trend to few hours or at most a day). While the body lies in state, mourners file past to pay their last respect and offer symbolic gifts (usually money, but can also be gold, soap and cloth) to the

SURNAME

Kwa Te or Quartey became surname, Owuo or Owoo as old as the Roman civilization until presently the DNA a proven research had becomes routinely available today. Remains the primary source of research into family lineage, a lineage of Owu or Owuo or Owoo research by that surname is not infallible except for the last hundred years. When few of them could read and fewer still could write a context in which surnames have often misspelled for instance. Kwa Te or Quartey and Owu or Owuo or Owoo with most consistent spelling throughout history with it source of contemporary family names vary widely. A surname of Owu Traders have been originally assigned to Kwa te family “Guan” to distinguish a Kwa Te or Quartey family and a Kwa Tei family which was now known as Kpakpatse We. To identify Kwa person by his physical or character attribute or a notable event of their lives or a field of endeavor in which they have excelled or as in most cases, their territorial attachment of that holders. On till today definitive origin of the name Owu remains a mystery, the presence of Kwa in Owu traders tends to indicate a surname base on territorial origin as Kwa or Gua means from Ghana. Kwa or Gua means anything or submit as direct ancestors of Guan of Ghana at least as of 13th century. Guan is translated to mean from Akan in several places in Africa known as Akan, as persuasive evidence that name was derived to identify those tribe of Akkadian. The Family Quartey Owu or Owoo heritage and genealogy shows direct family of Owu traders history of family from North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, to South Africa it wasn’t a tale of an adventure or courage for creating trade route as it must be the history of any person who survived in such a difficult conditions in the history of Kwa te Family Ancestor’s. These were the pioneer who settle family in smaller groups across Africa and survived the gamut of Owu traders.

SHORT HISTORY OF OWU TRADERS (“In the 1700-1888”) During 1698 when Oyibi was very young all Ada citizens appealed to Oyo (“Kwa tele”) when the basorun (“Leader”) who was ruling all Ada. Oyo messengers told the King of all Ada to put his Kingdom in order, the King ordered Oyo messengers to death. This outrage provoked each other which lead to Oyo invasion through all Ada Kings escaped to Whydah as the most important slave port in the region which was used by the British, Portuguese, Dutch, Brazilians and the French. Early 1703 the Europeans signed a treaty making the port neutral so that it would not be attacked because of European wars, later in the second year all Ada and Whydah agreed to let each other trade with Europeans. Unfortunately when Whydah King Aisan died in 1708 European traders enthroned 13 year old Huffon (r. 1708-1727) in violation of the Whydah Constitution, causing a trade war with all Ada. In 1712 a Dutch ship attacked a Portuguese trading vessel in all Ada harbor and the Portuguese declared war on Whydah, the next year Hutton dismissed his advisors which turned them foolish young men dragged the war for decade. When the number of slaves is completed, the ships begin what is called the middle passage, to transport the slaves to the colonies. The height of the apartments in the ships is different according to the size of the vessel, and is from six feet to three feet, so that it is impossible to stand erect in most of the vessels, and in some scarcely to sit down in the same posture. If the vessel be full, their situation is truly deplorable. In the best regulated ships, a grown person is allowed but 16 inches in width, 32 inches in height, and five feet eleven inches in length, or to use the expressive language of a witness, not to so much room as a man has in his coffin. — They are indeed so crowded below that it is almost impossible to walk through the groupes without treading on some of them; and if they are reluctant to get into their places they are compelled by the lash of a whip. — And here their situation becomes wretched beyond description. The space between decks where they are confined often becomes so hot that persons who have visited them there have found their shirts so wetted with perspiration that water might be wrung from them; and the steam from their confined bodies comes up through the gratings like a furnace — The bad effects of such confinement and want of air are soon visible in the weakness and faintness which overcomes the unhappy victims. Some go down apparently well at night and are found dead in the morning. Some faint below and die from suffocation before they can be brought upon deck — As the slaves, whether well or ill, always lie upon bare planks, the motion of the ship rubs the flesh from the prominent parts of their body and leaves their bones almost bare. — The pestilential breath of so many in so confined a state renders them also very sickly and the vicissitudes of heat and cold gene rate a flux — when this is the case (which happens frequently) the whole place becomes covered with blood and mucus like a slaughter house; and as the slaves are fettered and wedged close together, the utmost disorder arises from endeavours to relieve themselves in the necessities of nature; and the disorder is still further increased by the healthy being not unfrequently chained to the diseased, the dying and the dead!!! When the scuttles in the ship's sides are shut in bad weather, the gratings are not sufficient for airing the room; and the slaves are then seen drawing their breath with all that anxious and laborious effort for life, which we observe in animals subjected to experiments in foul air or in the exhausted receiver of an air pump — Many of them expire in this situation crying out in their native tongue "we are dying." — During the time that elapses from the slaves being put on board on the African coast to their sale in the colonies about one fourth part, or twenty-five thousand per annum are destroyed — a mortality which may be easily credited after the preceding statement.

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An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera ________________________________________ Click on picture for larger image, full item, or more versions. [Rights and Reproductions] ________________________________________

Image 1 through 2 of 2 $150 reward [cut of runaway slave] Ranaway from the subscriber, on the night of the 2d instant, a negro man, who calls himself Henry May, ... William Burke, Bardstown, Ky., September 3d, 1838. $150 Reward. CREATED/PUBLISHED Bardstown, 1838. NOTES Gift Arthur Douglas, Hulls, York, England The original is in Wilberforce House, Hulls.; Positive Photostat. Printed Ephemera Collection; Portfolio 22, Folder 12b. SUBJECTS Broadsides--Kentucky--Bardstown United States--Kentucky--Bardstown. MEDIUM 1 p.; 12 x 16.5 cm. CALL NUMBER Portfolio 22, Folder 12b

PART OF Broadsides, leaflets, and pamphlets from America and Europe DIGITAL ID rbpe 0220120b http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rbpe.0220120b

WARFARE, DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS IN IFE DISTRICT The interactions between warfare, economic transformation, religion and ethnicity in eastern Yorubaland came out clearly as the Yoruba crisis spread eastwards into the Ife and Ondo districts. Refugees from northern Yorubaland, Owu and surrounding Ife villages massed at the capital town, Ile-Ife. Consequently, Ile-Ife soon emerged as a cosmopolitan community with refugees from Oyo, Owu and Epo towns forming significant ethnic and religious divisions. What was life like for these refugees who had fled to Ife which they regarded as the origin of their ancestors, and therefore their ‘home’? Warfare and slavery gave rise to the proliferation of big households. Since wealth was calculated in ‘persons’ and not in cash, the larger the number of dependants, the higher the status of a house. Writing in 1859, Robert Johnson, History, p. 230; Akinyele, Iwe Itan Ibadan (Ibadan: Board Publications, 1980 [1911]), pp. 295-298. Developments in Ijaye show the ethnic animosity between soldiers from Epo and Oyo Metropolitan districts. See Johnson, History, p. 238.

 In 1858, Modakeke (a quarter occupied by Oyo refugees in Ife) was described as a ‘Muslim’ town. See Daniel J. May, “Journey in the Yoruba and Nupe Countries in 1858”, Journal of Royal Geographical Society (JRGS), 30, 1860, pp. 215-216.
 Although we do not have statistical evidence to measure the demographic profile of Ife in the nineteenth century, qualitative estimates point to a picture of a big community. Johnson noted that refugees settled in Ife countryside in “great numbers.” By the 1840s, Oyo refugees were so predominant that Apomu, Ikire, Gbongan, Ipetumodu and a couple of other originally Ife towns would have passed for Oyo towns Johnson, History, pp. 230, 558. By 1886 the population of Modakeke and Ipetumodu were estimated at 60,000 and 10,000 respectively. Johnson to Moloney, May 21, 1886, encl. 11 in no. 26, Moloney to Earl Granville, June 23, 1886, C5144, PP. In terms of their vocation, the majority of the Oyo settlers were farmers but many were also soldiers. Between 1860 and 1886, the military victories achieved by Modakeke over Ife were the handiwork of military lineages such as the houses of Ojo Akitikori and Ajombadi, who were led by Oyebade, Adepoju, Oke Pupa and Detomi. On patronage see Jane Guyer, “Wealth in People, Wealth in Things: Introduction,” JAH, 36, 1995, pp. 83-90 and Karin Barber, “Money, Self Realization and the Person in Yoruba Texts” in Jane Guyer (ed.), Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995, pp. 205-224. See note 23 below.

Campbell observed that many wealthy Yoruba individuals could not raise 10 bags of cowries in an emergency. SO rather than store cash, the rich used their wealth to build up bands of supporters. The significance of large houses lay in their economic self-sufficiency, social and political power. Hence rather than treat the refugees as their kin, the people of Ife began to recruit them as clients and even as slaves. The greatest beneficiaries from this development were members of the aristocracy, who captured many slaves, or otherwise got them as gifts or fines, and by purchase. As owners of big houses, the aristocrats were also the biggest landlords and patrons. The major problem however was that those been enslaved or turned into clients at this stage were the Oyo, who in the previous centuries were the imperialists of Yorubaland and were not considered enslavable by other Yoruba groups. How these factors played out among the elites shall be discussed in the dispute between the Ooni and his chiefs. Socio-economic and political changes in Ile-Ife brought about some transformations which in turn induced problems that the town had to cope with. One of them was factional fighting among the chiefs. By the middle of the century, the crisis degenerated into a slave/refugee revolt. A major feature of post-1820 Ile-Ife history was the increased visibility of military chiefs whose power rested on their slaves. In the opinion of Jacob Ajayi, the “Yoruba military system helped to reinforce the position of the chiefs rather than that of the king.” Evidence of militarism in the nineteenth century is confirmed with the admission of war chiefs such as the Akogun and Waasin, and later Loodi, Segbusin and Lukosi into Ife’s highest council. Ife generals, probably not satisfied with what Ife could give them materially, and because of what was an evident disagreement with the Ooni, moved to other towns. Maye, Singunsin and Labosinde carried their slave raiding activities to, and later settled in Ibadan between 1825 and 1829. As refugees and slaves moved into Ife territory, a large number seized control of the Egba town of Ibadan. Until about 1830 Ibadan was under the control of a confederate council led by Ife soldiers, but this changed after a short time. The shift took place after ethnic conflicts pitched Oyo against non-Oyo residents. In the resultant civil war, Oyo elements triumphed and the Ife were either killed, expelled from Ibadan or sold into slavery, while only those who had Oyo connections were spared. It is not surprising that events that took place in Ibadan would also affect Ife in a major way. Back in Ife, exiles from Ibadan, especially the warlords whipped up anti-Oyo sentiments. Unfortunately, there was no agreement among Ife chiefs on how to deal with Oyo refugees and slaves. On the one hand there were the exiles who gained mass support among Ife people. This group exacted revenge on Oyo settlers. Consequently, lands hitherto allocated to the Oyo were seized, and many were enslaved or forced to pay Robert Campbell, “A Pilgrimage to My Motherland: An Account of a Journey Among the Egbas and Yorubas of Central Africa 1859-1860” in Martin R. Delaney and Robert Campbell, Search For A Place: Black Separatism and Africa, 1860 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1969), p. 191.

 Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, pp. 179-182.
 Ajayi, “The aftermath,” p. 185; “Professional Warriors” and Falola and Oguntomisin, The Military in Nineteenth Yoruba Politics (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1984).
 Biodun Adediran, “Government and Administration of Ife in Pre-colonial Times”, Cradle of a Race, p. 292.
 Johnson, History, pp. 238-242 and Akinyele, Iwe Itan Ibadan, pp. 26-31.

higher taxes. According to Johnson, the refugees were treated “as slaves [and] little better than…dogs”. This status is startlingly revealed in the 1886 testimony of a Modakeke man who witnessed every stage of Ife-Modakeke relations: it has often been said by the Ife that we are their slaves, and this point we wish to dispute. We are a remnant of the Yoruba nation… When Chief Maye an Ife was expelled [from Ibadan] then we began to suffer all sorts of indignities from the Ife…we fill their houses and we were treated as slaves rather than as freemen.

Tension between the exiles and Oyo refugees threw Ife monarchs into confusion over how to resolve the differences between the military, the refugees, and the local people. Now faced with a restless military oligarchy, and heightened ethnic nationalism, who were the persons on whom the kings relied to run the administration, and to keep themselves in power? The main body of new service and loyal personnel derived through the system of palace administration. The major turning point came around 1839 when Adegunle Abeweila, whom tradition says descended from an Oyo woman, came to the throne. Because of the opposition from his chiefs and his Oyo pedigree, he was more tolerant of the Oyo. Abeweela’s support for the Oyo won the admiration of many slaves and other marginalized individuals who flocked to him as bodyguards, advisers and workers. From among these people, he recruited private guards whose loyalties were only to him. Unfortunately, this only helped to alienate Ife people from both their ruler and the settlers. Ife politics became extremely turbulent, with Abeweela trying either to use the Oyo to stay in power and risk the hostility of his Ife subjects, or to please the Ife, and risk rebellion from Oyo refugees and hostility from Ibadan. He chose the latter. To consolidate his grip on power, Abeweela tightened state control over the distribution of firearms and powder. He restricted the flow of imported arms as well as maintained monopoly over those that got into the town. He also made his chiefs swear an oath that they would not kill him like his predecessors. Finally, he moved his slaves and Oyo supporters to his farmstead, Modakeke, located just outside the city gate, and he instructed them not to allow Ife chiefs to handle his burial. The physical separation of Modakeke from Ife facilitated a Robert Campbell, “A Pilgrimage to My Motherland: An Account of a Journey Among the Egbas and Yorubas of Central Africa 1859-1860” in Martin R. Delaney and Robert Campbell, Search For A Place: Black Separatism and Africa, 1860 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1969), p. 191.

 Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, pp. 179-182.
 Ajayi, “The aftermath,” p. 185; “Professional Warriors” and Falola and Oguntomisin, The Military in Nineteenth Yoruba Politics (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1984).
 Biodun Adediran, “Government and Administration of Ife in Pre-colonial Times”, Cradle of a Race, p. 292.
 Johnson, History, pp. 238-242 and Akinyele, Iwe Itan Ibadan, pp. 26-31.

higher taxes. According to Johnson, the refugees were treated “as slaves [and] little better than…dogs”. This status is startlingly revealed in the 1886 testimony of a Modakeke man who witnessed every stage of Ife-Modakeke relations: it has often been said by the Ife that we are their slaves, and this point we wish to dispute. We are a remnant of the Yoruba nation… When Chief Maye an Ife was expelled [from Ibadan] then we began to suffer all sorts of indignities from the Ife…we fill their houses and we were treated as slaves rather than as freemen.

Tension between the exiles and Oyo refugees threw Ife monarchs into confusion over how to resolve the differences between the military, the refugees, and the local people. Now faced with a restless military oligarchy, and heightened ethnic nationalism, who were the persons on whom the kings relied to run the administration, and to keep themselves in power? The main body of new service and loyal personnel derived through the system of palace administration. The major turning point came around 1839 when Adegunle Abeweila, whom tradition says descended from an Oyo woman, came to the throne. Because of the opposition from his chiefs and his Oyo pedigree, he was more tolerant of the Oyo. Abeweela’s support for the Oyo won the admiration of many slaves and other marginalized individuals who flocked to him as bodyguards, advisers and workers. From among these people, he recruited private guards whose loyalties were only to him. Unfortunately, this only helped to alienate Ife people from both their ruler and the settlers. Ife politics became extremely turbulent, with Abeweela trying either to use the Oyo to stay in power and risk the hostility of his Ife subjects, or to please the Ife, and risk rebellion from Oyo refugees and hostility from Ibadan. He chose the latter. To consolidate his grip on power, Abeweela tightened state control over the distribution of firearms and powder. He restricted the flow of imported arms as well as maintained monopoly over those that got into the town. He also made his chiefs swear an oath that they would not kill him like his predecessors. Finally, he moved his slaves and Oyo supporters to his farmstead, Modakeke, located just outside the city gate, and he instructed them not to allow Ife chiefs to handle his burial. The physical separation of Modakeke from Ife facilitated a ‘Statement of the Bale of Ibadan on the claims of Ibadan to Gb[o]ngan, Apomu, Ikire and Ikoyi,’ CSO 12/24/25/3038/1905, NAI and Johnson, History, pp. 230 and 239.

 ‘Statement by a Modakeke man of 100+ years, April 26, 1886’, CMS (Y) 1/7/5, NAI.
 Ibadan tradition says his mother was the daughter of Oluyinka, an Owu prince. See ‘Dada Opadere, Bale of Ibadan’s Statement,’ Dec. 22, 1905, CSO 12/24/25/3038/1905, NAI.  
 Modakeke (Oyo) men who became palace officials included soldiers such as Ojo Akitikori (son of the Asirawo), Oniyiku (his son, Oke, was the Balogun in the 1880s), Arigiloso, Adeworo and Ajayi (his son, Adefajo was the Osi Balogun in the 1890s). The soldiers were complemented by blacksmiths, whose leader, Wingbolu, was conferred with the Ogunsuwa title derived from Ogunladin, one of Ife’s most prized Orisa. See ‘Oni Adelekan Olubuse’s statement,’ December 18, 1905, CSO 12/24/25/3038/1905, NAI. 
 Derin, Ooni-elect to Governor of Lagos, April 28, 1886, CMS (Y) 1/7/5, NAI and ‘Statement by a Modakeke Man’, April 26, 1886, CMS (Y) 1/7/5, NAI. According to the ‘Modakeke man’, the major shift in Ife social and power relations took place shortly after the return of Ibadan exiles around 1830. Between 1830 and 1839, three Ooni—Gbanlare, Gbegbaaje (one who carries the calabash of riches) and Winmonije—reigned on the throne of Ile-Ife in quick succession (average tenure of three years), each reign ending in regicide. The attitude of each of the Ooni towards the refugees, and by extension to slave ‘exodus’, and the development of a revolutionary ideology among residents of the new town.  It also drew sharp distinctions between Ife slaveholders and ‘Oyo’ slaves, united the stranger elements in Ife, and to some degree carved out a ‘Muslim’ ward. Gradually Modakeke became a safe spot for runaway slaves, refugees and criminals. 

The growth of anti-Oyo sentiments created a feeling of oneness among the ‘Oyo’ in Ile-Ife, and by the closing years of the 1840s, the aliens in Ile-Ife, both slaves, freed and freeborn, had started to develop a strong ‘Oyo’ ethnic identity, and anti-Ife sentiments. Their ambitions merged with those of other settlers of non-Yoruba origin—largely slaves, who because of Ife’s antipathy towards them, now differentiated themselves from the Ife and began to identify with the Oyo. They adopted the Oyo dialect and body marks as symbols of brotherhood and by 1850 a clearer division had emerged, polarizing Ife and settlers into free and ‘slaves’, superior and inferior citizens, landlord and tenant and indigene and stranger respectively. Furthermore, ethnic and class rivalries erased the awe and respect which non-Ife ‘Yoruba’ were supposed to accord the ancient slavery and the slave trade, which alternated between good and bad treatments, had a bearing on the success or failure of their tenure. The short reigns no doubt suggest some constitutional crises in Ife because it would appear that some of the monarchs were poisoned or forced to commit suicide. Therefore since the monarchs and their chiefs would have struggled to seize control of the religious institution, the incorporation of Oyo and slaves (outsiders) into the palace meant a conscious policy to raise a parallel power base. This position adequately fits the Oyo and slaves among whom were soldiers, Muslims and owners of ‘non-Ife’ Orisa.

 Richard Olaniyan, “The Modakeke Question in Ife Politics and Diplomacy” in Akinjogbin, Cradle of a Race, pp. 266-271.
 David Hinderer, ‘Condition of Yoruba country’, September 19, 1853, ‘Journey to the interior’, August 2-September 4, 1858 and ‘Second journey to the interior’, August 23-September 11, 1859, CA2/049, CMS; May, “Journey in the Yoruba and Nupe Countries,” pp. 215-216 and ‘War in the interior’, Lagos Times, December 27, 1882. On Modakeke’s military outlay, Johnson wrote: it ‘was first built in a circular form as a single vast compound of about two miles in circumference; the enclosed area was left covered with trees and high grass, each individual clearing out a small space in front of his dwelling. This was done for the sake of mutual protection as no one need to go out of the compound for firewood or thatch for roofing.’ Johnson, History, pp. 231-32.
 R. J. B. Ross, Acting Attorney General and Harold G. Parson, Acting Resident Ibadan to Colonial Secretary, February 24, 1904, CSO 12/23/9/587/1904, NAI. Notable Oyo compounds and their founders were Ajombadi at Oke-Eso, Wingbolu at Iyekere (near Iwirin), Onirawo and Ojo Bada at Ijugbe; Ogungbe at Esin Oye, Oke Owu and Adefajo at Lagere and the Owu at Oke Owu under the superintendence of Chief Obalaye of Iraye-Ife. Ajombadi, Wingbolu, Onirawo, Ojo Bada and Ogungbe came from the Oyo provincial districts of Ijaye, Oko, Irawo, Ejigbo and Oje respectively; Ayanleye from Kuta near Iwo, Agbakin from Owu, Ikugbayigbe and Sorinolu from Egba. Other settlers included Oyeku, Apanla, Akin, Meminure, Emuoje, Alesinloye, Ayangbade Ajuwon, Igiyadina Lagbege, Jatina, Abegunde, Alaka Adeworo, Akinrinlo, Are Giriloso and Ajayi. Interview with Madam Elizabeth Toriola, 68 years, Ile-Ogo, Modakeke on December 10 1997 and M. A. Fabunmi, Ife: The Genesis of Yoruba Race (Lagos: John West, 1985), 116-117.
 Hinderer reported that the town. Thus unlike in earlier years when Owu’s attack against Apomu was seen as a taboo—a desecration of the cradle of the Yoruba, Oyo refugees and slaves had no scruples about attacking Ife.  

For Ife warlords to overcome Modakeke, it became necessary to remove the latter’s sponsor and patron, Abeweela. There are different traditions on how this happened. One version linked this to his opposition to the killing of Oyo residents for religious rituals. According to the tradition, an Ife woman, who had lost her son, raised an alarm proclaiming that the boy was an Ife, not Oyo (Ife ni o, e i s’omo Oyo o), and should therefore not be used for any sacrificial rites. This public declaration drew Oyo elements together to make a representation to Abeweela on the issue of sacrificing their members to appease Ife’s Orisa. He assured them of his support by appealing to Ife compound heads to check the tide of kidnappings in their domain. Since the welfare of a town was embodied in its king, the people of Ife would have interpreted Abeweela’s action as a betrayal of traditional trust, and indicating that he no longer capable of administering the town. His appeal against the sacrifice of non-Ife indigenes could have been interpreted to mean that he either wanted to abolish human sacrifice or was in support of the use of Ife citizens for rituals. Both options translated into a violation of Ife’s Orisa rituals, which in turn meant the king was bringing bad fortunes on the town and its inhabitants. By opposing human sacrifice, Abeweela destroyed the majesty, the fear, and the respect that many of his subjects felt for him, and any fighting that Ife citizens who were not his enemies might have done for him would have been half-hearted at best. In 1886, a latter Ooni of Ife, Aderinsoye informed the British Peace Commissioners in Yorubaland, Henry Higgins (acting Colonial Secretary) and Oliver Smith (Queen’s advocate) about the importance of human sacrifice to Ife rituals and humankind: “[it] benefit[s] the world…[but for it] the white man’s arts would not exist.” On this supposition, Abeweela’s ‘disloyal’ proclamation was quickly attributed to his Oyo ancestry. According to Ife beliefs, the king should now be overthrown, for he had abandoned his own claims to legitimacy. As Abeweela could not be removed by force of arms, the Ife chiefs succeeded in poisoning him in 1849. Shortly after Abeweela’s death was announced, his slaves were aware of their potential fate. In Ife’s constitution, the death of an Ooni was to be accompanied by series of rituals, one of which was the killing of slaves at his funeral. Thus Ife chiefs would have used the opportunity of Abeweela’s funeral to dismantle his power base. Attempts by Ife chiefs to destroy Modakeke set the stage for the Ife slave revolt or as it is popularly known, the Modakeke uprising of 1850. According to Charles Phillips, ‘the slaves buried him (Abeweela) before they made known his death to the Ifes. The Ifes were vexed and when they wanted to punish the slaves, the latter conquered Ife Hinderer reported that the refugees became the favorite victims for human sacrifice. See journal, August-September, 1858, CA2/049, CMS.

 Interview with Mrs. Margaret Moradeyo, 75 years, Road 7, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife December 7 1997. Ile Ife has a popular saying a kì í fi ọmọ Ọrẹ bọ Ọrẹ (we do not sacrifice the childreof Ọrẹ (an Orisa) to appease Ọrẹ). This implies and corroborates the tradition that strangers were used for sacrifices.
 Akintoye, “Ife’s Sad Century”, Nigerian Magazine, 104, March/May 1970 and Akinjogbin, “Ife: The Years of Travail,” p. 154.
 Higgins to Colonial Office, Second Part of Report to the Interior of Lagos, June 20, 1887 (entry for November 4, 1886), C5144 vol. LX, no. 8, PP. 
 ‘Story of Abeweela’ in Phillips, diary, 1885, Phillips, 3/1, NAI. Ife authorities and later stationed themselves at Modakeke where they made alliance with Ede, Iwo and Ibadan [Oyo towns] and drove Ife to Isoya’.  

The significance of these events is that they highlight links between warfare, religion, economy and ethnicity. Slave recruitment and population movement resulted in economic and political competition among Ife chiefs. Because most of the refugees and slaves were Oyo, the contest soon turned into one between Oyo and Ife. Finally, the recruitment of officials into the palace not only increased the power of elite slaves but also had an impact on the rituals of the king’s funeral. All of these episodes soon converged in a slave/refugee and ethnic revolt. Having shown earlier that the trade route from Ife extended southeastwards into Ondo, we shall now discuss how power and economic shifts in Ife affected developments in Ondo region.

EASTWARD SPREAD OF THE YORUBA CRISIS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ONDO, C.1830-1870 Political and economic changes in northern Yorubaland, and along the Ife corridor gradually drew Ondo into the center of these developments. Thus events in Ondo and Ile-Ife were closely related—one seeming to have influenced the other. Ondo was well connected with Ife, lying to the southeast and on the trade route that linked Ijesa and Ife with Ijebu, Benin and the Atlantic coast. The possession of superior weaponry enabled Ife to raid and plunder towns in Ijesa, Owu and Ondo districts and to sell slaves. The diversion of trade routes through Ife and Ondo expanded the commercial and political power of the Osemawe such that the balance of power tilted in favor of the monarchy. Starting from about 1820, slaves were imported into Ondo from northern Yorubaland, Owu and the Egba districts and this continued until the destruction of Ondo around 1850. It did not take long for the new economic opportunities in increased traffic in slaves to change the socio- ‘Story of Abeweela’ in Phillips, diary, 1885, Phillips, 3/1, NAI. Ife authorities confirmed the alliance between their slaves and Oyo settlers but they denied their role in the enslavement of Oyo refugees. According to Aderinsoye, “Abeweela’s slaves resorted to the strangers (Oyo) after his death and united with them. When they became numerous and powerful they began to steal Ife children and sell them into slavery.” In spite of the contradiction in these statements, there is agreement on the primacy of slavery and ethnicity to the crisis and that attempts to check enslavement sparked off the revolt. On the crisis see Hinderer, ‘Condition of Yoruba country’; ‘Journey to the interior’ and ‘Second journey to the interior,’ CA2/049, CMS and May, “Journey in Yoruba and Nupe”, p. 215 and Derin, Ooni-elect of Ife to Governor of Lagos, April 28, 1886, CMS (Y) 1/7/5, NAI. Aderinsoye (often shortened to Aderin or Derin) was an Ife warrior and prince, whose activity was a source of anxiety to the Ooni, and whose chances of upstaging Abeweela were very high. Abeweela thus saw him as a real threat to his reign hence the plot to get rid of him. See T. A. Olowoje, ‘Oke-Igbo in Ondo and Ife Power Politics in the Nineteenth Century’, BA, University of Ibadan, 1970, pp. 2-3. For Aderin’s career see Adediran, “Derin Ologbenla: The Ooni-elect of Ife during the Kiriji/Ekitiparapo War” in Akinjogbin (ed.) War and Peace, pp. 149-164 and interviews with Felicia Akintunde-Ighodalo and Bishop Samuel Olufunmilade Aderin, great-grand children of Aderin, June 1, 1999.

 Ondo Intelligence Report, p. 11, CSO 26/30172, NAI; Michael C. Adeyemi, Ondo Kingdom: Its History and Culture (N. Aluko-Olokun, ed.) (Ibadan: Bounty Press, 1993), pp. 26-28 and Jerome Ojo, Yoruba Customs from Ondo (Wien: ACTA, 1976), p. 43.

economic and political relations in Ondo. In Ondo, like other parts of Yorubaland, the ownership of slaves soon became a major indicator of wealth. The more slaves one possessed the more likely one was able to wield political and economic power. The early nineteenth century saw the accession to the Ondo throne of Arilekolasi, renowned as the wealthiest of the nineteenth century Ondo monarchs. His reign marked a significant turning point as it saw Ondo playing more active roles in the slave trade. For instance, Ondo and Ife traders met at Oja-Ife (Ife market) located on Ile-Ife road, where they exchanged slaves for agricultural goods. Arilekolasi’s rise to power was influenced by his economic power, for it was said of him in 1879: “his great wealth and power excited the jealousy and apprehension of his people, and they tried to find occasion to make insurrection against him.” In order to situate his reign in its proper historical context, it is necessary to understand the various influences on his personality, placing them against the background of nineteenth century Ondo and Yoruba history. Ondo traditions agree that Arilekolasi was a rich man, having inherited much wealth from his parents. For instance, Bada and Leigh suggest that he inherited 200 and 180 slaves from his father and mother respectively. His riches also included a substantial amount of money and cattle. Arilekolasi and his parents had benefited from the crisis in Owu and Oyo, which enabled them to participate in slave trading around Ife. The location of their farm/trade depot on the Ife road would seem to confirm this speculation. This suspicion is heightened by stories about the Oba’s antecedents. Traditions collected at Ondo and Oke-Igbo agreed on the point that Arilekolasi’s mother was an Ife woman, and that he himself lived either at Ile-Ife or Ifewara before his accession to the throne. As a young man, Arilekolasi had a base at Iperindo where he kept a substantial number of farm and trade slaves. Shortly after his elevation, he moved his Iperindo estate to Oko-igbo (forest farm, later corrupted to Okeigbo (forested hills) near a common market for Ife and Ondo traders. The strategic location of both Okeigbo and Iperindo in relation to Ondo trade is important in analyzing why Arilekolasi and his parents decided to locate in these towns. As we have shown above, Okeigbo was the command post for Ife-Ondo trade from where commodities, particularly slaves were sold. Indeed with the destruction of Owu and Apomu, Okeigbo gradually emerged as the meeting point for Ife, Ondo, Ijesa, Egba and Ijebu traders. On the other hand, wars between Ife and Ijesa also generated many slaves. After 1840, Ibadan and Ilorin’s push into north-central Yorubaland increased the scale of slave production. These attracted Ijebu and Benin traders, and Iperindo lying on the Benin-Yoruba and Ijesa-Ondo-Ijebu route became a commercial depot. As soon as Ijesa was conquered, trade reduction in this area increased the lure of Okeigbo. In effect, relocation to Okeigbo should be seen as a strategic movement targeted at increased participation in commerce with Ife. We will show below how contacts made in earlier years helped Arilekolasi’s reign.

 The name literally means ‘one who possesses a store of wealth.’
 ‘Notes on Ondo’, 1878, Phillips 1/3/3, NAI.
 Interview with Jerome Ojo, May 20, 1980 cf. Olasiji Oshin, ‘Ondo in the Nineteenth Century,’ MA, Ibadan, 1980, p. 55. A source (with some exaggeration) put the number of his slaves in “thousands”. See Adesoji Aderemi, the Ooni of Ife to Senior Resident, Oyo Province, July 6, 1931, pp. 28-31, Oyo Prof 2/3/644, NAI.
 Interview with Chief Akilapa, the Bajulaye of Ondo, February 21, 1980 (by O. Oshin)
 Adeyemi, Ondo Kingdom, p. 29.

ELITE SLAVES AND ONDO CIVIL WAR, C.1845 During his sojourn in Ife district, Arilekolasi established a wide network of friends. According to Oke-Igbo tradition, Arilekolasi met Ajibike, an Egba Ifa priest, at Ile-Ife. Ajibike predicted that Arilekolasi would one day be installed the king of Ondo, and this came to pass with his election to the Ondo throne. It is not clear how Arilekolasi won the Ondo throne, but his reliance on slaves and external forces would suggest a rancorous succession process. On ascending the throne, Ajibike was invited to Ondo and appointed to oversee the royal estate at Okeigbo. A variant of the tradition suggests that Ajibike’s relocation to Okeigbo took place when Arilekolasi feared that he (Ajibike) might ally with Ondo people who were already complaining about his (Arilekolasi) autocratic rule. From Okeigbo, Arilekolasi’s slaves and followers engaged in criminal acts, kidnapping, extortion and slave dealing and no one was strong enough to stop them without attracting their wrath. The excesses of Arilekolasi and his followers aroused strong opposition from Ondo chiefs and other wealthy personalities. Three names appear prominent among the opponents: Ajakaye, Timawo and Koyemi. Ajakaye was the most powerful, and the richest of the group, whose riches according to Leigh, “consisted not only in a large number of slaves, but also in cattle and money in which he stood unrivalled by anyone in the country.” On account of his affluence, the king sought an opportunity eliminate him and other opponents. After some time, Ajakaye and Koyemi were killed through the collusion of some of their wives and slaves. The death of these men increased both the political and economic power of Arilekolasi and his slaves. This further mobilized his opponents. We do not have the details of the incident which led to Arilekolasi’s ultimate rejection. We know however, that as disaffection to him spread among the people, he built a fortification on his farm hoping to retreat there. Before he could finish his plan, his chiefs forced him to commit suicide while his supporters escaped to Okeigbo from where they finalized plans to sack Ondo. Whether at Ile-Ife or Ondo, problems arising over control of slaves were genuine concerns. As we shall discuss below, the roles of Modakeke and Okeigbo corroborate Paul Lovejoy’s study of slave resistance in the central Sudan. According to him, although slave rebellion was less likely where slave escapes were frequent, flight alone does not prevent slave revolts especially when slavery merges with ethnicity. For instance, when slaves from common cultural backgrounds found themselves in concentrated locations, ethnic solidarity could lead to group action. The Yoruba wars and the possibility of being sold into the Atlantic market made it difficult for slaves in Ondo and Ife to contemplate massive flights. Those from northern Yoruba no longer had homes, and flight further south into the forest region would lead them into the hands of Ondo, Ijebu and Egba raiders and T. A. Olowoje, ‘Oke-Igbo in Ondo and Ile-Ife Power Politics,’ BA, Ibadan, 1970, pp. 10-12, 1970 and ‘Evidence of Chief Aderin, the Oloke of Okeigbo’ in Inquiry into Oloke of Okeigbo Chieftaincy Title, Ondo State Chieftaincy Review Commission, 1978.

 Olowoje, ‘Okeigbo’, pp. 10-12 and interview with Chief D. A. Odukunle, the Otun of Okeigbo on August 19, 1980 (cited in Olasiji Oshin).
 John A. Leigh, The History of Ondo (Ondo: Ondo Boys High School, 1917), p. 49; Ojo Bada, Iwe Itan Ondo, pp.61-63 and interview with Chief Fadase cited in S. I. Togbese, ‘Palace Organisation in Ondo,’ BA Essay, University of Ife, 1976. The most notorious of Arilekolasi’s men were Ago, Ajibike, Kulajolu, Luwonran, Ajikitiogun and Laleye.
 Leigh, History of Ondo, pp. 47-50 and Bada, Itan Ondo, pp. 64-65.
 Phillips, ‘Notes on Ondo’, Phillips 1/3/3, NAI. 
 Lovejoy, “Slave Control”.

traders. As soon as Oyo slaves were concentrated and merged with Oyo refugees, revolt became an attractive option. In Ondo also, its slaves could not escape towards Mahin, Ijebu or Benin. Hence after years of frustration, they allied with Ondo and Ife rebels to sack Ondo and like Modakeke, they established their maroonage only a few miles outside the Ondo wall. The above factor is as strong as that arising from the rise in the power of royal slaves/palace officials. These officials were executives carrying out the Oba’s orders. They also formed his inner circle of advisers and had influence over him, for he was largely dependent on them for the exercise of his authority. With this power, town chiefs would appear to have been gradually edged out of major decision-making. This would appear to be one of the major complaints in Ondo as we examine the career of some of the rebels. Like Abeweela’s followers, Arilekolasi’s supporters at Okeigbo and Ondo continued in their acts of lawlessness, and this even increased after his death. According to Okeigbo tradition, Ajibike sent a message to Ooni Abeweela, requesting warriors to assist the pro-Arilekolasi party. At the time the message got to Ile-Ife, Aderinsoye Ologbenla, an Ife prince and warrior, was leading a campaign against Osorogi, an Ijesa town, and it was from there that he moved to Okeigbo. The Ondo civil war provided the opportunity for Ife to intervene in the war and later to plunder. From Okeigbo, Ife forces in collaboration with Ajibike, and Kulajolu, leading Arilekolasi’s slaves as well as freebooters from parts of Yorubaland joined the attack on Ondo, thus marking the beginning of the war, which destroyed Ondo town. During the Ondo civil war, Arilekolasi’s slaves also received support from some Ondo freeborn and chiefs. Indeed as we have seen with Ife, it is not impossible that divisions among Ondo chiefs encouraged the slaves to seek advantages for themselves. Disgruntled Ondo elements used the chaos to settle scores with their rivals, thereby joining the despoliation of their town. Why were Ondo elements interested in the destruction of their towns? Apart from an obvious constitutional crisis and social tension between slaves and slave owners, the pattern of the rebellion showed some economic dimension. The northern Yoruba wars turned Ondo into a highway to the coast bringing traders and slaves, and perhaps refugees. This shift in the direction of trade routes encouraged ambitious men who desired more participation either by relocating their economic bases or turning to warfare. It is in this sense that we should see the movement of Arilekolasi’ slaves from Iperindo to Ife road, and Ile-Ife’s expansion into Ondo territory. On the other hand, the interests of free trade were in potential conflict with the interests of the Oba. Instead his ruling policy had always been protectionist and monopolistic. Rather than concede a part of the trade to his chiefs, Arilekolasi brought in foreign supporters to reinforce his control. While in the early nineteenth century, the possession of 380 slaves by the Osemawe was considered staggering, similar or higher numbers were not uncommon in the 1870s. Therefore the importance of large slaveholding was not lost on Ondo chiefs. Economic power meant political power especially since all but a few of the over 50 chieftaincy titles were open to all citizens. Hence, it was easy for rich personalities to buy titles and for junior titleholders to See ‘Statement by Modakeke man,’ CMS (Y) 1/7/5, NAI. In 1898, the Travelling Commissioner at Ibadan arranged a deal by which Ife and Modakeke could exchange slaves at the payment of redemption fee of 12 bags of cowries. See Travelling Commissioner’s journal, December 17, 1898, IbaProf 3/6, NAI. On Okeigbo see R. Julian M. Clarke, ‘Agricultural Production in a Rural Yoruba Community,’ PhD, London, 1979, pp. 63-78 and Laray Denzer, Folayegbe M. Akintunde-Ighodalo: A Public Life (Ibadan: Sam Bookman Publishers, 2001).

 His latter history tends to suggest that he was a freeborn who joined the rebellion.
 Mercenaries who took part on Okeigbo’s side included Akinlalu and Odo from Ibadan and Ifewara respectively. Interview with Chief Felicia Akintunde-Ighodalo.

citizens. Hence, it was easy for rich personalities to buy titles and for junior titleholders to assume higher positions. Thus it could be assumed that those who lost out in the commercial political power struggle were at the forefront of the anti-Arilekolasi movement. Those who wanted the maintenance of the status quo joined the revolting slaves. Owing to the different motives of the rebels, there was an evident split in their camp from about 1866. Kulajolu agreed to be elected the Odunwo (Ondo’s fourth highest office) and to fight against his former allies. From his action it is possible to interpret him as a soldier of fortune, or someone who might have lost a previous chieftaincy contest, and therefore seized on the crisis as a means of revenge. According to Phillips “there were instances when one or two of their own chiefs made a common cause with the already powerful enemies and destroyed their own people.” Thus as soon as Kulajolu abandoned the rebels, he met stiff resistance from Ago, the new rebel leader, who carried out more raids on Ondo. The wars destroyed Ondo and as it progressed many Ondos even built shelters in the woods where they thought they could hide safely from the insurrectionists. A party under Osemawe Osungbedelola fled to Igbado while his chiefs escaped to villages such as Oke-Opa, Erinla, Ewegbin, Ateu and Iwoye. From then on, the war turned into guerrilla operations, with few pitched battles, but several raids and kidnappings. Okeigbo continued her predatory activities against Ondo, raiding well into the northern half of Ondo and capturing trade around River Oni. As the war dragged on, more warriors from Ile-Ife joined the rebels at Okeigbo. Because the wars/skirmishes were going on simultaneously with the Ife-Modakeke crisis, the influx of Ife elements into Oke-Igbo increased rapidly between 1850 and 1886. To many of the new immigrants, the Ondo crisis provided not only an escape from the pressures at home, but also an opportunity to enrich themselves through banditry. The greatest beneficiary, however, was Aderinsoye, who used the opportunity to build a strong political and economic base towards the realization of his ultimate ambition of becoming the Ooni of Ife. Unfortunately when he was elected to the throne in 1880, he could not return to Ife because of the continued conflict between Ife and Modakeke. The fall of Ondo witnessed an outward migration of Ondo slaves towards Okeigbo, Ijebu and Ikale. Consequently, prominent Ondo chiefs, among them chiefs Lisa Ogedengbe and Ayadi Edun (later Lisa), like the Oyo chiefs of the 1830s, established a framework for the reacquisition of their lost territories and defense of existing towns. One of the crucial decisions reached by the Ondo elite was that Ondo should seek assistance from Ilesa against Okeigbo. In return, Ondo would allow Ijesa traders to have free access to Benin, Ijebu and Adeyemi, Ondo Kingdom, p. 10.

 Phillips, ‘Address delivered at missionary meeting held in the schoolroom, Faji, Lagos February 28, 1879, Phillips 1/3/3, NAI.
 The role of Ago and the intensity of attacks must have been so important that the Okeigbo-Ondo wars have since been known as the Ago wars. See Adeyemi, Ondo Kingdom, pp. 29-32. Ondo tradition suggests that Ago became the rebel leader in 1866 cf. Rasheed Fawehinmi, Makers of Ode-Ondo Parts 1-3, vol. 1 (Italy: Tipolitografia di Borgosesia, 1992), p. 27.
 The dates tally with the presence of Ondo liberated slaves in Sierra Leone. An informant who was enslaved around 1841 put the number of Ondos in Sierra Leone in 1848 at about 30. See Sigismund Koelle’s Linguistic Inventory in Curtin and Vansina, “Sources of the Nineteenth Century Atlantic Slave Trade,” p. 196.
 Adeyemi, Ondo Kingdom, pp. 8-10.

coastal markets. Since Ondo could not overpower Okeigbo, it turned southwards against the Ikale and Idoko for slave raiding. While the people of Ondo lived in exile, they benefited from the successes of Ibadan in Ijesa, Ekiti and Akoko districts. Located on a major trade route, Ondo received slaves through Ibadan, Ijebu, Ijesa and Benin traders. More slaves were also supplied in the 1880s as a result of the Kiriji and local wars in Ekiti. In fact, slaves from these towns were specifically sold to Ondo markets. Therefore, the patterns of Ondo wars and commerce ultimately influenced the ethnic identity of slaves in the settlement. Warfare and trade enriched Ondo chiefs, and by the 1870s, a socio-economic system strongly influenced by slavery had developed. The average size of slave holdings in the large households was about 20, but there were warlords and ranking chiefs who had over 100 slaves. In the 1840s, Arilekolasi’s slaves were estimated at 380 but in 1875, the slaves and other clients of Edun were estimated at about 800. Half of Edun’s dependants were his full time soldiers, whom he grouped into platoons. Each soldier had two guns, while each platoon head had five guns. Other Ondo Chiefs such as Sara who died in 1875 had a farm filled with his slaves while his successor who died in March 1877 had about 100 slaves.

WARFARE, BANDITRY AND REBELLION: ETHNICITY AND SLAVE RECRUITMENT IN NORTHEASTERN YORUBALAND, 1820-1893

Eastern Yorubaland also felt the impact of its powerful eastern neighbor, Benin. When Benin invaded Ekiti between 1818-1823, the aim was to quell provincial revolt and regain control over the region’s economy. Indeed by reasserting control over the trade routes, which linked it with Yorubaland, Benin strengthened the position of its long distance traders, the Ekhengbo (from Ekhen Egbo) (ekhen, traders; egbo, forest). Akure and Benin traditions agree that the invasion of Akure was precipitated by a commercial dispute following an attack on a Benin tobacco trader, Ogonto, who was accused of violating an Akure law. Even though the information is scanty, it is possible to situate the Benin invasion at this time and the economic dispute at its root, within the context of the rise in the supply of slaves by the wars in Yorubaland and Hausaland. Benin traders would have desired to tap into the northern Yoruba slave fields as well as send foreign goods into the interior. They would have also wanted alternative markets, even if temporary, to counterbalance the disruptive effect of the Nupe political crisis on Benin’s trade with the Niger. Consequently, Benin soldiers, under Ologbosere Imaran and Ezemo Erebo, carried out punitive expeditions, which left so much destruction that the fear of Benin lingered on till the early years of colonial occupation. Several Ekiti, Akoko and Owo towns were sacked and in them were created Benin colonies under the Balekale (consuls). Intelligence Report on Ikere District, para 32.

 Charles Young, journal, June 9, 1875, CA2/098, CMS.
 Young, journal, July 11, 1875 and Phillips, journal, March 30, 1877, Phillips collection, KDML. See also Clarke, ‘Agricultural Production’, pp. 81-86.
 Royal Gold Coast Gazette, 1, 21, March 25, 1823; Egharevba, History of Benin, pp. 27-34 and Akintoye, ‘The North-eastern Yoruba Districts and the Benin Kingdom,’ JHSN, 4, 4, 1969, pp. 539-553.  
 Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics, pp. 25-30; Intelligence report on Ogotun district, para. 30, CSO 26/29762, NAI; J. A. Mackenzie, ‘Report on Owo’, 1927 enclosed in Intelligence report on Owo and Ifon With the victory, Benin reasserted its control over trade in Ekiti, Owo and Akoko, and Benin enclaves in Owo, Akure, Ikere and Ado-Ekiti became the nexus of trade between Benin and Yorubaland. Both Akure and Idanre traditions agree that owing to Benin commercial activities, a nineteenth century ruler, Deji Gbogi and an influential woman, Olokoju both of Akure founded Alade village/market (near Idanre) as a meeting point for Ekiti, Idanre, Ondo, Owo, Ijebu, Benin and Ijesa traders.  Imported items such as guns, salt and metal implements from Benin were sold as far as Ilesa, Ekiti and Ilorin. This earned the Ekhengbo the distinction of being called the “first long-distance traders in Ekiti.” Although the Akure king’s list seems to put Igbogi in an earlier century, the reference to the importation of guns would put his reign in the mid-nineteenth century. Most significant was that commercial metal products point to the position of Akure as a regional market.  As we shall show in chapter four, Benin traders undermined direct commercial contacts between Ekiti and Ondo for a greater part of the century. 

Apart from Benin, there were also invasions from Ibadan and Ilorin. Beginning from the mid-1840s, two lines of attack were directed at northeastern Yorubaland. Around this time, remnants of the Oyo elite had agreed on three major policies: recovery of territories already lost to the Muslims of Ilorin, the protection of ‘Yorubaland’ (Old Oyo) from external aggression, and the conquest of new territories. Ibadan and Ijaye were to implement these policies in the eastern and western provinces respectively. To achieve its target, Ibadan, in whose jurisdiction eastern Yorubaland belonged, undertook periodic campaigns in Ijesaland, Igbomina and Ekiti from about 1844 to 1876. Ibadan’s intervention in the internal affairs of eastern Yorubaland commenced with Ilorin raids into the region. Emir Abdusalam (1823-1842), Shitta (1842-1860) and Subeiru (1860-1865) attacked and conquered towns in Ife, Osun, Ijesa, Igbomina and Ekiti communities. Ibadan, having been assigned the duty of protecting Oyo’s eastern provinces, used the excuse of curtailing Fulani conquest to attack Ijesa and Ekiti towns in the 1840s. With these wars, Ilorin, Nupe and Ibadan were to become permanently involved in northeastern Yorubaland where they displayed their conflicting imperialism and nationalist ideologies. Ibadan saw her mission against Ilorin as one meant to protect ‘Yorubaland’ as well as to recreate the collapsed Oyo kingdom. Ilorin on the districts (Joseph Harold Beeley, 1934), para. 4 and 41, CSO 26/ 29956, NAI; Intelligence Report on Ikere District (N. A. C. Weir, 1933), para. 4, 28-31, CSO 26/29799, NAI; Intelligence report on Akure district, para 19-21, CSO 26/30014, NAI; A. O. Oguntuyi, The History of Ado Ekiti (Ado-Ekiti: Bamigboye Press, 1978), pp. 30-32 and History of Ekiti (Ibadan: Bisi Books, 1979), pp. 65-68. Egharevba says the trader was the wife of the Benin consul to Akure, History of Benin, pp. 45-48.

 Meeting of Akure and Idanre chiefs at Alade market chaired by S. M. Wood, District Commissioner for Ondo, September 19, 1912, Ondo Prof 1/1/843, NAI.
 Intelligence report on Akure district, p. 18, CSO 26/30014, NAI.
 Notes and Letters of Rev. James Buckley Wood, 1881-1896, CMS (Y) 4/1/8, NAI; Johnson, History, pp. 279-284 and Ajayi and Smith, Yoruba Warfare, pp. 67-69.
 Ivan F. Mustain, ‘A Political History of Ilorin in the Nineteenth Century’, MPhil, University of Ibadan, 1978; Intelligence reports on Ado district, p. 20, CSO 26/29734 vol. 1, NAI and Owo and Ifon districts, p. 15, CSO 26/29956, NAI.
 Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics, pp. 44-45, Johnson, History, 310-312.

other hand saw her mission as one partly geared towards the promotion of Islam and the Sokoto Caliphate. Thus eastern Yorubaland became an arena to resolve the unfinished business of the collapse of Oyo. As Ibadan and Ilorin’s intervention exposed the military weakness of the small, numerous and ‘populous’ polities of northeastern Yorubaland, soldiers and freebooters turned the entire region into a reservoir from where slaves and materials could be derived or exploited. By the 1850s, northeastern Yorubaland had become a region targeted for frequent slave raids and economic exploitation. Studies by Akintoye, Awe and Falola have shown that Ibadan, by this period, had emerged as the most powerful Yoruba state whose economic structure had come to rest strongly on the use of slave labor. The colonies, on the other hand, served as places to be levied with taxes and tribute. It is against this background that one should view the wars and slave raiding in the northeast between 1850 and 1876. As we have shown above, one of the major consequences of the rise of Ibadan was the commencement of an era of total warfare. Some of the slaves and clients (of eastern Yoruba origin) of Ibadan warlords began to return home to launch their own military adventures. Lacking the military sophistication of Ibadan, some of the returnees were essentially freebooters, brigands and kidnappers profiting from raids. The emergence of local brigands revolutionized the political and economic landscape of eastern Yorubaland. Indeed, the slaves that were generated by these brigands formed the bulk of those who were fed into the local markets. In Ekiti, the local acquisition of slaves did not commence on any large scale until the 1870s. This was because the region until 1876 served as a slave reservoir to its strong neighbors. The need, however, for a more efficient military organization to combat slave raiders, together with the increased opportunities for looting resulted in the appearance of local professional warriors. These soldiers in turn divided their operations between the service of their towns and free-lance activities. The careers of eastern Yoruba brigands often began with highway robbery or kidnapping. Some of their captives were sold for guns and powder and others kept as soldiers. Their successes attracted other wayward young men. For example, Esubiyi established a camp, named Ayede on Itaji territory around 1850, from where he carried out raids into Akoko and Iyagba districts. By the mid 1850s, he had created an Ayede ‘kingdom’ which included parts of Ekiti and Iyagba and he received the praise title of “Àtá, Olú odò, agbọnà kankan. Ò s’ọkọ Ìyàgbà, s’ ọkọ Àkókó” (Ata, the king of rivers, which floods the roads with its waters. Lord of Iyagba and Hinderer to Henry Venn, April 12, 1854, CA2/049, CMS; Johnson, History, pp. 294-296, 318-320 and Akinyele, Iwe Itan Ibadan, pp. 54-63.

 Intelligence reports on Efon district (1935), p. 10, CSO 26/6/30169, NAI; Itaji district (by N. A. C. Weir, 1934), para. 18, CSO 26/29800, NAI and Johnson, History, p. 323. 
 The oriki (praise poems) of Chiefs Ibikunle and Ogunmola, two Ibadan warlords between 1851 and 1867, contain reference to their successes in the 1851-1855 raids on Ekiti. See Akinyele, Iwe Itan Ibadan, pp. 58-63. Ekiti towns mentioned in these oriki include Aramoko, Ijero, Otun, Ikogosi, Ipoti, Efon, Omu-Ijelu and Iyapa (now Ayetoro).
 Such warlords or brigands include Olajubu, Koloko, Oderinlo, Ayorinde Aje, Ajobo and Abayomi from Ibadan; Esubiyi of Ayede; Aduloju, Ogunmonakan, Ogunbulu Ala and Akogun Irona of Ado; Fabunmi of Okemesi, Faboro of Ido, Olugbosun of Egosi; Aderinsoye (Derin) and Ago of Okeigbo; Ogedengbe, Omole and Arimoro of Ilesa; Lisa Ogedengbe and Edun of Ondo and Aduwo, Ajo and Ole of Ikale/Mahin/Ijo. 

Akoko). His successes attracted brigands from Ibadan, Ekiti and Ijesa into Akoko, Owo and Ora villages. Their operations in these areas earned them the title “ẹni tí Àkókó ń bí ọmọ sìn l’ẹsẹ òkè (he whom the Akoko worship/serve with their children in the valley). One of the freebooters, Ayorinde Aje from Ibadan was also praised as erinmi l’óde Ọwọ, a pè wá yan ọmọ Àkókó (the hippopotamus of Ọwọ, who is called to choose from among the children of Akoko). Indeed by 1880, a substantial part of the population of Aduloju’s and Akogun’s wards of Idemo and Irona in Ado were composed of slaves and refugees from Southern Ekiti, Akoko and Owo while the same population was represented at Ogedengbe’s base at Iju. Slave holding in Ekiti, although slightly smaller than Ondo was large enough to alter political and economic calculations. Warlords like Falowo, Akogun and Aduloju had over 400, 200 slaves and over 150 female slaves respectively. Another rich soldier was Olugbosun of Oye, who while lobbying Ogedengbe to join the Kiriji alliance in 1877, promised to pay him the price of two slaves for every slave that he might lose in the war. The slave estate of an Ikere chief included about 80 women. Court records and redemption papers reveal that many people, including women also had slaves numbering from a few to about 100. Large households, as we have seen in Ile-Ife and Ondo also increased the influence and authority of Ekiti soldiers. In most Ekiti towns, the leading soldiers were admitted into the kings’ inner councils, where they became consultants on foreign policies. The increased political profile of the military chief of Omu-Ekiti earned him the cognomen ‘A pa bírí wọ’lé Ọwá’ (he who enters the king’s house without permission) and Ado traditions, with reference to the 1860s and 1880s, talked about mutual disrespect between military and civil chiefs. Slave holding was not limited to men. Many women also invested their resources in the accumulation of slaves. However, most Ondo women had few slaves and those with ten slaves or more were described as rich. Unlike western Yorubaland, Hausa slaves were rarely used. As late as 1890, there were very few of them and the only reference to Hausa slaves was in 1878 when Lisa Edun was reported to have three.

 Intelligence Reports on Ayede and Ishan districts, CSO 26/31014 and CSO 26/30983, NAI; Historical Notes on Illa, Ishan, Iye and Ayede, Ikole, Ilesha, Osi, Obo, Awtun and Ajasse,’ IloProf 324/1917, NAK; Diary of James Thomas, October 11, 1863, CA2/038, CMS; May, “Journey in the Yoruba and Nupe”; Johnson, History, pp. 308-22; Perham and Bull (eds.), Diaries of Lord Lugard; Olufemi Olaoba, “The Ata Dynasty in Aiyede Kingdom 1850-1880: An Experiment in Traditional Political Culture”, African Notes, 14, 1-2, 1990 and Andrew Apter, Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Esubiyi targeted Ilorin traders who traveled to the Egosi kolanuts market. Cf Oguntuyi, History of Ekiti, p. 69. 
 Akinyele, Iwe Itan Ibadan, pp. 283-84. On Yoruba oríkì and hero worship see Karin Barber, “Money, Self Realization and the Person in Yoruba Texts,” pp. 205-224.
 Oguntuyi, History of Ado, p. 39-40, 87 and Akure Intelligence Report, pp. 10-27.
 Oguntuyi, History of Ado, pp. 34 and 44.
 Akintoye, “Economic Background”, p. 47.
 Criminal and Civil Record Book, November 1, 1910, pp. 203-205, Ondo Div 7/2, NAI.
 Interviews with Benjamin Akinyemi and Gabriel Omojola, Omu-Ekiti, July 21, 2001.
 Young, journal, February 26, 1876 and Moses Emmanuel Lijadu, diary, January 31, 1900, Lijadu Family papers (LFP) 2/1/7, NAI.
 Phillips, Address delivered at missionary meeting, Faji schoolroom, Lagos (Faji address), February 28, 1879, Phillips 1/3/3, NAI and Phillips to Ven. Arch., (about March 1890), Phillips 1/1/3, NAI.
 Intelligence reports on Ayede, CSO 26/31014, NAI; Ara, CSO 26/29834, NAI and Itaji, CSO 26/29800, NAI.

WARFARE, POPULATION MOVEMENT AND THE FORMATION OF A YORUBA IDENTITY

The Yoruba wars changed the demographic, political and ethnic composition of communities. Many villages suffered considerable population loss, forcing survivors from several villages to come together and establish new towns or resettled in safe places. The demographic effects of the wars were so severe that they were retained in popular traditions euphemistically as sparing only ‘three persons and a dog’ in Aramoko and ‘six people and a dog’ each in Itaji and Omu Ekiti’. In spite of the Yoruba crises, or what in Christian Mission papers is referred to as the ‘age of confusion’, the Yorubas “struggled to hold onto what they could of old identities and patterns of living”. As they fled into safety or driven into slavery, ‘they carried the springs of social identity with them in their names, praise poems, body marks, food taboos, dialects and languages, political and religious practices. In their new locations they sort out others who shared or recognised these markers”. Consequently, by the end of the nineteenth century, most eastern Yoruba towns were aggregates of people from diverse communities and regions, with particular quarters occupied by those who shared several layers of common historical or cultural identities. In some instances, people escaping insecurity, ex-slaves and traders settled in hitherto unoccupied territories, by seizure, purchase and negotiations as new colonists. Attacks on northern Ekiti and Okun districts induced a southward movement of population such that people who were originally Nupe, Yagba and Ijumu migrated into Ekiti. For example, around 1844, the remnants of Iye population from Yagba moved into Ekiti where they established the town of Ayede (this is where the world has pushed us). Similarly, Omu an Ijumu town and remnants of two other Yagba villages relocated into an Ekiti forest hitherto used as hunting ground by Ijelu farmers, who had also relocated from Ijumu in the 1810s. Indeed, Omu and Ijelu, which used to be separated by a distance of about 70 miles in 1840, were by 1860 separated by less than two miles. In the winter of 1875 Ibadan soldiers had mistaken the two villages for one. In the same vein, Nupe raids drove the villages of Iye, Iporo, Ipere and Epe southwards to Ijero district of Ekiti and Iye tradition has it that the town was peopled by remnants of population from twenty-two villages. In Akure district, refugees from Akoko, Ekiti and Owu joined forces with the people of Ode Oja to form the new town of Ita Ogbolu. Immigrants into Ekiti also included traders, soldiers, administrators and their dependants from Benin. These colonists set up farm in the forest straddling the Akure-Idanre border and occupied what is now called the Ọgbọn Ado (Edo quarter) of Ado-Ekiti. Similarly slaves captured by the Benin from some Ado villages and some refugees were settled at Ikere where they established Ogotun, Afao, Are, Iluomoba and Agbado quarters, all Intelligence reports on Ayede, CSO 26/31014, NAI; Ara, CSO 26/29834, NAI and Itaji, CSO 26/29800, NAI.

 Peel, Religious Encounter, pp. 49-50.
 On Yoruba warfare and ethnicity, see Ajayi, “Nineteenth Century Wars and Yoruba Ethnicity”, pp. 9-19; Isola Olomola, “Demographic Effects”, pp. 371-379; Oguntomisin, “Refugees” pp. 381-398; Niyi Oladeji, “Language in Ethnic Rivalries: An Analysis of Ethnocentric Use of Yoruba in Nineteenth Century Yorubaland”, pp. 451-460 and Moyo Oladeji, “Yoruba Facialographic Art and Oyo Expansion”, pp. 487-496, in War and Peace. 
 May, “Journey in the Yoruba and Nupe” and Intelligence Report on Itaji, para. 3. 
 In Government circles, Omu is referred to as ‘Omujelu’. See Coronation Speech by Oba Ajibade Iyanda, the Owajumu of Omu Ekiti, May 27, 1989.
 Intelligence Report on Ijero District (by T. B. Bovell-Jones A. D. O., 1936), p. 7, Ondo Prof 1/1/906, vol. 1, NAI 

named after their previous towns. Indeed as late as 1933, Ado emigrants still constituted one-fifth of Ikere’s population. Population mixture in the far northeastern districts of Okun, Akoko, and Owo along the Yoruba, Edo, Nupe, Igbira and Igala border was more complex. Refugees from neighboring districts moved into this area and formed semi-autonomous communities and retained their languages or dialects. A study of Ipetu-Ijesa on the Ekiti-Ijesa border, and Igbajo town on the Oyo/Ijesa border shows that a good part of their population came as a result of refugees and slaves from Yoruba, Benin and Nupe towns. At Igbajo settlers from Ekiti and Nupe towns constitute 18 compounds or 17.5 percent of the town’s 103 compounds. Nearer the coast, the hitherto Idoko, Ifore and Oka groups were totally assimilated into Ondo and Ijebu, by 1886, the only sentiments left of them were the rituals associated with Orisa Idoko and the installation of Ondo king.

 Although Okeigbo was originally Ondo, by 1860, its inhabitants were predominantly Ife and Owu and settlers from other Yoruba districts.
 Its most important orisa were Ife’s Oranmiyan and Oramfe and Owu’s Anlugbua. In the Mahin/Ikale district, the major demographic shift took place with the constant immigration of coastal people, traders, returning liberated slaves after 1870 and rubber tappers and Urhobo palm oil farmers in 1890s.
 See Intelligence Reports on Ado District of Ekiti Division (1933) by N. A. C. Weir, CSO 26/1/29734, NAI; Ogotun District of Ekiti Division, Ondo Province (1934) by Weir, CSO 26/1/29762, NAI; Ikere District of Ekiti Division, Ondo Province (1933) by Weir CSO 26/1/29799, NAI, pp. 2-24 and Oguntuyi, History of Ado-Ekiti, pp. 30-33.
 Some Akoko villages speak languages that are distinctly Nupe, Igala, Yoruba or Edo. 
 Adeyemi, Ondo Kingdom, pp. 15, 48, 71-72; Johnson, History, p. xx and Peter Lloyd, “Osifekunde of Ijebu” in African Remembered, pp. 222-287. Of the 33 slaves that were redeemed by the Lagos Consul in 1860, two were Idoko. See Brand to Russell, December 31, 1860, FO 84/1115, PRO. Further immigration is attested to by the expansion of Orisa cults in Ondo in the 1870s. Rev. Charles Phillips described the pluralism of Ondo religion thus: “Ondos are purely heathens. Few Mohammedans. I have only seen five resident Mohammedans in the whole country since I came in 1877 three of those are Ondo slaves and they do not scruple to join in the idolatrous rites of their Master. The two remaining are Ondos, a mother and son. The mother had been in slavery in the Yoruba country and returned to Okeigbo only last year (1878). Ondos have many idols in common with other Yoruba tribes e.g. Ifa, Ogun, Sango. It is remarkable that the priests of those idols are chiefly slaves from the interior countrys [sic]”. Address delivered at missionary meeting held in the schoolroom, Faji, Lagos, February 28, 1879, Phillips 1/3/3, NAI.
 Phillips, journal, January 29, 1977.

AKKADIAN

A little background to the ancient land of Akkadia and the Akkadian language. • During the 3rd Millennium BC, the Sumerians and the Akkadians lived peacefully together and created conditions for a common high civilization. • A few centuries later the first Akkadian king, Sargon of Akkad, ruled over an empire that included a large part of Mesopotamia. The ancient name Akkadian is derived from the city-state of Akkad. It appears that Semitic speaking people had lived for centuries amidst the Sumerians and gradually became an integral part of the Sumerian culture. We don't hear much about them in the first part of the 3rd millennium, because the scholarly language used in writing at that time was Sumerian. • Akkadia was founded by Sargon I when he conquered Sumeria. Sargon reigned from 2334 to 2279 BCE, and during those fifty-five years Akkadia became the world's first empire. During his reign, the Akkadian language became the lingua franca of the region. Along with the language came the Semitic culture it represented. The Biblical Shinar, the home of the tribe of Terach, father of Abraham, about 2400 BCE, was ancient Akkadia. It later became Babylonia, and it is now (roughly) Iraq. The art of glassmaking was born in Akkadia. It was a Semitic, and then a Jewish, art for the next three millennia. Glassmaking was unique among the arts, for it was invented only once in all of human history. Its spread through the world was parallel to, and coincident with, the dispersal of the Jews. • Akkadian is one of the great cultural languages of world history. Akkadian (or Babylonian-Assyrian) is the collective name for the spoken languages of the culture in Mesopotamia, the area between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Deciphered in the 1850s, Akkadian is the medium of innumerable documents from daily life as well as a vast literature, including the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the quest of a man for eternal life. • Akkadian, the oldest known member of the family of Semitic languages, succeeded Sumerian as the vernacular tongue of Mesopotamia and was spoken by the Babylonians and Assyrians over a period of nearly two thousand years. It was written in the cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians, and the surviving documentation covers the period from 2350 BC to the first century AD. The oldest known writing system employed by Semitic-speaking peoples is cuneiform. It was adopted by the Akkadians ca.2500 BC from the Sumerians, whose language was not a Semitic tongue. • The city of Babel is thought to have been Babylon and the word babel comes originally from the Akkadian Bab-ilu meaning "gate of God". • The earliest surviving inscriptions in the language go back to about 2,500 BC and are the oldest known written records in a Semitic tongue. The Semitic languages are named after Shem or Sem, the oldest son of Noah, from whom most of the languages' speakers were said to be descended. • By the first century AD Akkadian had become an extinct language replaced as a spoken language by Aramaic. • On Sumerian clay tablets dated around 2900-2800 BCE found in Fara, Semitic (Akkadian) names are attested for the first time. It concerns the names of kings in the city Kish, in the north of Babylonia where according to the Sumerian King Lists 'kingship descended again from heaven' after the great Flood. Kings with Semitic names are the first postdiluvial kings to rule Kish. They started the first historical period called the Early Dynastic Period. • During excavations in 1843 and 1845 AD large collections of clay tablets were found carrying cuneiform signs. They pointed to a forgotten Assyrian civilization which was hinted at in the bible and in Greek scripts (Herodotus). The decipherment of the language was completed in 1851 and the language was first called Assyrian, but is now considered a dialect of Akkadian. • Ikhnaton's capital, Akhetaton, was in Tell el Amarna. About 400 tablets with inscriptions in Akkadian cuneiform were found there in 1887. They constitute correspondence between Amenhotep III and Ikhnaton and the governors of the cities in Palestine and Syria, and they shed much light on ancient Egypt and the Middle East. The tablets are mostly in the Berlin, British, and Cairo museums. • North Semitic Division "An example of a Northeast Semitic language is Akkadian, also called Assyro-Babylonian. The principal subdivisions of the Northwest Semitic group are Canaanite, Ugaritic, and Aramaic (which embraced many dialects in the course of its long history, including Syriac). The term Canaanite is derived from Canaan, the name for the ancient region that comprised Palestine, Phoenicia, and part of Syria. Included among the Canaanite languages are Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew. Phoenician, a dead language, was the tongue of the Phoenician people. The earliest inscriptions in Phoenician that can be deciphered are dated ca.10th century BC. The language is also preserved in inscriptions from ancient Phoenician colonies, especially Carthage, whose language was a variant of Phoenician known as Punic. The existence of Moabite is known from a single inscription in that language dating from about the 9th century BC, from proper names that occur in the Old Testament, and from the inscriptions of other peoples. The Ugaritic language was first encountered in 1929 at Ras Shamra, Syria, a village where ancient clay tablets with writing in this tongue were found. Since Ras Shamra, which flourished before the 12th century BC, was called Ugarit in antiquity, the language discovered there was named after that ancient city. The Ugaritic language has variously been regarded as an early form of Hebrew, an early form of Phoenician, an early dialect of Canaanite, and an independent dialect of Northwest Semitic. Its classification is still unresolved. The writings in Ugaritic are important in the study of the Hebrew language and biblical literature of the early period."

Marathi Marathi (also known as Maharashtri) is a member of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is closely related to Hindi and Punjabi. It is spoken as a ... Full article

Éwé Ga mashi Togo Éwé (Ɛʋɛ̀gbe) is a member of the Atlantic-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family spoken in southeast Ghana and Togo. It has several alternative names: Ebwe, Efe, ... Antiquity. The Origins of Agriculture in Africa. It is impossible in a relatively short space, to cover the vast and controversial prehistory of humanity since its origins in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Therefore this Kwa history which start with the beginnings of agriculture there within the past 20,000 years. Experts agree that agriculture, the cultivation of crops and the domestication of animals, began independently in many different places. There were two major centers or "hearths" in Africa, America, one in Southeast Asia, and others. Two important hearths were in Africa. The first of these was in the savanna south of the Sahara, where a number of different maize, sorghums and millets were domesticated. Specimens of these have been found dating to around 7000 B.C.E. and domestication may well have begun earlier(Wendorf et al. 1992). The other acknowledged African hearth is Ethiopia. There other sorghums as well as grains such as teff and noog still grown there, were first cultivated. Most scholars maintain that nontropical crops like wheat, barley and chickpeas were first domesticated in Southwest Asia around 9000 B.C.E. and spread from there to Egypt and the rest of north Africa some twenty-five hundred years later. However, two new discoveries have led a number of specialists to reconsider this hypothesis. The first of these is that during the late Ice Age, between 14,000 and 12,000 years before the present, when the climate of southern Egypt was similar to that we now call "Mediterranean," there was a sharp increase in the amount of barley and other grains being harvested and consumed. This does not necessarily mean that they were also being planted but it seems very likely(Hassan 1980, pp.437-438). The second discovery is that of the extraordinary variety of types of barley found in Ethiopia, indicating that it has been cultivated there for an extremely long time. The two new pieces of evidence suggest three possibilities: 1) that barley (and wheat) was domesticated independently in Ethiopia and Syria; 2) that the cultivation began in Ethiopia and diffused to Southwest Asia; the third and most likely scenario, that toward the end of the Ice Age, inhabitants of the Nile Valley were in fact cultivating barley and other nontropical grains above the first cataract--cataracts are series of rapids and waterfalls that are impossible to traverse by boat. As the climate became hotter and wetter--even more so than it is today--this cultivation moved north along the Nile to Southwest Asia and up the mountains into Ethiopia (Doggett, 1989.p.33). After two thousand or three thousand years, when the climate of the lower Nile valley became drier and more temperate, the cereals were reintroduced to Egypt and northern Sudan from Southwest Asia where they competed successfully with the tropical crops developed in the savanna south of the Sahara. Although domesticated sheep or goats have been found in southern Egypt from the sixth millennium B.C.E., it seems likely that there were first domesticated in Southwest Asia. Cattle, on the other hand appear to have been domesticated in both Africa and Southwest Asia( Grigson, 1991). Thus, most if not all of the early bases of African agriculture were indigenous.

The Nile Valley 3500-500 B.C.E.

African history, as opposed to African prehistory, begins with the Egyptian records after the Upper Egyptian unification of Egypt around 3400 B.C. (Bernal, 1991. pp.207-211). For two hundred years before then, however, there is evidence of a sophisticated state in Nubia--between the second and first cataracts of the Nile. Royal tombs found along the riverbank, now under Lake Nasser, indicate the existence of a rich stratified society and the fact that symbols of royalty such as the hawk on a serech , or palace facade, and the white crown later used by Egyptian pharaohs were already in use there. The local pottery shows that the culture was Nubian not Egyptian but pots and other objects found in the tombs indicate a pattern of trade stretching from the Kordofan Mountains in what is now south central Sudan to the Levant, now Syria and Palestine?Israel (Williams, 1980). The Nubian wealth appears to have come from cultivation along the river banks and herding and hunting in the Acacia desert scrub that existed then, where there is now desert. It is also possible that Nubians were already trading in gold which was abundant in the region. Some time later, another state emerged in "Upper Egypt" along the Nile from the first cararact to the mouth of the Delta. The physical type of this population was similar to that of Nubia then and today and is classified as belonging to the "Saharo-tropical" variant range, which includes both "elongated African," of the type identified with the present Fulani or "Nilotic Negro" seen today in the southern Sudan and Broad or "Negro" physiognomies (Keita, 1990). It is probable that the Nubian language of the time was related to that of Upper Egypt. This belonged to the Afroasiatic linguistic Super-family which includes the Semitic and Berber language families, the Cushitic languages of East Africa as well as the Chaddic languages to the west, including Hausa. One possible territory in which the super-family could have arisen are in the Upper Nile in what is now southern Sudan, where languages of another African family are now spoken. A more likely original home is in southern Ethiopia, where there is the most dense concentration of Afroasiatic families and individual languages and from which the African members of the family could have fanned out. It is conventionally supposed that the Semitic languages now spoken in Ethiopia arrived there from southern Arabia. However, an increasing number of linguists now see the Semitic family as having arisen in Ethiopia and spreading from there to Southwest Asia.(Murtonen, 1967). Like Nubia, Upper Egypt was a society in which the ruler played a pivotal part, not only as a leader in war but as a producer of agricultural wealth, magically by ensuring good floods of the river and practically by organizing irrigation. He also played a central role in the distribution of bread and beer, the staples of Egyptian life. The greater size and economic potential of Upper Egypt not only gave it the edge in competition with Nubia but enabled its king Menes to conquer Lower Egypt in the Nile Delta and unify the whole country around 3400 BC.E Although Egyptian rulers were always symbolically and actually aware of the distinction between the two halves of Egypt and of the tensions between them, for most of the next three thousand years they were able to maintain unity for the whole country and achieve a record of stability, prosperity and cultural creativity that--with the possible exception of China--is unsurpassed in human history. Lower Egypt was inhabited by northern Africans of the "Mediterranean" type found in the coastal Maghreb, but with unification of Egypt there was an immediate mixing of population types among the elites and a slower one among the people as a whole. Even today there is a definite cline or slope from south to north with the appearance of the population tending towards that of Southwest Asia. This tendency has intensified with the many infiltrations and invasions from Southwest Asia that have taken place over the past five thousand years. These seem to have begun even before the unification of 3400 B.C.E. and traces of settlements from Syria at this time have been found in the Delta. As stated above, there was trading contact between the Levant and Nubia and presumably Upper Egypt in the1st half of the 4th millennium. Cultural influences from Syria and Mesopotamia increased after unification and there is evidence of it from artistic styles during the 1st two dynasties. It is also possible that the concept of writing was introduced to the Nile Delta from Southwest Asia at this time. However, the fundamental differences between Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs and the fact that many ancient symbols from Nubia and Predynastic Egypt were incorporated in later Egyptian script indicates that even if the idea of a visual representation of speech came from outside, the form of Egyptian writing was entirely local. Similarly, the centralized kingdoms of the middle Nile Valley are totally unlike the city states found in Mesopotamia and Syria at the same time, and the pharaonic system would seem to be a completely indigenous development. Egyptian culture was consolidated at the beginning of the Third Dynasty around 3000 B.C.E.. The following five hundred years of the "Old Kingdom" were those in which nearly all of the pyramids were built and Egyptian architecture, mathematics, and art were raised to a very high level. From the beginning, Egyptian culture was extremely analytical. Butchery of animals and the dissection and separation of organs necessary for mummification--a tradition of Saharan origin not found in Southwest Asia-- is paralleled by the central myth of the murder dismemberment and reassembly of the Osiris the god of fertility, rebirth and immortality. In hieroglyphics, fractions could be written as the different strokes that made up the sign for the "eye of Horus" said to have been torn apart by the wicked god Seth and restored by Thoth god of wisdom and calculation. This analytical tradition of distinguishing the different parts and functions of the whole remained important in Egyptian culture and played a significant role in the development of Greek medicine and science (See Bernal, 1992). Although the political unity and prosperity of the Old Kingdom was destroyed by the anarchy of the First Intermediate Period after 2500 B.C.E. its high culture survived and continued to develop during the Middle Kingdom (2100-1800 B.C.E.) and New Kingdom (1570-1070 B.C.E.). During these peaks of wealth and centralized authority, Egypt frequently extended its military power to the north over Syria and its political influence much further to include parts of what are now parts of Turkey and Greece. To the south, Egyptian control sometimes reached up the Nile as far as the fourth cataract just 150 miles north of the modern Khartoum. Nevertheless, Nubian culture did not disappear. In the Old Kingdom, Egypt conquered lower Nubia to the second cataract, but, when it collapsed around 2500 B.C.E., a new form of Nubian culture emerged. During the Middle Kingdom, Egyptians established a series of forts at the second cataract unparalleled in the ancient and medieval worlds (Adams, 1984, pp.175-188). Their enormous scale testifies not only to Egyptian wealth and power at the time but also to the importance with which Egypt considered Nubia. Scholars debate as to whether the forts were mere assertions of grandeur or had practical defensive value. If the latter were the case, it would demonstrate that the Nubians of the time were extremely powerful and well organised. Another possibility is that the forts--none of which is far from the river-- were built to protect trade from the south. These suggestions are not mutually exclusive, but the last would seem to be the most important. The significance of this trade is shown graphically by Egyptian tomb paintings of the import of tropical goods and gold from the south. Trade also seems to have been an important factor in the growth of a kingdom at Kerma, just above the third cataract. This kingdom may also have been part of the threat against which the Egyptian forts were constructed. Kerma became still more powerful after the collapse of the Middle Kingdom and the invasion of Egypt from Syria by the barbaric Hyksos. Royal tombs at Kerma contain the largest number of human sacrifices around the deceased ruler found by archaeologists anywhere in the world. This indicates the existence of a powerful central authority. Excavations in the 1980s showed that there was also a large fortified city containing houses built of stone, mud brick or wood dating from before 2000 B.C.E. and lasting for several centuries (Connah, 1987, pp. 39-40). There is no doubt that there were Egyptian influences in the architecture and material culture of Kerma. Nevertheless, it was clearly an indigenous civilisation, which collapsed only with the conquests upto the fourth cataract, of the Egyptian New Kingdom in the sixteenth century BC. With the climatic deterioration between 4000 and 1500 B.C.E. lower Nubia eventually became almost uninhabitable below the second Cataract. However, by the ninth century B.C.E. a new form of Nubian culture had arisen at Napata above the third cataract. This state dominated the Nile Valley as far south as the modern Khartoum. Although completely independent politically, Napata was heavily Egyptianized. Its rulers saw themselves as pharaohs, used Egyptian hieroglyphs for inscriptions, and worshipped Egyptian gods especially Amon, whom it should be pointed out, was generally associated with the south in Egyptian religion. In the decade following 730 B.C.E., Pijankhy ruler of Napata sailed and marched down the Nile into Egypt, which was in chaos with local disorder compounded by increasing Assyrian interference from the north. Pijankhy died after several battles but his brother Shabaka went on to conquer the whole country in 715 B.C.E.. The Nubian pharaohs were outstanding for their generosity and their piety to the Egyptian gods. After seventy years, they were driven out of Egypt and retired to Napata, where the state survived in Upper Nubia, until the 5th century B.C.E. when it was replaced by that of Meroë, still further up the Nile.

Other Regions of Africa Before 500 B.C.E.. The Nile Valley has been far more extensively excavated than other parts of the continent. Thus, it is much less easy to tell the extent of urbanisation and state formation elsewhere. Traces of agriculture and pottery have been found in the Sahara before 8000 B.C.E. By 2000 B.C.E. the cultivation of tropical African crops had spread across the savanna south of the Sahara and beyond, possibly as far as South Africa (Davies, 1975). By this time, Sorghum had also been taken overseas to become--with rice-- the staples of South Indian agriculture (Doggett, 1989. pp.43-45). The spread of agriculture in Africa does not mean that hunters and gatherers disappeared and they continued to occupy large territories in the continent until the last few centuries. The beautiful rock paintings of the central Sahara illustrate the life of pastoralists or "Bovidians" of the Southern Saharan-Sudanese tradition for many thousand years as it moved up towards the wetter mountains with climatic deterioration. The paintings illustrate a mixed population consisting of some North African types but predominantly of black peoples of the Fulani or elongated African type. The extremely dark tall thin Haratîn are still found in some Saharan oases. In the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. the style of paintings changed and they become stiffer and more concerned with horses and chariots than with cattle. The new chariot riders appear to have been the ancestors of the nomadic Berber speaking Tuaregs, who came to dominate the native agriculturalists. However, as we shall see, Saharan blacks came to play a significant role in chariot warfare. Further west in what is now inland Mauritania, the Saharan-Sudanese Neolithic tradition, based on this agriculture has left traces of many stone built villages and towns from between 1500-1100 B.C.E.(Munson, 1976) After 1100 B.C.E. the villages were fortified and in more defensible positions. After 850 B.C.E. there was a definite deterioration of the culture, which has been interpreted as the result of attacks by Berber speakers from the north who possessed both chariots and bronze. Since then, until today, this zone has been contested between the predominantly black and negroid local population and the newcomers. It was from this region that much later, in the 4th century AD, that the Soninke (Niger Kordofanian) speaking kingdom of Ghana arose. There is no archaeological evidence of urban life in the forests of West Africa before 500 B.C.E.. However, given the availability of wood, fibers and leaves for construction and tools and the heavy rainfall the chances for preservation of remants are very low. The possibility of urbanision and technical sophistication , as well as cultural influences there from the Nile around 1000 B.C.E. is suggested by the significant though controversial evidence of West Africans in prominent positions as well as by Nilotic cultural features in the Olmec civilisation of Central Mexico( Van Sertima, 1992). There are two other non-archaeological indicators of very early cultural sophistication in Africa. These are the Tifineh alphabet, still used by Tuaregs in the Southern Sahara and the Ethiopic one, the basis of the Amharic alphabet used in Ethiopia and Eritrea today. Both of these derive from an alphabet in use in the Levant in the Late Bronze Age and contain archaic features indicating arrival in Africa before 1200 B.C.E..(Bernal, 1990 pp.51 & 63). Thus, during the second half of the second millennium B.C.E., both the northern African societies invading and infiltrating the Sahara and the Ethiopian agriculturalists contained literate individuals.

African Contacts with Southwest Asia and Europe, 3500-500 B.C.E.. Contacts between the Nile Valley and the Levant in the 4th millennium B.C.E. were referred to above. With the Egyptian unification, the relationship became unequal with Egypt as the dominant partner. Contacts were made not only by land, over Sinai peninsula, but also and more often by sea. Byblos, the oldest and greatest city on the Levantine coast, during the Bronze Age always had a particularly close relationship with Egypt. During the Middle and New Kingdoms, Egypt controlled much of the Levant directly and had strong political influence over the rest. During these centuries, Egyptian culture and language had a substantial influence on the Semitic languages of the region, notably the West Semitic Canaanite, of which Hebrew and Phoenician were dialects. ( The Semitic and Egyptian languages were already related as members of the Afroasiatic language family.) It is because of the heavy influence of Egypt on the Canaanites that Canaan was seen as a son of Ham (Egypt) and a brother of Cush (Nubia) in the Table of Nations in Genesis chapter 10. During the Intermediate Periods of disunity between the great Egyptian kingdoms, there were peaceful migrations and invasions by Semitic speakers and others from Syro-Palestine. The most famous of the latter were those the Hyksos who ruled Egypt from about 1730 to1570 B.C.E.. These led to later Egyptian culture being influenced by that of the Levant. Despite such interactions fundamental differences remained between the African Egyptian irrigation farmers along the Nile and the nomads, rainfall farmers, and traders of Syro-Palestine. Egypt and to a lesser extent Libya had a lengthy influence around the Aegean in what is now largely Greece. Predynastic Egyptian objects have been found in Crete, as well as objects and material indications of Egyptian influence dating before the great Cretan palaces there were built around 2000 B.C.E.. The architectural and bureaucratic structures of the latter were largely based on Southwest Asia and a Semitic language may well have been dominant there until the Greek conquest of the island around 1450 B.C.E.. However, much of Cretan religion and art developed locally and much else clearly derived from Egypt. During the period of Hyksos domination of Syria and Lower Egypt, there appear to have been particularly close relationships around the eastern Mediterranean. It is possible that these were the result of conquests and settlements in the South Aegean by the Hyksos, who brought more Semitic and Egyptian culture to the region(Stubbings 1973 and Bernal 1991, pp.361-408). Strong indications of such influence have been found on pictures from this period(the seventeenth century B.C.E.) on the Aegean island of Thera and Cretan influences have been found on murals in the Hyksos capital in the Nile Delta and in the Galilee. Around 1570 B.C.E., Egyptian rulers from the south expelled the Hyksos and set up the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom. With national unity, Egyptian power not only expanded south to the fourth cataract, but also to the north. Direct rule was established over much of the Syro-Palestine and a sphere of diplomatic and political influence extended far beyond that. By 1400 B.C.E., Egypt's only serious rival was the Hittite Empire based in what is now Central Turkey. Thus, contact was established with the enemies of the Hittites to their west in order to outflank them and to gain the products of the Aegean region, which after middle of the 15th century B.C.E. came under the overall domination of the Greek rulers of Mycenae in the north- east of the Peloponnese. Tomb paintings from the Egyptian capital at Thebes show Aegean envoys and their servants bringing Cretan products and offering their submission to the Pharaoh. Diplomatic correspondence from Western Turkey to the pharaoh and religious reformer Akhenaten(1367-1350 B.C.E.) has been found. Furthermore, as the Egyptologist Donald Redford has written recently: "There is no reason to doubt that the Egyptian court was at all times during the Mycenaean Age in correspondence with the court at Mycenae, although the letters have not as yet been recovered" (Redford, 1992. pp.242-243). Archaeological finds from this period provide the same picture. Many Egyptian and Levantine objects have been found around the Aegean and Mycenaean pottery in the Levant as well as Egypt and Nubia( Cline, 1987). Still more startling have been two shipwrecks from this period, excavated under water off the Turkish coast. Their cargoes, one of which is extremely rich, show considerable trade among Egypt, the Levant and Cyprus and the Aegean( Bass, 1987). There is no doubt that the kingdoms of the Aegean were important players in the international system between 1450 and 1200 B.C.E.. They exported metals, finished metalwork, pottery and probably cloth, wine, olive oil, honey, and slaves. We also know that Mycenaean mercenaries served in the Egyptian armies. Nevertheless, it is clear that Egypt was the dominant partner. Economically, it had a huge grain surplus and was a producer of linen and papyrus, it was also a conduit for gold and tropical products such as ebony and ivory. Politically it had a strong centralised state extending far into Syria. Culturally, it was far in advance of Mycenaean Greece with two thousand years of almost continuous religious and technical development behind it. Although there was clearly substantial Egyptian influence on Greece-directly or through Crete-before this time and for many centuries after, the period from 1450 to 1200 B.C.E. was probably the one of Egypt's greatest direct impact on Greece (Bernal, 1991. pp.408-484). There are a number of indications of the presence of Africans in Bronze Age Greece from 1650 to1200 B.C.E.. Among other paintings at Thera was one identified by the excavator as of two African boys boxing. This interpretation has been challenged but there is no doubt about other paintings of Black Africans from the Bronze Age Aegean or about the 6 representations of "negroid" Africans found from Bronze Age Cyprus(Karageorghis, 1988, pp. 8-15). Documents found in Greece from the thirteenth century B.C.E., contain a significant number of West Semitic names but also others such as Aikuptiyo the later Greek Aigyptios and Misarayo from the West Semitic Mis5ry both meaning "Egyptian". The names Kamayo and Kemeu may come from the Egyptian km or kame "black" and Kmt or Ke@me " the black land or people" i.e. "Egypt". It is generally acknowledged that the name Aitioq/po found on these tablets is the later Greek Aithiops, "Ethiopian" (Snowden, 1970. p.102). Aithiops had a wide range of meanings. It was sometimes used to denote any people substantially darker that Greeks or Romans themselves. Homer, for instance, refers to two sets of "Ethiopians" one to the south and one to the east. The latter clearly indicates the dark Asian populations of Elam (in what is now Iran) and India. At the other end of the scale, the meaning of Aithiops was restricted to black Africans with "Negro" features. In Roman times, the name Aegyptius became a synonym of Aethiops. Before then, it meant inhabitant of Egypt, hence people of either dark Mediterranean or Upper Egyptian Nilotic appearance. Thus, from the beginning there was an overlap between the Aithiops and Aigyptios, although the former generally denoted darker and more "negroid" types. One of the earliest Greek poems--now lost-- was called Aithiopis. It was concerned with Memnon, king of the Ethiopians. Its date is uncertain, but the story of the "the most beautiful," noble, and brave Ethiopian prince, who marched to Troy's rescue and died there heroically, was known by the earliest Greek poets whose works survive, Hesiod and Homer, who lived in the 10th or 9th centuries B.C.E. (Bernal, 1987, pp.86-88). There is some confusion as to whether Memnon was an Asian "Ethiopian" or an African one(Snowden 1970, pp.151-152 and Bernal, 1991, pp.258-260). The predominant tradition, however, linked him to Egypt and Nubia and the most plausible origin of his name is from Imn m ht or Ammenemes II, the twelfth Dynasty pharaoh, who campaigned far to the north of Egypt in the 19th century B.C.E.(Bernal, 1991. pp.267-268). Memnon was not the only Ethiopian to play a prominant role in the Homeric epics. In the first book of the Iliad, Zeus goes with the other gods to feast with 'the blameless Ethiopians"(I. 423-424) The Odyssey opens with Poseidon visiting them (I.22-24). Thus, for Homer and presumably other Greeks of his time the Ethiopians were a particularly virtuous people with close associations with the gods. This, and Homer's knowledge of Pygmies (who lived in the land where cranes migrated in winter) show that he had some sense of African Geography(Iliad. III.5-7). Homer had a great admiration for Egypt. For him, its capital Thebes, was the richest city imaginable; its medicines and magic were the most effective and its rulers the most just and generous in the world(Iliad IX. 382-386; XIX. 37-39 and Odyssey IV.123-126; XIV. 282-286). The poet also saw Africans in Greece. Odysseus' herald Eurybates, who accompanied him on important missions was described as having "black skin and woolly hair" (Snowden, 1970, p.102 and Drake, 1990, pp.318-319). There was also a lord called Aigyptios on Odysseus' island Ithaca. The modern scholar Frank Snowden has suggested that there may have been a special connection between Ithaca and Egypt. (Snowden, 1970, p.102). However, this would seem unlikely given the use of the name in Bronze Age texts. It is much more probable that Egyptians and other Africans were living in many places around the Aegean, both during the Bronze Age, which Homer depicted and in his own time, several centuries later. However, the poet's use of the name and the description of Eurybates's physiognomy as remarkable indicate both that Egyptians and other Africans were familiar in Greece and that they were unusual there.

Africa 500 B.C.E.-500 C.E. Around 400 B.C.E., the Napatan state declined and was replaced by one still further up the Nile at Meroë, just seventy miles north of Khartoum. Archaeologists have excavated a large city there with monuments and official buildings of stone and ordinary houses of brick. There are many inscriptions in hieroglyphics and in a special cursive alphabet developed from Egyptian writing for the Meroitic language. This has been deciphered and historians have been able to establish a list of the kings and queens for the state's 700 years of history after the shift of capital from Napata. Unfortunately the Meroitic language is still unknown and the texts cannot be read(Adams,1984. pp. 294-332). Nevertheless, from Egyptian inscriptions, freizes illustrating royal triumphs, descriptions by Greek and Roman travellers and archaeology it is possible to reconstruct some aspects of Meroitic politics and society. Royal power was based on pharaonic principles and pyramids, of a distinctive type, and collossi were constructed. However, Meroitic queens, the "Candaces" of the Bible and Greek sources were clearly more powerful than in Egypt. It should be noted that in the first millennium B.C.E., the status of women in Egypt was itself far higher, than in contemporary Syro-Palestine or Greece. The Meroitic state extended well to the south of Khartoum and to the north as far as the Egyptian frontier under Greek or Roman rule. In the first century C.E., technological improvements allowed for water to be raised for irrigation and lower Nubia to be cultivated once again. The state controlled over twelve hundred kilometers of the Nile Valley from above the sixth to well below the second cataract, some stretches of which were extremely fertile and productive. Thus, the economy of the Meroitic state had a firm agricultural basis. Cotton fabrics were produced in Nubia before they were in Egypt. From these textiles and some of the art styles it is clear that Meroë was in contact-presumbly by the Red Sea- with India. Most scholars believe that Nubia at this time was a "corridor" and gained great wealth from trade between Egypt and the Mediterranean and central Africa and some have gone on to suggest that Nile Valley culture was diffused elsewhere in Africa from Napata and Meroë(Arkell, 1961, p. 177). This has been denied in the recent academic trend towards isolationism(Connah, 1987. pp.64-66). However, some striking similarities require explanation. Amazing parallels between the ritual and objects of Egyptian and Nubian pharaohs and those of royalty from elsewhere in Africa have been noted by many scholars(Hoffman, 1979, p,258-260). There are two explanations for these, 1) that Nubia and Egypt drew from a wider African tradition and 2) that Nile Valley styles of kingship diffused elsewhere in the continent. The two explanations are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it would seem likely that both processes took place. Nevertheless, some of the specifics are too close to be explained simply as part of a general tradition and, given other cultural similarities between Nubia and distant parts of the continent it, is very likely that there was cultural diffusion during the 1st millennium B.C.E. from Napata and Meroë across the savanna at least as far as Nigeria. Meroë was a major producer of iron. One scholars has even propose that smelting iron "formed (its) economic basis." (Phillipson, 1977. p.88). The slag neaps outside the capital led another to describe it as "the Birmingham of ancient Africa" (Adams, 1984. p.301). It is generally believed that forging iron was first developed in Anatolia, the modern Turkey in the second millennium B.C.E.. However, it is likely that Egyptians were using terrestrial (nonmeteoric) iron by the period of the Old Kingdom and there is no doubt that it was in use there in the New Kingdom, ( Dunham and Young, 1942). However, it is likely that there were religious and cultural inhibitions to its use in Egypt and it was never used on such a large scale as in Nubia. Nubian sandstone contains easily accessible iron ore, and given the shortage of tin, which is needed for bronze the development of iron there is not surprising. Iron was not being smelted only at Meroë. By the ninth century B.C.E., it was being worked, far to the south in Rwanda and Burundi. By Meroitic times, the metal was being smelted to the south west of Lake Nyanza in Tanzania( Sinclair, 1991. p.200). The Nok culture of the Nigerian savanna that was later to produce such wonderful naturalistic sculpture was already working iron by 500 B.C.E. It is difficult to say whether this wide spread occurrence in such a relatively short period was the result of independent invention or diffusion and if diffusion what was the point of origin. Despite the early working in Rwanda, before the emergence of the Napatan kingdom, the most likely candidate for origin is the Nile Valley. and given the major iron works of Meroë this state certainly had a significant influence in the spread of the metal's use. The huge and rapid expansion of the Bantu language family appears to have begun by about 400 B.C.E.. Linguistic evidence leaves no doubt that the family originated in the savanna of what is now Cameroon and both linguistics and archaeology indicate that its success was the result of a superior iron technology. There is, however, so far no evidence for this in Cameroon. Thus, scholars postulate that Bantu speakers as successful agriculturalists spread around the north of the rain forest of the Congo basin, to the Great Lakes region, where they encountered and learnt new herding techniques and metallurgy from the Sudanic and Cushitic speakers there. Some of them then migrated south and south west, and began the process that eventually led to the occupation of virtually the whole of Central and Southern Africa. The patterns of Bantu migration and absorption of other peoples were undoubtedly extremely complex, and it is unlikely that historians, linguists and archaeologists will ever completely unravel them(Phillipson, 1977.pp.210-230). In any event, the Bantu expansion led to the later establishment of many large and successful states. Meroë was destroyed in the 4th century CE by one or more of its neighbours, the tribes to the east and west and the Kingdom of Aksum, whose king Ezana boasted of having raided this country in the early fourth century. The Kingdom of Aksum based in the Northern Highlands of Ethiopia is claimed as the ancestor of the Ethiopian monarchy, which was abolished only in 1975. As mentioned above, the Ethiopian highlands had been one of the major African agricultural hearths and a very early recipient of barley and wheat. The introduction of the alphabet there suggests that a society of some stratification and sophistication existed there, before the emergence early in the first millennium B.C.E. of the powerful and cultivated states across the Red Sea in South Arabia(the present-day Yemen). It is also interesting to note that this early introduction fits with the strong Ethiopian tradition of relations between Ethiopia and Israel during the reign of King Solomon in the tenth century B.C.E., although many of the details of the tradition would seem to be mythical. There is also no doubt that there was a strong Jewish influence on Ethiopia well before the country became Christian in the fourth century C.E. Archaeological discoveries have confirmed the traditions that there was a close relationship between Ethiopia and the South Arabian kingdoms. This does not mean, however, that the Semitic languages in Ethiopia came from Arabia. Nor were conquests always from Asia to Africa, in the sixth century C.E., for instance, Ethiopians conquered South Arabia. Almost a thousand years earlier in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., however, there is evidence of cultural influence from South Arabia to Ethiopia of such intensity as to suggest a conquest. Nevertheless, the culture always remained distinctively Ethiopian. Impressive temples were constructed and bronze and iron were smelted. After the third century B.C.E., the civilization continued to develop more independently and in the first century C.E. Aksum was established as a strong kingdom. It was referred to with respect in Greek and Roman sources, and there is archaeological evidence of grand monuments and huge fortified stone built palaces (Connah, 1987, pp.74-83) Ezana, the best known king of Aksum left inscriptions recording his triumphs in the first quarter of the fourth century C.E. He raided the Nile Valley, and he declared Christianity the state religion of Aksum. Thus, Ethiopia was the second country to become officially Christian (Armenia had converted some twenty years earlier). Ezana also reformed the Ethiopian alphabet by introducing diacritical marks onto the consonantal letters to indicate the vowel that followed them. This principle was adopted from India and shows the extent of trade across the Indian Ocean at the time. As a literate, urbanized and Christian state Aksum survived for many centuries and provided a cultural basis for later Ethiopian religious and social structures even after the capital moved to more productive climatic zones further south. As the Sahara became drier, the coast and mountains of north-western Africa were increasingly cut off from the rest of the continent. Their relationship with the Mediterranean world was enhanced by the establishment there after 1100 B.C.E. of a number of colonies from Phoenicia; these became integrated into a trading network that formed the first basis of the "slave society" that later became typical of the Greek and Roman worlds. Nevertheless, the Phoenicians of Carthage and the other cities of the northern coast of Africa had significant links with the native Berber speaking peoples of the mountains and the Berbers and others who inhabited the Sahara and the savanna to its south. A significant proportion of the population of Carthage at this time has been described by physical anthropologists as "negroid" and this includes members of the upper classes (Keita, 1990, pp.36-37). Thus, around 500 B.C.E. there was here, as in Egypt, Upper Nubia and Ethiopia a distinctive literate and urbanized, sophisticated civilization on the African continent.

Africans, Asians, and Europeans from 500 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. Dislike or suspicion of peoples who look different from the physical norm or ideal type of a population occurs in many societies. However, before 500 B.C.E. there is no evidence that Asians or Europeans disliked Africans for their skin colour or physiognomy. Quite the contrary, there seems to have been a general admiration, not merely for the cultural and moral achievements of Egyptians and Ethiopians but also for their appearance. This favorable impression did not disappear immediately. Herodotos, the earliest Greek historian, whose work is extant wrote in the fifth century B.C.E. that the Ethiopians (by which he meant the Nubians of the Upper Nile) were "said to be the tallest and best-looking people in the world"(III.20). By this time, however, a prejudice against both darkness of skin and "negroid" physiognomy was growing around the Mediterranean World. In Egypt, black was the color of fertility, life and immortality, in contrast to the sterile red of the desert. This contrasted with Greece where there is no doubt that at least as far back as Homer, blackness was associated with night and death as well as with the terrors that these inspire. This is not a human universal. In many cultures white or pallor-the color of corpses- is the symbol of death. However, in early Greece, black also had positive aspects. It was seen as the color of bravery and manliness while white was that of effeminacy and lily-livered cowardice. The predominant association of blackness with evil only began in Greece in the fifth century B.C.E.. A similar shift took place in the Hebrew tradition. It is clear that there were people of African appearence in Ancient Israel. The name Pinchas comes from the Egyptian Pa NNNhs "The Nubian" and Smimjôn, Sim(e)on may well come from Smaw "Upper Egyptian". This does not necessarily mean that the individuals so named were themselves black, but the names do indicate both that there had been people of this type in Israel and that they differed from the norm. In the Old Testament, the predominant color of sin is scarlet a tradition preserved today in the color of the devil. In Israel, too, black had unfortunate associations. It was used to portray psychological as well as natural gloom but black --and night as a relief from the heat of the day-- also had positive connotations. Black was the color of the clouds that brought the precious rain, and the beautiful and erotic lover in the Song of Songs is called in both the Hebrew and Greek texts "black and beautiful."(Drake, 1990. p.307). White too had both negative and positive connotations. It was sometimes the color of purity, but also that of leprosy. In the labeling of people, the ambivalence at the level of abstraction was made more acute by the uncertainties involved in transposing an abstract color to human complexions. By the time of the New Testament, at the beginning of our era black had become the color and complexion of evil and white that of purity and goodness (Drake, 1990, pp.4-5). The shift is symbolised by the fact that the Latin "Vulgate" translation of the Song of Songs changes the description of its heroine to "black but beautiful." It was in the last centuries B.C.E., that the long sickening tradition began of people with dark skins being patronized by others, or excusing themselves with the argument that their souls are white. The Biblical story of Noah's punishment of his son Ham by a curse on Ham's son Canaan, had originally been used to justify the Israelites' extermination and enslavement of the Canaanites. In biblical interpretations written in the new atmosphere, the curse was transferred to Ham, the African, and took the form of "ugly" blackness and perpetual slavery (Drake, 1990, pp.15-23). What caused this change of attitude? The standard explanation that it was the first encounter between Mediterranean peoples and black Africans does not hold, because of the evidence of substantial contact between the two groups during the Bronze Age and the period up to 500 B.C.E.. There are two other explanations for diminution of the positive connotations of blackness and the exageration of the negative ones at this time. The first is that Greeks began to dominate darker peoples in Southwest Asia and Egypt during these centuries and began to find complexion a useful marker and justification of rule; the second explanation is influence from Persia. During the second millennium B.C.E. Indo-European speaking invaders, calling themselves "Arya," invaded the older civilizations of Elam (in what is now Iran) and the Indus Valley. The "Aryans" were generally lighter in color than the natives, who seem to have resembled the south Indians of today. During these struggles, a cult of lightness, associated with the sun and the sky grew up. The Hindu Vedas or scriptures contain violent images of the destruction of natives described as "darker" and clear cut in their preference for the invaders own lighter skins, though black has continued to be valued in some respects in Indian culture(Drake, 1990, p.309). In Iran, these

struggles became integrated into the Zoroastrian religion which, like its later branch Manichaeanism, sees the universe as in perpetual conflict between the forces of good and evil or light and darkness. In the sixth century B.C.E., Persia irrupted into the Mediterranean, conquering the Levant and Egypt as well as many Greek city states. In Egypt, the emphasis on the value and moral superiority of lightness was useful both to the conquerors and to Greeks who played an increasingly important role there even before the conquest by Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Macedonian or Greek Ptolemaic dynasty there around 300 B.C.E.. This preference for the invaders and paler Lower Egyptians, introduced a new sense of "race" to Egypt and resistance to the Persians and later to the Greeks involved a cultural "return" to the art of the great southern Dynasties in Upper Egypt and an image of Nubia as a refuge( Drake, 1990. pp.259-265). These new "racial" attitudes spread into Greece. Nevertheless, the prejudice against people of evident African descent that grew up at this time was qualitatively different from the "caste racism" found in the modern world as a direct result of European needs to justify the horrors of race-based slavery. In the modern form, the best black is seen as inferior to the worst white. This was never the case in classical Greece and imperial Rome. The presence of many Africans there is indicated by the. large numbers of blacks represented in Greek and Roman art (Snowden 1970). We know that some were slaves, although most slaves of the period were Mediterranean or northern European. Some Africans were important free craftsmen. For instance, the best known and most admired potter in fifth century Athens, had the Egyptian name Amasis and was portrayed by a rival as a black African(Snowden, 1970, pp.16-17). Blacks were also admired and feared as warriors. The bulk of Hannibal's Carthaginian army that crossed the Alps and invaded Italy was African, and some were "negroid". The coin struck to pay the troops and symbolizing his army had a Negro head on one side and an elephant on the other(Snowden, 1970. pp.70-71). This leads us to consider Greek and Roman relations with Africa beyond Egypt. The name "Africa" probably comes from the Afar people, who lived (and live), at the southern end of the Red Sea. In Roman times, however, "Africa" was used as a euphemism for the hated Carthage for the territory we now call Tunisia. These northern Africans continued to play an important role in Roman history. The early Roman playwright Terencewas a central figure in the formation of Latin drama from Imperial times to the Middle Ages, was surnamed Afer and was born in North Africa. The Roman imperial dynasty of the Severans, who ruled the Empire from 193 to 235 C.E., were originally Punic or Phoenician in culture and came from the coast of what is now Libya. A number of the most important Christian fathers of the church came from Northwestern Africa, the most important being St Augustine the theological founder of the Roman Catholic church. The Roman provinces of North West Africa were conquered not only from the Carthaginians but from Berber tribes and the urbanized Berber kingdoms of the mountains to the south, who put up a ferocious resistance to the Roman legions, which were never able to establish themselves in the desert. For the Romans and Greeks, there were three types of blacks. There were those who lived within the empire, who were generally, though not always in the lower classes. Then there were the admired civilized and philosophical "Ethiopians" who were generally located in the Nubian state of Meroë. The name "Ethiopia" has maintained this high status into the modern period. The third type, the fierce nomadic "Ethiopians" of the desert from Egypt to the Atlantic, resisted Roman attacks and raided cities within the empire. From these and from black forces in the Roman legions, Africans gained a reputation for soldierly qualities. In Christian times, the patron saint of soldiers became St Maurice, a soldier from Upper Egypt of the 3rd century CE, who was always portrayed as a "negro"(Drake, 1990, pp.214-220). Ptolemy the mathematician and astronomer of the second century CE, was also an Upper Egyptian, and known to Arab writers as a black, (Bernal, 1992, p.606). Christian writers did not refer to his appearance. Thus, despite the widespread fear and suspicion of blacks among western Europeans of the Middle Ages the dominant figures or authorities in their theology, warfare, and science-St Augustine, St Maurice and the learned Ptolemy were Africans and the last two were sometimes or more often seen as Blacks. The name "Maurice" was itself linked to blackness, as it appears to come from the Roman province of Mauritania, the present Morocco and Western Sahara, from which the later Latin Maurus and the English Moor both seem to have come.

Another word with a somewhat similar history is "nigger." The Canaanite verb ngr means "to gush forth, flow or vanish." In Hebrew, one finds the words niggarim andniggarôt as "torrents" or "streams". Throughout,the Arabian and Saharan deserts there are ancient place names of the type Gerrha, Nagara and Negra. These derive from the Phoenician dialect of Canaanite and mean "oasis" or "river that flows into the desert." It is from the last that the name of the river Niger seems to have derived. Classical writings refer to a people called Nigretai, Nigretes or Negritai, who were Western Ethiopians or lived to the west of the Ethiopians. Together with their neighbours the Pharusai they were described as having ridden across the desert on horses and chariots to raid and destroy 300 Phoenician cities on the coast. The Roman writer Pliny( 23-79 C.E) believed they came from the Niger but it would seem more plausible to suggest that they came from the Saharan oases(v.43). There is no doubt that they appeared as "black" to the peoples of the coast. It is not a coincidence that the best known Latin word for "black" is niger. There is no common Indo-European root for "black" and although niger has descendents in all the Romance languages, negro, nero, noir etc. there are no cognates to it in other Indo-European languages and its origin is unknown to orthodox lexicographers. In early Latin there were many words for the color, the commonest of these being ater used for the dull black of shade or night and niger. The meaning of niger was originally restricted to the brilliant black, with a violet tinge found in southern products such as ebony and opals. Although not attested for people in the early period, this color fits exactly with the beautiful complexions of the Haratîn in the oases of the Sahara, and the Latin word niger would seem likely to derive from them as the Nigretai, Nigretes or Negritai. Laterniger displaced ater and the other terms to become the standard Latin term for "black." The fact that the Portuguese used their word for "black" negro, to describe the people they raided and enslaved on the African coast seems to be simply a coincidence and the negative connotations of "negro" and its derivative "nigger", in the era of race-based slavery more than justify the distaste with which they are held today. Nevertheless the terms have an honourable prehistory showing once again the intricacy and intimacy of relations between Africa and Europe in antiquity.

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Arkell, Arthur, J. A history of the Sudan from the earliest times to 1821. London: London University Press 2nd ed. 1961. Bass, George. " Oldest known Shipwreck Reveals Splendors of the Bronze Age." National Geographic 172.6. (1987): 693-733. Bernal, Martin G. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. I The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785- 1985. London and New Brunswick,1987. Cadmean Letters: The Transmission of the Alphabet to the Aegean and Further West before 1400 B. C. Winona Lake,1990. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. II The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence. New Brunswick, 1991. "Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science' Isis 83.4. (1992):596-607.

Cline, Eric. "Amenhotep III and the Aegean: A Reassessment of Egypto-Aegean Relations in the 14th Century BC" Orientalia 56: (1987):1-36. Connah, Graham, African civilisations: Precolonial cities and states in tropical Africa: an archaeological perspective. Cambridge 1987. Davies, Oliver, "Excavations at Shongweni South Cave: the oldest evidence to date of cultigens in southern Africa" Annals of the Natal Museum 22(1975): 627-662. Doggett, Hugh, "A suggested history for crops common to Ethiopia and India" pp.27-48 in L. Krzyaniak and M. Kobusiewicz ed. Late Prehistory of the Nile Valley and the Sahara. Poznan, 1989. Drake, St Clair, Black Folk Here and There Los Angeles, 2 vols. 1987- 1990. Dunham, D. and Young, W. J. "An occurence of Iron in the Fourth Dynasty" Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 28 (1942): 57-59. Grigson, Caroline, "An African origin for African cattle? -some archaeological evidence" The African Archaeological Review 9 (1991):119-144. Hassan, Fekri, A. " Prehistoric settlements along the Main Nile" pp.421-450 in The Sahara and the Nile: Quaternary environments and prehistoric occupation in northern Africa. ed. Williams, Martin A. J. and Faure, Hugues. Rotterdam, 1980. Hoffman, Michael, A. Egypt Before the Pharaohs: The Preghstoric Foundations of Egyptian Civilization. New York, 1979. V. Karageorghis Blacks in Ancient Cypriot Art. Houston: Menil Foundation (1988) pp.8-15.

Keita, Shomarka, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83(1990): 35-48. Munson, Patrick. J. "Archaeological data on the origins of agriculture in the southwestern Sahara and their implications for West Africa." pp. 187-210 in J. R. Harlan; J. M. J. de Wet and A. D. B. Stemler (eds.) The Origins of African Plant Domestication The Hague, 1976. Murtonen, A. Early Semitic: A Diachronical Inquiry into the Relationship of Ethiopic to the other so-called South-East Semitic Languages. Leiden, 1967. Phillipson, D. W. The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa. London, 1977. Pollinger-Foster, Karen. "Snakes and Lions: A new reading of the frescoes from Thera." Expedition 30(1987):10-30. Redford, Donald, B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton(1992). Sinclair, P. J. "Archaeology in Eastern Africa: An Overview of Current Chronological Issues." Journal of African History 32(1991):79-219. Snowden, Frank, M. Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco- Roman Experience Cambridge Mass.1970. Stubbings, Frank, H. "The Rise of Mycenaean Civilisation" pp. 627-658 in the Cambridge Ancient History 3rd ed. vol. II pt. 1.(1973). Van Sertima, Ivan. "Evidence for an African Presence in Pre- Columbian America: An Address to the Smithsonian" pp.29-81. in African Presence in Early America Special issue of the Journal of African Civilizations (1992). F. Wendorf; A. Close; R. Schild; K. Wasylikowa; R. A. Housley; J. A. Harlan and H. Krolik "Saharan exploitation of plants 8,000 BP." Nature 359.6397 (10/22/92) 721-724. Williams, Bruce, "The Lost Pharaohs of Nubia" Archaeology 5.3(1980):12-19. . Reprint Journal of African Civilizations 4.2 (1985) 38-52.

Aymara Aymara (Aymar aru) belongs to the Aymaran language family. It is spoken by the indigenous Aymara people in Bolivia, Peru, Northern Chile, and Argentina (Ethnologue). The ...

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