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The Tigrinya people (Tigrinya: ትግርኛ, romanized: Təgrəñña, pronounced [tɨɡrɨɲːä] ), also known as the Biher-Tigrinya (ብሄረ ትግርኛ, bəherä Təgrəñña) or Kebessa, are an ethnic group indigenous to Eritrea. They speak the Tigrinya language. There also exists a sizable Tigrinya community in the diaspora.

History

One view believes that the name comes from the word tägärät (ተገረት), meaning "she ascended". The word tägäru (ተገሩ) "they ascended" describes the ascension of the earliest indigenous people to the mountainous highlands of Eritrea as the plateau's first settlers. The Tigrinya tribe were first mentioned around the 8th to 10th centuries, in which period manuscripts preserving the inscriptions of Cosmas Indicopleustes (fl. 6th century) contain notes on his writings including the mention of a tribe called Tigretes.

The word kebessa (in the form khebsi) has also been found in Ancient Egyptian inscriptions in reference to puntites, however concentrating later on during the Ptolemaic period, the word khebsi roughly translates to "those who cut or detach the incense from the tree".

Language

Tigrinya is a North Ethiopic language. It is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea, and the fourth most spoken language in Ethiopia after Amharic.

Tigrinya dialects differ phonetically, lexically, and grammatically.

Settlements and kingdoms

Ona

The oldest settled pastoral and agricultural community lived in Ona (the villages and towns around Asmara) around 800 BC. It was the oldest known indigenous culture in the Horn Africa. Archaeologist Peter Schmidt compared the Asmara settlement to Athens and Rome. The language known as Tigre was believed to be spoken in the region around 1000 BC.

D'mt Kingdom

D'mt (Daamat) was believed to be home to a settled community in Southern Eritrean and Tigray from around 8th century BC to 4th century BC. There is little archaeological evidence of the D'mt Kingdom.

Metera

Metera was a major city in the Dʿmt and Aksumite kingdoms. Since Eritrean independence, the National Museum of Eritrea has petitioned the Ethiopian government to return artifacts removed from the site, though their efforts have been rebuffed. Hawulti, a pre-Aksumite or early Aksumite era obelisk, is situated here.

Qohaito

Rock art near Qohaito appears to indicate habitation in the area since the fifth millennium BC, while the town is known to have survived until the sixth century. Mount Emba Soira, Eritrea's highest mountain, and a small successor village lies near the site.

Qohaito is often identified as the town Koloe described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greco-Roman document dated to the end of the first century, which thrived as a stop on the trade route between Adulis and Aksum. It is thought that crops were interspersed with buildings in the town. Old edifices included the pre-Christian Temple of Mariam Wakino and the Sahira Dam, which might also be pre-Aksumite.

The ruins at Qohaito were first located in 1868, though they were erroneously identified as a "Greek depot" at the time. A related site outside of Senafe, Matara, lies about 15 kilometres to the south and was excavated in the 1960s.

References

1. "Tigrinya People". Orville Jenkins Home. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
2. "Languages of Eritrea". Ethnologue. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
3. ^ "Africa :: Eritrea — The World Factbook – Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
4. ^ Fegley, Randall (1995). Fegley, Randall (1995). Eritrea (World Bibliographical Series). ABC-CLIO. p. 7. California. ISBN 1851092455.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
5. Munro-Hay 1991, p. 187. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMunro-Hay1991 (help)
6. ^ G.W.B. Huntingford, Historical Geography of Ethiopia from the first century AD to 1704 (London: British Academy, 1989), pp. 38f
7. Davis, Theodore M.; Naville, Edouard; Carter, Howard, eds. (2004). The tomb of Hâtshopsîtû. Theodore M. Davis' excavations: Bibân el Molûk (Repr. 1906 ed.). London: Duckworth. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-7156-3125-6.
8. Davis, Theodore M.; Naville, Edouard; Carter, Howard, eds. (2004). The tomb of Hâtshopsîtû. Theodore M. Davis' excavations: Bibân el Molûk (Repr. 1906 ed.). London: Duckworth. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-7156-3125-6.
9. Leslau, Wolf (1941) Documents Tigrigna (Éthiopien Septentrional): Grammaire et Textes. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck.
10. Greenfield, Richard (2001). "New discoveries in Africa change face of history". No 401. Archived from the original on 2019-07-12. Retrieved 2020-08-27 – via New Africa. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
11. Schmidt, Peter (2002). "Oldest Africa Settlement found in Eritrea". BBC.
12. Schmidt, Peter (2006). Historical archaeology in Africa. Rowman Altamira. pp. 259–260. ISBN 0759109656.
13. "Eritrea wants artefacts back". 2005-10-02. Archived from the original on 2006-06-20. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
14. Phillipson, David (2012);Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the northern Horn, 1000 BC–AD 1300; ISBN 978-1847010414.
15. C. R. Markham, "Geographical Results of the Abyssinian Expedition", Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 38 (1868), p. 23

• Ethnic groups in Eritrea
• Habesha peoples
• Tigrinya language