page_title: Cushitic peoples
section_title: The Horn of Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Cushitic peoples / History / The Horn of Africa
caption_attribution_description: English: Biete Ghiorgis
context_page_description: The Cushitic peoples are a grouping of people who are primarily indigenous to Northeast Africa and speak or have historically spoken Cushitic languages of the Afroasiatic language family. Cushitic languages are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, as well as the Nile Valley, and parts of the African Great Lakes region. Some examples of these peoples include the Cushitic speaking ethnic groups.
  Linguistic evidence indicates that Cushitic languages were spoken in Lower Nubia, an ancient region which straddles present day Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan, before the arrival of North Eastern Sudanic languages from Upper Nubia. Many extinct populations of northern Nubia such as the Medjay and the Blemmyes spoke Cushitic languages related to the modern Beja language. Less certain are hypotheses which propose that Cushitic languages were spoken by the people of the C-Group culture in northern Nubia, or the people of the Kerma culture in southern Nubia. Historical linguistic analysis indicates that the languages spoken in the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture of the Rift Valley and surrounding areas, may have been languages of the South Cushitic branch.
context_section_description: Shell middens 125,000 years old have been found in Eritrea, indicating the diet of early humans included seafood obtained by beachcombing.
  According to linguists, the Horn of Africa could possibly be the original homeland of the proto-Afroasiatic language as it is considered the region the Afroasiatic language family displays the greatest diversity, a sign often viewed to represent a geographic origin. The Horn of Africa is also the place where the haplogroup E1b1b originated from, Christopher Ehret and Shomarka Keita have suggested that the geography of the E1b1b lineage coincides with the distribution of the Afroasiatic languages. Genetic analysis done on the Afroasiatic speaking population further found that a pre-agricultural back-to-Africa migration into the Horn of Africa occurred through Egypt 23,000 years ago and it brought a non-African ancestry dubbed Ethio-Somali in the region.
  The earliest evidence of state-building in the Horn of Africa comes from an area recorded in ancient Egyptian sources. The Land of Punt (Egyptian: pwnt; alternate Egyptological readings Pwene(t)) was an ancient kingdom. A trading partner of Egypt, it was known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory, and wild animals. The region is known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to it. The earliest recorded ancient Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC). However, gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt as early as the time of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty.
  Subsequently, there were more expeditions to Punt in the Sixth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Eighteenth dynasties of Egypt. In the Twelfth Dynasty, trade with Punt was celebrated in popular literature in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor.
  
  It is possible that it corresponds to Opone as later known by the ancient Greeks, while some biblical scholars have identified it with the biblical land of Put. The kingdom was famed for its incense as shown by inscriptions on the tomb of Hatshepsut 
  Said by Amen, the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Land: 'Come, come in peace my daughter, the graceful, who art in my heart, King Maatkare [ie. Hatshepsut]...I will give thee Punt, the whole of it...I will lead your soldiers by land and by water, on mysterious shores, which join the harbours of incense...They will take incense as much as they like. They will load their ships to the satisfaction of their hearts with trees of green [i.e., fresh] incense, and all the good things of the land.'
  At times Punt is referred to as Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), the "Land of the God". The exact location of Punt is still debated by historians. Most scholars today believe Punt was situated to the southeast of Egypt, most likely in the coastal region of modern Djibouti, Somalia, northeast Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Red Sea littoral of Sudan. It is also possible that the territory covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia. Puntland, the Somali administrative region situated at the extremity of the Horn of Africa, is named in reference to the Land of Punt. Interestingly  the term Habesha (also known as 'Abyssinian people') was used historically (before Abyssinian Ethiopian adaption) to refer to all the populations in the Horn of Africa by Arab travelers and geographers. The first among these travelers was Al-Ya'qubi, who visited the region in 872 CE. The word is thought by some scholars to be of Egyptian origin, South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser, claimed that the hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Punt) used by Queen Hatshepsut c. 1460 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected. Much of the worlds frankincense, around 82%, is still produced in Somalia, with some frankincense also gathered in adjacent Southern Arabia, Ethiopia and Sudan.
  Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), meaning "God's Land". This referred to the fact that it was among the regions of the Sun God, that is, the regions located in the direction of the sunrise, to the East of Egy
caption: The Church of Saint George, Lalibela, 12th century Agaw Zagwe dynasty.  The critical role of religion is near ubiquitous among Cushitic populations.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5472", "Image ImageLength": "3648", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 6D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2020:05:08 11:00:23", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "304", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1260", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1374", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8615", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/4000", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:11:13 10:44:19", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:11:13 10:44:19", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "12", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "15/4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF SubSecTime": "56", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "56", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "56", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "6748", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5848", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1228", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1368000/359", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "912000/239", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "055052000338", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[24, 105, 0, 0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF24-105mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "000000ccc4"}