THE ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY OF OROMO PRE-HISTORIC ROCK ARTS VERSUS THE “LOST CIVILIZATION” NOISE IN ABYSSINIANIST HISTORIOGRAPHIES

THE ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY OF OROMO PRE-HISTORIC ROCK ARTS VERSUS THE “LOST CIVILIZATION” NOISE IN ABYSSINIANIST HISTORIOGRAPHY Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD) 1 College of Social Science and Humanities Haramaya University, Ethiopia Email: [emailprotected] ABSTRACT Abyssinianist historiography is notorious not only for its hypostatization, anachronism and deAfricanization of everything that is of Ancient Black African civilization but also that it leaves no stone unturned to counterfeite, misappropriate, dismantle our social epistemology and make it so difficult for us to trace our (pre)history. For the old Solomonic Ethiopia and “lost Ge’ezites” narrative is no more palatable to a new generation of Ethiopians, another mystification has recently been brewing dancing around the hitherto low profile “lost” communities like “Harla”. This ‘community’ is always ascribed the ethno-/social-archeological finds of Eastern Ethiopia of Hararqee/Hararghe, where numerous pre-historic rock arts and material cultures are found, though they are rare objects of evolutionary multi-disciplinary research. The interjection is to mystify the socio-cultural origin and significance of these resources and, this alienating epistemology has quite successfully excluded the autochthonous Cushites. It has preempted any question as to why can’t they be possible agents or their traditions can’t be (potential) analytical devices for understanding the mechanism that generated or the meaning and significance that underlie these arts. As a result, evolutionary social sciences might have missed golden opportunities, given the geo-historical importance of this area in natural history and the Cushites in the history of world’s civilization. Thus, this study intended to inquire into the social semiotical structures underlying beneath the signs and styles of the ‘pre’-historic rock arts of the area by using the ancient Qaallu-Gada Institution of the Oromo as a general analytical device. Field, archival and artefactual data was collected and analyzed qualitatively by adopting multi-theoretical and cross-disciplinary approaches to social semiosis and (pre-)historic rock-arts. Results showed that the the “lost” civilization noise is a systematic distortion of truth to outsource or misappropriate a real history of Oromo-Cush peoples. The Oromo social epistemological technique that uniquely systematizes the semiotic-rhetorical structures offers substantive and methodological insights. This technique combines one at a time, into a single communicative structure, complex features of social semiotical-rhetorical structures, namely, homophonic, homosemic, homosememic, homomorphic, homologic and imagistic/symbological, all resonating with the regularities in Qaallu-Gada Institutional systems. It is a system that regularizes social structure down unto grammatological structure and, viceversa, the latter upwards to the former.

Keywords: ethnoarchaeology, Oromo, Cushite, pre-history, rock arts, lost civilization, Abyssinia, Ethiopia, historiography

BACKGROUND Abyssinianism or an Abyssinianist is a fluid term difficult to succinctly define. Anyway, Abyssinianists are two interrelated groups who, on the one hand, claim “South Arabic” (some claim the far north “Mesopoamia” and “Babylonia”) origin of Ethiosemitic people with their Ge’ez language that got “extinct” and/or “evolved” into Abyssinian languages, mainly Amhari

a and

©Dereje Tadesse Birbirso. Anyone can use this with due acknowledgement. Originally Presented on Annual Research Review Workshop, Haramaya University, September, 2013. The author would like to thank Haramaya University for partly funding the project “An Analysis of the Ancient Rock Paintings of Laga Oda and Goda A awa, Eastern Hararqé” by Birbirso, T. Dereje and Gashaye, G. Zelalem, 2012-2013, from which this paper grew.

Tigri

a and,

on the other hand, those who claim the “re-establishment” (some prefer

“establishment”) in the 13th century of the kingdom of the Biblical Solomonic Dynasty that evolved into “the” nation of Abyssinia (called Habasha or Habesh in Ethiopian languages 2 ) of Amhara and Tigire until around 1900, after which it, again, evolved to the present day Ethiopia, which herself is still a “State at the Crossroads” (Lata, 1999). Both groups jointly and equally preach us that the Classical Axumite civilization and the contemporary Ethiopian “civilization” have been but due to that super-race (known by various evolving names such as Sabaean, Agazean, etc.) that cruised over the Red Sea and settled among the “inferior” Black Africans, themselves being Non-Blacks (Hable-Sellassie, 1972; Jones & Monroe, 1955; Ullendorff, 1960; Marcus, 1994).

Rooted deep in this ideology, Abyssinian historiography is notorious for anachronism, phantasm and de-Africanization of everything that is of ancient and Black African civilization. One critical scholar treated this dyslexic historiography in his article “The Ethiopia Metaphor: A Dialectic Myth of Africa” wherein he wondered if at all “the vast body of Western or European or early white colonial writing on Africa” or if at all the so-called Classical writers, if we should believe there were any befor 1800, understood “the Ethiopia metaphor, the dialectic myth of two [sic] kinds of Ethiopia”, the so-called Abyssinia, “what was taken to be the ‘real’ Ethiopia”, and the rest of Black Africa (van Wyk Smith, 1999: 15). With the decolonization of Africa (politically and ideologically) and advent of post-colonial or post-modern era with globalizing and reflexivity thoughts, the old dogmatic piles of fake texts that were produced by racist ‘scholars’ of colonial Europe went bankrupt. That mythical drama designed Abyssinia/Ethiopia as the poster child for sucking up to colonial era Europe, presented her as bastard size to Black Africa or bastard child of the fabulous Solomon of the Lion of Judea who prostituted a female character known by various names, lived at various geographies, turned various colors like a chameleon, at various historical junctions (well summarized by Gebreab, 2013: 301-305).

To a considerable size of new generation of Ethiopian youths and (some) leaders, this dyslexic legend became so unpalatable and waned off, unfortunately, nevertheless, after gnawing off the minds of two/three generations of Northern Ethiopians. The repercussion, however, is still going on leaving millions of Ethiopian youngsters and politicians in geo-historical disorientations (locational-nationality disorientation, inferiority complex, social-psychological anomie, identity 2

The Oromo name for Abyssinia is ‘Sidaama’ from original Se i man’ i.e., the Oromo-Cush.

ap’a the opposite/opponent of Se

i Nama ‘sons of

crisis, sycophancy to Eurocentrism/Orientalism, transplantation of abroad solutions to to every local systemic problems) and above all loss of what the great sociologist Anthony Giddens (Giddens, 1984) says “ontological security”, roughly meaning a sense of trust in durability of life, living and the daily activities of social life. These pathologies can easily be observed in the terribly discourteous daily chats—racist, ethnocintric, blasphemous insults and counter-insults among the Amhara versus the Tigre versus the Oromo groups or the Christian versus the Muslims, but less or no debates over social issues or political ideologies--over the Facebook and Bloggers’ websites or the frequent hazardous attempts to flee the country crossing boarders and seas, usually ending up in appalling miseries and number of deaths. If anyone is interested in direct, but critical, observation of these Ethiopic pathologies, it suffices to make visits to Ethiopian higher institutions and observe student behaviors while reading Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. To quote a few applicable lines from his work: In alienated societies, men oscillate between ingenuous optimism and hopelessness. Incapable of autonomous projects, they seek to transplant from other cultures solutions to their problems. But since these borrowed solutions are neither generated by a critical analysis of the context itself, nor adequately adapted to the context, they prove inoperative and unfruitful. Finally [they] give in to disheartenment and feelings of inferiority (Freire, 2005: 10). A fundamental causative of this Ethiopic phenomenon is the incessant Indo-Semitic and Abyssinianist ‘scholarships’ of de-Africanization of Ethiopia or de-Ethiopianization of Ethiopians. Professor Ephraim Isaac, a professor of Semitic at Harvard University, recently wrote an important online short essay in which he regretted: ‘Unfortunately, not on account of their own fault, our young people are not up to date on the study of ancient languages and ancient world history, particularly their own. On the contrary, some half-baked foreign experts of Ethiopia and political philosophy condition them’ (Isaac, 2013).

As if that half-baked Abyssinianist historiography was not enough, a formerly low profile discourse is now growing into another form of grand narrative only awaiting few decades before it is fully built into a recuperating Ethiopia (since 1990s), a shattered autocratic-Stalinist empire at the embryonic stage of another phase of nation-building process after unsuccessful one hundred or so years. The discourse figures in histories of “lost” civilizations/languages at the heart of Ethiopia, in contrast to the former delimitation to Abyssinian (Northern Ethiopian) “lost” Ge’ezites, Axumites, Zagwe, etc., ‘civilizations’.

One notable Southern Ethiopian “lost” ones

are the so-called ancient/medieval (?) “Harla” (besides the so-called “Argoba”, “Efat”, “Gafat”,

etc.), allegedly located in Eastern Ethiopia, specifically in the vast land of Hararqee 3 which covered the entire Rift Valley from Central Ethiopia to the boarder of the ‘Greater’ Somalia before 1970s. This enigmatic community in focus is since the second half of 20th century is designated by the form “Harla” (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975; Braukämper, 1998 4 ) but known in earlier literature by “Arla” (Azais & Chambard, 1925). It is usually associated with the pre-historic (and medieval) Hararqee vast land abounded with numerous pre-historic social semiotic resources, none of which, nevertheless, has been socio-culturally explained. All the researchers on pre-historic rock arts (i.e., rock paintings, engravings as well as monoliths and stone constructions as significations of social memories) and material cultures of Hararqee unanimously and unqualifiedly ascribe the sociocultural origin or agentry of their archeological finds to this fabulous community claimed to have been “destroyed by the supernatural powers through natural catastrophes as punishment” (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975: 49). They automatically exclude the autochthonous Cushitic peoples and preempt any question as to why these native communities’

age-old

languages,

cultures,

social

institutions

or,

general,

social

epistemological structures couldn’t be used as (possible) analytical devices for understanding their (the pre-historic rock arts and material cultures) social origin, meaning, and significance. As a result, evolutionary social sciences might have missed golden opportunity, given the tremendous geo-historical importance of this area in social evolution and early civilization.

Dictators, fascists, Nazis and colonial era ‘historians’ have one behavior in common: They speak for somebody and insist on I-know-it-for-you principle instead of making the forum open to anybody without any restriction. No single contemporary real, existing Ethiopian community has 3

Phonology is indispensable in this study. The orthography ‘Hararqee’ is preferred to the usual ‘Hararghe’ or ‘Hararge’ for it conceals that the sign is composite of two free morphemes wherein the second morpheme qee/qa’é (also spelled kee, keé, qē, qêe) is hypocoristic-caritive (marked by -ee/-é) meaning ‘home, house, dwelling, habitation; ancestral home, birthplace, native land, environ, village; homestead, property, life and living condition’ (Gidada, 2006:100; Viterbo, 1892:89; Foot,1913:35, 82) from the archaic root qaɣ / k’ã ‘(to have) opportunity, expedient, way, orifice’ (Tutschek,1844: 44, 60). This is a cosmogonal-eschatological concept that coheres the Being/Man, His cosmos/topography and His spirits in the post-death times. Qee appears before or after the element it modifies as a toponym across Oromia (Oromoland, according to the contemporary Ethiopian Federalist structure):Qeemişee/Kamissee, Qeelamii/Qalleemi, Qeeȥiida/Qaȥiidaa, QeebaȦaa, Qeeball’ee/ Qaball’e, Qeebaee/Qeebbee/Gibee, Qeelatee; Ǘoorqee, Baaqqee, Qaaqee, Mayyu Mulluqee, etcetera. The other part, ‘Harar’, shall be explicated ahead. 4 Ulrich Braukämper, who produced amazing critical, balanced, scholarly anthropological works on Oromo and Ethiopia after he co-authored Cervicek and Braukämper (1975), really deserves deeper gratitude not just from the present author of this paper, but also from the whole Oromo people and the international community of true scholars dedicating themselves to advancing human knowledge, freedom, love and respect.

been found claiming, for themselves, either of the “lost-communities” identities listed above. Only Abyssinianist ‘historians’ claim they interviewed one or two individuals or quote and re-quote one another’s colonial era biased, cooked texts, precluding readers’ rights to intertextuality, or presentations of social history in its cultural, social and political contexts, openly addressing competing or alternative sources, and dialogicality, or presentation of a social historical phenomenon without stereotype and dogmatic conjure-ups (these concepts borrowed from Fairclough, 2003). Their local dictatorial regimes orchestrate the same on media that they alone absolutely control, absenting every alternative, private, free or dissent media. Thus, how can any logical mind consider their works as a plausible, authentic historiography or trustworthy, credible data? Subsequently, here are more intriguing, unanswered questions: Who were the Harla of Hararqee (and beyond)? What social epistemological structures (linguistic, semiotic, rhetorical, cultural, institutional) had they that can help us for advancing human knowledge about social evolution/history? Whose interest does the discourse of Harla serve and how (validly)? How does this discourse conceal the socio-historical origin and meanings that generated/underlie the pre-historic rock arts of the area? How does it undermine (or advance, if any) the cultural history and identity of the autochthonous peoples? How different/connected are these arts from/to the general cultural-artistic themes, styles or history of Black African peoples? These are some of the generic and fundamental questions which this study intends to explore as a part of the overall project that was born in 2012.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE STUDIES ON ETHIOPIAN ANCIENT ROCK ARTS Abyssinianist historiography associates ‘rock arts’ only to ‘paintings’ and, still, only paintings on or around ‘caves’ or ‘pagan rock tombs’. For Abyssinianist historians, any rock engraving or erected stone slab or megalith or stele does not constitute social semiotic works of human agents. It might only be considered as great works of great men if only if it constitutes a painting or engraving of “Christian” cross or some Biblical seraph. Otherwise, it is kept unreported or reported by systematic distortion. If it is reported at all from the area south of the enigmatic “Christian Abyssinia”, it is only done so as ‘paganish’ work or as works of ‘natural’ causes rather than as project of human ingenuity.

Researchers report that, the first reports of some ancient rock sites of Hararqee came initially (around 1840) from the French Missionary scholar Antonio d’Abbadie (Bravo, 2007; Lofrumento et. al., 2011) who lived with, especially, the Wallaggaa Mačč’a Oromos, studied and produced 5

countless and voluminous books, articles and lectures (e.g., d’Abbadie, 1890 and unpublished or whose publication dates are unknown) on Oromo genealogical history, political sociology (specially of the Gada System), anthropology and cultural history, beginning his works from 1830s up until his retirement around 1890 (Triulzi, 1990; Cerulli, 1922). Though many of his works fall into the hands of rougue colonial ‘historians’, Antonio d’Abbadie taught Europeans about the hitherito little known Abyssinia and about the Oromo whom he described as “a great African nation” (Triulzi, 1990: 319). Antoine d'Abbadie pursued the earlier work of his older brother Arnauld d'Abbadie that died of a disease he acquired while with the Oromo (according to what we are told). Shrewd, colonial “historians” spoiled lots of Antonio d’Abbadie’s genuine field data. As we shall see ahead more, they anachronistically manufactured false documents as though they were real “manuscripts” or “chronicles” captured in Medieval Era (especially, 12th -17th /-18th) by unnamed or anonymous “traveler”, especially Portuguese /Jesuits monks (like ‘Manuel de Almeida, Francisci de Almada, Abba Bahrey, etc.) and distributed falsities. For example, it suffices to see: (1) Vida de Takla Haymanot Pelo Manuel de Almeida, De Companhia de Jesus Publicada Por Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira. Lisboa Imprensa Lucas 93--Rua do Diario de Noticias—93 (1899) (Available at www.gutenberg.net.); (2) Manoel de Almeida, The History of High Ethiopia or Abassian which in actuality was composed by the shrewd Abbysinianist self-proclaimed “historians” C.F. Beckingham & G W B Huntingford, in their Some Records of Ethiopia 1.593-1646, London: The Hakluyt Society (1954); or, (3) the list of allegedly pre-15th century books on Abyssinia attached to/ ascribed to the work of the German scholar on the Oromo, namely: Dr. Philipp Paulitschke, Die Afrika–Literatur in der zeit von 1500 bis 1750 N. Ch. Wien: Brockhausen & Brauer (1882). No doubt, these are good examples of distorted versions of the true scholar Antonio d’Abbadie.

After Antonio d’Abbadie’s first report, a longer interruption for unknown reason took shape until the French Catholic monks brought the issue of Hararqee prehistoric rock art sites into discussions “in 1933 by Azais and Oncieu de Chappardo” who “discovered” the “Laga Oda rockshelter [which] was already known then” (Cervicek, 1971: 121). Yet, only after 1950s that European scholars launched their studies with ethnological and paleoanthropological interests on some of these rock arts sites. Among Hararqee rock painting sites that captured their interests was the

aforementioned Laga Oda, which some writers tentatively date as

“contemporaneous with” the paintings of the “predynastic and protodynastic Egypt” or “the beginning of the Christian era or shortly before” or “with the Nubian C-Group” (Cervicek, 1971: 132). It is believed that this site had been settled “at least 16,000 BP” (Shaw & Jameson, 1999: 6

349) or as archaeologists confirm from edge wears, “15, 000 years timespan” that indicated “a long period of pre-adaptation” (Clark, 1980: 269). Cervicek (1971: 121) published his article on Laga Oda pre-historic paintings based on the data/paintings which “were documented” earlier “[d]uring an ethnological research expedition of the Frobenius Institute” to the area “in 1950/1952”, but for unknown reason “they remained unpublished” (See also his footnotes on the same page). After four years, Cervicek and his colleague Braukämper published their article on another site, namely Laga Gafra (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975).

And, after several decades of hiatus, significant number of studies motivated by some Ethiopians began to emerge after the advent of the new millennium, though they, too, are limited to documentation of statistical description (of types, size and number of the signs) and geographical distribution, which is important for preservation purpose (e.g., Le Quellec & Abegaz, 2001). Unfortunately, little or no attempt has been made to interpret the underlying social semiotical (linguistic and non-linguistic) and socio-cultural meanings or significance.

WHOSE SOCIOCULTURAL ORIGIN IS HARARQEE PRE-HISTORIC ROCK ART? Regarding the socio-cultural origin of Hararqee ancient rock arts, Cervicek and Braukämper’s (1975) positivist study only provided us with too positivist report, hence, necessarily incurring their anthropomorphic fallacy (that whatever a respondent tells equals the reality outside, irrespective of the fact that respondents are social strategists or can never never be social zombie that ‘swallow their tablets without chewing it’; this fallacy shall be explicated more in the ‘Conclusion’ section of this paper). Quoting their ethnographic data, they tell us that “like all of their statements regarding any prehistoric site of ruin of stone-built necropoles, houses and walls, remarkably frequent throughout Northern Hararge, the present population ascribe the rock paintings indiscriminatingly to the ‘Harla’” (p. 49). They added: According to popular beliefs Harla generally refers to a mysterious, wealthy and mighty people, (frequently even imagined as giants!), who had once occupied large stretches of the Harar Province before they were destroyed by the supernatural powers through natural catastrophies as punishment for their inordinate pride. This occurred prior to the Galla 5 [Oromo] incursions into these areas during the 16th and 17th centuries (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975: 49). 5

Delete racist, imposed and hatred forms such as “Galla” which the evil consciousness prefers to ‘Oromo’. Many writers give various interpretations about etymology of this imposed signification. Werner (1914b: 263) is the only scholar who, before linguists discovered rhotics, suspected that the “word gada (cerebral “d” and “l” are often confused by outsiders) might have originated the name Galla”. For it is so vital, any researcher on Oromo evolutionary linguistics, should pay special attention to rhotics, the dissipative phonological exchange, between/among the variants of the alveolar (retroflex/implosive) liquids, prominently / / and / / and sometimes / / or / / and /ɳ/. Metaferia infers that Galla is foreign-language corruption of Qaallu/Χaallumma “the Oromo culture prior to

In their footnote, Cervicek and Braukämper (1975:49) quote the notorious Ethiosemitist writer G.W.B. Huntingford on the identity of the Harla: “The name “Harla” is first mentioned, as far as we know, in the chronicle of the Ethiopian Emperor ‘Amda Seyon 6 in the 14th century (Huntingford, 1965: 74) and is occasionally referred to in some later documents.” 7 Apparently foregrounding the usual bias to the Oromo as “new comers” to Ethiopia, they add that “as far as it can be reconstructed by our historical field enquiries, the Harla most probably represented an Islamized population of mixed Harari/Somali stock which partly survived in the ethnic body of the Oromo conquerors--a fact which can mainly be demonstrated by clan names and various oral traditions” (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975: 49). However, it is not clear why Cervicek and Braukämper did not see some previous literature, if they were at all true historical texts. On the one hand, the so-called 16th century chronicle--if we should believe--Futū Conquest of Abyssinia’ by a bloodthirsty Imam Ahmed Graň,

Al- abaša ‘The

originally said to have been

chronicled in Arabic by “Yemeni” called Arab Faqīh, then translated into French by Rene Basset 8 and extensively used in Abyssinian historiography, for instance, by Aregay (1971) in his PhD dissertation. So intriguing a chronicle, still “there are”, unveils Ahmed (1992: 23), “less authoritative, Italian, German and recently, Arabic editions of the chronicle” and, however, “came across an early manuscript by an anonymous scribe dated 1064/1653 entitled Kitab alFutuha al-Habasha al-Musamma Bahjatu al-Zaman.”

Both C. F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford, the notorious racist Euro-Abyssinianists, are known for their translations of secretive documents in 1954: (1) Some Records of Ethiopia 1596-1646 (published in London without publisher) claimed to have been chronicled by 16th century the Portuguese Jesuit monk Manoel de Almeida as “Historia de Ethiopia Alta” and (2) Zenahu le Galla (claimed to be in Ge’ez)/History of the Galla People (also published in London without clear publisher), also claimed to have been chronicled by 16th century unknown monk by their conversion to the Islamic religion” (Metaferia, 1978: 476). Note that the back gutturals /q/, / / and / / alternate. It is likely that it is foreign-language corruption of Qaallu and/or aȥa, but systematic and deliberate corruption is most likely. 6 See also Gidada (2006) who convincingly explained away this and many mystifications in Ethiopian history including the fact that the so-called “Amda Seyon” is in fact alchemy of Sayyoo Mačč’aa/Maʤ’ā, an early classical era Oromo war general of the Central-Western Ethiopia from who descended the Sayyoo Clan of Qeelami District and Dambi Dollo town of western Wallagga, a sub-sub-clan of the Mačč’aa Confederation. It is no surprise that there are also Sayyoo and Mačč’a clans/toponyms of the Eastern Oromo of Hararqee, too. 7 The author has no access to Huntingford, G. W. B. 1965. The Glorious Victories of 'Amda Seyon, King of Ethiopia. Oxford. 8 R. Basset. 1897. Histoire de la conquête de l'Abyssinie (XVIe siecle) par Chihab ed-Din Ahmed ben 'Abd el-Qader surnommé Arab-Faqih, Paris.

the name “Bahrey”. 9 Similar in content to these is also the hatred propaganda text Ya-Galla Tariq (Amhariňňa), whose anonymous author is “Asme Giyorgis” and publisher is Addis Ababa University, Institute of Ethiopian Studies but, now, shorn of date of publication.

Cerulli (1922: 67), a liberal great Italian scholar, described these fictitious and racist documents on Oromo as “outrageous”. So interesting, Andreu Martinez d'Alos-Moner (d'Alos-Moner, 2007), a critical scholar, has disclosed that the fictitious stories about Jesuits/ Portuguese Army presence in 16th century Abyssinia with their monks taking “chronicles” were but fabricated after British Royal Army Expedition to the Horn of Africa to free Britton travellers detained by “Abyssinians” during 1860s. Then after, the colonial British government established what it called the Hakluyt Society and funded her “colonial intelligentsia” serving as monk characters. It also orchestrated the colonial governments of Italy, Germany and France to contribute their “colonial intelligentsia” in the huge project to anachronistically, inter alia, fabricate bizarre fairytales as Abbyssinian ‘history’.

(Source: d’Alos-Moner, 2007: 76) An insult to both the “Abyssinian” people and the rest, the book anthology entitled The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in 1541-1543 published by the British Hakluyt Society and edited by certain “Whiteway” (Whiteway, 1901) puts on its cover page a quotation from Edward 9

What’s more, another racist Italian (pseudonym?) is also mentioned for the same/similar document by Bahrey, namely I. Guidi. 1907. Historia Gentis Galla, Corpus ecriptonim orientalium, Scriptores Aethiopici.

Gibbon, one of the colonial intelligentsias, as follows: “Ethiopia was saved by four hundred and fifty Portuguese, who displayed in the field the native valour of Europeans” from “Mohammedan” and “Galla” heathens. The Portuguese monk by the name Francisco Alvares, who travelled to the 16th century Abyssinia to find a white European monk by the name Prester John of an unknown country (?) called “Indies” at the heart of Abyssinia, and eventually composed a ‘fiction’ entitled The Prester John of the Indies (1540). What’s more injurious—but a pride to the “miseducated Ethiopians” (see Bekerie, 1997) –is this: Alvares was convinced that he had not only met the Prester John, but had seen the actual palaces and treasure chests of the Queen of Sheba, churches built by the New Testament Queen Candace, also ‘a most ancient chronicle’ verifying the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, and much else. In turn, the Ethiopian nuns came to wash their visitors’ [Alvares’] feet in holy water, then drank it and pronounced that the Portuguese were ‘holy Christians from Jerusalem’ (Alvares in Purchas [1625] 1905, vol. 7, 58) (van Wyk Smith, 2014: 64; Emphasis added). This anthology compiled by “Whiteway” is crucial since it has vital nexus with the above mentioned Maria Esteves Pereira and the German Enno Littmann, who led the “German archaeological-scientific expedition” to Ethiopia in “1906” (Toggia, 2008: 327) as well as well acquainted with Oromo wisdom literature (Bartels, 1975: 899) and the aforesaid French monks, namely Azais and Chambard. Therefore, we need to quote at length once again d’Alos-Moner (2007: 76-77): Towards the late 19th century, a series of editions of the account written by Castanhoso on the military expedition of Christovao da Gama from 1541-43 came to light: in 1888, an edition was prepared by the Italian Major Staff [namely] Corpo di Stato Maggiore (1° reparto - 3° Ufficio). Storia della spedizione portoghese in Abissinia nel secolo XVI narrata da Micheie da Castagnoso, Roma 1888; in 1898, the original Portuguese version was edited by Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira (Lisbon 1898i; an English edition was issued in 1902 by Richard Stephen Whiteway (London 1902), retired officer of the Bengal civil service; and a German edition was prepared by the Orientalist Enno Littmann (Berlin 1907). Similarly, other important sources were also reedited, such as Bermudes' and Alvares…[as if they were written by 16th century Portuguese monks, for instance] Joao Bermudes, Breve relacao da embaixada que o Patriarcha D. Joao Bermudez trouxe do lmperador da Ethiopia vulgarmente chamado Preste Joao dirigida a el-Rei D. Sebastiao, Lisboa: Typographia da Academia, 1875 (1st ed. Lisboa: Francisco Correa lmpressor do Cardeal Inffante, 1565) [and] Francisco Alvares, Verdadeira informaciao das terras do Preste Joao das lndias, Lisboa: lmprensa Nacional, 1883 (1st ed. Lisboa: Luis Rodriguez, 1540). Thanks to d’Alos-Moner, we know that, in actuality, these were fabricated and composed by the Capuchins and Lazarist monks Guiglelmo Massaja (1809-89) and Giustino De Jacobis (l80060), who were hosted, lived and ate from the Oromo whom they called “Galla”. Especially, we

have to know that b Guiglelmo Massaja’s Oromo literature and worldview was ‘food of thought’ for the influential Italian social theorist Antonio Gramsci: Yet even when the geographical adventure novel was in its heyday, the Catholic version of this literature was mediocre and in no way comparable to its French, English and German secular counterparts. The most remarkable book is the story of Cardinal Massaja's life in Abyssinia (Forgacs, 2000: 369). These Capuchins and Lazarist monks produced many popular texts in Europe which were edited and re-edited as well as translated and re-translated into various European languages, for instance, Memoire storiche dei Vicariato aposto/ico dei Galla: 1845-1880. Another important and secretive document most quoted by Abyssinianists is the so-called Kebre Nagast ‘Glory of the [Abyssin] Kings’. Let’s know that, symptomatic of this sinister, the document is recorded as follow, vaguely, by the British Hakluyt Society (Whiteway, 1901: CXIX, Appendix): Falmla de Rcgina Sabae apud AEthiopes. [An extract from the Ethiopic Chronicle : Kebra Nagast] Dissertatio inauguralis quam . . . defendet . . . F. Pretorius. Eth. and Lat. pp. x. 44. Halis, [1870.] 8°. (754. b. 4,) [The copy of Kebra Nagast, written A.D. 1682l706, British Museum, Or. MSS. 819, was generously restored by the Trustees of the British Museum to Prince Kasa, afterwards King John of Abyssinia, on Dec. 14, 1862]. So full of conflicting chronology, the text pretends “John” was noticeable person during 1862 and was installed to power around 1874 by the British after they killed the so-called “King Theodros” in 1868. What’s left so abstract/implicit involves: Kebre Nagast was re-s tored in the country of origin, “evils”, by the “generous” British before it was ‘stored’ in a country of the “generous”; was written pitifully in two ‘dead’ but ‘ex-superpower’ languages, etc.

Having this in mind, let’s come back to the fictitious Arab Faqīh, who was taking war chronicles following the footsteps of an Abyssinian Christian warrior Amda Seyon, on the one hand, and imam Ahmed Graň, on the other. Arab Faqīh, repeatedly, thanks an unclear person, “The storyteller”, and frequently saying “may God have mercy upon him” and goes on to, for instance, register: Thereupon the imam Ahmad stirred up the enthusiasm of the Muslims for the jihād in the way of the Most High God. He said to them, ‘There is a great distance separating the country of the Muslims from that of the infidels… So, after that, the Muslims stood their ground. The tribe of the Somalis said ‘it was the tribe of ārlā 10 that gave us away (Arab Faqīh, 2003: 69-702, English translation). 10

Note that the vocalic ‘ ’ interchanges with ‘A’. Quoting Huntingford’s Glorious Victories of 'Amda Seyon pages 31 and 74, the translators’ footnote shows that “ ārlā, a locality mentioned in the chronicle of Emperor ‘Amda Seyon, was a small tributary territory east of Šawa [central Ethiopia], affiliated to Ifat.” This should remind us that in the

On the other hand, long before Huntingford’s claims, the French Catholic monks by the name Azais and Chambard (1925, Folklore Oromo, quoted and translated well into English by Sumner, 1996 11 ), who studied and published on Oromo folklore as well as (first) reported about the Hararqee ancient rock paintings mentioning “Harla” (spelling it rather as “Arla”), all ‘chronicled’ Oromo oral stories (including that precisely correspond to what Cervicek and Braukämper wrote) from an Oromo wiseman and storyteller from Allaa clan of Booreetú > 12 Barentu 13 Barenton”

(Sumner, 1996). The story itself is about a “wealthy” Oromo man called “de 14

who was “very rich but very proud farmer” (Sumner, 1996: 26). For it is both vital

and complex (in its usual metaphorical rhetorics of Oromo) it is necessary to quote it in full: There was in the Guirri country, at Tchenassen [Č’ināksan], an Oromo, a very rich but very proud farmer called Barento. A cloth merchant, an Arab who was also very rich, lived a short distance from there at Derbiga. The merchant’s daughter went one day to see the farmer and told him: “I would like to marry your son.”—“Very well, I shall give him to you,” he answered. The merchant in turn, gave his daughter and made under her daughter’s steps a road of cloth, from Derbiga to Tchenassen, residence of the rich farmer. The tailor replied to this act by making a road of dourah and maize under his son’s steps, from Tchenassen to Derbiga. But God was incensed by this double pride and to punish him, shaked Tchenassen Mountain and brought down a rain of stones which destroyed men and houses; it was then that the race of Arla [Allaa] was destroyed (Sumner, 1996: 26).

second half of the 20th century, the Greater Somalia claimed the whole land of Hararqee extending to Central Ethiopia. 11 The original text by Azais and Chambard (1925), to which the present author has no access, was in French. Claude Sumner’s translations are used with paying deeper gratitude to him. 12 X >Y: lexeme X changes to Y by sound and/or analogical change; X /Y: lexemes X and Y are variants or used in different dialects; and ↔: reversible relationship by sound change. Without going to unnecessary details, in this paper, the IPA style with some necessary exceptions is pursued. The doubling of consonants signifies gemination, while the doubling of the vowel indicates very long vowels, a common feature of Afan Oromo that makes significant typological difference. In the pre-1990s works, many scholars did not take care of these issues. Therefore, in direct quotations, they are kept as in original texts. 13 The Oromo are divided into two ancient moieties, namely “Borana” and “Barentu”. Legesse (2006:144) analyzes how various authors spell the latter “ancient moiety”: He states that Boorana ritual texts indicates that the ancient name of the junior moiety was, rather, “Baréetum(a)”. Like the other retroflex liquids, /ɳ/ appears as an epenthetic consonant de-voicing the original voiced consonant. Yet, the very long vowel /ee/ is also a compensatory lengthening for the lost long /oo/. Hence, Booreetú and Booreetúma are taken here as most appropriate orthography, whose root is Boora “Free Man; Son of Man” and Booré “Belle(s)”. While Booreetú designates the Easter moiety, one of whose descendants are the Hararqee Oromo, the term Booreetúma translates ‘Booranization’ or ‘Booranism’, the generic moral-ethical principle that governs sovereignity of humankind (booremaɳú / beermadumma), nationalization of the non-Oromo (also booransa ‘to booranize’, oromsa ‘to oromize’), disaccustomization marriage between close relatives (obo-č’oro, literally ‘the exterior-interior’), avoidance (lakkii / laȯii) and so forth. 14 It is likely that Azais and Chambard authored anonymizing themselves by “de Barenton” another interesting book aimed at hunting origin ancient knowledge (De Barenton, Hilarie. 1936. Études Orientales N° 9 L’ Origine des Langues des Religions et des Peuples 2e Partie. Paris: Librairie Orientale et Américaine). It abounds numerous “Galla” [Oromo] vocabulary besides, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Hindi, Français-Roma and many others.

According to evolutionary phonology, the form “Harla” or “Arla” violates the general (Proto)AfroAsiatic languages evolutionary principle of consonantal co-occurrence restriction confirmed by Greenberg (1950) and Bender (1978), that rhotic liquids /l/ and /r/ are isomorphic and, hence, cannot co-occur in any base word (excluding affixation). Consonantal co-occurrence restriction is also called consonantal compatibility restrictions or dissimilation. This is very true as far as Oromo is concerned; nowhere do (retroflex) rhotic liquids /l/ and /r/ or their allophones ([ɻ], [ ], [ ], [ʀ] and [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ]) co-occur in a base word. 15 Indeed, not just children but also any fully grown Ethiopian, including the author’s own “Phonetics and phonology” course takers, both undergraduate and graduate student, whichever his/her mother tongue is, finds it hard to pronounce when these co-occur, and hence, inserts epenthetic vowel between them. Therefore, if it is not a systematic distortion, the other important inference is the so-called “Arla” or “Harla” can be foreign or second language speaker misreading of the Oromo clan-name Allaa (note the germination /ll/).

Interesting shift from the biased traditional Abyssinianist archaeology, Finneran (2007), a Semitic archaeologist, recently wrote his Archaeology of Ethiopia, making an attempt to reAfricanize the ancient rock arts of Ethiopia, though he insisted on the South Arabic origin without explaining to us why the reverse—African origin of the South Arabic—could not be possible. Interestingly, nowhere did he mention “Harla”, however. Christopher Grant, a researcher on Oromo/Ethiopian rock arts is right when he pointed out “Their [the Oromo’s] creativity and artistic traditions have been undermined by a de-emphasis on Oromo cultural innovation and art, as well as a tendency to place Oromo art within the greater context of “Ethiopian” art” (Grant, 2006: n.p.). Grant describes this as “dearth of scholarship on Oromo art practices”, and a systematic policy practice of “dispossession of Oromo history” spearheaded by “Christian hegemony and political oppression.” In his research, Grant recommends that Oromo cultural themes and symbolic interpretation cut across the ancient and contemporary Eastern African ethnic groups and, hence, may provide new substantive and methodological insights for rock art, ancient as well as modern, research.

Therefore, the colonial era Azais and Chambard or Beckingham and Huntingford or the writers of the so-called “chronicle” Futū

Al-

abaša or Historia Gentis Galla or Zēnā Gāllā (single

Rarely or in a very limited cases do the other (retroflex) rhotic liquids /ɳ/ and / ’/ or their allophones, co-occur, too. In case they do (e.g., ȯaɁȦa ‘village, community’, maɀȦ’ee ‘hiding place, nest’), it is only recent sound change from the original (e.g., ȯaȥaa, máȦ’Ȧ’ee).

‘document’ also known by other names: Zēnā hu le Gāllā, Tarik Ze Gāllā, etc., etc….) are all, as usual, cheating their readers (unfortunately also the young generation of Ethiopians) by registering African oral (hi)stories, then

systematically distorting,

misappropriating or

outsourcing them. Clever enough, though, this pathetic group knew well the ideological advantage of being “ancient” and “original” and, for this, they knew there is no match to using pre-historic rock arts as ideal battle ground. This is a colonial era dirty tactic of few Aryan-IndoEuropeanists as explained well by great scholars (DuBois, 1915; James, 1952; Diop, 1975; also important, albeit too Semitist, is Bernal, 1986).

THE ROLE OF OROMO IN CONSTRUCTION OF MODELS FOR PREHISTORY Contrary to the recent Abyssinianist historiography that describes the Oromos as sixteenth century migrants and settlers in the Horn of Africa, both pre-colonial era and contemporary liberal minded scholars repeatedly argued that the Oromos are ancient and indigenous people of Black Africa particularly of Horn of Africa. As such, the ancient practice of social epistemological memory/knowledge storing, teaching and communicating across generations through various systematicalized semiotic media (e.g., cattle branding 16 , rock painting and engraving, insignia/simulacra, erecting stone slabs or megalithic, oral wisdom literature, mnemonic games, ethnomathematical formula, chronological/clinal abaci, etc.,) has been widely practiced in Oromo tradition, though it began to decrease at high rate since Islamization and Christianization in the 19th century (Henze, 2005). Henze’s (2005) study, which was conducted in Baalee and Arsii regions, south west to Hararqee, indicated huge tombstones and piles of upright slabs with “lines and geometrical patterns”, “a group of wavy lines” and “Arabic 17 inscriptions” (2005: 178), which indicated the last stage of Oromo writing system before occupation by Abyssinian Christian army/state which ‘constitutionally’ banned such arts as ‘pagan’, ‘un-Christian’ and ‘worshiping’ of three dimensional icons or ‘gods’ (Grant, 2006). Until recently, for the Hararqee Oromo, who are now uniformly Islamic religion followers, qaallumma/ allumma (i.e., qaallu-ism, qaallu-hood) designates “the Oromo culture prior to their conversion to the Islamic religion” (Metaferia, 1978: 476). Metaferia confirms that the pre-Islam Hararqee Oromo have had advanced calendar system that proves common origin with their southern (Ethio-Kenyan borderlands) Booran Oromo ancient lunar-calendar system that used to 16

It is worth noting that Werner (1915:2) observed for herself that in Booran Oromo “every clan has its own mark for cattle, usually a brand (Ȱuʋa [ȯu á] which is the name of the instrument used, an iron spike fixed into a wooden handle)”. 17 Henze (2005: 178) acknowledges that “When I was able to enquire of local people about the identity of the occupants of the graves, however, they were almost always identified with Oromo names, not Islamic ones.”

trace stars with giant stone pillars (Legesse, 1973; Thomsen, 1984; Bassi, 1988; Tablino, 1994). 18

The group of calendar-experts (warra ’aa/ aya) are only the holy wisemen, Qaallu or Ayyantú. These are expert people equivalent to the Platonic ‘imposers of names’, who must surely have been ‘considerable persons’, ‘philosophers’, and have ‘a good deal to say’ (Plato, 1840: 32). Legesse (1973: 181) observed for himself that “A Borana time-reckoning expert (ayyantu) can tell the day, the month, the year, and the gada period from memory. Should his memory fail him, he examines the relative position of the stars and the moon to determine the day and the month astronomically.” Here, let’s also note that the advanced time-reckoning system of these Hararqee Oromo is also unequivocally presented as if it belonged to the mysterious “Harla” or some unknown Arab ‘community’ or some extnictt imaginary folk.

The Allaa and It u clans of the Hararqee Oromo are essential informants who “provide[d] a basis for…construct[ing] models for prehistoric land and resource use” (Clark & Williams, 1978:19). The “Itu [It u], vis-à-vis the Afran K’alo, are called warra gooro olii ‘those of the upper upland, or the upper homestead’...the Itus are [also] called warra gara guraachcha ‘those of the high-lands or the forested area’….” The Afran K’alo are warra gooro gadii “those of the lower up-land, or the lower homestead” (Metaferia, 1978: 477). Metaferia, who studied the ancient calendarial system of Hararqee Oromo, adds in footnote, “Gooro together with khaarra … is a term that describes places, which, other than being hilly, are conspicuous and well known because a main road passes through them. They could be a spot or a stretch of land.” Despite accurately, literally, deciphered, Metaferia did not explicate the phonological-semantic evolution and the social semiotics/metaphoric meaning of these. Firstly, ȯuraa-chcha (appropriately, ȯurraa-ččā ‘black-ABSOLUTIVE’) is rhotacized (l→r) form of quȺu/quȼo ‘black, nude, pristine, blameless, absolute’ (also intensive quȼqulu and qar-uma/ k’arumati ‘‘absolutely, swear in the name of absolute God’). Unacquinted well to Oromo phonological-semantics and tradition of play on related words (phonologico-semantically or etymologically), Metaferia did not detect the similarity-in-difference between ȯaara ‘mountain, high-land’ (warra ȯooro, for agnates dwelling

Cerulli’s warning is worth iterating: “One should be warned not to confuse the Borana, a branch of the Oromo tribes in general, with the present confederations of the Borana, i.e. the Harar, the Ittu, and the Arussi” (Cerulli, 1922:169).

this kind of topographic area 19 ), gooroo ‘ridge, mountain ridge, roof ridge’, qara ‘apex, tip, point, sharp’ and ȯaraa ‘belly, stomach; heart, mind’ (qoroo, animate ‘sharp-mind, sharp-eye/pupil, learned men’). Thus, Warra ȯaraa ȯuraachcha/ȯurraaččā, literally, means ‘the family/agnates with black belly/heart/mind’, is a metaphoric expression for “the wisemen”, for black-color is a symbol of ‘wiseness, purity; christener, sanctifier’.

The commonest expression used for God

in doxological litanies is the poly-semantic: Waaqa ȯaraa ȯurraaččā, first meaning, ‘God, the one with black belly/stomach’; second meaning, ‘God, the one with pregnant, black cloud, offering us rain/water’; third meaning ‘God; the Blameless, Gracious, Almighty, Omnificent’. 21 Gooroo literally ‘ceiling/roof made in concentric circles, or pyramidial chambers/columns’ is a social semiotic/semantic representation/chronymy for ‘sacred land (and departure thereof), chronological line of descent’ or simply means the English combining form gyro- meaning ‘circle, circular, spiral’ which is claimed to have come from Classical Greek yύpo ‘circle’ (see Fig.1J; we shall see ahead in detail). Khaarra [ aarra] ‘passage, path, road, way, direction’ also make etymological/semantic network with: ɢkarraa/ěkheraa ‘spirit of the dead’; k’ariā/qãriha

‘to go

pass crossing a hill, stepping over (of soul, spirit of the dead)’; qaara ‘enclosure; apex (mountain)’; k’aarre ‘precipice’; k’ark’aa ‘hill, holy/open passage of spirits’ (from k’ariā and k’ã ‘(to have) hole,

opportunity, expedient, way, orifice’); kaarraa/ȥ’anqee ‘fork’ (symbol of

descent), kaarroo ‘contemporary man of equal age’ (for these lexemes see also Tutschek,1844: Foot 1913; Stegman, 2011). 22 The archaic but still productive root is the above discussed cosmogonic concept and ultimate element of Hararqee: Qee/ K’âé “own body-cum-land, primordial cradle-land, ancestral home, birthplace, native land; homestead, property, life, living and livelihood; home, dwelling, habitation, environ, village” (from Qa/K’a ‘Just, Be, Arise, Cause, Embody’, and the suffix –ee/-é ‘caritive-hypocoristic’).

This word/concept is also known in

(Proto-)Ancient-Egyptian doctrine of immortality, i.e., Kha or Qa’a. Tilly (1994: 30) is right when he wrote “and refers beyond itself to patterns of activity and social organization.”

Symptomatic of rhoticization, Afran Qalloo and Worra(n) Qaalluu are Oromo clans in Hararqee and Wallo of northern Oromia, both of who belong to the ancient moiety Booreétu/Barentu. 20 If an Oromo Wiseman says the double semantic “Arrabi isaa ȯurraačča”, literally, ‘His tongue is black’, he means, in different dialects: He is Qaallu ‘’Holly’ (Hararqee/Eastern Oromia); He is Booraa ‘Pharaoh’ (Western Oromia); He is D’oorii ‘Reconteur’ (Central Oromia); each is an idiom for ‘He is so prophetic such that his words do eventually be realized or happen pragmatically’. 21 According to the Classical Greek, historian Plutarch, if we should believe, the Egyptians worshipped intellectual Author or Creator of the world that they worshiped him in a statue of human form and “dark blue complexion”, a color expressed in Oromo by quȺu. Yet the so-called Classical Greek text must be read with critical perspective. 22 Note that people of “Hill-Folk/Fork” and “False Passage/Door” are popular among Egyptology and Axumite social archaeologists.

Clyde Winters informs us that Henry Rawlinson, one of the early Egyptologists (also a British Army soldier), “used an African language Galla [Oromo], to decipher” not only Egyptian hieroglyphics, but also the so-called “Babylonian cuneiform writing”. 23 George Rawlinson (1862: 25) who deciphered in Babylonian or Mesopotamian tomb scriptures Oromo words such as “Guda” or “Gada” (also “Gudea” Diop, 1975: 60) decisively concluded: Its [Babylonean language’s] vocabulary has been pronounced to be “decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian;” and the modern languages to which it approaches the nearest are thought to be the Mahra of Southern Arabia and the Galla of Abyssinia. Thus comparative philology appears to confirm the old traditions. An Eastern Ethiopia instead of being the invention of bewildered ignorance is rather a reality… Rawlinson (1897: 314-315) adds about Ancient Egyptian “Under the Ethiopians” or, appropriately, the Cush: Among the various tribes there was a certain community of race, a resemblance of physical type, and a similarity of language. Their neighbours, the Egyptians, included them all under a single ethnic name, speaking of them as Kashi or Kushi—a term manifestly identical with the Cush or Cushi of the Hebrews….Their best representatives in modern times are the purebred Abyssinian tribes, the Gallas, Wolai'tzas, and the like, who arc probably their descendants. Willis Budge, the notorious Semitist encyclopedic writer and transl(iter)ator of Ancient Egyptian, acknowledged in his An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary Vol.I: The ancient Egyptians were Africans, and they spoke an African language, and the modern peoples of the Eastern Sudan are Africans, and they speak African languages, and there is in consequence much in modern native Sudani literature which will help the student of ancient Egyptian in his work. From the books of Tutschek 24 , Krapf 25 , Mitterutzner 26 and from the recently published works of Captain Owen 27 and Westermann 28 a student with the necessary leisure can collect a large number of facts of importance for the comparative study of Nilotic languages both ancient and modern (Budge, 1920:IXIX-IXX). In his critical work, Mr. John G. Jackson (Jackson 1939) reached the following conclusions, inter alia, about the Ancient Cushites: 1. The system of writing which they brought with them has the closest affinity with that of Egypt—in many cases indeed, there is an absolute identity between the two alphabets. 23

Winters, C. Genesis and the Children of Kush (Available at: http://.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi ). Grammar of the Galla-Language. Munich, 1845 ; and his Lexicon. Munich, 1841 25 Vocabulary of the Galla -Language. London, 1842. 26 Die Dinka-Sprache in Central Afrika (with Worterbuch). Brixen, 1866. 27 Bari Grammar and Vocabulary. London, 1908. 28 The Shilluk People: their Language and Folklore. Berlin, 1912 ; Die Sudansprachen. Hamburg, 1911; The Nuer Language. Berlin, 1912. 24

2. In the Biblical genealogies, Cush (Ethiopia) and Mizraim (Egypt) are brothers, while from the former sprang Nimrod (Babylonia.) 3. In regard to the language of the primitive Babylonians, the vocabulary is undoubtedly Cushite or Ethiopian, belonging to that stock of tongues which in the sequel were everywhere more or less mixed up with the Semitic languages, but of which we have probably the purest modern specimens in the Mahra of Southern Arabia and the Galla [Oromo] of Abyssinia.

Let’s quote at large Gardiner Wilkinson, one of the widely quoted Egyptologists: Of the allegorical portion of their religion we have frequent instances, as in 'the story of Isis and Osiris, whose supposed adventures, according to one interpretation, represented the Nile and its inundation: and numerous other natural phrenomena were in like manner typified by figurative or emblematical conceits. The Gods had also their peculiar symbols, which frequently stood not only for the name, but also for the figure, ofthe Deity they indicated; as the Cynocephalus ape was the sign and substitute for Thoth; the hawk and globe indicated the Sun, and the crocodile was the representative of the God Savak. Nor were moral emblems wanting in the religion of the Egyptians; the figure of Justice with her eyes closed purported that men were to be guided by impartiality in their duties towards their neighbours; the rat in the hand of the statue of Sethos at Memphis recorded a supposed miracle, and urged men to confide in the Deity (Wilkinson 1840: 201). To add few scholarly works on the role of the Oromo in the Ancient Black African civilization, we have to bring in here, inter alia, the liberal Egyptologist W. A. Crabtree (1924) who once wrote in a letter to his Egyptology students: There is a very wide field for study which has been too curtly set aside, merely because the adjacent story of Egypt has possessed written records whilst the [Oromo] story has none. The weaker is made to suffer by preconceived ideas based on an entirely one-sided view of the case--the Egyptian view point; and these remarks are an earnest plea for independent study from the African point of view (Crabtree 1924: 253-254). Crabtree stresses that “Oromo”, “contemptuously called Galla”, is “possibly the language of the Anti [‘ancient Egyptian’] or… possibly even Hittite” (ibid: 255). This critical scholar goes on to problematize that “the Egyptian form Wawat”, which appears in record since the time of “Pepy I… 2650 B.C.” is “often asserted by Italians that [they] were ancestors of the Galla”. He emphasizes that, since time immemorial, Oromos occupied across “the Somali coast (Punt)roughly in a line Kerma, Napata, Meroe, Blue Nile, Shoa, Zeila” (ibid). He further reminds us that, Oromos are whose great leader expelled “the Hyksos, circ. 1600 B.C.” and were known in the hitherto documents as “Hormeni” (ibid). Crabtree emphasizes that, Afan Oromo, the

language of the Oromo people, derives from unique and pre-historic “vocabulary--possibly the language of the Anti [Ancient Egyptian] or Hill-folk, possibly even Hittite” (p. 255).

The great scholar W.E.B. DuBois, the pioneer of Pan-africanism, africology and African origin of world’s civilization, wrote a lot about the Oromo-Cush but summarized by Dr. Ayele Bekerie, the only critical and liberal Ethiopian historian ever to make a departure from orthodox monastic and phantasmagoric Abyssinian historiography as follows: According to W.E.B. DuBois (1947; Reprint, 1972), “the First (Egyptian) Dynasty appears to have moved up from Punt. The Third Dynasty, which led to the Forth, shows a strongly Ethiopian face in Sa Nekht. The Twelfth Dynasty (1955 BCE-1750 BCE) we can trace to a Galla [Oromo] origin; the Eighteenth Dynasty was Ethiopian paled by marriage; the Twenty-fifth Dynasty was from distant Meroe.” DuBois also quotes Sir Harry Johnston as stating: “The Dynastic Egyptians were not far distant in physical type from the Oromo of today” (Bekerie, 2004:116). Bekerie strengthened W.E.B. DuBois’s arguementations further when he observed Ancient Egyptian theological theme “Uakha” and the Oromo “Waaqa” linkage and added: The Oromo-Ancient Egyptian connection could be deduced from a significant Oromo conceptual term found in these ancient Egyptian documents and artifacts. The term is “Auqas a name of the divine ferryman.” The Oromos call their God Waqaa…It is also interesting to note that the term Sirius, the beautiful star that rises once a year towards the source of the Nile, corresponds both in meaning and pronunciation with the Oromo term for a dog, Sarre. The star warns the Egyptian farmer against the coming water and hence the metaphoric designation Sirius, because it is like a barking dog, which gives notice to danger and, therefore, called this star the dog, the barker (Bekerie, 2004:116). EXTREME RELATIVISM AND ITS IMPACTS ON ANCIENT HISTORICAL STUDIES From the available Axumite, Meroitic and Egyptological literature, we know that the Eurocentric researchers interpret the Ancient African rock arts, paradoxically, either as un-Christian and pagan or as images of Biblical or some mythical seraphs (Massey, 1907; Diop, 1975). Houston (1926: 26) is right when she wrote “The prehistoric achievements of Cushite heroes were the theme of ancient sculpture, painting and drama.They were the object of worship of all the nations that appear civilized at the dawn of history.” Two interrelated European relativist-dualist philosophies must be disclosed here. Grounded in European dualism, some Eurocentric scholars mystified Ancient African rock arts (aligning themselves to the latter Biblical tradition) or de-Africanized them motivated by colonial mentality, primarily excluding the autochthonous peoples and their social epistemology. Secondly, they naturalized the relativist assumption that, for a language changes so rapidly and in linear, organism-like fashion (is born, then grow and finally die) no trace of it remains by simple process of evolution after 6,000 years (Ruhlen, 19

2007), which is “the fatal mistake that 19th-century linguistics made” (Alinei 2006: 126). Merritt Ruhllen, one of the leading genetic/evolutionary linguists of our time, convincingly proves that this is not only misrecognition of Darwinian evolutionary theory, but also is a myth invented by the 20th century Indo-Europeanists to protect the splendid isolation of their language family.

Similar myths persist in the majority of Eurocentric art historians’ minds. Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1995: xvi) described this as extreme relativism “the levelling of values, to the lowering of greatness, to the abolition of those differences which make for the singularity of the 'creator'” and the proponents of relativism “intend to assign science a priori limits” with a “postulate of incomprehensibility or…inexplicability” with the idea “that the work of art represents

challenge

our

understanding

because

indefinitely

escapes

all

explanation, and offers an ever insurmountable resistance to whoever would translate it into the identity of a concept”. Furthermore, so ahistoricizing, relativists treat societies from two distant spatiotemporalties (the ancient/classical/medieval and the modern/Western) as having no possibly related social epistemological background; nor do they see the relation of society’s social constructions and the world as systematic, whose consequence is the decouplation of culture and nature or arbitrarization of their relationship. As was mentioned above, these unfounded myths are fabricated and used by the Indo-European colonial linguists and historians to intransigently claim that the modern Indo-European languages and peoples had no any evolutionary/genetic link with the inferior races, i.e., Black Africans and the Black World. It is relevant to quote the Afroasiatist Semitic scholar Martin Bernal known for his trio Black Athena with emphasis on his explication of the “Indo-Aryan” fallacy of “argument from silence”: It seems to me that if “being right” is not merely the result of a fluke but has become habitual then one should question why the conventional “reasons” could have led to the wrong conclusions. I believe that the answer is quite simple. Where I have merely aimed at “competitive plausibility” conventional scholars in these fields have required “proof.” Specifically they have tended toward minimalism in both time and space. This tendency leads to an acceptance of the argument from silence. On questions of time they assume that a phenomenon was not present until shortly before it is first attested. Spatially, they have given the privileged position to isolation and required proof of contact between different cultures and societies (Bernal, 2006: 2). No matter how ancient or modern, (social) “semiosis figures first as part of the [social] action” and second it “figures in the representations, which are always a part of social practices— representations of the material world, of other social practices, reflexive self-representations of the practices in question” (Fairclough, 2004: 228). Systemic functional linguistics philosopher 20

M.A.K. Halliday explicates for us that the evolutionary process of human meaning making and transmission (social semiosis) through semiotic systems occur in all three semogenic time frames—processes of evolution in the phylogenetic time frame (i.e., the time frame of evolution in the species or a social group), processes of learning in the ontogenetic time frame (i.e., the time frame of development in the individual) and processes of generation and analysis (also of translating, interpreting and editing) in the logogenetic time frame (i.e., the time frame of the unfolding of a text), all located in and significantly shaped by the wider eco-social environment (Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam, 2010).

Besides

extreme

relativism,

which

generates

some

genuine

lack

interest

cultural/contextual knowledge, the colonial era European researchers of African pre-historic rock arts used to come with their dogmatic Orthodox-Orientalism and Catholic-Eurocentrism? This made them employ some deliberate and distortional strategies against the local African lexicosemantic/semiotic structures, for instance: synonymy (meaning identity), antonymy (meaning exclusion), hyponymy (meaning inclusion), and calques (syllable for syllable translations, usually reversing their sequence). Inevitably, as they come from ‘superior’ to ‘inferior’ society, they also used zealous and undialogical historiography or discourse characterized by (Fairclough, 2003): •

Authoritative: Speaks for others and produces impression of consensus;

•

Absolute: Non-modalized or categorical;

•

One-sided: Exclusionary of other’s voices/identity/history;

•

Incomplete: Unresolved issues are raised but assumed facts or left implicit or, statements of fact and of possibility are mixed up;

•

Abstraction: Issues are (over-)generalized and the specific processual or circumstantial questions are evaded: Why? Who? When?

ANCIENT BLACK AFRICAN ORIGIN OF SOCIAL SEMIOSIS AND RHETORICS The generic social evolutionary model known for the most part by Locational Model or Africology upholds that Black African peoples are not only originators of the whole world’s civilization but are also subjects of their own civilization rather than objects in the margin of Euroasians’ experience as few Indo-Semitists and Abyssinianists insist (Bekerie, 1997; Diop, 1975; Massey, 1907; James, 1954). The Ancient Black Africans that some 19th century European monks and researchers referred to as ‘Ancient Egyptians’, whom others refer to as Ancient Cushites /Ethiopians or Meroe, are the “earliest to write about language and the brain… the first to write 21

about anything at all” (Altmann, 2006: 802). For it is so important in this discussion, let’s also emphasize that geometry, was first “cultivated in Egypt, whence the Greeks derived it ; but it was cultivated as little more than a set of approximate rules for use in land measuring” (Rogers, 1901:9).

Less discussed but other two strategies can be suggested based upon African peoples’ traditions. One is portrayal symbols/signs (letters, pictures, paintings, engravings or designed cultural objects, for instance, amulets, or naturalistic objects, for instance, landscapes) on the basis of metonymic-semantic-phonologic harmonization yet fundamentally generated by percepts of natural laws or ‘causal powers’ (e.g., the virile bull or its picture or engraving as not only representation but also with the homological alternation of the same single word). This is slightly similar to designating of simulacra of their politico-theological concepts/words from objects in the real world based on imagistic similarity between the two (e.g., sacred material cultures such phallic objects, staff or stick, etc.,), were among their diagrammatological strategies. The second key strategy is sequencing a group of pictures/signs, grouping them or superimposing or subsuming them under another according to their linguistic-semantic semotactic, the phonological-lexical-syntactic-semantic sequences required to communicate a series of sememe, the small(est) logico-semantic concept, or hypersemotactic, similar sequence that stands for a complex social-ontological logico-semantic epistemes simultaneously subsuming semotactic structures. To use the modern and succinct systemic functional linguistic terms, the sequence could be sequenced in “tactic relations”, i.e., parataxis “units combined being of equal status” or hypotaxis “units combined being of unequal status” (Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam 2010: 132).

The Classical Greek encyclopedic writer by the pseudonym “Plato”, one of whom Africologists consider as never Greek but “stolen”

documents (written or oral social epistemology and

wisdom literature) of Black Africans, presents in “his book” entitled Cratylus (Benjamin Jowett’s translation in 1840), the old debate on relations among the semiotic triangle—the sound/sign, meaning and referent. As Bloomfield (1973: 4) once said Plato “gives us a first glimpse into century-long controversy between the Analogists, who believed language was natural and therefore at bottom regular and logical, and the Anomalists, who denied these things and pointed out the irregularities of linguistic structure”. Plato presents his points through three

dialoguers, namely Cratylus 29 , Hermogenes and Socrates. Cratylus insists on the analogist position, i.e., he believes language was natural and the word names or the sign significates in accordance to the principles of ‘inherent correctness’, ‘imitation’ of natural laws. However, Hermogenes is anomalist, hence believes there is no relationship between word, meaning and what the word refers to and considers the relationship as irregular, yet interestingly as particularistic to the convention of the particular community. Socrates interviews the two disputants and canvasses their views exploiting phonology, paronomasia ((study of) plays on words whose similarity involves sound and meaning), onomasiology ((study of) sets of associated concepts in relation to their forms as well as origin from common ancestor, or cognates) and mythology-meaning relationship analysis. He believes that with these strategies, one can reveal what the ‘poets’, ‘poets of language’, who ‘first introduced the names’ thought was the nature of reality they were naming from their perspectives. In Socrates’s view knowing the ancients’ ways of naming will help us know ‘the true and natural’ ways they established the ‘affinities’ or ‘likeness’ between the names/signs and the things they refer to. 30 The strong parallelism in form-semantic/semiotic-institutional structures between the Oromo and Socratic tradition was discussed elsewhere (Birbirso 2014).

Moreover, the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, which presents many interesting information about the origin and meaning of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or social semiosis is worth raising here. Horapollo, “a native of Phænebyth”, was an Egyptian who, in general, is believed to “offer ‘decipherment’ of the [Egyptian] hieroglyphs fully echoing the late antique symbolic speculations” (Loperieno 1995: 26). Horapollo describes, more or less, the then mythological, social-epistemological, semantic and phonological justifications for Egyptian to choose certain real world ‘entity’ for semiotic symbolism and communication of shared meaning. According to Cory, a translator of Horapollo (1840), early in unspecified classical time “one Philippus” (believed to be a Greek) translated Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica.

However, some colonial European writers claim Horapollo was “Greek”. For instance, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt Volume I (Redford, 2001: 87): Among later pagan Creek writers, “Horapollo" is perhaps the most interesting. He is supposed to have written a work in Egyptian entitled Hieroglyphica, which was then translated into Creek by someone called Philip. This claim, like Horapollo himself is almost 29

To distinguish the book (Cratylus) and the dialoguer (Cratylus), the former is italicized. For details on comparative analysis between Oromo and Platonic traditions and language, see Birbirso (2014) “Plato’s Cratylus: A comparative historical linguistic and social semiotic analysis from Ancient African perspective.”

certainly fictitious. The author of the Hieroglyphica was probably a Greek who knew something of the script and wrote about it from Neoplalonit point of view, arguing that the signs symbols of ideas and gave the key to ultimate reality. While the work contains some accurate information, it did great damage in pointing the early decipherers of hieroglyphs in quite the wrong direction. The same document adds elsewhere (p. 448): Horapollo, the fourth to fifth century CE Greek grammarian of Egypt, who does preserve some traditions of identifiably genuine Egyptian origin, can be regarded as the last gasp of native hieroglyphic scholarship… can be understood to say something meaningful about the system. It adds: The existence of authors such Manetho and Horapollo the materials relating to Egyptian religion provided by Plutarch (first century CE Greek) and Apuleius (second century CE Roman), and the intimate interrelationship between the Egyptian and Greek Isis material are only some of the indications that a cultural apartheid such as that envisaged by many scholars simply does not account for what is attested (p. 448). Strong correspondence between Horapollo’s and Oromo ontology, social semiosis and rhetorical principles has been revealed (Birbirso, 2011).

THE OROMO ONTOLOGY, SOCIAL SEMIOSIS AND RHETORICAL PRINCIPLES The Oromo social semiosis or epistemology originates from Oromo ontology that goes beyond the “quasi-platonic” division between “the real world” and “the world of ideas or principles” (Dahl, 1996: 167). 31 Qaallu 32 or, in full, Qaallu-Gadaa, designates cosmogonal-eschatologicaltheological doctrine that Waaqa ‘the Black-Sky God, Supreme Being; Sky, Heaven’’ 33 34

Supreme Creator ( moo ) of everything sui generis. First ontology is Ayyana

‘the spirit,

essence, cause of things’ (Megerssa, 1998), or it is that by which Waaqa created the second 31

Dahl affirms this dualism, rather than stratified ontology suggested here. Different orthographies are known in the literature, such as k’alu, k’allu, qaalluu, qalloo, etc. Here, qaallu is adopted as most appropriate unless in direct quotations. 33 Some early European missionaries also translate Waaqa ‘Sun’, as well. Etymologically cognate, metonymic and allomorphic variants of Waaqa are âk’a/ága/ aqa ‘heaven, just, justice, truth, good news of the ancestral spirit; one’s chamber, deal, share’ and qaá/k’ã/qawa ‘cosmos, hallow; black-hole, sun-disc, hole, orifice; divinity, fortune’. It is also likely related with genealogical -ancestral terms: aka ‘consanguinity, archeo-, icon, ico-’, ako ‘foremothers, grandmother’, akkā ‘placenta’, akaka-yo ‘forefathers, grand-fathers/mothers, consanguine’, àkara/êkêrã ‘spirits (of deceased, forefathers/mothers)’. 34 moo is respectful non-finite (non-perfective, non-gendered, non-numbered, non-personified, respectively of God’s qualities) from absolutive verb úma ‘to create (only for Waaqa)’. 35 Lexicogrammatically, a-yá-na comes from yá/ǰaa ‘(be) fundament, origin, flowing, spilling’ (whose deadjectival form is ǰõ, ɣɲõ ‘hot water-spring’ pertaining to the belief in spring water as origin of life, -na ‘substantive-invariable’ and a‘prothetic vowel’. The reduplication yayya- a (- a ‘comparative/superlative degree’) designates the ontological concept ‘stile, stratification, robustness (of reality)’. Calendarially, ayyana means ‘day, holiday, each day of the 27days lunar calendar’ hence is ayyantu ‘calendar expert, time-reckoner’. 32

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ontology, namely every creature/object/being ( mee). Here, the primordial spring water (hooro) is the source of (early) life and human being while qoollo ‘the primordial pristine material of upper sphere’ give rise to inanimate world (from which comes qôrça ‘star-shoot, meteorite’, qôra ‘stars, star-beams’, qɨȹéɀča/qŏɨȹéɀça ‘air, stratosphere, air’) and the chirping cosmos (waaqa), all of which are in constant and interconnected flux (gadaa).

Both in form and semantic structure, co-related to the above, Qaallu guides the spiritualeschatological world, reckons the constantly and recursively moving Ayyana, ancestral spirits, genealogical trees, kinship, generations, settlement pattern and federations. Gaȥa guides the political democracy system that organizes the age/ontogenitic-cum-generation/sociogenitic power-relations/exchanges, maintains the singular-cum-multitudinal identity, and promotes sovereignty, security, wellbeing (Jalata, 2012; Legesse, 1973). The intimately related but more complex Saffuu roughly translates the Greek Sophia ‘wisdom’, but Lambert Bartels (Bartels, 1983: 373) defines it better as moral philosophical institution that guides “mutual relationship (rights and duties) between individual creatures or groups of creatures according to their place in the cosmic and social order on the basis of their ayyana [=essence, spirit]”. Saffuu refers to both moral category and the constituent of ethical bases upon which human actions should be found (Megerssa, 1998: 42). Vandelo (1991:229) understands saffuu as learned behavior announcing a person to tolerate and productively to handle contraries, disagreement, persistent behavior and peculiarities both in one’s own and another. From philosophical perspective, saffuu is a mass of fine truth strands (not only religious) socially constructed and shared, hence, individually possessed, across longer and wider spatiotemporalities, as a web of plausibility structure similar to Berger and Luckmann’s ‘social construction of reality’: “the specific social base and social processes required for [not just] maintenance [of] subjective reality” but also “the social base for the particular suspension of doubt without which the definition of reality in question cannot be maintained in consciousness” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966 : 174 ).

As ontological concept (beyond sociological), Saffu also governs the deontological (desirable and undesirable) relations that individuals/communities should respect

in their interactions

among themselves and with nature, treatment and use of natural resources (lands, sacred trees, depressions, water bodies, waterbeds, mountains, domestic and wild animals, forests, fords, cultural objects, etc.). Likewise, from political-democracy perspective, the concept Gada System comes from the root gaȥʌ- ‘bond, fetter, concord; ‘(to) foot, hoof, cave; tie, bind, bundle, knot; squat, congregate; recoil, contract, oblige, adopt, persuade; be/become great, big, full, 25

multitude; reinforce’ all of whose underlying semantic is totality, unity or state formation. We shall discuss these in detail ahead, but let’s emphasize here that, since time immemorial up until today, the Qaallu-Gada System generally governs the Oromo general worldview and lifeworld practices (Legesse, 1973, 2006; Bartels, 1983; Gidada, 2001[1984]).

In general, social-familial relations (hoora, sumsuma) and geneaological relations (hariira, haariyaa), individuals (bã, abba), ife and labor in flux (ǘaarraa), human freedom (boorétuma, beermadumma ), power distribution (bokkuu baallii),

justice (haqa, ak’a), generation-based

social-political hierarchy and stable power distribution (gaȥa,

aȥaa), regeneration

and

immortality (Ȧ’aabaȦ’a) of the anscestral and human spirit/soul (ekeraa ǚalaa, ȥãkkiiraa, qaaɀčibu’karreé) 36 , all are indispensable, part and parcel of Oromo social ontology.

Of particular interest in this paper is the Oromo Gada System unique principle of móȯȯassa/ mo áɞa ‘name-giving, sawing maxims, arranging from center to peripheries or in patterned lines’ also called Mak’á/Luba Bása Gadaa, literally, ‘the social-linguistic actions of freeing/unveiling of names (mak’á) of Gada Classes’ or the praxis of name-giving to the moving (in ages and social spaces) Man into Gada Classes, in accordance to Gada System. 37 Professor Asmarom Legesse, one of the distinguished scholars studying Oromo Gada System, registered: In our examination of the Gada System we considered many formal rules. We dwelt on such factors as the forty-year rule, the eighty-eight-year cycle, the position of genealogical generations, the concept of gogessa (and the specific arrangement of gada classes it implies), the mak’absa epicycle (and the specific reordering of gada classes that concept implies), the systematic pattern of recruitment into the age-sets, and the equally patterned relationships between age-sets and gada classes. All these involve a large number of 36

Note that, these antique terms, accented differently in different dialects, also uniformly designate Mantis religiosa, known among ancient civilizations such Egyptian as symbol of soul-transporters during transmigration of the soul. Hence are the variants č’aaččuu ‘(to) traverse, transmigrate (BENEFACTIVE); snail’; ha aa ‘’cord, string, flex; snail’; č’ela uu ‘snail; to sprawl, stretch, vanish; to twinkle, shine; to get venerability, love, affection from (people)’. 37 Luba is a sophisticated Oromo Gada System ontological, evolutionary (in ontogenetically and sociogentically) concept. It is denominative form of the always gerundive/participial proto verb/concept lubuu/ ȹuppú ‘being physically existing, cognitively conscious and aware-in-the-world, and in soul/heart beating/alive, sexually (potentially) active and socio-politically active servant of the nation, but spatiotemporality and social hierarchy in always on the moving, evolving, changing, growing state’. Moȯȯassa/mó áɞa is a causative from mógga/mak’a ‘(to) name, mock, namesake, curve, altercate; to give way, to mix, confound, doze; branch (road), abundance, gruel, wilderness, weft, woof’. Oromo concepts of making metaphors and proverbs (mak’mak’sa) rest down in this proto-concept. Mó áɞa also precisely translates zeugma, which looks the reverse reading/permutation of the consonants of the former, though Indo-Europeanists tell us it came from 16th century Greek (?) or Latin (?) unclear form meaning ‘joining’ or ‘yoking’. For curiosity, another similar sociolinguistics permutation with same semantic is diglossia and Oromo loqoȥɨčā/loqoɳa (from loqoȥâ ‘to accent, quaver in speech; chatterbox, whetstone’ (for Oromo concepts, see Tutschek 1842: 150; Foot 1913: 40; Stegman 2011: 65).

invariants that build up into a formidable system of relationships whose internal consistency and processual transformation [are] demonstrated (Legesse, 1973: 165). 38 This fixed, but elastic, curvy and swarming gogessa ‘lines, series, caucuses, caudex, arrangements, socio-semantic coded texts’ 39 (also known by misseensa, literally ‘cord (genealogical), generation’) involve not just political, calendarial, chronological, geneaological, geometrical or settlement, etc., are, technically, social epistemological measurement or abaci designed in such a way that they traverse spatiotemporal boundaries (for details see Legesse, 1973, 2006; Cerulli, 1922). They cyclically recur codifying social ontologies or, as de Salviac (2005[1901]: 222) better expresses “natural governments”. Grounded deep in the generative paradigmatic concept of saffuu, these social abaci and Oromo rituals, 40 social semiosis, wisdom literature and theologico-political rhetoric are all characteristic of “intimate link…between form, content and concrete situation in life” (Sumner, 1996: 17-18) and “formulaic texts” (Triulzi & Bitima, 2005: 132-136).

Even Gada Laws were “issued in verse” (Cotter, 1990: 70) and in “the long string of rhyme, which consists of repeating the same verse at the end of each couplet” or a “series of short sententious phrases” that are “disposed to help memory” (de Salviac, 2005 [1901]: 285). It is not only the languages/expressions but also the “meetings of the assembly… [the] dress, posture, and seating arrangements of the celebrants” of the Lallaba/Lablaba 41 ‘public harangue or deliverance of Gada Laws’ are all “rigidly patterned” (Legesse, 1973: 215). For this reason, scholars warn that “interpretations of Oromo terms, idiomatic expressions, and proverbs related to gada have meanings other than their surface meaning” (Hassen, 1994: 9). In their ‘Introduction’ to the historical-anthropological book they edited, Baxter, Hultin and Triulzi

Too complex a term, gogessa is also described by Legesse (1973: 189) as: “The term includes the living as well as the dead gada classes and corresponds to the opposite sectors of the gada cycle.” 39 See also Stegman’s (2011) English-Oromo Dictionary. It is likely that goge-ssa is allomorphic image of qoqee ‘trachea’ from which comes qõqoo ‘(to) voice, language’. Horapollo (1840, 1840: 47, 101) wrote about Egyptian symbolism: “The Heart of a Man Suspended by the Windpipe signifies the mouth of a good man”. Oratory or rhetorical skill is an obligatory criterion for an Oromo to become a socially active Gada Class member, especially politician, in age 40-48 and above. 40 Lambert Bartels’ definition of ‘ritual’ (based on the renowned anthropologist Victor Turner) is pursued in this paper: “Behaviour which forms part of a signaling system and which serves to 'communicate information', not because of any mechanical link between means and ends, but because of the existence of a culturally defined code” (Bartels, 1977:503). 41 Lallaba/Lablaba is reduplication for intensification of the root of: ȹa ã ‘to tongue, lap, faint’ from which comes ȹa sa ‘harangue, promulgate laws’, ȹuppú / ȹapp’é ‘soul, heart’; Ȼafa ‘(to be) tender, soft, good’ or Ȼafafa/ȻafaȻafa ‘to harangue, calumniate, monologue’; by rhotic Ɍaba>àrraba ‘(to) tongue, speechify, insult’.

emphasize that “‘the philosophical concepts that underlie the gadaa system…utilize a symbolic code much of which is common to all Oromo” (Baxter, et. al., 1996: 21).

Likewise, interweaving genre varieties, the Oromo wiseman speaks and sings in rhythmatic verses styled by “the usual” and “artful sound parallelism…forming a kind of parallelism of sounds or images” (Cerulli, 1922: 21, 87, 67, 69, 96) or, as another scholar expresses it, forming “parallelism of sounds” and “image” in “vocalic harmony” (Bartels, 1975: 898). It is the reflection of that old tradition that even the contemporary time elderly Oromo skilled in Oromo wisdom speaks “in ritual language, as it was used in old times at the proclamation of the law” (Bartels, 1983: 309). Professor Claude Sumner, who has produced three volume analysis of Oromo wisdom literature argues that like any “ancient texts”, in Oromo wisdom literature, “a same unit of formal characters, namely of expressions, of syntactic forms, of vocabulary, of metaphors…recur over and over again, and finally a vital situation…that is a same original function in the life of [the people]” (Sumner, 1996:19). This is a feature “surely has developed within the [Oromo] language” and “is also only imaginable in a sonorous language such as Oromo” which “as a prerequisite, [has] a formally highly developed poetical technique” (Littmann, 1925: 25 cited in Bartels, 1975: 899). Claude Sumner formulates a “double analogy” tactic as prototypical feature of Oromo wisdom literature, i.e., “vertical” and “horizontal” parallelism style (Sumner, 1996: 25), known for the most part to linguists as, respectively, ‘paradigmatic’ (‘content’ or ‘material’) and ‘syntagmatic’ (‘form’ or ‘substance’) relations or contextual-diachronic and textual-synchronic relations.

The Oromo, who are known for their metaphoric techniques, say “Our fathers told us that Waqa [Waaqa], in the beginning, gave also a book to us. A cow swallowed it. Waqa [Waaqa] got angry and did not want to give us a second book. Now we are compelled to look for the lost book in the intestines of the cows” (de Salviac, 1991:133 quoted by Zitelmann, 2005: 92). As was discussed earlier, when the British Expedition Army came to free their incarcerated travelers from Abyssinian captors in 1867/8, we are told, by Abbyssinianist historians, that the Army “robbed”, “destroyed” Ge’ez “Library of Emperor Tewodros II at Mäqdäla” (Pankhurst, 1973). But, quite contradictory, the geographers accompany the Army registered that the if at all there was any, out of the so-called Abyssinian “manuscripts”, old or fresh, were but “four or five are paper, [but] the rest vellum” (Pankhurst, 1973: 41) and “the geographer, C. R.

Markham” described the so-called monumental “library” simply “as ‘a

wretched place, without pictures or even whitewashed walls’” and “Major H. A. Leveson, a 28

British officer and journalist, as ‘the hovel called a Church’” (quoted by Pankhurs, 1973: 15). The classical Oromo ‘manuscripts’ written on abba mač’aafa ‘abomasums’ or moora ‘peritoneum’ can be visited in Naqamtee Museum of Wallagga.

PURPOSE AND METHODOLOGY This study is part of the general project motivated in 2012 by the assumption that analysis from the autochthonous people’s social epistemological frame of reference might offer a new understanding about the social semiotical (linguistic and non-linguistic) and institutional structures that generated and underlie the ancient rock arts of Hararqee. The generic and fundamental questions that this project inquires were listed above under the Backgrouund section. The

following more specific, substantive and methodological, questions are explored

in this initial phase study: 1. What pattern of relations among the Hararqee rock arts signs, motifs and styles, on the one hand, and the Oromo social semiotical and institutional structures, on the other, can be deciphered? 2.

To what extent can Oromo social semiotical and institutional structures help us for understanding the socio-cultural meanings underlying beneath the ancient rock arts?

3. What insights will critical and multi-disciplinary analysis of the rock arts offer about social semiotic and rhetorical techniques of Ancient Ethiopians? About their social, religious and cultural life in antiquity?

To such a degree, it eschews the mystifier ‘Harla’ and aims at using the ancient Qaallu-Gada Institution of the Oromo as a general sensitizing/analytical device. That’s why the traditional European dualist philosophy narrows down semiospher only to the micro-level of signs. This study eschews the latter and adopts van Leeuwen’s (2005: 3) approach that extends the scope of semiospher and “semiotic resource” to “the actions and artefacts we use to communicate, whether they are produced physiologically” (with vocal apparatus, muscle, facial expressions, etc.) or “by means of technologies” (‘low’-tech or hi-tech). Van Leeuwen (2005: xi) introduces the changing semiosphere of social semiotics: from the micro level ‘word’ or ‘sentence’ to the ‘text’ and its ‘context’, and from ‘grammar’ to ‘discourse’; from the ‘sign’ to the way people use semiotic ‘resources’ to both produce and interpret communicative cultural objects, artefacts and events; from fragmentation of the semiotic modes (e.g. into the ‘semiotics of the image’, the ‘semiotics of music’), to comparing and contrasting semiotic modes, exploring what they have in common as well as how they differ, and investigating how they can be integrated in multimodal 29

artefacts and social events. Thus, this study follows suit the modern semiotic epistemologists who take “the concept of sign far from the idea of simple coding and decoding” to, rather, “the epistemological issues of the acquisition of knowledge through signs” (Hendricks, et. al. 2007: ix). To this social epistemological/semiotical perspective, the activity theory built on Lev Vygotskian sociocultural theory must be added. According to this theoretical perspective: [A]ctivity theory maintains that human activity is fundamentally artifact-mediated and goal-oriented…people do not function individually or independently of others, but they mediate and are mediated by the social relationships they have with others….they pursue their goals through the use of culturally constructed physical and symbolic artifacts….human cognition is situated in and develops through activities unique to the societies in which they have been constructed during their collective histories (Johnson, 2009: 78) . Johnson (pp. 78-79) summarizes this “important explanatory tool for understanding any activity system”; that, every component of the activity system is generated, emerge and become stabilized or possibly dis-emerge from and through the community’s sociocultural history: the division of labor (who does what, how activities get done, and who holds power or status), the rules or social institutions ritualized through a long sociocultural history, the artifacts (physical and symbolic, signs and rock arts), the object (is the “problem space”) and the outcome (could be perpetuation and/or revision of the whole system).

Human Activity System (Engeström, 1987 cited in Johnson, 2009: 78) The implication is the shared and dialectical interrelationships of each component, without which it is impossible for a society to transmit or communicate a coherent social organizations, history, and identity. That means, the rules of the community (e.g. epistemological, politico-institutional, literary, semiotic, semantic, linguistic structures) codify as well as are codified in as much the mediating artifacts (e.g., cultural signs portrayed on such as rock paintings and engravings or symbolic cultural insignias, simulacra such as scepter, amulets, implements as well as symbolic 30

stone slabs, monoliths, megaliths or through objects/projects

ritual actions and activities)

and cultural

(e.g., of storing, communicating and transmitting sociocultural memories,

chronologies, hierarchies, polities, genealogies, calendars, political eras/epochs, theological rituals, settlement patterns, ethnomathematical formulas, literary metaphors, metonymies, etc.) as are they codified in or do they codify the society’s divisions of labor (e.g., sociostructural slots and respective experts in

semiotical, grammatological, literary, ritual, political, theological

professionalisms) in accordance to the sociocultural history and/or contemporary social praxis of the society. Indeed, scholars insist that there is deeper, stronger correspondence among the formal and semantic constituents of (some) societies’ linguistic/syntactic, rhetorical (literal, symbolic

figurative--metaphoric,

metonymic),

iconic/semiotic

structures

their

comparison/contrast (paradigmatic/syntagmatic) tactics (Dirven & Parings, 2003). This agrees with M.A.K.Halliday’s expounding of grammar from evolutionary linguistics perspective as fossilized memory of experience (Halliday, 1992).

Semiotic resources were collected during the 2012-2013 visits made to the some of the popular and less known ancient rock painting sites in Hararqee. Field data (still and motion) of the rock arts, relevant archival data and photos of material cultures were collected. Besides, relevant rock art resources outside Hararqee area were also collected as a part of overall project during travels around Ethiopia. Except some technical socio-semantic terminologies, the ordinary Afan Oromo

lexemes/corpus used in this analysis can be found in such Oromo-English and/or

English-Oromo dictionaries as the classical era by Krapf (1842), Tutschek (1844) and Viterbo (1892), or the early 20th century by Foot (1913) and the contemporary one by Stegman (2011). During analysis, especial attention is paid to how patterned are the intelationship or systematicity (parallelism, similarization, representation by phonologic, appearance or causal likeness) of the above discussed ‘vertical’ and the ‘horizontal’ paradigms.

In other words, iterative and constant comparative analysis across the three levels of the micro (linguistic, i.e., from phonologic, lexical, syntactic to clausal and rhetorical levels), the meso (from mental imagery to the painted and curved out and erected concrete objects like stone slabs as semagrams, ideograms and how they are sequenced, grouped, etc., in order to, possibly, represent clausal, rhythmic patterns) and the macro (social institutional themes, sememes, systems and selection of sacred natural objects such as trees and mountains for rituals of Qaallu-Gada) is conducted. In addition to these methods, this study employed a method borrowed from historians of photography, namely “historical elicitation”, i.e., “to old 31

images” or, here, the photos of the rock arts (paintings, carvings and engravings), are “brought to the field and shown to elders” (Triulzi, 2006: 53 based on Geary, 1990). This was extensively used with Obbo Xalanjii Bakar and Obbo Siraaji Kodheellee of Gaara Mull’ata Districts, both of them old wisemen around 80 on average. It was believed that they adequately possessed a repertoire of social epistemology for any researcher aspiring achieving ‘thick description’, an analysis which unravels the ‘emic’ signification underlying social ‘actions’ in Hararqee rock arts as semiotic ‘texts’.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION THE TOPOGRAPHICAL IS ALSO THE TYPOGRAPHICAL: LANDSCAPE METAPHOR Christopher Tilly, an influential (social) archaeologist, frequently argues that societies (the ancients) assign a name to a place in such a way that they assign the place not only meaning but also identity and, hence, is parallelism among structures of meaning and structures of power (Tilly, 1994 ). This is a big digression from what linguists usually tell us. For instance, the renowned (African languages’) linguist Joseph Greenberg (as editor) and his colleague Charles Hockett defined “arbitrariness” of language: “The relation between a meaningful element in language and its denotation is independent of any physical or geometrical resemblance between the two” (Hockett, 1966: 10). Hockett further substantiated it: Or, as we say, the semantic relation is arbitrary rather than iconic. There are marginal exceptions, including traces of onomatopoeia. In bee-dancing, the way in which the direction toward the target site is mapped into a direction of dancing is iconic. The relation between a landscape painting and a landscape is iconic; the relation between the word landscape and a landscape is arbitrary (ibid; Emphasis original). But, that “relation” is as much the ‘object’ of linguistics--regularity or operation or mechanism be it syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, (socio-)semiotic, (socio-)cognitive or etc.—as is atom or compound or (social) structure is object of, respectively, physics, chemistry or sociology. Or, otherwise, linguistics lacks objective.

Obviously, none of these objects ‘exist’ in stasis or

endism since their first emergence, be it minutes after Big Bang or cell or Homo sapiens sapiens. Nor is the “relation” or “element” equally or universally arbitrary among all objects, animals, societies or languages.

When we observe Oromo cultural history, we perfectly observe Christopher Tilly’s theory in practice. The ancients’ choice of rock arts, painting or ‘writing’ or text-making was based upon ‘reading’ not only the world (topography) but also of the words of forefathers or ‘the custom’, not that they arbitrarily ‘picked up’ rock shelters (or stone slabs), bovines (pictures, superimposed 32

signs), certain significations (signs painted, engraved, or erected) or means of painting (tools, inks or colors). Given the lexemes of their ȥubbii áȥā ‘words of custom’, smearing their forehead (dibaa aȥȥa) with sacrificial (qalii) blood (Ȧ’iiȯa) was more grammatically, semantically and politically correct than doing it with mud or on the leg or anywhere else. They, rather, say: çaqalí/galçá aȦ’abōti ‘It is on the recycling words/permission of the ancestors/ apotheosis’. For the Oromo, identity (manhood, peoplehood), genealogy (genesis, line of descent, lineage), settlement (landscape, occupation, settlement pattern) and signification/branding of these (marking of identity, land ownership, bordership, etc.) are so inseparably intertwined that the (root) words/signs for designating these concepts are homophonic/homosemantic 42 , not by perchance but by source and course of history. 43 After genesis in an epicenter and the ensued separation “the different branches of the Oromo nation lived in federations and confederations in several autonomous but contiguous territories” (Bulcha, 1996: 50). This is because the Oromo “view their history in genealogical terms. Groups in space are related to common ancestors and their present distribution explained as a result of the movement of brothers away from each other” (Lewis1965: 25 quoted by Bulcha, ibid).

Quoting Makko Billii, the ancient Gada System law maker, the Wallaga Oromo recite their social-genealogical-settlement patterns metaphorizing with the anatomies of korma ‘the virile buffalo-bull’ 44 , whose words significate double semantic: Sibu garaačča; Leeqaa dirra; Haruu č’inaačča kormmaati, from junior to senior: ‘The Sibu clan is the guts of the bull /hillside; Leeqaa clan is the hip/plateau; and the Haruu clan is the flank until to the loin/back of the bull/at the side 42

In Oromo, it is hard if not impossible to make distinctions between homophony (words pronounced similarly but with no semantic relationship), homonymy (completly different words that happen to sound (or be written) the same way) and polysemy (a single word having multiple systematically related meanings) as well as these and among metaphor and metonymy. Or, there is no ‘homophony’ in this traditional sense; every such word is related in patterned, systematic and historical-semantically explainable sense. 43 For instance, the polysemantic-symbologic words âa/bîya, balbala, qubee, qôma/ȯáma designate every one of these concepts—identity and genealogical (formation), landscape and occupation, or authorship/writing/marking (see Ayana, 1995; Gidada, 2006). 44 For reasons to be yet explicated in independent study, the Oromo terminologies/concepts of animal taxonomization/classification is quite similar to the Latin terms/concepts dominating the international science, hence none of Oromo terms are translatable to English: hórí refers to all the kingdom of Animalia that are eutherian (hoormata) with segmented spinal cord (hoorro) including humans, with emphasis on the notion that the bovids (hoorii) are part of all the invaluable and ‘amicable’ assets fulfilling our ‘manness’; the collective looni /loaɁ refers to all the Bovidae --bovine and cattle-- but as a herd in grazing; sâa (also sa’a/sawa/saya) refers all the females/femenine of domestic Bovidae (e.g., cow, heifer’) as well as 4thfemenine animate pronoun; korma all the young males of Bovidae (e.g., bulls, ram, buck) as well as 4th male animate pronoun; and sangaa refers to all the old or castrated of these; re’ee/reé designate all the Caprinae but excludes the Alcelaphinae (e.g. gnu), hoolaa emphasizing the ones with short or no horns.

of river’ (also OCTB, 1998:164). Jan Hultin, the great scholar who wrote extensively on Oromo philosophy of genealogy or kinship and land and settlement pattern witnessed: People distinguished between two categories of Oromo: between local Sibu and Leqa. These terms refer to two major segments (qomoo ‘‘tribe, patri·clan, patrilineage’ [pluralanimate from qôma/ȯ’áma ‘(to) torment, keen; (be) beyond, opposite (for land); rib, breastplat, body’]) of Macha as well as to their respective country or territory (biyya) [also means ‘people, soil’ from bâa ‘go-out, genesis, man, source, river’]….The Sibu country is a high plateau at an altitude of about 2,000 metres and consists of softly undulating hills. The homesteads are scattered along the ridges. Each hill is associated with a patrilineage or a lineage segment, and usually the men and the unmarried girls who live on the same ridge are agnatically related [gooroo]. Married brothers live as close neighbours and all the husbands on a ridge trace descent from a common ancestor, while their wives, who moved there at marriage, do not belong to this descent category. As a man grows up, marries, and gets children, his father gradually devolves land upon him and his brothers (Hultin, 2003: 411-414; Square brackets added). The bull is selected because, as Baxter (1979: 71) deciphered accurately, in Oromo culture “big game hunting for trophies can be considered as a pursuit that fostered “manly” attributes. A successful hunter was, like a good warrior or a prolific father, Ȧiira ‘masculine, virile’, or ǘaba ‘tough’ or korma ‘bull’.” 45

Gidada (2001[1984]: 27, 96-97) registered that “during their [antique] migration [to people free lands], and when claiming land and settlement areas,” the Oromo had been “guided by a bull called korma karbacha” (literally, ‘the bulldozer’) and the place at which the bull “retired became the possession of the clan who was the owner of the bull” and pillar stones (Ȧ’aȯaa ǘ’iraččaa, literally, ‘milestone of life, living and working’) were erected. If the occupant was from the senior clan the bigger pillar stone was planted, meaning the central pillar Ȧ’aȯaa ǘ’iračaa of the mana ‘house, nation’. 46 The Oromo make distinction between ancient, mythical and polysemantic fathers: Abbaa/ âa č’iɋɋaččá ‘holder/man/father of the sub-soil/gravel/granite’ and Abbaa Ȧ’aȯaa/Ȧ’okk’é ‘father of the stone slabs/top-soils/mud’. Hultin (1987:16 cited in Triulzi, 1996: 261) puts this more vividly: According to Jan Hultin, the Macha make a distinction between the abba cirracha (‘father of the sub-soil’) and the abba dhoqqee (‘father of the top-soil’); the first one, in his words, 45

The Oromo say, “Nu Ilmaan Boorana-Booreentu; Ilmaan fincaan korma takkaa”, i.e. “We are children of the primogeniture moieties of Booran-Boorentuu; Children of a single Bull-/Macho-Man”. 46 The substantive bases (without appending the final vowel as case markers) of the words Ȧ’aȯa-a ‘stone, rock, pellet, pebble’ and ǘ’ira-čaa/č’iɋɋa-ččaa ‘granite, gravel, rock, body’ are worth taking a deeper look; ǘ’iračča ‘life, work, labor’ from ǘ’ira ‘to be alive, live, green; to work, labor, exist’ and Ȧ’aȯa ‘to hear, sense, listen; communicate, embody’. The underlying notion is ‘be not dead’. D’a a-n qabā ’a ‘circumcise; circumcision’ (literally ‘seize own phallus/body/stone’) and saaȼ’fuȦ’a/saalfaȦ’a ‘fear, respect; veneration’ (literally ‘seize own phallus/genitalia’) may be related semotactic. Traditionally, the one to be circumcised is seated on a special stone.

‘should be a borana to the highest degree, i.e. a first-born son of a man of a senior borana lineage, an angaffa. The ‘father of the sub-soil’ was a cultural hero who took possession of the land, killed wild animals and enemies. He blessed the land and made sacrifices and held the land in trust. In many respects his position was comparable to that of a ‘father of a well’ among the Boran ... As a ritual trustee the ‘father of the sub-soil’ granted land to ‘fathers of the top-soil’, who then devolved land upon others. As lord of the land he was first and foremost a ritual warden. He was the lord of the ayana of the area’. These scholars didn’t pay attention to metaphor of the mythology and the phonological evolution of the signs/words (e.g., r↔r). The Oromo are talking about two types of life mediated by paterilineal ancestral spirits (Abba Bayu): the one in the life-in-the-world (Abba Boora/Boolee known in other areas by Qaallu or Abba Muudaa ‘Father of Unction’) and the one in the lifeafter-death (Abba Č’iɋɋaččá or Abba Ğaȼō equivalent to Christian “Godparent”). Respectively and contrastively, they are symbolized by two types of Ȧ’aȯaan ‘stones’ (also means or symbol of ‘body’), Ȧ’aȯaa boora or booralee ‘basalt-stone’ and Ȧ’aȯaa č’iɋɋaččá ‘granite-gravel’. It is “contrastive” symbolism because there is curly secret: č’iɋɋaččá is recovered from the black river-bed/sea-bed and world and erected in the upper, full-awareness world (ȥ’aakki, Ȧ’agawa) as megalith on the tomb of the (great) man, while basalt-stone emerges ‘by itself’ from the underworld (ğalla) and ‘lives’ in-the-world shiny ( aaɋii, booqaa). A symbol of this curly (borč’aa) secret, from the granite, a double-curled wire, spiraled and screwed at the two ends, is worn on the right arm (mičč’iirraa, maȥȥ’ičča). See also Fig 1 D. In Oromo worldview: Organisms in harmony with their environments naturally reproduce themselves through acts of replication called hormaata. Such organisms grow through a repetition of rounds, called dagaaga, that change the state of the organism or society while still preserving its identity. Dagaaga literally means a “ram’s horn.” The metaphor of the spiral growth of the horn captures its identity in difference. Organisms or societies that successfully pass through the six stages have the power to transmit themselves into new territories in a process called ȥaga-horaa (Megerssa, 1993: 121; see the spiraling, round, capped stone art Fig.6E and Appendix). Similar to ȥ’agaa-boora/-horaa ‘ston-slab of fecundity’, the Daakka/Dakkii trees (e.g., Birbirsa ‘Podocarpus gracilior’, Ejersa ‘Prunus africana’, Hoomii ‘Pygeum africanum’, Somboo ‘Ekeberigia capensis’) are used as cementary or graveyard because they are believed as abode of regenerating, autopoeitic spirits (of the dead) and link between Waaqa and the people.

The Oromo have had a special ritual of Soodduu D’aabuu ‘planting commemorative, awesome stones and plants’ (for detail, see Baxter & Kassam, 2005). For Oromo Qaallu-Gada tradition, there is no difference between/among the acts of making respectful/solid speech (seeda), which is a linguistic, and erecting of an obelisk (siidá), which is a material-symbolic action/object, on 35

the ritual of sooddu/sooddoo ȥ’abaaȦ’a, an expression that stands for not only ritual-action of paying homage to the deceased but also to all the statuary “objects and substances that are placed at the graveside and all the actions that are performed by the family in remembrance of the deceased parent” (Baxter & Kassam, 2005: 1). By performing or planting the soodduu (from saȦi ‘three, trio’ or the reflexive seaɳuu ‘thinking, commemorating for self’) stone slabs, for instance, they are, not merely erecting Ȧ’aȯata ‘stone-statue, dolmen’ but representing by it the physical ‘presence-in-absence’ of the spirits of departed ones, and calling the farewell attendants for Ȧaȯa ‘subsidence, forgetting, deceasing’. The physical-material act of Ȧaȯaa ǚaa ‘putting stone slabs on the grave’ during burial ritual is in actuality a communicative ‘speech’ act of (which is uttered while acting out the putting) blessing the departed: Mushroom!’; or, with quip, they bless

aȯaaȯaa ‘‘Spread out!

’aȯaa kaa ‘Awaken, hearing!’ It is stone of dega ‘relief’.

The earth thrown into the pit, they say ‘ ’aȯaan/Biyōn sitti haa sap’ȹatu ‘Let the cumulus be easy/weigh not’ or ‘Let the people/family feel easy!’, so that “the corpse in there crouched…who on his sitting, looks like a man at his rest waiting for the great awakening”, messaging a “symbolic attitude corresponding to that which we have defined ‘the prophesy of rites’” (de Salviac, 2005[1901]: 272-273). The trickle-down (ȥ’urura) of the ancestral spirits since ancient times (ȥurȥuri, reduplication of ȥuri) is symbolized by what Henze described as follows gingerly: On the shoulders of the valley of the Wabe Shebelle I found occasional isolated square… tombs topped by a small rounded dome, sometimes distinctly pyramidal, and often with a crescent on the very top. These may have marked burials of….holy men…. Such tombs were often painted white and were visible from afar (Henze, 2005 : 179). What Henze as well as others did not understand well is the logical systemicity of the linguistic (form), the semiotic (representation), and the semantic (history). The orifice (qaa), the series of hierarchical-concentric circles (ȯooroo) is representation of the sacred land or epicenter (without suggesting single and only one) of genesis/fertility and the ensued separation, expansion away from the qaé/qee ‘the land of nativity’. Ancient Egyptians represented this concept by orific circular sign similar to ⊚. The pyramidal (daammi), ridged/seasoned (doorii), segmented (ȦuruuraȦ’a) significations are objectification of the differentiation and trickle-down of the genealogical stem (ȥámmee) or D’amoota ‘the Stems (people)’. D’amoota is also a toponym for fertile, rainy and cool alpine land a denominative from ’amoota a transitive verb meaning ‘to be cool’, from the root ȥ’ama ‘to ooze, drip, drop, tear-drop’, a climatological-cum-topological concept.

Chiekh Anta Diop, the great Egyptologist, is right when he says Egyptians call

themselves

deciphered as “Rmt kmt” (note ↔ ’ and ʈ↔ by rhotic interchange) 36

which he interprets as “the men of the country of the black men or the m e n of the black country” (Diop, 2000: 42). 47 The Abyssinianists’ name ‘Highlanders’ is an ideological misnomer for ‘the Abyssinians’ used in contrast to the ‘Nomadic’, ‘Pastoralist’ or ‘Wanderers’, expressions ascribed to the Oromo and present day other Cushites, the “16th century” newcomers to Ethiopia, in their fallacious and prejudiced eyes. 48

Indeed, their choice was not done by dualism or linguistic determinism. It was as much determined by the power of history or age-old social structure as was by the power of the natural world. Henze (2005: 178-179) registered: “Good rock for carving upright slabs, this man said, was not available in the immediate area so rock was brought from quarries in an area to the northwest on the lower slopes of Mount Kakka” [Mountain of Oath/Word of Honor] and “a cemetery [must be] at the edge of a forest”. De Salviac (2005[1901]:272) saw that Oromo theologico-political chamber (č’affee) camps “on a slope, which is on the right” (the head of Abba Bokku/Abba Gadaa) and “on the left the left or lower slope” (his dignitaries) where there must be a water body and green č’affee ‘hay, grass’. They serve as the sacred zonal “centre of Oromo religion” (Hassen, 1994:6) and headquarters of the (con)federal nation (Nicolas, 2010). For they are symbol of ‘absolute purity’ (qûȹqullu, reduplication 49 from qûȹ‘pure’), only the above sacred lands serve as centre of ritual and religious performances and hence remain the unforgettable cradle lands. This emanates from the Oromo cosmogonaleschatological belief that the (primordial) water is the source of (early) life/man, earth is wife/mother

(closer)

and

sky

husband/father

(distant)

the

always-on-the-flux

spatiotemporality (ȯada) (Bartels, 1983: 108-111). Thereupon, holy spirits (qullu/ȯooȻȻoo) reside in an area undulating from a river bed (ȯabra/ȯarba) in a valley (dareera/ dirré/baalee/bɨβu all of which also mean ‘beginning, blossom, emergence (of man and life)’) or a depression (malkaa) to a foot of mountain hill (ȯoda/wôda) and mounting (yabba, yayyaba) to a mountain peak (qara/ȯaara, which also mean ‘the present generation, first, second and/or third’). 47

Most probably, KMT is a consonantal sequence similar to Oromo K’omoota ‘the nation of people belonging to a common ancestor’ (from k’omo ‘ribs, kinship’) or K’ubata ‘Community’ (from k’uba ‘to dwell, land’). To reiterate, similar to Ancient Egyptians’, kinship is expressed by anatomy and viscera in Oromo traditions/expressions too. 48 Above, we saw that a 16th century Jesuit/Portuguese monk Manoel de Almeida wrote a book The History of High Ethiopia or Abassian which in actuality was composed by the shrewd self-proclaimed “historians” C.F. Beckingham & G.W.B Huntingford (1954), in their Some Records of Ethiopia 1.593-1646, London: The Hakluyt Society. 49 In Afan Oromo, reduplication show not only semantic emphatics or intensiveness, but also ontic/homomorhic multiplicity in ‘natural governments and processes’ such as tallness (process), bifurcations, differentiations, frequentativeness, duplicity, parallelness, pairedness, zigzagness, symmetricality, dialecticality, reciprocity, intensiveness, continuum, process of extending in size, etc.

As such it must possess characteristics of flowing river (yaa) or spring (mineral) water (hooro) or lagoon (laȯa) or any water body (aßaa/abbaya), for these are the only life-givers (hence, bâça-Ɂ / bɨša-ni). In other words, it must be Baȥ’aa ‘a vast highland country endowed with black and fertile soil, cloudy, rainy and cool climate and, subsequently, where giant and evergreen plants abound and, hence, suitable for man to settle or live’. Imagistically and strictly, it is endowment on the par with aȥā. 50 The analogy emanates from the Oromo cosmogony that water is the origin of life (Dahl & Megerssa, 1990). Finally, Hultin’s (2003: 420) observation and recording of the Sibu Oromo blessings of “the land” is enlightening of how they see land, kinship and “life and vitality”: Oh father! ---Yes, I say! Much wealth. ---Yes! Plenty in the granary. ---Yes! Ruler of me and country. ---Yes! Long gannents that reach the ankles---Yes! Plenty of delicious food. ---Yes! Much wealth. --- Yes! Peace to the country. ---Yes! Health to the body. --- Yes! Ruler of the rulers . ---Yes! Your country loves you. ---Yes! Your lineage loves you, Increase my calves. --- Yes! I say, keep them alive and remain with the Sibu. ---Yes!

QAALLU-GADA INSTITUTION AND THE GENESIS OF HIERARCHY A historical, social and critical observation of ancient Hararqee rock paintings possibly awakens memories

Qaallu-Gada

social

epistemological

structures-in-flow.

These

involve

figuritivizations/semiosis of the diachronies of genesis and reproduction of man, genealogical trees and social hierarchies, on the one hand, and the flux of generations, ages, calendars and political-regime chronologies, on the other. That’s precisely what the word gadá/qaȥá means, indeed. At the heart of figuritivization of these social epistemologies is AUGMENTATIVE concepts represented by oȥá ‘giant Ficus family trees’, ȯuɳi ‘giant ostrich’, ȯâɳila ‘big cats’, or ȯá/ȯabar/ȯarba which refers to both ‘big waters’ and ‘big animals (bovids)’ etcetera. An excellent 50

Baȥ’aa denominative form of baȥ’ā ‘to be endowed, abounded of, be abundant with (fortune)’ or baȥ’aa-sa ‘to bestow, bequeath’; below the ecosystemic qualities of Baȥ’aa are, respectively, Baȥ’aȥ’aree, admóʨi/Gmmooɳii (literally, ‘the not- aȥā’), Addeela/Adaree (literally acid-land/-soil), arraha (literally ‘bald, bare’). The Mačč’a-Tuulama Oromo’s age-old rhythmical proverb about their lost country, to their northwards, goes: “Hintaane Kiristinnaan Baȥ’aanɨ” “The Christianization of Our Baȥ’aa only worked against us’.

reference on chronymous or calenderial symbolization by some of these is the work of HaajiAadam (2010).

For the Oromo, the first Qaallu “Hereditary ritual officiant” and “high priest” was of “divine origin” and, as the myth tells us, “‘fell from the sky itself’…with the first black cow” and he was the “‘eldest son of Ilma Orma’” (Hassen, 1994:6; Baxter, et al 1996:6). In its “dual[ity] nature”, Waaqa, the Black Sky-God “controlled fertility, peace, and lifegiving rains… [hence] prayers for peace, fertility, and rain” are the core recursive themes in Oromo religion (Hassen, 1994:7). 51 Hence, the concept/word Qaallu refers at large to “Divinity’s fount of blessings in the world” (Baxter, et al 1996: 21). Etymologically, Qaallu comes from the durative qûȹu (qul’qullu, intensive) ‘pure, holy, sacred, blameless; black, grizzly, pretty, neat’, pointing to the color and quality of Waaqa (for detail, see Bartels 1983 and Hassen, 1994). Due to rhotacization (from the root qûȹu↔quɻ/Ȱúrr 52 ), the expression Waaqa quɻačča ‘Waaqa the black one’ is the common metonymic reference to His righteousness, graciousness. But, the metonymy/modification is not just semantic, conceptual, or imagery but also is percept or ontic/ontologic in that the modifier quɻačča signifies that which is “in its original state” (Megerssa, 1993: 8), possibly from the polysemantic qara ‘(to) grain, eye, edge, fruit, ray 53 ; first(ly), early’. The Booran Oromo have still kept the Qaallu Institution ‘unspoiled’ and, thus, their world view is worth quoting (Dahl & Megerssa, 1990: 26): The Booran view of cosmology, ecology and ontology is one of a flow of life emanating from God. For them, the benignancy of divinity is expressed in rain and other conditions necessary for pastoralism. The stream of life flows through the sprouting grass and the mineral waters [hooro] of the wells, into the fecund wombs and generous udders [Ȱurrɢú] of the cows. The milk from the latter then promotes human satisfaction and fertility. When people are satisfied by the yield of their herds, they live happily and peacefully together…thereby creating a balance between people and Divinity, and reproducing favourable conditions (Compare this with Egyptian Fig. 6H). An observation of the Laga Oda pictures (e.g. Fig. 1A) consistently illuminates interesting analogy--bulls are consistently drawn above the cows. As recorded by Lambert Bartels, Waaqa ‘Devine, God, Sky’ symbolizes Abbá, Patriarchic-side of the cosmos (qoollo) or Father/ Husband “who goes away” while, Daččee ‘Earth’ symbolizes, the Matriarchic-side, Mother or Wife who “is always with us” (Bartels, 1983: 108-111) and “originally, Heaven and Earth were standing one 51

This concept/word Waaqa Black-Sky God is well documented—albeit less spoken/written--in Ancient Egyptian texts (Bekerie 2004: 116 based on W.E.B DuBois). 52 ↔= reversible relationship (by sound change, rhotic). 53 Qara is also used as in the expression qaro adu or qara biftu ‘eye of the sun’ i.e., rays.

next to the other on equal terms” (Haberland, 1963: 563 quoted by Bartels, 1983:111). Similarly, a bull represent ßoo ‘sacred domain of the male’ (vocative form of bâ ‘man, subject, being, masculine 4th person pronoun’), while a cow (saa/sa’a) represent çâé/îssi ‘sacred domain of the female’ also ‘feminine 4th person pronoun’ (Kassam, 1999:494). In other words, cows are “a symbolic representation of women” (Sumner, 1997:193; Bartels, 1975:912) and korma ‘buffalobull, bullock’ is a symbol of manliness combined with virility and temperance and such a masculine manliness for Oromo is ‘oromoness and, hence, “every [Oromo] man is a bull” (Bartels, 1983:146) 54 and particularly in the social epistemology of Gada System, people born prior to the luba gada cycle “are known as ilman korma ‘the sons of bulls’” (Helland, 1996: 138). Even Oromo greeting speech act is expressed: saa-nama naȯaa, literally ‘cattle-men [all] peaceful/welfare’ (for detail, see Bartels, 1975, 1983).

Likewise, the black buffalo bull appears to represent qualities of God and black sky/cloud. Father Lambert Bartels (Bartels, 1983: 90-91), writes “When they bless, they [the Oromo] say: ȯurrači ȯaraa ǘ’abbii siif ha kenu ‘May the dark one [God] with hail under his abdomen give you all (good things).’”

More importantly, the giant bull designated aɀgaffa/haɀcaffa (also ‘first-

born (son)’) is a symbol of aɀgaftitti “seniority of moieties: stratification and imbalance” (Legesse, 2006:134); “he is carrier of “Boraanness” to a higher degree” (Dahl, 1996: 172), for Bóra or Booran 512) and

is/are socio-politically the ‘the baron, the highest social group’ (Bartels, 1977:

genealogically aɀȯafa ‘first-born son’ (superlative from aaȰa/aƙ’a ‘heaven,

news/spirits of the forbearers, commencers’) of Hoorro the primogenitor of the Oromo nation (from hor ‘to vege, sprout, proliferate’). 56

The motifs in Figure 1 (as are others, too, as we shall see ahead) pose intringuing challenges to researchers on interfaces of phonology 57 and semantics, semiotics and cognition, language and institutional formations.

It is necessary to conceive ‘a figure’ here from the contemporary

systemic functional linguistics perspective: “a configuration of elements—a process, participants 54

Korma/ orma also designates ‘male’ or ‘ram’ of all Capra varieties and of fowl (domestic and non-domestic). The underlying notion is ôr ‘vege, proliferate, (re)produce, copulate, pierce’ and/or rromʔa/ʀommá ‘rage (sexuality)’. 55 Here, Bartels was not interested in the unusual play on word (paronomasia), though he discussed this ‘soundmeaning’ parallelism stylistics elsewhere. Gurrači ȯaraa ǘ’abbii is a polysemantic metonymic witticism: ‘Sky-God, the one with č’abbi ‘hail, ice, snow’ and dark belly (=heavy cloud); ‘God whose stomach [=heart] is tough (ǘ’abbii)’; ‘God, under whose belly is there a bullock (ǘ’abbii)’. 56 Note also that among other sememes, the polysemantic root hor is hypernym for domestic bovid and bóra is a pet name for brownish bull or male lion. 57 For it is so vital, any researcher on Oromo historical/evolutionary linguistics, should pay especial attention to the rhotacization/lambdization exchange between/among various forms of /l/ and /r/ must seriously be noticed.

involved in it and attendant circumstances. Figures are realized congruently by clauses, and may be linked by logicosemantic relations to form sequences” (Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam, 2010: 98). With this notion, it can be argued that, motifs in Figure1 (Fig.1B, C, D, E, F & G) are possibly resemblance figuritivization of the real phenomena (through chrononymy, ethnonymy or line of descent representation, etc.) such as of the institution Gada ‘generation-/age-based politico-theological praxis, genealogical trees or line of descent and so forth. We need to know some subsidiary institutional concepts.

To begin with, according to Oromo mythology, the separation (wall ballaa) of the primogenitors (hoorro) and the most senior (ßoroo or Booran, plural) set Horroo ‘the primogenitors of the Oromo nations’, who said to have settled in an unverified country near a big sea called Mormor [ßorßor] or spring water Hooro Ẃalaaßu [ßolaßoo] (for detail of the oral history/lexemes, see Legesse, 1973, 2006; Gidada, 2001[1984]; Bartels, 1983; OCTB, 1998; Tutschek, 1844: 98, 110; Stegman, 2011:95). They set the first ßala ‘split, separation, bifurcation’ (from baȼ ‘to split, spring, flame; to bifurcate, be forked/y-shaped, have bilateral symmetry’) or walaßu/ßáȼamu ‘freedom, bail, spring, sprawl’, which grew into ßaȻßaȻa ‘series of lineages, sub-sub-sub etc. lineages; to populate, sprawl’ (also means ‘doors, gates’ the reduplication showing ontic, binary repetitiveness or sub-moieties). At the same time, they also set lamii, literally, ‘citizens’ (absolutive-animate form of lama ‘two’), but socio-philosophically “the primary pair, among several pairs of binary oppositions…which are ‘the creative communion between oppositions, the fertile unity of contrasts’” (Baxter et al 1996: 21). For this reason, Oromo lineage must always be binary (paternal-maternal), for instance: Booran-Barentu, Mačč’a-Tuulama, SabbooGoona, Sikkoo-Mando, etc., etc., following the natural law of, binary fissions (see Fig.1 except H). Father Martial de Salviac wrote this: The races who have maintained the life of the tribes therefore come nearer to the pmordial regime. Natural society that is born in the family is like the tree that comes out of its roots. Union based on paternity and fraternity is the most extended. Ex patribus familias factos reges (From the paternal head of household come descendants), said Plato. Thus the Oromo people, strongly attached to the Abba Muda [Qaallu], the chief of the eldest tribe, representative of God in the eyes of the whole nation, merits, and by identity of the origin of the name and of the language, and by the unity of the religion, of law and character, considered to be a single family enlarged from the Orma [Raa/Raya]” (de Salviac, 2005[1901]: 210-211; Square bracket added). By this description, Martial de Salviac is giving us accurate description of the element of Gada System whose adage is: Seerri Gada seera uume! ‘Gada System/Laws are systematized abstractions going along the routes of the patterned nature and natural governments!’ 41

A(Cervicek, 1971)

B(Goda Baalla/Baalli)

C (Laga Oda, trace)

D (Goda Abba Soofa/Soofii)

E (Goda Elellee)

G (O a geneaological tree)

F (Laga Oda)

H (Goda Qu ɳi)

I (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975)

J (Barruu/Boolloo Gadaa)

K (The Booran calf room)

FIGURE 1— A: From Cervicek’s (1971: Fig.46) Laga Oda paintings also “represented in Surre” site (Cervicek 1971: 129, 132) possibly portraying bull-cow-calf representation of heaven/father-mother/earth-child/man trinity cosmogony; B motif from Goda Baalla/Baalli (Bravo, 2007) known by French writers as “Porc Epic”

possibly sketches of moó ‘both side of loin/lumbar, each side of flank’ representation of Ḿoo’a ‘ritual of the forefathers’. Possibly, so are C, D Goda Abba Soofa/Soofii ‘Foothill of Father/Man of Plane/Plateform’ (which foreigners misread as Goda Haban Sōfi) from Bravo (2007), Left: a motif of sak’ala/saŋ alé ‘square-plane, plank’ , soofaa ‘plane; to plane, level’ or horree ‘platform, plane (e.g., craftman’s, carpenter’s), and Right: motif of vertebrae ȥ’amìna ‘jowbone(s), maxilla (+) mandible’ symbol of Hararqee Oromo’s amìɁa ‘Agnates, Aganate-Boughs’ (or representatives these by the descent clans), designated in Booran by La oo/La ’ū and in Mačč’a by Maȥȥ’ičča worn on the arms to immortalize agnates and moeities (see Foot, 1913: 43) his representative of ȥamee (plural aamota) ‘bough branch (geneaological)’ ; E (Bravo, 2007) and F (Cervicek, 1971) motifs of bovine/human anatomy possibly chrononyms/simulacra/semagrams of k’omo ‘ribs; belongingness to a common race’, hariira ‘consanguinity, spinal ridge, queue, seam, suture’ or horroo ‘vertebrae, spinal column; formation of primogeniture (hoorro), line of decent’ and so forth; G o a tree, a symbol of genealogical tree; H: from Goda Qu ɳi/Hummata site, şurree/ɲaarrii ‘a high-intellect fabulous creature’, symbol of ‘First Light’ of fertility, harvest and abundance; I: from Laga Gafra representions of anthropomorphic sprawling (bak’ufaa / bakkaafaa), a symbol of affluence (k’ufa) and chiefship (k’ufatá / goofftá); J Gooroo ‘chambers, columns’ motif from Gadaa, literally ‘the Slots/Notes/Text of Gada’ .

The simulacra/figuritivizations of the genesis of man is the anatomy of ‘the bull’ and the oȥa tree or the product of this. First is horooroo ‘the y-shaped herds stick’ designed from the oȥa tree after image of overhead view of bull’s nape-plus-horns, “in the fashion of a mantle” (de Salviac, 2005[1901]: 216). Then is hariera/hariira ‘spinal column, line of descent’ (hariira also means ‘logical sequence, queue, seam, suture’, a reduplication, for ontic multiplicity, from hɨra ‘(to) divide, share’) or horroo ‘vertebrae, genesis, genealogy’ (horroo also means ‘springing sacred mineral water’ associated with genesis. Likewise, bóȹȹoo (or biiɌɌii, singular) ‘spinal sockets, spines’ also means (by semantic-metaphoric extention) ‘cistern, pit, hole’. Yet, more interesting for social semiotic consideration is the axiomatic expression “Booȹȹoon Gaȥa saddeeti” ‘Eight is the pits/slot/cline of Gada’ (see Fig.1J), appropriately “One eight-year cycle/term is a presidency of an Abba Gaȥa—the Man/President” (literally, ABBA GADA/GU A “The Great Man; The Male Lion (king of the pride)”). It is a recitation of how they used to keeping social memory about Gada System of power exchange after every eight-year term, perhaps the first organized chrononymous abacus 58 system.

Motifs of a group/row (of eight) strokes or circular/oval objects (followed by a stroke) are common

across

Hararqee

and

Southern

Ethiopian

pre-historic/medieval

rock

paintings/engravings (Cervicek, 1971; Le Quellec, & Abegaz, 2001). The action of making such logical marks (or the mark itself) is designated hira/hariira or tara/tarara the reduplications 58

Dictionaries of English etymology tell us different stories about the origin of this word, ‘abacuses’. It entered the English lexicon in 14th century via Latin. Some claim it comes from Greek abakos, which others spell as abax, meaning board strewn with “dust”, others say “sand” on which to “draw” or “write” or for “tracing calculations”. Others tell us it comes from Hebrew ābhāq ‘dust’. We can, however, consider, on the one hand, the Oromo abaqí/ábaqii ‘bran, chaff, straw (chopped)’ from abaqa/ábaqa ‘to sieve, sift; to disillusion, stir, instigate’ an allomorphic category with a eeka/beekka ‘to know’ (see Tutschek, 1844:191; Foot, 1913: 65, 67). On the other hand, the final sound in the Greek abakos, i.e., /s/, is rather the semi-voiced alveolar/alveodental / / or /σ/ which regularly corresponds to Oromo voiceless retroflex/implosive / / or / /. Therefore we can consider the Oromo abakaȦ’a ‘to tattle, reckon, contemplate, count (by heart)’ or just Abba Gaȥa (see Tutschek, 1844: 7).

designating frequentativeness and multiplicity (see Stegman, 2011:49, 25). Haria or hariyya means “a group of people born in the same eight-year period” or Hariya Kuš, the ritual of initiation to Gada Grade III, designating, in simple terms, co-relative generations based agemates ceremony (Legesse, 1973: 58ff). See Plowman (1918) for terms/rituals/divisions of the 8year cline/term and Cerulli (1922) and Legesse (1973) for Gada System 80-year divisions/parties/partitions. In other words, the picture/painting arts in Figure 1 (Fig. A, B, C, D, F & G) can be assumed as representations of social systemic relations in portrayed in semiotic “tactic relations”— paratactical, concepts/units combined to portray the state of “being of equal status” and/or hypotactical, concepts/units combined to portray the state of being of unequal/hierarchical status (Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam 2010).

Accordingly, the left hand and right hand of the bovine always represent, in rituals, the “subsections of the phratry” (Kassam, 2005:105). That is, as the tradition sustains, when the ancient matrilineal-patrilineal moieties ‘sowed, dissevered’ (fač’á) from the original East (BoɌa/Òβoro), the Booreetú (designating matrilineality, feminine soul) took or went towards the left hand side, while the βooroo (also,

ooroo, with the rare /Ħ/ and / / interchange), designating patrilineality,

masculine soul, took the right hand side. Both correspond, respectively, to the directions of sunrise and sunset, which configure in the way houses, cattle pen and ritual camps is constructed. Baȼbaȼa ‘the front door’ (lambdization and reduplication of BoɌa ‘(to) dawn; East’ 59 ) always faces the East, while

ooroo ‘the back wall’ faces the West. 60 This still governs

the praxis that the backwall “is the place of the marriage negotiations and of the first sexual intercourse of sons and their bride [i.e., behind the stage]” (Bartels, 1983: 296). The second concept is Ḿoo’a/Ḿó a, the ritual of the ancient forefathers, observed by their contemporary family (Sabaa, 2006: 258). This concept, a concept that coheres both the primogenitors and the contemporary generations, is symbolized by moó ‘both side of loin, lumbar’. This is allophonic category to two concepts. First is ȥaaȥoo/ȥuuȥ’a, first meaning ‘(to) back, agreement, tit for tat, concord, union; turning around in rotation’, but second sociogenitic meaning ‘moral and cooperative ties based on age-old

line of lineage, blood, affinity or

Also facing to the East are âɌa/ arra ‘gate (cattle pen)’ (literally ‘inception (of moving-sun), way’), ìffa ‘saloon (for guests)’ (literally, ‘arrow, beam, shine; sling’), badaa ‘front room next to ìffa; hearth’ (Stegman, 2011:23). Hearth is a symbol of “nuclear family” or “mother-child household” (Legesse, 1973:39). 60 Also ooroo means ‘Horus, evening twilight’ and Òβoro ‘morning twilight’. ooroo and βooroo are interchangeably used for back and front walls, gardens or twilights possibly because for Oromo time or spatiotemporality is circular (Bartels, 1983).

neighbourhood” (well treated by Bartels, 1977). Second is ßoo ‘line, ditch’ (Fig.1B) and/or k’omo ‘ribs’ which also means ‘belongingness to common race; consanguinity’ (see Fig.1D). Hence is the expression k’omo ko ‘my ribs’ i.e., my kin, kindred. From the same concept originates the concept of Ḿootumma Gada ‘Kingdom of/under Gada’ (or equivalent to the Biblical ‘Kingdom of God’ 61 ) which Shongolo (1996) explicates etymologically: [Ḿootumma comes] from moo’a, autobenefactive: moo’ /ʈ, is a cattle image. For example, Kormi sun him moo’a, “that bull is in heat” and sa’a sun iti moo’a ‘he is mounting that cow’. With reference to human beings, the implication is not necessarily sexual, but can denote superiority or dominance in general. An moo’a, an mooti is a formula of self-praise by a new Abba Gada during his inauguration (Shongolo, 1996: 273). As was touched above, part of the principle of the Gada System kingdomization was land occupation pattern premised upon or determined by line of decency or seniority. Above, we defined key linguistic/semiotic/institutional concepts that should be iterated here: âk’a/ aqa ‘one’s chamber, deal, share, just(ice), consanguinity’ and hariira

‘line of descent, logical

sequence, suture’ (a reduplication from hɨra ‘(to) divide, share’). These also designate land sharing, settlement pattern and frames of delineations. Ak’a Abbaa, literally ‘Just(ice) of the Subject/Person’, designates his autonomous shares in the society: his land, asset, private sleeping chamber/room for him and his wife, etc. Any overhead-view observation of Hararqee land finds it hard to make distinction between anatomical structures/frames (Fig.1J, B, C, D) and settlement or land-share patterns.

Also, earlier we touched upon cattle branding (quba) of Oromos as observed by Werner (1915), focusing on the literal-metaphoric concepts of quba/qubee/qubtuma ‘(to) finger, true, letter; hold, occupy a settlement area; settlement pattern’, goobsoo/qubquba ‘ridges, social hierarchy’ and qabaȦu ‘pincer, obligation’. These must explain what Cervicek (1971) describes as “pincer-like” motifs: “The neck, head and the ears of the cattle are shown from above, the horns from the back (looking precisely as in the frontal view) as if the head of the animal were turned away with respect to the on-looker” (p.130). Abundant across Hararqee and the recently found sites in Booran areas of Southern Ethiopia and Northern Kenya, this style is traditionally described as “Ethiopian- Arabian style” or “the stage of Surre” (Cervicek, 1971:130). Note that surre/ɞura is an Oromo word for ‘intellect, intelligence’ (see De Barenton, 1936: 786).

In his article “Origin of African Kingdoms”, Herbert Lewis wrote, historically the Oromo “developed at least three and probably seven different kingdoms” (Lewis, 1966: 404).

Furthermore, the latter concept, qabaȦu, which also means ‘corpulent, fat bull’ and the expression moora wal qabaȦu ‘hold together (people) the grease of the scarified qabaȦu bull’, ‘give/receive obligation (to ceasefire)’ on ceremonies of peace building and conflict resolution (e.g., territorial disputes). These are symbols of sprawls, affluence and extended family and settlement patterns (Fig.1I) grounded in Oromo/Boran worldview “to maintain, and, ideally to increase by good management, the herds and flocks in which he has a share” and “that generally stock thrives best, and the grazing and water are most efficiently exploited, if the stock of a family is divided into milking cattle, dry cattle, milking camels, dry camels and small stock, and each such unit is herded separately” (Baxter, 1979: 76). Baxter explicated that the “social consequences” this world view and the ensuing social praxis are, inter alia, “members of a family who share rights in a body of stock are, like that stock, probably widely dispersed” and “every stock owner is likely to be engaged in a network of social relationships which is extensive in social span and in territorial spread” (Baxter ibid: 76.).

Cervicek (1971), as well as any observer, ponders about a recurrent motif in Hararqee rock painting (see Fig.1A), namely a motif of apparently a cow and, under her belly, a pictures of a calf and an H-shaped anthropomorphic stretching hands, seemingly, to beseech her belly (compare with Egyptian Fig. 6H). On the ȯuȥeefaɳa (>guddiffaččaa) ‘child-adoption ritual’, cows are given to the adoptee children by the women (the biological and foster/adopter) who are addressed hypocoristically aȥȥ’olee ‘the good parous; the Baroness’. 62 The gift-cow is also addressed aɁȥ’úree, literally ‘umbilical cord, navel’, caritive of aɁȥ’aara/ aȥȥ’ara ‘sternum, abdomen’ (see Fig.3I), symbol of tenderness, cordiality and entrustment (aȥȥaraa) for the child (Hassen, 1994: 21; WIBD, 2005: 25). The women as well as the children use the usual expression of affection: ȯaraa na ammaȦa ‘My belly/heart itches/hankers to beseech/embrace hers/his’. Some lines from a praise song for a hero illustrate caressing and kissing the belly of his mother (Cerulli, 1922: 48). Metasemiotic encapsulator of this ceremony of “liberating”, “blessing” babies, the word for this ritual itself is designated in various Oromo dialects/areas by: (h)ammačiisaa, literally ‘to get the child embraced, enwrapped, wrapped’ i.e., integrating, initiating rites (from amma or the benefactive amma-Ȧ’a 63 / amna-Ȧ’a ‘to wrap, hug, embrace, Aȥȥ’olee is plural-hypocoristic form used for older women coming from āddē ‘title of respect for women of any age’ or áȦ’a/ aȦ’a ‘mother, female begetter’, yet aȥȥ’olee/ oȥdolee denote ‘white spotted cow; spots, spotted’ from aȥȥí ‘white (hair)’ or aȥȥó ‘whitish’. It is witty paronomastic representation of Aȥȥ’olee ‘Baroness, Feminine Royalty’ a variant of the masculine Aȥooȼaa/Aȥuȼaa ‘senior councilors’ (Viterbo, 1892: 4; Legesse, 1973: 63-64; Stegman, 2011: 18, 80). 63 Hyphen is used to mark division of roots/stems and affixes while slash mark is used to show that the words are used in different dialects. 62

cherish’); ȯuȥeefaɳa (>guddiffaččaa) first meaning ‘to hold (children) between own two thighs for self/selves’, i.e., to rear, nurse, be bulwark for (autobenefactive from gudé ‘groin, calf, lap, area between two legs, child’)); gubbisa, literally, ‘imposing, codifying’ (a causative from ȯu a ‘to brand, mark, cauterize; to sign, true, finger, impose, incubate, summit’); booreʨuma/ boorɳuma, first meaning ‘booranizing’ or ‘to give him/her

booreʨuma/boorɳuma ‘chair’

(indeed, ‘chair, seat’ is offered in action on the ceremony see Fig.5D), second meaning to to make the child boora/bormaduu (>biirbaduu) ‘free and equal man, empowered’. 64 Rooted in this antique worldview, an unfortunate Oromo father/mother has to but say élmee koo ana ǘalaa du’e, literally, ‘my offspring/child died from under/underside me’ while an unfortunate child would say abbo/ayyo koo ana’irraa du’e ‘my dear dad/mum died from above/over me’. All these might well explain that the abundant motif in question is the unfolding of these social meaning or institution.

THE CONSTITUTION OF SON OF MAN AND MATRIARCHY The Ancient Egyptian hierocrat Horapollo left us a document that states when we portrayed or painted “backbone” or “loin” of “a man” (this document indicates, like in Oromo, “bull” metonymically represented “man” for ‘Egyptians’, and anatomy represented genus,kinship, nation, too), they denoted “constitution of a man” for they believed “the seed proceeds from thence” (Horapollo, 1840: 106). The Oromo words (reduplications) for the verb “constitute” and its semantic realizations (‘be something, be ingredient of something, formally establish, formally appoint’) are: aȥȥa/aȥȥaȥȥa ‘be something, independent’, śa

u ‘be ingredient of something’,

ȥ’aa/ȥ’auȦ’a ‘formally establish’, ( )eera ‘formally appoint’, yába/yayaba ‘constitute, make up, be fundament; mount, loin (meat)’. All these arise to our minds the normative-anatomical concepts: áȥaa ‘custom, culture’, ȥuuȦ’a/ȥuyȥȥa ‘social decorum, structure; backbone’, ça

ii ‘seed,

nation, race, tribe, genus; manner, quality’, heerra/hariira ‘line of descent, constitution, law and

Depending the age of the individual and the Gada Classes he/she is initiated/incorporated to, different terms with the same underlying semantic is employed: luboobsa/luba baasa, first meaning ‘to incubate, enfold’ i.e., ‘to assign someone into generation set (Gada) of Łuba age (age 40-48, in respect of his own when he was or his child who is Gada abbaȼee, age 0-8:; Note the possible Ł↔ ), second meaning ‘to set free by winging (from luboosa ‘wing (birds of prey)’); moggaasa, first meaning ‘to name’ (from moqo ‘(to) namesake’), or ‘to set free or secure somebody holding under own arms’ (from moo’a ‘(to) reign, boss, hunt’ or moɢo ‘loins, lumbar (regions)’; goggeessa” to assign membership in luba patriclass’, literally ‘(to) line up, row, series, sterile (become)’ or from ogeesa ‘talk much (become); become specialist, skilled’; maçeensa/miɐeensa ‘to become a member of strongly bound men of the same raaba/rooppi (‘hippos’) but, socially “age of a buffalo or a lion killers” (age 32-40 or this time his father’s 80-88, or latter his own at age 80-88), literally maçeensa/miɐeensa ‘cord’ (see also wih little variation, Legesse, 1973: 127131).

order, vertebrae’, and yabu/yayamu/ ayyamu ‘ratifying, endorsing’, (h)amaa mudaamuddii, literally ‘vein (jugular) and groins’ i.e., death sentence. Matriarchy and matro-semiosis is known (only) in Oromo 65 and whole Cushites social history and never does Christianity allow these for its very gender-biased ideology that undermines women and depicts them as evil and image of Satan. For the ancients, their ‘great men’ were as much agents of semiosis as they are embodied objects social semiosis (i.e. their images, statues are painted, portrayed, or engraved as signs sanding for social meaning). Let us again bring in here the influential Plato’s Cratylus, which claims that it was only ‘great men’, ‘goddesses’, or ‘who know divine things’, have ‘divine intelligence’, who were agents of social semiosis. From the “extinct” ancients the Meroes are the only people known for their matriarchic and matrilineal tradition. Above, we touched upon Meroitic and Egyptian hieroglyph of a sitting woman stretching her hand(s) up to the heaven, which Bekerie associated ‘Ethiopia stretching herself’. Similarly, Bekerie (1999: 71) associates her to Egyptian “Negro Woman on the body of a lion or lioness” or what the Greek say “the sphinxes representing Queen of Egypt through different dynasties”. Many associate the (depictions of) same or similar woman to ISIS, the goddess of fertility. Nevertheless, none admitted so far that she is AȦ’é or AȦ’ēȦ’ī (determinative particulative)

‘Dear Mother’ AȦ’a Raa 67 (or the variant

aȦ’a Raya) the Queen Mother of

Raya (written as Raã by Europeans), who is the primogenitor of Oromo nation. 68 She is ancient ‘goddess’, a symbol of feminine fecundity, ethics, chastity and wisdom (hadarii) for who OromoCush celebrate the ritual AȦ’ēȦ’ī (also AȦeeʈee, Aʈeeʈee) usually overlaps with the above discussed ǅáɋɋii Ritual of Fertility and of Harvests—pastoral, farming, agricultural, human, land, etc. (see Fig.1H). Some European scholars ‘hear’ “AȦ’a Raã” as “Atara” (de Salviac

For instance, see, ‘Introduction’ part of Krapf and Isenberg (1843). Oromo -é or –ee is diminutive-hypocoristic marker. 67 Bernal (2006:133-134) argues Semitic /z/ comes from Egyptian ḏ or Proto-Semitic dʸ. The Oromo exhortation A ’ara ‘In the name of AȦ’a Raa ‘Pray!; Please!’, ȥyartii/ɲaartii ‘old woman’ (-tii ‘feminine determinative definitive’) come from this female deity. Compare this with what Bernal (1991:430) says Egyptian ίɜyat ‘old woman’, which is related to “Semitic root found in the Ugaritic ɢdr and the Arabic ɢadara “help, succor” [and] became ɢåzar in Hebrew”. 68 Abyssinianist historians cite Enarea, Ennarea, Inariya, etc. as Oromo-Cush Ancient/Classical state established and ruled by queens, located in South-Western Ethiopia of present day. This name is strange to the native speakers. Due to long time of phonological evolution or influence of first language, foreigners render the phoneme / ’/ as /n/. On the other, due to the usual co-occurrence restriction or dissimilarization among the retroflex rhotic /r/, /d/ and /n/, many historians confuse the orthography. See also Hassen (1994), Oromo of Ethiopia on this state and orthographic confusions. It is likely that the right orthography is ( )AȦ’a Raya or Dooria/Doorii [ ooɏii], which, we have seen, is productive Oromo political structure/concept and/or community, from east to west Oromiya (for this confusion see also Cerulli 1922: 203, 209, 149; Aregay, 1971: 146, 149). 66

2005[1901]:170) and (mis)interpret her and the AȦeeʈee as “religious, female divinity” (Cerulli, 1922: 11-228).

Hence, it can be contended that there might be a connection between the Ancient Cushites “Ade” (from which comes AȦeeʈee) and Diop’s (1975) “Adite Empire” or Cerulli’s “Adamite Dynasty” (Cerulli, 1922: 31). This is possible, because thanks to Cervicek, the only scholar to analyze the “pre-Egyptian” paintings of Laga Oda, Eastern Oromia (Ethiopia), there is, among many others, amazing motif of “H-shaped man representation (headless man with raised hands as in a gesture of adoration” (Cervicek, 1971: 132), which cuts parallel with one of the many Oromo semiotic “marks for cattle” (Wernerm, 1915: 22) as follows: Uta Laficho-This very curious brand is supposed to represent two hands raised in prayer to heaven, and two feet standing on the ground. This is drawn along the left thigh and flank, so that the hands come to about the place of the heart. There is some reference to Uta Laficho's descent from heaven, but I found it impossible to get at Abarea’s [an Oromo informant] meaning clearly. As a foreign language speaker, Werner might have misread áȦ’a (mother) or ó á ‘Ficus sycomorus’ the Queen of trees as “uta”, a common phenomenon, hence, appropriately, Óȥá Lafiččo ‘the Land of the Queen of Trees, Ficus sycamorus’ 69 , associated with the first cradle land of the amnion (ot á), namely Madda/Horra Wolabu ‘the Land of Genesis/Spring-water’ in Oromo mythical oral history. So historic, mythical and transfactual generic topography qua toponymy, in Wallagga, Qeelami county, Óȥ’ábaa/Áȥ’aabaa Lafìččó ‘the Native Land, Land of Parents/Fertility’ is a toponym for a landscape characteristic of fertile highland with tick forests of giant óȥá tree varieties along river and the riverbanks (using this concept, Áȥ’aabaa, we shall explicate the origin of the so called Aithiopia ‘burnt face’ ahead). ÁȦ’a Laftii ‘Mother of the Bone/Earth’ (bone symbolizes descent and common ancestry) is an ancient mythical woman in oral history (in Wallagga) known for her big-heartedness, drooping breasts and, above all, succoring, breastfeeding and rearing 6 orphaned infants enduring enormous suffer for herself (most probably symbolic of/symbolized by the Queen of Trees—Ficus sycamorus). In Oromo wisdom literature/belief system (and, indeed, in reality) óȥá has viscous teat/breast (mučč’a) and it is under this tree that people conduct precisely the Habermasian (Habermas, 1981) ‘communicative action’ on religious, ecological, political, betrothal, etc., matters or, in general, every issues of the ‘public sphere’. Fittingly, it is possible to infer that—in addition to the rhotic alternating phonological process with the liquids /l/ and /r/-- Óȥá/Uta/Ot á Lafiččo is a morpho 69

Courtesy: BBC Natural World Documentary. 2005. ‘Queen of Trees—sycamore fig’.

phonological (telescoping plus lambdization) and homologization (‘play on word-image) of Óȥá/Óȥó Irreefaččó, literally, ‘Sycamorus/Place of Irreessaa/Irreeč’aa Ritual’.

Similar to and long before Diop’s “Ade” or “Adite”, De Salviac understood that the ancient Oromo-Cush country of Horn of Africa is called “Adai” or “Adel” (De Salviac 2005[1901]:31). Yet, before De Salviac, Ravenstein and Wakefield (1884) wrote “as early as 1525, Jorge d'Abreu, one of the gentlemen attached to the mission of Don Rodrigo de Lima [a ‘Portuguese , in their victorious career round Africa’] accompanied an Abyssinian army into Adea ” (Ravenstein & Wakefield, 1884: 256). Adea might be the honorific AȦ’a ‘Matron, Queen Mother’ or the identity-marker Adaraa/Adéraa (r↔l) coalesced form of AȦ’á Raa/Aadaa Raya ‘State/Custom of Raya’ from which also come the epithet Aȥ’ara ‘In the name of AȦ’a Raa!; Pray!; Please!’ (See Fig. 3I). In like manner, Bekerie (1997: 33, 69) also cites Fattovitch, an Italian archeologist, who argues that the Pre-Axumite culture belongs to Nubia and Meroe whom he (Fattovitch) refers as Alodia and D’mt. Both of the latter names, albeit possible corruption, correspond to the Oromo ethnonyms/toponyms/socio-structural terms Adoolaa 70 and D’amoota, literally ‘the branches (geneaological)’.

Similarly but with different worldview, Ethiopian ‘historians’ tell us of an imaginary, destructive Medieval era Queen they call “Gudit”, who “destroyed Aksum, as one of the worst scourges of Ethiopia” (Mercier, 2001: 57) and a half-animal seductive queen called ‘Sheba/Saba’, also said to be known previously by various significations such as Makida and Candace (Gebreab, 2013: 301-305). Contrary to the destructive, fire-like, or flirtatious “Queens” of Abyssinian legend (?), the Meroes/Egyptians, similar to the Oromos, had a ‘pacifying’, ‘fertility-giving’, ‘life sustaining’, ‘hieroglyphizing’, ‘ethicizing’ and ‘aestheticizing’ queens in their cross-millennia history (see Fig.3H). According to the Oromo Gada tradition, if A ’eeʈee, the Queen Mother appears, holding her ɞiiqee/siiqqee, a sacred, decorated tall stick held by baroness especially on Aȥēté/Aṱeetee ‘the ritual of feminine fecundity divinity’, between two belligerent Oromo groups, it is normative ethics that the war has to, whatsoever, come immediately to a halt (Kumsaa, 1997; see Fig.3H). 71 Black goat or sheep is also the favorite for sacrificial purpose especially at 70

Adoolaa or aȥ’oolee ‘white spotted cow’ is a double entendre and representation of AȦ’oolee ‘Baroness, Feminine Royalty ’ or Aduȼaa ‘senior councilors’. See Viterbo (1892: 4), Legesse (1973: 63-64), and Stegman (2011:18, 80). 71 Foot (1913: 50), defines siiqqee/siki as “rod for punishment; with a white tip to the tail”, Steggman (2011) defines as “stick (ceremonial for women); klipspringer”; comes from siiqa/seeqa ‘to glitter, glimmer; splendor, spiral’. Also, by

“peacemaking and reconciliation ceremony, “a sheep of peace (hoolaa araaraa 72 ) was slaughtered and a waddeessa tree was planted as a symbol of peace” (Gidada, 2001[1984]:103). Just before the Oromoland was to totally fall prey to Abyssinian Christian army and settlers,

Bompiani (1891), a person less known in Ethiopian historical documents,

observed Oromos on pilgrimage to the cradle land, around the present Ethio-Sudanese boarder (most probably the famous Oda

isil), of Abbaa Múdā ‘the father of unction’ and “father of the

nation” (the western Oromo equivalent to the eastern Qaallu) and recorded that as “a sign of peace they make a sheep go before them on entering the village….They are met on their arrival by Abba Muda, who conducts them to his grotto… He as well as his followers dress in skins, let the hair grow very long, and anoint it with butter, and instead of a lance carry a stick, upon the top of which is fixed the horn of an antelope” (Bompiani, 1891: 78; See Fig.3H). Pompiani accurately stated the anthropological fact, but the underlying social semiotic mechanism at work is this. The generic name “antelope” (which can be designated by the meronymous and interchangeable re’ee or hoolaa) is particularly klipspringer (designated by siiqee) while the stick is the renowned siiqee—the antique Oromo style of abstracting meaning from nature and choreographing the semiotic triangle. In Gada System, “the very old, the very young and all women, in the Gadaa system, are considered innocent and peace-loving” and quoted the renowned anthropologist Gemetchu Megerssa who expressed that in Oromo Gada tradition women “were also regarded as muka laaftuu (soft wood--a depiction of their liminality) and the law for those categorized as such protected them” (Kumsa 1997:119).

THE ONOMASTIC AND RHETORIC OF THE ROCK PAINTING SITES Onomastics, a critical analysis of the semantic of names, yields essential information for research on pre-history of Africa (Diagne, 1981; Diop, 1981). Modern semioticians (Cobley, 2001: 259) define ‘semiotics’ as not only “the study of semiosis [the action of signs]”, but also “‘as a ‘metasemiosis’, producing ‘signs about signs’.” It is only at Qaallu-Odaa lands that one conducts the rituals of immortalizing ancestors, blessing the newborn, praying for fertility and rain, praising the gracious God, or conducting political speech acts. Hence, such a sacred land of theologico-politics must be ‘read’ as meaningful taxonomies, both topographically (as a landscape) and typographically (as an ecological-linguistic text). In other words, it is an area worthwhile for or characterized by the homosemic-metonymic variants: laga ‘lagoon, stream, word-image-metonymic interchange, siiqqee means ‘klipspringer’ (apparently among ovicaprids painted on Laga Oda rock paintings along ‘fat-tailed sheep’), depicting the other side of power of women—beauty, velvety and resilience. 72 Also known by hoolaa Waaqaa, literally ‘Sheep of God’, but appropriately ‘amicable, pacific; geniality, cordiality’. The very word for ‘generosity’ is holaa (Stegman, 2011: p. 35).

catchment; hallow, depression’; Ȼāȯá ‘(to) language, dialogue, realize; vocal cord, larynx’ (See Appendix for metasemiotic rock art of Ȼāȯá from Beero site); Ȼāȯá ‘logo, language, discourse, dialect’; Ɏāȯâ ‘(to) foretell, prophesy; prophet’); ȦaȻāȯá ‘to realize (intention/word to action/reality)’ and the forest of oȥa ‘Ficus sycomorus’. Called Muka Waaqaa ‘Tree of God’ or Muka Oȥaa ‘Speechifying Tree’ 73 , the above mentioned tree of geneaology or genesis, oȥaa, is chosen for, among many reasons, for its causal powers—has milky saps symbolize őṯṯa ‘amniotic fluid’, the primeval fluid, and multiple, large and is evergreen branches. Hence, its shade is used not only as a graveyard but also as ‘assembly hall’ for Gada parliament, “a depiction of a political power” and “symbolizes the entire corpus of their activities, history, culture and tradition” (Gutamaa, 1997: 14).

The etymology of some of the variants of oȥaa offers enlightening anagrams. The variety qɨȹ u ‘Ficus gnaphalocorpa’ (or similar), described as muka qaalluu ‘tree of Qaallu’ comes appending agreement marker - a/- u to the recurrent root of qûȹ- ‘pure, black; immolate, sacrifice’. Another is ȥûɓɓí ↔ ȥâmbii ‘tree of norm, agreement’ (a kind of Ficus thonnigil) or known as ȥambii ǘâbbii ‘‘tree of the tough bullock; tree of solid word/observation’ 74 , or still known as muka Ȧ’ammaa ‘tree of sap/whey’ for it oozes a sticky, milky latex. Ŷakka/Aa aa ‘baobab’ is literally ‘tree of news (of spirits of forefathers)’ or, in other areas, muka dãmm’i ‘the tree of honey (bee)’ or muka dãmmee ‘tree of blood/branches (genealogical)’. When he pauses or closes his solid words, a Gada wiseman says in a poetic verse, Ȼamii, ȥûɓɓí ké ȥammán ná qabi ‘fellow citizen, hold/bind/preserve your words with honey for me’ (i.e., (I, you) keep your words, oath!), or ȥûɓɓí késsan akka ȥammá waliti ha mui’au “May your words be as sweet to one another as is honey”, or qabaȦ’e ‘I hold (your words)!’ (de Salviac, 2005 [1901]:220; Bartels, 1975: 903). To a Wiseman having articulate rhetorical skills (a key criteria for becoming a Gada politician), an Oromo says arrabi isaa walaȼa dãmma, literally ‘his tongue is pure liquid honey’, a quip for ‘he has unique skill to inform (Ȧ’aama) in a poetical-proverbial-wittily style’. 75

Likewise, it is not haphazard that a considerable number of the toponyms of the ancient rock paintings sites of Hararqee are not only significated but also are characteristic of the above Oromo ontological words or corrupted forms by foreign language speakers. For the most part, 73

It comes from ‘primitive’ substantive verb õȥa ‘be inspirited, pulsate; to inform, utter, express’, hence the durative oȥū ‘proclamation, news’. 74 From this comes dambii ‘agreement (in writing)’, itself rom dubbi ‘express, act, word’ (see Foot, 1913: 60). 75 Chemical analysis of the Hararqee rock painting pigments compelled Lofrumento et. al. (2011) extrapolate the Ancients’ use of organic ‘binders’, especially sap from the local nopal plants or honey, for painting.

they collocate with or qualify the sacred theologico-political system ontologies (Gada, Qaallu, Baallii) or the mythical-eschatological landscape ontologies (ȯoda, ȯada, qaallu). So polysemantic concepts ȯada also designates, besides political system, ‘temple, cave’ or ‘deep burial chambers’ for the gadamoo/gadamooɳii ‘who (are to) lay to rest in their final resting/burial places’ 76 , from which also comes ȯadaɣméʨa (↔ȯaȥāmeeɟaa) ‘literally, temple of the fetus; womb’ (Bartels, 1983: 261).

This is image of Gada System, a complex concept

generally designating the circular flux of coming of ages (ȯaȥa), lives (luba), generations (horro, kharro), political power handovers (baalli), seasons (gaȥɁa), eras (barra), cosmos, timespace. An allomorphic category with the latter is the ontological concept ȯoda ‘mountain foot, foothill, depression (presence of water body is necessary both semantically and topographically)’. As ordinary vocabulary, ȯoda also designates ‘down, bottom, slope, cave’. In their studies entitiled “Cushitic and Nilotic Prehistory: New Archaeological Evidence from North-West Kenya,” Lynch and Robbins (1979: 321) observed that “Each site consists of a burial area and an accompanying rock art centre” and “near river(s)” or “tributaries.” This is true of any rock art sites of Hararqee, too, though evidence of burials cannot be presented here.

To analyze some toponyms of Hararqee rock painting sites (also listed in Bravo, 2007 and Lofrumento et. al., 2011) with their respective polysemous 78 metasemiotic meanings, we can consider: Goda Akkawa/Aȯawa ‘Foothill/ Cave of Iconization/Agnates’; Goda Daȥȥabē ‘Foothill/Cave of Letters/Writings’ (a reduplication with phonological change from ȥaɓa ‘bend, plait, engrave’, homosemic with ȥûɓa ‘to word, express, flesh out’ and ȥîɓa ‘paint’) ; Goda Duɓɓata ‘Foothill/Cave of Speaking/that Discourses’; Goda Bássã/Busa ‘Foothill/Cave of Languaging/Delivering’; Goda Burqa/Meȥȥisa ‘Foothill/Cave of abbo/Àbbabo

‘Foothill/Cave

Genesis/Ancestors’;

Generation/Forming’, Goda

Goda

Qunema

‘Foothill

Relation/Intersection’; Gadālee Ballii (sometimes corrupted, Goda Ali Bilili) ‘Foothills of PowerHandover’. A similar look at the onomastic of other sites are also enlightening: Bake Khallo 76

Gadamoo refers top the systematically designed chambers, usually in five segments and a seriese of shapes similar to crisscrossing curved shapes like Christian Crosss; Gadamooɳii are retitred Abba Gadas in age 80s, are called, idiomatically, closer to boolla qaranqareessaa ‘holes of millipede’. Finneran’s (2007) works reveal similar burial chambers across Ancient Ethiopia. 77 Also, gada is used as in gadaan ke meek’a ‘how many is your gada’ i.e., how old are you? Of common etymological background, Guȥȥo>GuɁȦo ‘circularly plaited grass-plate’ is a symbol of womb and time is circular for Oromo (Bartels, 1983: 261). The word qaraa/garaa designates ‘womb, abdomen, stomach; mountain’. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church adopted gada corrupting it to gadam ‘cave (as temple of monks)’. See Hassen (1994:9-10 for various meanings of gada). 78 Linguists agree that polysemy is the reflection of long diachronic semantic change (Geeraerts, 1998: 6; Chomsky, 2000: 180-182).

‘Expanse of Qaallu’; K’arré Súrā/Súrree ‘Limestone/Gypsum Figures/Talents’; Goda K’arree Ǘaldessa ‘Hill of Cluster of Limestone/Gypsum Scripture’; Gadaa/Ganda-Biftuu/Şurree ‘Village of Sunshine/Intelligence/Image’ (see Fig.1A); D’aȯaa K’etebaa/Qeetamaa ‘Stone Book/Stone of Nativity’; Barrú

K’abanaa/Qabanawa ‘Authorship Notes’, Goda Hoǘǘii/Oundji ‘Foothill of

Affairs/Wording’ and so forth. 79

The pre-historic site of Laga Gafra/Golla

ofa ‘River/Paddock of Buffalo’ 80 , famous for its

bovine, ovicaprid and anthropomorphic pictures, is located at the county of Gāra Mull’ata ‘Mountain of Revelation/Publication’ specifically “in the deeply incised Gafra River Canyon” covered by “podocarpus and juniperus species, [which] was largely eliminated” is called by the native Allaa Oromo, Gada Ba’la 81 (“large shelter”)” (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975: 47). Oȥa tree,

ȥá ‘Custom (governance)’ and a a are much related in form, meaning and course of

history. Meronymous, both Oȥa and Qaallu mean ‘Axes’ and, as such are names of the five Political Head Quarters 82 of the Oromo Nation during the Gada System, the former (Oȥa), which is for confederal political purposes, compared to the latter (Qaallu), which is for federal states’ religious and ritual purposes, designating more distant, both in spatiotemporality and geneaology or history, and higher, both hierarchically and power relations (Nicolas, n.d.; Gutamaa, 1997). The full name of Laga Oȥa historic site, with its

river (see also Cervicek,

1971: 121) is Laga Oȥaa Guɀɀuufaȥaa/GoȥɁoofataa, which translates 'the United Kingdom of Gada System’ whose headquarter is at Laga Oȥa. As usual, the homophonic anagram is so deceptive to somebody without adequate analysis of the lexicogrammar in its socio-cultural context. Appending the auto-benefactive marker –(ú)faȦ’/ʈ or –(ó)faȦ’/ʈ to either of the following 79

Spectroscopic analysis of Hararqee prehistoric rock painting revealed the presence of gypsum (Lofrumento, et.al. 2011); k’arree/qarsaa ‘limestone, gypsum’ literally means ‘that by which is sharpened, carved, inquired, studied’; so is the soil-type boorallee/barullee ‘volcanic rock, ochre’ which comes from booruu/barruu ‘variegating, painting; knowledge, hand palm’, Ɂooraa/ȥoorii ‘limestone; erudite, sagacious’, etc. 80 The Oromo gafra/gaßra means ‘African buffalo’ (gaffarɟa, absolutive accusative), golla means ‘paddock; every enclosed place’ (Tutschek, 1844), ofa [ȥófā] means ‘fertile land; fat, big (bovine)’ (Tutscheck, 1844: 115; Stegman, 2011: 30). 81 Gada ‘temple, shelter’ and ball’a/baȼȼa ‘very large, wide’ (baallii, nominative) are ordinary definitions and undermine the meaning of the otherwise complex social-philosophical concepts, as discussed in this paper. They are influenced by the Amharic ba’al ‘Christian holiday’, a recent borrowing by little form-semantic change, but Claimed by Semiits as coming from the mysterious and dead “Phoenecian god Baal” (Leslau 1992: 83). 82 Well known O a Axes are Odaa Nabee, Odaa Bisil, Odaa Roobaa, Odaa Bultum and Odaa Bulluq. The name of the Hararqee Axis, Odaa Bultum, is phonological change, dissipation or rhotacization/Lambdization, related to the concept/form Barentuma or Booreetúma we discussed above. Additional evidence is bultuma means ‘administration, governance’. Similar phonological change must have occurred to others too for they are very antique, too (e.g. known categorical allophones are Nabee/Lubaa/Nubaa, Roobaa/Lubaa/D’obbaa/T’obboo, Bisil/Masir/Maasaraa, Bulluq/Baa ii/Baalličča). The only surviving Qaallu Federal Axes are of the Booran of Southern, Ethio-Kenya, viz., Qaalluu Odiituu, Qaalluu Karrayyuu, Qaalluu Matťaarii (Garǘeeda), Qaalluu Karaar, and Qaalluu Kuukuu.

etymologically related non-finite root can come with related semantic field: gaȥʌ- ‘bond, fetter, concord; to go a warlike adventure’, ǚoȦ-/ȯoȥ- ‘(to) foot, hoof, cave’, bundle, knot; squat, congregate’,

ȯuȥ-/ȯuɲ- ‘tie, bind,

guɁ - ‘recoil, contract, oblige, adopt, persuade’, ȯuȥȥ-

‘be/become great, big, full, multitude’, gooɁ- ‘reinforce’ all of whose underlying semantic is totality, unity or state formation. 83

One interesting motif at this site is the one Cervicek (1971:132 in his Fig.25, here see Fig.3H) describes as “horseshoe-like representations” which look a congregation or “group of symbols… omitting entirely the head, horns and the tail of the animals.” This carefully styled motif speaks to the auto-benefactive syntactic structure of ǚoȦefarȦā which means by language game (1) ǚoȦ(e)-farȦā ‘shoe-horse, horse-hoof’ or (2) ǚoȦ(e)-farȦā > ǚôȦôofaȦ’a, literally, ‘squat, tame, be circumspective, come together; to congregate, mass’, appropriately, a call for unity and state formation. The use of the sign/lexicogrammar faɌȦa ‘horse’ for auto-benefactive marker –faȦ’a with the usual epenthetic liquid consonant (Ɍ) is worth noting. Beyond syntax, the role of horses in war or defense of the nation and horses’ selves-defensive strategy (congregating but facing off their foreparts in different directions while facing their rears inside) make them not only brute necessity but also cognitive/imagistic possibility.

Equestrian symbolism is also captured in the following ethnomathematical formula coding antique social memory (Wener, 1914b: 272, everything is kept intact despite there are apparent problems of decipherment by Wener; we cannot also go to details here despite field data is available for these are still in use among the Oromo): Tokoch kes harea, tok kesa kuwol = One is the hoof of the donkey Laman much hretia = Two are the teats of the goat Sadien kubdurea = Three is [a kind of ornament worn by women] Arfa much hoyoa = four are the teats of the cow…. Shan agicho nama = Five are the fingers of man Jan lawon herima = Six are the marriage cattle Toib ban imbulte = The Seven stand on one side Sadiet dal sara = Eight is the bringing-forth of the sara (a fabulous animal) Salar hariedi wantoko = Nine is not counted Kur sir sadiek = Ten.......? Dib ilkole dadua = A hundred are the strings of the sack (dadu) Kum mil kankares =A thousand are the legs of the millipede

One outstanding style in Laga Oda pictures is “the fore-legs and hind-legs [of the cattle] are pooled to one thick line respectively” (Cervicek, 1971:130).

In fact, Werner only literally translated Tokoch kes harea and left tok kesa kuwol without translating as well as cared not about the complex Oromo wisdom literature style of exploiting polysemy and paronomasia in simultaneity (see de Salviac, 1901). Tok kesa kuwol means all the following: (1) one is kâolii / iiloo ‘dark and ferocious equid’ (or the variant k’ooli/kuula ‘shell, horseshoe, dark and nice thing’), and/or (2) one is ka Olii ‘one is the Above’, i.e., the Monolith Sky-God, and/or (3) ʈaka kessa ka wol ‘inside oneness, is there each and every one of us’, a reference to the philosophy of dialectical universalizabilty and concrete singularity of a manness. The equids are referred to us ǚoȥe ȥúȦ’á ‘round-/bound-/full-hoof’, a symbol of ȥūȥ’a ‘edifice, roundness,

holism,

back-ups,

density,

multitudinality,

strength-in-unity’

(see

Gidada,

2001[1984]: 30-35 for Makko Billii 84 saga and farewell speech in which veneering and breeding horse for defense is one of the key themes). The idiom ǚoȥé wol k’abaȦ’a literally, ‘hold the hoof/claw of each/one (an)other’, means ‘to wager, pledge solidarity’ (see also Tutschek, 1844: 47, 35) as well as enacted bodily by hooking/clasping fingers on Gadaa System ceremonies. Fig.3I might be the co-textual (i.e., lexico-grammar) objectification of the latter concept of (formation) of social cohesion. Another related interesting Qaallu Institution is ǚuȦ’arfaȦ’a, which Herbert Lewis (Lewis, 1970) treated in his article “ǙuȦ’arfan:

A Multi-Functional Institution

among the Western Oromo”, from ǚuȦ’a fuɌ ‘number fourteen, fortnightly’. To reach the Laga r

Oda site from the Harar-Diré D’awa High Way, one has to pass through a village, whose name is Wayeela/Waa’eela, meaning ‘agent, companion, escort, helper’, deadverbial from waaya ‘revered person’ whose synonym is the masculine Qallačča or feminine qaalliʨii. 85 Today, only few disemerging oȥaa trees are observed across the way to the site, yet retaining their metasemiotic function.

Lastly, the metasemiotic role of the profession of rock arts is worth touching. Only the men-oflearning (qoɋoo) 86 or the pharaoh ( ooraa) stone/knowledge carvers (Saaqaa Šarafaa / Soofā

Antonio d’Abbadie, one of the early European Missionary scholars, described Makko Billii as “African Lycurgus” (Werner, 1914b: 263; Triulzi, 1990: 319). 85 Borrowed into Amharic as wakil ‘delegate’ and wayyaala ‘cashier and helper of the taxi driver’. 86 The Oromo word ooraa ‘pharaoh’, (aba) qoɋoo ‘wisemen, men of reading, noble men, men of big pupil (eye); raven, black hawk’ deadjectival plural from qará ‘sharp, sharpen, inquire, read, delineate, sculpture, do grammar’) and qafá ‘wise person’ (from qaffa ‘to ask; horn, day’) are also deciphered from Ancient Meroitic-Egyptian texts (See Aubin, 2003, for Meroitic qore “sovereign, king” and pqr “prince”, and Old Nubian ο ο( ) (‘ogro(g)’) “chief, king”; also, Rowan, 2006).

ooraa 87 ) or Abba Qot o/Qoȥó (iterally ‘Fathers of the adze’ Gidada, 2006: 99) are the expert semioticians or rhetoricians. Werner (1914b: 277) defined the professional Morā/Murā as ‘rainmaker, sheriff, spokesman’; but, he also ‘reads’ moora ‘peritoneum or abomasums’ of sacrificial animals and ‘prophesizes prophesies’ (raga ruga / raaǘii raaǘa). Gadaa ßoora/Mura is the Booran Gada System’s principle of equitable mura “government by committee”, itself symbolized by qat a-mura ‘cross’ (literally ‘horizontal-vertical’ cut) (Legesse, 1973: 63). What is more interesting is Saaqaa Šarafaa (or corrupted and shortened, Saqa Šarifa) and Soofā/Safuu ooraa

(corrupted

Sofo

Mor

Sof

Umer)

both

designate,

besides

semiosis

professionalisms, two different amazing ancient/medieval rock arts sites; the former in Hararqee and the latter in the historic land of Maȥȥa Ẃalaaßu in Baalee, south-central Oromia (see Appendix). Soofā/Safuu

oora was a well known site of hammering out Gada Laws since

antiquity and pilgrimage center in the medieval era, when it was re-named as Dirree Sheikh Hussein, for the community began to accept Islamic religion. This has been well documented by Braukämper (2002).

HOLIDAY OF THE SUBLIME COW/BULL ON THE QAALLU CRADLE LAND Eurocentric scholar has to but call it bull-/cow-worship to pre-Christian/pre-colonial African zoophilism (devotion to and respect for animals) and zoomorphism (use of animals in arts), hence, their social epistemological, semiotical and grammatological projects of what I call, out of lack of better terminology, zoomorphologization (i.e., idea-naming or calquing after (name of) animals) and zoosemotactic, i.e., symbolization, figuritivization or signification of literary or nonliterary meanings and social institutional or epistemological concepts by signs of real world objects and animals. Likewise, reflective of Oromo zoophilism and zoomorphism, Qaallu-Gada institution’s key concept is the Time/Holiday of the Cattle or Ǘaarrii Loonii or AȦ’eeʈee Saa

(Legesse, 1973; Bartels, 1975; Dahl & Megerssa, 1990; Kassam, 2005; Wako, 2011). Held around ritual camps (see Fig.2H, I), the ‘festivity of the cattle’ culminates in renovations: old “fence of the barn is dismantled and rebuilt…Leaves of the birbirsa (podocarpus) are put on the fence. At the centre of the fence, straight and wet stem of [the] tree are lodged…under [which] leaves of different herbs are placed [as are they put] on the right and left hands of the [barn]” (Dirribii 2011: 138-139; Bartels, 1975). The festivity and dancing is accompanied by bringing 87

Etymologically,saaqa ‘open, unveil, seek; sag, skate, slide’ (saãqqaa ‘board, shelf, carpet’), šaɌafa/şaȹifa ‘change (money), slice, slit; chop, review, steward’; şok’a/çok’a ‘curve (wood, stone), engrave; chop, trim; inspect,cleanse, clean’ (hence, çõk ú ‘adze (the instrument)’, sofaa ‘to file, plane, scrub (carpentry)’, mora/mura ‘file, scour, cut, curve’. 88 The term Ǘaarrii (Ǘaarraa, accusative) is a (masculine) spatiotemporal ‘progress’ (human and non-human) divinity concept, while AȦ’eeʈee is a purely feminine (human and non-human) fertility divinity concept.

out/holding horooroo y-shaped pastoral-stick, a symbol of hooroo/hooruu ‘sprouting’ (see Fig.2G) and hafarsa/afarsa ‘a special pastoral whisk made of luxurious fur’, a symbol of afarsa/farsa ‘great respect and affectionate caress’ (Fig.2F, the anthropomorphic observed are refered to as qoroȯanda ‘sheriffs’ though this word is also used to alternately for the whisk they hold, too).

Cervicek (1971:124 Fig.10) wonders about the unexplained but recurrent “oval

representations… painted black [and] white-dotted” and consistently painted “below” the cow udder (Fig.2E). These could be woɁč’a drinking horn-cup or č’óč’oo/č’iič’oo milking horncup (Fig.2B, D). An excerpt from the praise song (also Bartels, 1975) to the cattle on the Ǘaarrii Loonii ‘talks’ about these cultural objects (see Fig.2 P, Q, R) and cattle: Chorus: Ahee-ee Soloist: Yá saa, yá saa—o cattle, o cattle! saa Humbikooti--cattle of my Humbiland, Saa eessa ǘibbu?--What part of cattle is useless? Saa qeensa qičču--Our cattle with soft hoofs, koṱṱeen šínii ta’e—from their hoofs, we make coffee-cups gogaan wallu ta’e—from their skins, we make wallu [leather cloth] gaafi wanč’a ta’ee, -- from their horns, we make woɁč’a [large milk/beer cup], faȻɢanas/moqqa ta’a!—as well as a spoon! Chorus: Ahee-ee…. Likewise, on Irreessa annual Holiday of Thanking Waaqa (Fig. 2 J, O), a line of doxology mentions ‘Waaqa č’iič’oo gurraattii’ “God of the dark č’iič’oo” (Sabaa, 2006: 312; Legesse, 1973: 71, 78).

A(Bravo, 2007)

B(č’óč’oo milk-pot)

E(Cervicek, 1971)

F (Bravo, 2007)

H (Legesse,1973 )

C(Cervicek, 1971)

G (Qaalluman, Qallačča )

I(Cervicek, 1971)

D(Booré milk-pot)

J(Observing Irreečča))

K(Laga Oda)

N (boraati )

P (Paulitschke, 1893)

L(Goda T’e nek’e)

M(Anselin, 2009)

O(Goda Boora/Baruu)

Q (Paulitschke, 1893)

S (Cervicek, 1971)

R (de Salviac, 2005[1901]:159)

T (Cervicek, 1971)

FIGURE 2—A from Goda Elellee/Allele “Hill of Cowries’ representation of B č’óč’oo milk-pot, especially the sacred č’óč’oo qurratti ‘the little black č’óč’oo’ decorated with elellee ‘cowries, shells’ (č’óč’oo also means ‘francoline, white-dotted’, homomorphic category with ǘuǘuu/ǘâǘuu ‘owl’); C from Laga Oda apparently representation of string of cowries; D variant of č’óč’oo, booré (literally “goose, belle, feminine beauty, grouse, free, liberal”) is ceremonial milk-container decorated with string of cowries, a sacred material culture given to a bride from her mother on her wedding day; E Laga Oda painting (Cervicek, 1971 Fig.10), “cattle” with motif of cow/bull with qallačča charm-marks on the nape/neck with “oval and stroke representations below”, motifs interpreted here as representations of milk-container. F: Bravo ( 2007, based on Breuil 1934: fig.11) from Ganda Biftu the anthropomorphic are maybe foora ‘one/those who takes cattle to untamed river valley’ (Legesse, 1973: 57)) apparently holding the ceremonial whisk (afarsa, alanqee) chiefly held on the Ǘaarrii Loonii, a simulacra of exultation-and-praise (faarsaa) for the cattle; G: Qaallu man with his horooroo sacred herd stick; H Professor Legesse’s (1973:62) ‘painting’ of Qaallu-Gada Ritual Camp (at the top are spears and milk pots, both of which are symbols of male reproductive organ and female’s breast, respectively; see also Bartels, 1983:261-262); I: Cervicek’s Fig. 3 obtained from Laga Oda motif: “Oval representations and strokes, curved lines, dots”; J: Celebrants of Holiday of Irreečča ‘Almighty God, the Righteous’ holding the symbolic material culture boraati headrest (a symbol of buraatii ‘buffalo/lion bull image—rolling in mud, buzzing, roaring; firmness, triumphalism’); Werner (1914a:128), uses the Booran Oromo word “Barke” and defines “a wooden pillow, or rather neck-rest, of the well known Egyptian pattern”; K and L: Respectively Laga Oda and T’e nek’e/Goda Dassa paintings of bull’s nape plus horn, simulacra of existing in firmness and justice (bora t’aȥek’a); M: From Anselin’s (2009) Figure 11-Nyangatom headrest (right); middle, Ancient Egyptian headrest, 18th Dynasty, Gurob (Manchester Museum 3722, © The Manchester Museum); headrest hieroglyph, Gardiner Q3 (left); N boraati ‘headrest’ of Abba Jifar (for more on this man, see Hassen 1994); O: Painting at Boora/Barruu Cave, typical of Irreečča Holiday

style of praying body-language (see also Fig.4F); P, Q, and R are Oromo cultural milk-cups made of cattle hooves and horns. D: from Cervicek (1971, Figure 9) “Two big paintings of cattle with a small one between them. Above the big cattle pictures and at several places overpainted by them is a large outstretched figure painted in English red which is continued to the left” (p. 123); D from Cervicek (1971, Figure 4).

Figures 2 F (right), J, K, L, M, N, O (see also Appendix Sooddoo, Buttaa

aarraa Pre-historic

and Classical Era Rock Arts, top left) all portray typical of Irreečča Holiday style of praying bodylanguage (arms raised) and exhortation of Irressa ‘Lift-up!; Raise to above!; Praise God!’ from irré ‘above, on; muscle, arm’). A “perfect attitude at prayers in the Oromo’s eyes is to lift the hands towards heaven” (Bartels 1983: 350). These recall to our memory the Ancient Egyptian Fig.3H (right), the aforesaid social semiotic mark/image “Uta Laficho”, the imagistic/symbolic cultural artifact (Fig.2j) boraati headrest (a symbol of buraatii ‘image of buffalo/lion bull, rolling in mud, buzzing, roaring; firmness, triumphalism’). Moreover, on the Irreeč’aa/Irreessaa Ritual is reiterative epitaphic supplication and hymn of the day--Mālloo! Maree Hoo! “Heavens! Here again is the Twist/Revolving of the Mesmerizing BaaȺȺii/BaaɌɌii—‘New Light/Year’!” are ejaculated during prayers, accompanied by the extra-linguistic ‘speech act’ of lifting hands up (plus twisting) towards the heavens or the sky (waaqa). That anthropomorphic, v-shaped image formed of the person-in-pray is precisely enfolded by the word balló, a de-adjectival from baȺȺ ‘to bifurcate, flame’, plus maroo ‘gyratingly, rotator (moving)’. Even the special food of this new Light-Year time is maɌɌoo—a type of bread made of green corn (the dough wrapped (mara) with the corn leaves and ‘baked’ in clay a pot).

Above, we said, cows are a symbolic representation of women. Basically, there is no difference between a newborn calf and a new born man or nfant. For this reason, there is no need of separate lexis, or both is élmee—diminutive-denominative from elma ‘to milk’. Young calves or children are worn kolliɳa ‘collar’, č’alli / ǘallattii ‘diadem, crown, tiara’ or č’allee ‘jewelry’ wrapping around their necks (See Fig.2T), all of whose semiotic significance is to express ǘálla/ǘallačča ‘love’ and protection from ȯaaȥiȦú ‘evil spirit’ that bewitches not only infants and young of animals, but also men, cows and crops (Bartels, 1983). The first meaning of ȯaaȥiȦú/gádíṱú is ‘silhouette’ or ‘human shadow’ (Tutschek, 1844: 54), but, in this context it refers to the evil spirit that accompanies or inhabits person or cattle. The evil spirit comes in a form of shadow and watches with its evil-eyes, hence, it is also called, in some areas, ȼaltu / ilaltu ‘watcher (wicked)’ having, oddly, four multi-colour eyes (called buȥaa). See Fig.2S, especially the silhouette-like background and an evil-eye motif seen watching from above. In praise song to cattle, this is captured as follow: Ilaltun hadabdu--May no jealous person sees them, tissen ha-argatu--may the herdsman watch them, 60

iɲi abba hinȦ’abu--the owner's eye will not fail to look at them. Ya sawa, ya sawa--O cattle, o cattle, gari kun loni--what good cattle they are (Bartels 1975: 915). Silhouette, shadow, evil spirits are all motifs common in Hararqee (and across Ethiopa) rock paintings as well as, quite intriguingly, as far as Australian first-nations’ rock paintings. What’s more, qallačča headgear, which some describe narrowly as “phallic symbolism” (to be treated in detail below) is common as far as the Americas first-nations (Sertima, 1976).

QALLAČČA: PHALLUS OR THE EMBLEM OF THE ‘BLAMELESS ETHIOPIANS’? The fact that Homer writes in The Illiad and the Odyssey of these Ethiopians as “blameless” and “pious people” precisely translates the word Qaalluu ‘the blameless, righteous, virtuous” or the plural Worran/Afran Qaalloo “the pious people” and this fact was confirmed by the initial early (1830s and 1840s) European travelers and scholars who truthfully and truly lived with the Oromo, learnt and spoke Afan Oromo (e.g., Father Ludwig Krapf and Charles Tutscheck of Germany and Antonio d’Abbadie as well as Father Martial de Salviac of France); disregard the prejudice and falsities later re-constructed from their field data by “the colonial intelligentsias”. Not only do Oromo scholars and students know these early frankly Europeans from their grandgrands and grand fathers via oral histories, but would also like if their statues were built on Oromian soils. This wish is indeed (experience shows) would outright be rejected by the Orthodox theocratic regimes of Ethiopia who on the ground that they came not only to spoil Abyssinia with Catholicism and Protestantism but also (albeit not spoken so loud) to expose their hidden human and cultural genocides.

An antique, polysemantic and vital device, the ontological concept qallačča (absolutive from qullu ‘black, sacred’) continues to be object and means of our analysis. Accusing “some anthropologists” for “phallisphication”, Amborn (2009: 401) argues that qallačča is rather a symbol of “socio-religious mediator which is able to bundle positive and negative “cosmic” (for want of a better word) energies” and “symbolizes a link between the human and the supernatural world; its function is to open up this connection between different spheres.” He is talking about qallačča, a mysterious sacred material culture worn on the forehead (Fig.2 B) by Qaallu ‘Spiritual Father, Christener, Baptizer’ or, sometimes, by the Abba Gada ‘the elected president’ to serve for eight years in accordance with Gada System Laws. Plowman (1918:114), who took a sketch of qallačča headgear

described it as “emblem” of the Qaallu “Chief Priest”

i.e., Abba Qallačča (Fig. 6H). Qaallu is described as Abba Qallačča ‘Father/Master/Proprietor of 61

qallačča’ portraying that, he is ‘Guide of Perspective (=indicator)’ to his people. For this reason and his multiple traits and roles, the Qaallu man as well as his emblem qallačča

are

interchangeably referred to by the adjectival aȥȥoo, from the polysemantic aȥȥa ‘forehead, head; promontory, headland, beginning, identity; intellect, talent, gift’.

To our surprise, the Oromo Qaallu-Gada System cuts parallel with the system of the Judea people (who many Abyssinianist writers too confusingly tell us used to live/are living (?) in Ethiopia), a social system called Judaism. Judaism, which encompasses Jewish law, custom, and practice, offers an integrated cultural system encompassing the totality of individual and communal existence. It is a system of sanctification in which Halakhah (which derives from the Hebrew word “to go” and has come to mean the “way” or “path” 89 ) offers both a worldview and a way of life to be subsumed under God’s rule—that is, under divinely revealed models of cosmic order and lawfulness. Too confusingly, it is stated that Judaism and religion do not exist in premodern Hebrew. 90 One lunatic Abyssinianist ‘historian’ by the name Hable-Sellassie (1972: 96) claims without any evidence as far as practical reality of northern Ethiopia indicates/indicated: According to the Kibre Negest, the official religion of Ethiopia in pre-Christian times was monotheistic. The Queen of Sheba brought Judaism to Ethiopia and this became the official religion.26 The existence in Ethiopia of a Jewish religious community, the Falasha, with all its archaic ritual and religious practices, is a fact. Edward Ullendorff, another lunatic figure in Abyssinianist historiography and Hable-Sellassie’s ‘miseducator’ (to use words of Dr. Bekerie (1997), however, later wrote with much adumbration: Our knowledge of any extra-biblical Jewish customs came to Claudius from the Portuguese and from the acquaintance with Rabbinic Judaism and not (as one may be compelled to point out nowadays) from the Falashas…. It must be remembered that die Falashas possess only the Pentateuch not the other Old Testament books and that this part of the Scriptures reached them exclusively in the Ge’ez translation of the monophysite church….A clear, picture of mid-nineteenth century Sabbath observance by the Falashas emerges, from H. A. Stern’s Wandering among the Falashas in Abyssiinia (London I862) (Ullendorff, 1989: 172; emphasis original). 89

Note that, above we defined the mystical concepts karraa/ěkheraa ‘spirit of the dead’, k’ariā/qaariha/qaari’a ‘to go pass crossing a hill, stepping over (of soul, spirit of the dead), ascend’ and khaarra [ aarra] (also accented in other dialects as karaa, k’arraa) ‘passage, path, road, way, direction’. We shall see throughout this paper that Qaallu, the Oromo Spiritual Father of the Nation wearing his sharp qallačča mystical headgear, is the moral-ethical (qayo) and eschatological (ākka/ãȯa) mediator (ȯalča) and informant (ȯurro) of his people. Given the sememic/conceptual similarities, it is not unreasonable to suspect alchemiztion by lambdization of the Oromo QaaRiHa or others into HaLaKhaH 90 “Judaism.” Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

The implausibility of his friends “wandering” and “Portuguese” in Abyssinia as well as his EuroAbyssinian white Nugus by the name “Claudius”, all have been other adumbrations we discussed above.

Some describe qallačča as a “white metal horn…worn on the forehead” as “horn-symbolism” (Bartels, 1983: 146). For others it is a symbol of fertility or a “phallic ornament” (Haberland, 1963:51 quoted in Bartels, 1983:146). Similar to Amborn’s, another scholar (Knutsson 1967:8890 quoted in Bartels, 1983:145) sees qallačča as “a conically formed ‘lump’ of black iron…brought from the heaven by the lightening.” In his Oromo-English Dictionary, Foot (1913:33) defined qallačča 91 as “a white patch between the horns of a [bull or cow] running back down the two sides of the neck; a charm” (Fig.3). That ‘patch’ or ‘charm’ around the neck as seen in the figures is also called (as well as is symbol of) urra/quɌa ‘flap, ear, lump; fame, reputation, name’ (from which comes

uɌɟa ‘advisor, exhorter’) or

uɌrɣ-malaɣ literally ‘ear-

dewlap; what news, hoopoe (believed prophetic, hence called šimbra qaalluu ‘bird of qaallu’)’, appropriately ‘mediator, counselor’ (Tutschek, 1844: 121 erroneously defines this as ‘wagtail’ Part Two), all of which are symbols/qualities of the Abba Qallačča . 92 The ‘charm’ is quite related to the concept book’a ‘a white mark upon the forehead of bull/ram/’ (Fig.3A, G & Fig.3B, D, E). For human, Adda isá book’aa k’aba “His forehead has a blaze on forehead!’ and Qallačča qaba “He has a qallačča” are metaphoric/imagistic expressions meaning the person has the spiritual/intellectual omen/grace/sublimity, inherited from ancestors, that he can baptize, christen and prophesize accurately. For this reason, “white-headedness” or wearing white turban is a symbol of (passage to) seasoned manhood and wisdom (qar-oma) and seniority class or superordinate moiety (Kassam, 1999). Proximally, Qaallu approaches to a quality of God’s power: ȯaraa Ȧ’aȯaa keessa-yu ni arga ‘God even can see straight through the heart [core] of stone’. As earthly holy man, the Qaallu shares the metaphoric designation in Oromo doxology for God’s power, namely,

aȹčã ‘God’s Providence or Witness’ (Tutschek, 1844:57; Foot,

1913:21) accompanying His Garbičča ‘Servant (honorific and praise semantic 93 )’ or Ufkala 94 during his long travels. 91

Various orthographies are known for the initial velaro-gutturals /q/, /k/, / /, / / alternate or interchange. In this paper the orthography qallačča is adopted unless in direct quotation. Here, q is backed, post-velar or laryngeal, semiejective or implosive different from k’, palato-velar ejective, usually interchangeable with the gutturals < , > and < , >. 92 By rhotacization of the root quȹ- ‘be clean, black’ and by affixation comes ȯurračča/quɌɌačča ‘the black one; the absolute one’ referred usually to Waaqa. 93 Similar to the Biblical positive, honorific concept of ‘Slave, Servant’, the Oromo Gafra/Gaßra /Garba ‘Servant, Slave” (Garbičča/Gabričča, particulative accusative; Gabbaro/ Gabroo, plural nominative vocative) is never negative,

A(Cervicek, 1971)

D(Goda Dassa)

B(Qaallu& His qallačča)

E(Goda Dassa)

C(Bravo, 2007)

F(Laga Oda, trace)

G (Petrie, 1905, 1914; Ancient Egyptian statues)

H (Egyptian Hieroglyphs; Redford, 2001)

aversion, suppressive, stereotypical of other human beings. It is augmentative, praise, honorific expression from gabra/garba ‘servant, tough, powerful macho man, warrior, black African buffalo; vast black sea, ocean; sea bed, heavy cloud’ as well as, metaphorically, designates ‘Waaqa’ the Black Sky-God. Buffalo bull (korma, sanga) and horse-bull (korma, sanga) were used for war, bulldozing dense forests, etc. Also name of an ancient agnate, clanname, and Gada class-name, for the Oromo, the Gabra/Garba were one of the tough warriors, defenders of the Oromo nation. By diffusion from the Amharic and Orthodox Christianity ideology of hate based on skin pigment (black, dark), the semantic of Oromo gabra/garba has been deteriorating and assuming hatred ideology “slave, the Slave” since early 20th century. Similar history can be found in our Dinka friends of Sudan: “The subordinate status of the girl, which leads to the applicarion of such words as “slave”--metaphoric as they are--,implies that a girl labors more than a boy” (Deng, 1972: 58). The same ideology deteriorated that of Oromo boora “baron, pharaoh” deforming it to Amharic bariə “slave (hate, negative)”. Leslau (1992: 736) took the Oromo consonants/radicals gbr and gave the semantic “servant” and claimed it is “Ge’ez”. He added synonyms: amādi, lā’k, qwəl’e, qațțin, wa’āli, gazzā. All these are deformation of Oromo dignitaries: amìɁa ‘agnate or his representatives’ (see Fig. 1D); Waa’eela ‘agent, companion, escort, helper’; and Qaallu and Gaȥaa (see also Stegman, 2011; Viterbo 1892). 94 The Ufkala, also Ofkala/Afkala, are “Oromo merchant class” or “the intrepid Oromo traders…engaged in aroundthe-year brisk trade” known since early medieval times (Hassen, 1994: 89, 98). The word is composite of uf / őf ‘self, selves’ and kala ‘construct, support, protect’ and/or ȯaȼa ‘understand, enter; return home (achieving goal and safely)’.

I (Dunham, 194) FIGURE 3—A: Cervicek’s (1971 Fig. 47) Laga Oda motif “seven animal representations…a symbol (center) and pictures of H-shaped anthropomorphic figures” (p. 129); B: an Oromo Qaallu with his qallačča headgear and Plowman’s (1919) sketch of qallačča headgear ; C younger anthropomorphic motif with qallačča headgear/hairstyle from Goda K’arree aldessa ‘Hill of Apes at the Place of Gypsum Scripture’, reminding us the Ancient Egyptian Thoth, a literate ape, anyhow, figuritivization; similar motifs are reported on rock paintings in Northern Ethiopia and Eriteria (Graziosi, 1964; see Appendix). D motif of Irreečča (cf H right), and E from Goda Dassa (based on Bravo, 2007) and from Laga Oda F (right) both appearently motifs of qallačča headgear. Formerly unreported, F (left) appear to be an engraving of male lion ‘big father’ (abba guȥȥa) with head not recognizable or, maybe, purposefully made headless; G Ancient Egyptian statues, from works of the early French Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who connected the images to Oromo cultural history, most probably depiction of Abba Qallačča or the Qaallu (Right and Left) with his qallačča headgear or of Abba Ȱurrroo ‘Assembler, Prophetizer’, (literally ‘Man of Flaps/Ears/Fame’, from guurra ‘to assemble; ear, flap’ guurr’maalee ‘hoopoe’) or, in Booran Oromo known as Abba Gadaarbora, literally ‘the Elephantine Man”,’ a symbology of “the Apical Man” or the leader or “spokesperson of the assembly of Gada” (Legesse, 1973: 63, 69, 83, 225). H: Egyptian hieroglyph, anthropomorphic (female) holding stick similar to Oromo siiqqee sacred stick (Redford, 2001 Vol.I-III p.75, 136); I: the Meroe tomb of their Queen, perhaps, as in Oromo, represented by fowl (haȥ’ak’o/aɀȥaqo) or dove ( aȥ’arii / ʍmakoȥii), all mean, by play on words and literally, haȥ’a-k’o ‘mum-mine/ours’, aȥ’a-rii ‘Mum-CARITIVE’, armå-ko-ȥii ‘Mum-our-the’, i.e. Dear Queen Mother) and sternum (handaraffa) plus aɁȦ’ura ‘navel’, symbol of feminine wisdom (hadarii) and elevation/exaltation (haɁdara).

Amborn’s bitter criticism of other scholars’ views on qallačča was but motivated by narrow view of

fertility grounded

Euro-Christianity

framework.

Both the

argumentations

for

‘phallisphication’ and ‘cosmic mediation’ share some common root, albeit it is obscured by the phonological process of rhotics (l↔r). On the one hand, they share the stem/concept qaɌa ‘horn; graining fruit, granulate, shoot, star’. Noting that the ancient Qaallu also served as

uɌɟa

‘exhorter, prophet, doctor’ 95 providing qorča/qorça ‘medicine’ to especially the diseases qorra ‘tuberculosis, pneumonia’ (literally ‘fog’)’ or qorça ‘rheumatoid arthritis (of the legs)’, it is also important to consider the variant qorça ‘meteorites, starshoot’. In Booran Oromo, the Abba Qallčča, the Qaallu man, also served as Abba Gadaarbora, literally ‘the Elephantine Man, the Apical Man’, a symbology of ‘the leader or spokesperson of the assembly of Gada’ (Legesse, 1973: 63, 69, 83, 225). So metonymic-semantic-form complex, the latter points to the belief that the first qallačča dropped from the sky with meteorites or lightening (Bartels, 1983:145-146). On the other, supporting those who associate qallačča with “phallisphication” or “horn-symbolism”, 95

According to Lotman (2006: 869) “Probably the first to use the term ‘semiotics’ was a doctor and medical theoretician, the developer of the Hippocratic tradition Galen (2nd century A.D.); he employed it to refer to symptomatology – in modern terms, diagnostics.”

the very Oromo words for genitals, sexuality and fruition speak to this: qőla ‘disposition, shaft, penis’, qara-čča ‘fruit, grain’, qaar-mi ‘leavings’, qar-mmaa/ armama ‘frolic’,

arra-yo ‘love-r,

loving’, qaɌ-Ɂî ‘sex, characteristics’, qaɌa (-mu é) ‘horny, clitoris, fornication’, sáȻa ‘sex (intercourse), horny, oryx’, and so forth.

The same or similar phallic cultural object(s) are known in Egyptian semiosis and hieroglyphica. Several statues of Qaallu with his qallačča headgear and Ȱuɋɋɋoo/GuȦuru hairstyle which is like the sheath of corn cob, non-shaved, well-plaited and smeared with butter (see Fig.3B), symbolizing that the Qaallu’s goorroo gololataa ‘dribbling/stripped /branching/ pyramidal descent lines’, can be observed in the works of the earlier, non-biased and great French Eagyptologist Flinders Petrie (few examples are Fig.2G). Wilkinson (1840: 202) oddly describes it as belonging to or worn by (statue of) “Mercury (Thoth)” and interprets it as “indicating the generative principle of nature.” Note that Wilkinson uses “Mercury”, “Hermes Trismegistus” and Thoth interchangeably. Thoth is European Egyptologists’ decipherment of the Egyptian ape representing ‘the wiseman/wisemen’. This can easily be interpreted non-acquaintance with the precise meaning and Abyssinianist interjection to connect it with the Amharic o a ‘baboon’, which gives no sense at all. Oromo qaȼùmé/qaɏomé ‘baboon’ (-é ‘diminutive’) which by formcum-metonymic similarity stands for qaȼùma/qaɏoma ‘wiseman, civilized’ from –ma ‘having, characterized by, like’ and, due to rhotic process, qaallu ‘Priest, hieratic, curate’ or qarō ‘sharp, wise, pupil, pupil of eye’. 96 Besides, the belief that the original qallačča was made of a mysterious iron fallen from sky (Bartels, 1983:145-146) might remind us the archaeological finds from the Laga Oda cave, namely “‘sickle sheen’ gloss and polish”, an “endscraper” and “one curved-backed flake”, “a few microliths that show evidence of mastic adhering close to the backed edges” all “dated 1560 B.C” (Brandt, 1984: 177).

The Greek “Hermes” and the Roman “Mercury” are just mythology and refer to the same “Messenger god”. We are also told that Hermes Trismegistus means “the Thrice Great Hermes.” We are also told that “Holy Ghost” and “Holy Spirit” refer to the same “third person of Trinity, understood as the spiritual force of God.” Qaallu, the Oromo Holy man, is not only “messenger” but also one of the three greatest dignitaries (we shall see in detail ahead) of QaalluGa a. Note that Oromo backed gutturals /q/ and / / are equivalent to European /h/ and /gh/ and European /st/ is consistently Oromo implosive/retroflex/ejective / , , ’/. Both the Latin/Roman and Greek root “of uncertain origin”, we are told that Hermes also mean “god of commerce” as well (Klein, 1996: 724). Despite the rhotic linguids /l/ and /r/ intercheange or dissipation, we can consider Oromo economics terms: ȯura ‘trade, amass (profit)’, gurra ‘ear, info (business)’; kuulii ‘coolie’ variant of the voiced-rhotacized ǚaarii ‘chariot’ (the Aryan Model tells us that “coolie” entered English lexicon in 17th century from Hindi kūlī ); k’uula ‘horseshoe, good luck (business), dark and nice (thing)’; qaalii ‘expensive’; ȯurȯura ‘sell, exchange, barter; commerce, business’, gergara ‘help one another’. Maybe, certain 19th century colonial European ‘travelers’ are plagiarizing as well us cheating us.

Amborn might be motivated to accept Michel Foucault (Foucault, 1988), the great French social philosopher of the 20th century, who has taught us that there is no reason why discipline (philosophy), sexuality, politics (power), metaphysics (religion) and cosmology cannot be interrelated by origin. Oromos have ancient tradition of iron smelting from Hararqee to Wallaga, by the experts um u/ȥumʈú ‘smelters, blacksmiths’ 97 (see Appendix). Describing “three parts” parts of an ancient “endogamous” hoeing or digging implement with a heavy head of iron or stone (based on availability), sheath and stick handle (ȥumqora/danqara, gadduma, ɣorȥ’a) technology of Oromo of Hararqee, one Semitist writer distributes: owners are the “Harari”, the “metal tip sheath” is made by “Somali blacksmiths [sic] called t'umt'u” and the “stones” by “local Oromo” (Waldron, 1987: 70). Both Waldron and Amborn might have read Van Sertima’s They Came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America (1976) which proves, among others, the Egyptian-American (Native Black Africans) commonalities of “phallic symbolism” or “phallic cult”, a historic Black Multitudinality which never suits Amborn’s and his Abyssinianist agenda of obfuscate, divide and rule.

GADA SYSTEM AND POWER POLITICS Qallačča is much connected with Gada age/generation-based classes. Baxter (1979: 73, 80), who calls it “phallic” or “ritual paraphernalia”, states, accurately, that it is worn on the head “by men at crucial stage in the gaada cycle of rituals”. Also, the Qaallu and Gada men make distinction between two types of qallačča: qallačča qarača ‘the soft, acuminous’, which is worn by the elderly Qaallu or Gada, and qallačča korma ‘the one of virile bull-man’. Viterbo (1892) defines “kallaéccia” (qallačča) as ‘disciple, pupil’, which cuts parallel with the anthropologist Baxter (1979: 82-84) who states that, in Oromo Gada System, a young man’s grown

tuft

(ȯuuȦu/ guuṱu; see Fig.3C) is “associated symbolically with an erect penis” and discourses that he is “guutu diira”, which means a “successful warrior”, the one who has reached a class of “member of political adulthood”, for he has “become responsible for the nation”. 98 At this age, Baxter adds, “each of its members puts up a phallic Kalaacha”, which is a “symbol of firm but responsible manliness.” Wakefield (Ravenstein & Wakefield, 1884: 264-265) witnessed the Hararqee Oromo when he wrote that “Men not entitled to wear the gutu or crinal badge shave the head completely”. The feminine counterpart of ȯuuȦu hairstyle or shaving ceremony is The Oromo word um ú /ȥumʈú comes from the base uma/ȥuma ‘hammer out, forge, pound, hoe’ and Ȧ’ā ‘smite, beat, strike, imitate’ appending -t'u/-ʈú ‘-er, -ant’. 98 A metonymic-homophonic complex, the expression guuṱu ȥ’iiraa or ȯuuȥu ȥ’iiraa comes from guuṱuu ‘full, virile, virgin, inundated; roof, tuft (hair)’ (from ȯúȥa ‘to become full, big enough; to fill a hole’) and ȥ’iiraa ‘male, boy, son; intrepid, slit, sting’. Guuṱu ȥ’iiraa is a play on words with Gooṱa ȥ’iiraa ‘intrepid man’. 97

ȯū iya, goodiyaa (Nicolas, 2010: 6) or “ȯuȥeya” (Werner, 1914a: 141), first meaning ‘go-away bird’ (or its tonsure) or qarré ‘tonsure’ (first meaning, ‘(age of) horsekite, pride (lion, tiger)’) as treated well by Bartels (1983:262). The feminine counterpart to the masculine qallačča headgear is the qarama/ qárma headwear made of string of cowries (Fig.3B, C, D), first meaning ‘sharpened, matured, civilized’. In Gada System, this age-class is called Gaammee Gúȥ’ȯuȥá (reduplication from ȯuȥá ‘(be) big, full enough’) or ‘Senior Gamme III’, the age at which the boys elect their six leaders to practice political leadership (Legesse, 2006:124-125).

The Haraqee Oromo are known not only for their antique Qaallu qallačča theological-political institution but also for the related Bokkuu bokkičča political institution. Caulk (1977:371) wrote about the Hararqee Oromo Gada System in its last stage: With the Oborra—who occupied the eastern banks of the Burqa River… the Allaa, Nolē and Babilē clans formed a loose confederation, the Afran-Qallu (the Four Qallu). This had a common assembly of elders and war-leaders chosen from the same age-sets as the clan assemblies and ‘semi-elected, semi-hereditary’ clan leaders, bokku, who, unlike the better-known office-holders among the western Oromo, combined civil and military duties. The Irish traveler James Bruce, who said to have “discovered” the source of Nile River in 1770s, wrote “that on the installation of the “king…they [the Oromo] put a scepter or bludgeon … in his hands, which they call Buco [Bokkuu]”)” (Werner, 1914b: 274). Werner is right when she referred to the French traveler and scholar Antonio d’Abbadie same Bokkuu Ceremony of Scepter/Power Handover in 1840’s.

Bokkuu is as important and complex a concept as is qallačča. Hassen (1994:15) discusses that bokkuu has “two meanings”. 99 One is “the wooden scepter kept by the Abba Gada in his belt during all the assembly meetings”, an “emblem of authority…the independence of a tribe, and…a symbol of unity, common law and common government”. The second meaning of is: “it refers to the keeper of the bokkuu—Abba Bokkuu” (Hassen, 1994:15), or in plural Warra Bokkuu “people of the scepter” (Legesse, 2006: 104). De Salviac describes the scepter bokkuu “has the shape of a voluminous aspergillum (a container with a handle that is used for sprinkling holy water) or of a mace of gold of the speaker of the English parliament, but in iron and at the early beginning in hard wood” (de Salviac, 2005 [1901]: 216; See Fig.3 A, B, C possibly pictures of bokkuu scepter types). Nevertheless, Legesse (2006:104) describes it as “a specially curved 99

Some of the orthographies are bokkuu, bokku, boku, bukú, boqo, boqoo, boco, boqu, etc, due to the interchanging guttural consonants and back vowels. Here, the geminated guttural ‘kk’ and the longer final vowel ‘uu’ are preferred.

baton.” In fact, similar to qallačča, two types of bokkuu scepters are observed in use. The one that Legesse describes as ‘curved’ is like ȯaȥūma ‘sledgehammer’, which symbolizes its double entendre gaȥooma first meaning ‘the curved, tamed, dehorned’ and second meaning ‘animal that has been tamed’, but third meaning ‘the person who has completed all the Gada Age-sets’ or ‘the retired Gada 100 president’ (see Fig.3C for possible superimposed, on bovine, picture of ȯaȥūma motif). After serving for full eight year, Abba Bokkuu must celebrate Bokkuu Walira Fuud’a (first meaning “to exchange bokkuu, scepter/power”), a Gada system concept that refers to two socio-political “events as a single act of “exchange”” (Legesse, 1973:81): (1) the event of power “take over ceremony”, i.e., the symbolic act of “the incoming class” and (2) the event of power “handover ceremony”, i.e., the symbolic act of “the outgoing class”. This power-exchange is also called, as Legesse (1973:81-82; 2006:125) accurately deciphered, Baallii Walirá FúȦ’a “Power Exchange” or “transfer of ostrich feathers”, one of the insignias of the ritual. As an ordinary lexeme (see Stegman, 2011: 5, 68; Foot, 1913:5) baallii designates not only ‘power, authority, responsibility; flame, light, v-shaped pillar pole’ but also ‘the bull king (of the herds), ostrich feather, leaved-twig, spear blade, dagger’ (Fig.5G), the other symbolic objects of Baallii ‘the Holiday of Power Transfer’—a day which, by default, was the first day of the New Year/New Light (Fig.4B) during government by Gada System. The underlying concept is simultaneity in bilateralism and reciprocity or equity and democracy. It is an intentional synchronization of the phonology and semantics of baalli ȯuɳii ‘feather of the ostrich’ and Baalli Gaɳii /Gadičči ‘the power-overtake ceremony of the specific Gada man’.

In the hieroglyphica of Egyptians “When they would symbolise a man who distributes justice impartially to all, they depict the Feather of an Ostrich; for this bird has the feathers of its wings equal on every side, beyond all other birds” (Horapollo, 1840: 215), and Pthah “occasionally wears a disk with the lofty ostrich feathers of Osiris, and holds in each hand a staff of purity, in lieu of the emblems of stability and life” (Wilkinson, 1840: 252). Recall that aȥaa ‘stability’ (also aȥooma, literally ‘down, come down’) and ǘaarraa ‘life and labor in flux’ whose ritual is Ǘaarraa are Oromo ontology. 100

Gada or the particulative Gadičča designates the man in power. Similarly, the retired one is Gadoomačča particulative accusative or gadoomačči>gadamooǘii particulative-nominative. Dehorned or headless bovine pictures are common motifs The lexicogrammar ȯaȦ’a-miʨii/-mițții ‘ȯaȦ’a –not ACCUSATIVE’ and ȯaȦ’(o)-m taa ‘ȯaȦ’-not NOMINATIVE’ might explain the absence of head (mataa) or being dehorned (ȯaȦ’oomataa) as diagrammatology of the grammatical category: NEGATION.

A (Laga Oda)

D(Laga Oda, trace)

B(Cervicek, 1971)

C (Bravo, 2007)

E (buffalo’s bokk’uu)

F(Hararqee style)

G (Bravo, 2007)

H (Laga Oda)

J (Goda Hummeta)

I (Cervicek, 1971)

K (Ejjersa Gooroo/Gursum)

L (Oromo costume)

FIGURE 4—A: Laga Oda, anthropomorphic with his bokkuu button in hand (see also Fig.6H right); B: anthropomorphic, apparently, Abba Bokku “raising in his hands the [Bokkuu] scepter towards the sky” (de Salviac 2005 [1901]: 213), according to Gada ritual of power transfer (see also Fig.6H right); C: a bovine painting from Goda Ballii (“Ourso”) with superimposed (white background) ȯaȥūma ‘sledgehammer’, simulacra of ȯaȥooma ‘one who has completed all the Gada Age-sets’. D buffalo bull’s agóda ‘forepart’ and E his bokk’uu/boqoo ‘nape (+ jawbone)’, image of bokkuu scepter, all symbol and residence of power; F: typical Hararqee Oromoo traditional clothing style with his baallii knife/machete’ (also abȼee by metathesis) in hands and on the hips semblance of G anthropomorphic motif with his machete (left), and his farming tools (middle) and in-action (right), all from Porc Epic (in French). H: Laga Oda horseshoe like bovine motifs; I apparently a picture symbolizing pledge (wóȥú/hoodú) by clasping (qo ú) or a watchtower (ȯoȥoo); J and K anthropomorphic pictures (center in K) in action with their bow and arrow (in K possibly defending their cows, goats or sheep, right) wearing like L: a traditional Oromo costume. Unlike G or F, this type of costume

is ‘strange’, at least since a couple of generation, to not only the Hararqee Oromo of Ejjersa Qoroo (literally ‘the Establishments/Institutes of the Wisemen) but the whole Hararqee vast country. Once considered as style of the bourgeois (qorričča), today, it is in use in some areas of central Oromia, mainly Shawa, and western Oromia, mainly Wallagga and Ilu Aba Boora, worn only on especial occasions.

De Salviac (2005 [1901]: 216) witnessed “the power is transferred to the successor by remittance of the scepter or bokkuu.” After power exchange ritual, the ‘New’ Abba Bokkuu “falls in his knees and raising in his hands the scepter towards the sky, he exclaims, with a majestic and soft voice: Yaa Waaq, Yaa Waaq [Behold! O, God!]. Be on my side…make me rule over the Doorii 101 …over the Qaallu…make me form the morals of the youth!!!” (de Salviac, 2005 [1901]: 213), a symbolic-speech act that shades light on the significance of Fig. 4B obtained from Cervicek’s (1971, Figure 44). See also Fig.6H right. As was discussed earlier, this is ceremonial loud powerful speechification of lallaba/lablaba which Legesse (1973:215) described as a “highly stylized, but occasionally powerful, defense speeches eulogizing their own ancestors, their gada class, their gogessa, and the house of the K’allu.” An excerpt from Lallaba text goes “…May the bulls multiply, may the streams swell. I took balli and served faithfully [as Abba Gada]. I have not fallen short of what custom requires. I am strong. I am wise. Our family has produced thirteen Abba Gada…” (Legesse, 1973: 215). Then, the new Abba Bokkuu / Abba Gadaa takes possession of the seat and “immolates a sacrifice and recites prayers to obtain the assistance of On-High in the government of his people….The entire tribe assembled there, out of breath from emotion and from faith” (de Salviac, 2005 [1901]: 212).

The depth of the semiosis is very interesting. Above, it was raised that two symmetrical acts/concepts are enfolded “as a single act [or word] of exchange” is performed by exchanging the Bokkuu scepter during Baallii ceremony (Legesse, 1973: 81). That is, when the scepter is the one with bokkuu ‘knobs’ on each edge, it suffices to enfold it ‘Bokkuu Baallii’ since the symmetricality principle of the act of reciprocal power exchange is as adequately abstracted in the phrase as in the iconicity of the balanced bokkuu. Besides, the horooroo stick with a knob (bokkuu), on the one end, and v-/y-shape (baallii), on the other end (Fig.4G), is a semagram for the same concept of symmetricality principle, i.e., Bokkuu Baallii. 102 The overhead view of bull’s nape (bokk’oo/bokk’uu), symbol of power (Fig.4D, E), and his snout (huuruu), after whose 101

Here, Doorii and Qaallu refer to the trickling ‘edifice, tradition’ from ancient great men, doorii also designating ‘a wise, consummate raconteur’ of the edifice. 102 Both y-shaped sticks horooroo and Ȧ’aɁqee (from Ȧ’aɁɢa /Ȧ’ak’Ɂɣ ‘flesh, organ, genital area; v-shape, twig’) are designed from sacred trees like waddeessa and harooressa, variants of ‘Cordia africana’. They are “symbols of material life”, held on pilgrimages to the cradle lands to immortalize Hooro ‘Primogenitor(s), Saint(s), eponymous of the founder(s) of the Oromo nation, the first son of Oromo (Megerssa & Megerssa, 1988: 36-37; Braukämper, 2002: 141).

image is the horooroo stick designed, is never whimsical. The Abbaa Bokkuu is the supreme judge, literally the huuruu/huuraa ‘snout; informer’ and qara-huuraa, literally ‘horn/headsnout/informer’ or, by punning, kharooraa ‘the head planner’ or ‘head of the law-makers’.

An expression of the power conferred upon Bokkuu and Gada Laws, any serious and persistent breach, albeit repeated probations and fines, of Naȯaa Mačč’aa ‘The Mačč’aean Ethics/Order’ or Aadaa Seera Booranaa ‘The Booran Ethics of Rule of Law’ cuold end with “death by beating on ‘the open palm of the hand and in the groin”, haama mudanmudi, with a club, bokku” at a place called “Bokku Luuboma, the club of the luuba” (Oba, 1996: 119). This should remind us the The Nichomachean Ethics: “if a tyrant, having in his power our parents and children, should order us to do some base deed, and they in the case of our obedience should be saved, but in the case of our refusal should be put to death… as people do with crooked sticks to make them straight” (Aristotle, 1895: 52-54).

FERTILITY SYMBOLS: HARMONIZING THE PHONIC AND THE ONTIC Ad’eetee ‘the ritual of female (man, cattle) fecundity divinity’ and its symbolism (see Figure 4) are important indicators of how phonic/linguistic, symbolic objects and ontic/institutes are harmonized. This ritual involves Dibayoo/D’ibaara a ritual equivalent to the Christian Trinity concept that involves the ritual of anointing giant evergreen sycamore trees (odaa) with butter and milk. It is in actuality the ceremony of thanking Ancestral Mothers and Mother Earth (Daččee) that sustain and offer fertility, greenery and fecundity. A two-line excerpt from doxology—praise song—to Mother Earth goes: ȥaččee yaa dinqituu --O you wondrous mother earth! ɲaartii ȯaraa meetii -- ring-belly lady/wife …. …. We also need to ‘here’ a praise song to a beauty (baɌé) of woman, which symbolizes her by élé ‘circular cooking pot made of clay as oven’, bede ‘smaller clay cooking pot as oven’ (also refers to pizza-like disc-bread made on the pot) and baaȥii/baaʈʈii ‘moon’ (Sumner, 1996: 68): Admiration is for you, o I take out of Admiration is for you, moon shaped beauty Rightly, Sumner states élé symbolizes “the mother” (of the bridewoman) while bedé symbolizes “daughters” (the bridewoman) or her “moon shaped beauty” (Sumner, 1996: 68). Sumner, however, did not want to go deep into play on words. This makes him not illuminant, for 72

instance, that “moon shaped beauty” (baaʈʈii) is a very indirect reference, as usual in the literary wisdom, by aȥ’eʨi ‘moon-disc’, baȥʈii/baɁʈii ‘crown, tonsure’ and báɳii/baaǘii ‘cattle having crooked horns’ 103 to baɳii/baǘǘii ‘the virgin’ and áȥȥeʨii ‘duchess’ (-ɳii, -ʨii, -ʈii are allophones marking feminine-diminutive-nominative marker allophones). Virginity on her wedding wins the girl a crown, while selection of the facts of moon-shapedness, crookedness and even of the crook-horned cattle/heifer is all systematic. Bartels (1983: 261) also documented that on her wedding day: [T]he girl has with her a grass-plate (gundo), which she made herself. This gundo is a symbol of her womb [ȯaȥāmeɟa]. Since…she is expected to be a virgin [ȯuɁȥúȥa], nothing should have been put in this grass-plate beforehand. Gundo are plaited from outside inwards, leaving a little hole in the centre [ȯuȥé 104 ]…this little hole is not filled in by the girls themselves, but they ask a mother of a child to do it for them. If they do it themselves, they fear they will close their womb to child-bearing (Square brackets added). GuɁȥó is a grass-plate, plaited in a series of concentric-circles, particularly made from highly propagative grasses. While, ȯuɁȥó stands for a woman’s ȯaȥāmeɟa ‘womb’, the concentricity of the plaits (mara, maɟooraa also means ‘mesmerizing’) is a symbol of the recyclers of the replicating, reproductive faculty (ʂa ii), namely the bride-woman (musirroo) and bride-man (marii, also means ‘cycle, recycle, circle, inwrap, plait’). The cylindrical ȯuɁȥó with cover (called wasúba/masoobi, literally ‘thing of the newly married’) is particularly given as a ‘betrothal gift’ to the newly married couples, because it is a symbol of sú ō ‘the married gentlemen, the prudential ones’. 105

In addition to the “Queen Saaba” ecstatic fairytale, we need to explicate here one more funny point about to Abyssinian plagiarism. There is one area called “Darra” on the borderline between Shawa of Oromiya and Amhara, but by a century and half systematic subjugation of Červiček (1975: 131-132) saw “Pictures of cattle with downwards directed horn” and concluded “Cattle with horns shaped in this manner are favorite with the Boorana, [Oromo] group in Southern Ethiopia, where they are called bāǘi or bāǘṓle. Even nowadays toy figures of humped103 cattle without heads are modelled of clay and dung by the Borana.” 104 That ‘little hole at the centre’ is designated either by ȯuȥé ‘meeting place, loci’ or qaɣ / k’ã ‘hole, orifice’, also discussed at many places above. 105 Abyssinianists tell us many fabulous flirting women like Queen Saaba. One is “Mäsobä Wärq, the daughter of the last Aksumite king…[who], against her father’s will…married a high-ranking military official, Märä Täklä Häymänot” and formed “Zagwe dynasty” (Andersen, 2000: 31). Another is known as Gudit ‘the odd one; fire-like’ “for she burnt Gäbäzä Aksum, the temple of Siyon” (ibid: 39). Here the plagiarism is targeting Oromo institutional-symbolic words/concepts with word-play: sú ō/masoobi, mara/marii, musirroo, ȯuɁȥó; saaba ‘uterus’; and Warqɨ and Guddi are Oromo female-name meaning ‘Gold, Golden; Odd, Remarkable’ (Foot, 1913: 21, 56). Gäbäzä is to counterfeit gaba ā ‘a circular wooden basin, board, tray, or tablet for dining food’ (Foot, 1913: 21).

103

the Oromo and, hence, linguistically “of Amhara”. It is associated to the so-called Abyssinian “Amda Syon (1314-44)” where he “attacked the different sultanates and incorporated some into the Amhara kingdom” as well as “is mentioned in the Gadla Anorewos (1374; C.S.C.O., Scr. Aeth., ser. ii, vol. xx pp.1, 54, 76-7)” (Arnesen, 1996: 214). The area’s unique historical feature involves its funny names and a lot, as cautiously put by the scholar Odd Eirik Arnesen as follows: The ruins of a church can be found in the…town Gundo Meskal (the name relates to the myths of the finding of the true cross [=Maskal] and has no relationship to the present population that use the old name of Aderre), but whether this indicates the existence of a “pre-Oromo” Christian--“Amhara” community or a Muslim community made tributary to the Amhara kingdom, being culturally “annexed” through the church/missionaries, cannot be confirmed (Arnesen, p. 215; Square brackets and emphasis are mine). To come back to real history, if an Oromo gentlemen is a buffalo-killer, he gives his new couple, in accordance to the his antique tradition, a “giant snail shells” (elellee/ elellan) “kept with a string made from his buffalo skin” (Bartels, 1983: 268; see also Appendix for snail-shell-like rock on which are amazing fertility motifs). It is representation of his solid love for her and respect for the tradition handed down in ‘strings’ to them since antiquity. In this nuptial ceremony of the nubile (ȯa’ila qeerro), the elellee symbolizes, by metaphoric paronomasia, elellee or ilillii ‘flower, steed, feminine virility’ and halalee ‘to charge, hew; be erectile, flowery’. Moreover, the elellee arises ilillee ‘rejoice, ululation’ or elellɟa ‘the act of ululating and glorifying’. The women, thus, ululate: el-el-el-e!...il-il-il-il…!

Systemic functional linguists and semioticians who hold “the stratal theory of language in context” agree that concentric circles are metaphoric representations of “metaredundancy”, a term that designates “the idea of patterns at one level redounding with patterns at the next level” (Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam 2010: 20-23). This cuts parallal with the Oromo use of concentriccircular or concentric-cylindrical ȯuɁȥó or the giant snail shell with strings as a gift (see Figure 5; see also Appendix for other fertility motifs from Kombolča) as symbolic representations of the biosocial marriage qua recycler of the reproductive system/process of human being— biolinguistic/biosemiotic phenomena at work in tandem!

A(Goda Roorris)

(Goda Qu ɳi)

B(ȯunȥó)

D(borɳuma)

E (T’ennek’ee)

F(Laga Oda)

G(Birrillee)

H(Laga Oda)

I(Aɳɳoolee)

FIGURE 5—A: concentric (maroo, ȯooroo); note the sign at the center, which is common in EgyptianMeroitic hieroglyphics, too; B: ȯunȥó grass-plate and C: picture of inundated/full teat, symbols, respectively, of woman’s womb (maroomaan/ȯaȥāmeɟa), virginity (ȯuɁȥúȥa) and inundation (ȯuɁȥúȥa), fullness (ȯúȥú);D: traditional four-leg seat (borɳuma) or two-legged (ȥuppalo) used during milking, image of udder of cows and breast of ȥubbaroo ‘womenfolk’ in accordance to institution of Booreetúma; E: Goda Daassa or T’ennek’e ‘Righteous land’ symbol of sunburst-like motifs; F Laga Oda (Cervicek 1971) cow with sunburstlike motif on the hind leg; G: Birrillee, an Oromo girl wearing her cowries and other fertility symbols, sold as a slave to a German in 1830s; H: Cervicek (1971) cow with the four inundated teats; I: A recently designed statue at AɁɁoolee, commemorative of the barbaric Hark-Mura, Harm-Mura ‘Cut-Hands, Cut-Breasts’ principle and action of the Abyssinian ‘Emperor’ Menelik II, who mutilated tens of thousands of AɁɁoolee/Ayyolee/Aȥ’oolee ‘Dear Matrons’ (Bulatovich, 2000; Melba, 1980).

Fig.5I is a prototypical of social semiotic systematicity, or of non-arbitrariness, in the history of Oromo social epistemological structuration. Recently designed (inaugurated April 6, 2014) at the historic site of AɁɁoolee in Arsii central Oromia (one of the Oromo societies/areas known for its pre-historic to medieval era rock arts, see Henze, 2005; Grant, 2006 ), this social semiotic memorabilia was designed in such a way that it arises to the observer’s mental-lexicological structures the barbaric Hark-Mura Harm-Mura ‘Cut-Hands Cut-Breasts’ principle and action of the Abyssinian ‘Emperor’ Menelik II and his militias who conducted genocide against the Oromo-Cush, mutilated tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of AɁɁoolee ‘Dear Matrons’ during the last two decades of the 19th century (Bulatovich, 2000; Melba, 1980) and ‘constitutionally’ banned social semiotic rock arts as ‘pagan’, ‘un-Christian’ and ‘worshiping’ of three dimensional idols or ‘gods’ (Grant, 2006). Despite a century-old hiatus, like their precolonial and antique friends, the contemporary social semioticians/historians chose the site AɁɁoolee for not just that horrendous historical event took place chiefly at there, but also for AɁɁoolee ‘Dear Matrons’ (also by sound change, Ayyoolee/Áȥ’olee; -lee is hypocoristic, gender neutral plural, determinative marker) and Harmee ‘Dear Mummies’ (also Ayyoo/Áȥ’oo; -ee is diminutive marker, -yo/-oo is caritive tenderness feeling marker) bore, at that same site, not only the mutilation of their sacred body, harma ‘bosoms, breasts’, but also bled to death watching their aɁɁoo ‘milk’ flood off like that of aɁɁoo ’euphorbia’. This justifies why the social semioticians engraved a sign of cut breast or why traditionally forefathers planted euphorbia trees on the graves of deceased mummies (see Fig.6F)--literally as much to stick to mind as is it to immortalize or, in the words of Egyptologists, to ‘mummify’. 75

Likewise, the social semiotic of “sunburst-like” motifs (Fig.5E, F; Fig.5A) are worth observing. As was discussed earlier, central to Qaallu worldview is the origin of life/man in the primordial spring water. By looking at Fig.5E and F, what arises in an Oromo socio-cognitive faculty or conceptual frame is spring water (hoora), pond (harra), sprout (hoorrɣ) or areerri/areera ‘milk (fresh)’. But, it is less about a frame of referencing/reverencing qaa/Qailee ‘sun-disc/Holiday of Sun Goddess’ or of ararii ‘ball (light, sun)’. So, a picture of cow with ‘sunburst’ sign on the hind leg might be read appropriately ɐaaɌaa/saaraaraa ‘flourish, root, sprout, vegetate’, or ɐaa horaa ‘fertile cow, fecund cow’ areereesaa/saareeraa ‘a cow that gives good amount of milk’. In Oromo worldview, cows are such that they are like/considered as areera ‘maternal aunt (to orphans)’ or, as was mentioned above, aȥȥ’olee ‘baronesses’ not least their (the cows’) milkpouring is, as the tradition obliges, as mandatory as are the seasoned barons/baronesses for/on araara ‘ceasefire, conflict resolution ceremonies’. For the same reason, the Tuullama sub-tribes of the Oromo designate their cattle/pastoral ritual by Saaraaraa, an onomatopoeic-homologous term derived from sound-image (saaraaraa ‘to draw lines’), of the sputtering milk, into the milkpot, while milking the cows.

Concept of fertility might also be at work when he blesses a bridewoman, an Oromo old man says: hoori ‘multiply!’, aȦ’ami ‘Give birth again and again!’ (from aȦ’a/ á á ‘to explode, burst’); baȯȯa/bakk’a ‘Hope welfare! Peace!’ (also ‘split, melt, ramify, ovulate’). Then, after observing the centre of the anthropomorphic Fig.5A, an Oromo qaallu interpreted it as fâčč’á-n > fû

a-an

‘nose’ or hoorû > huuruu ‘snout (of man)’, both of which arise in the mental lexicon webs of related concepts/words: fâčč’á-n > fiɀč’á-ni ‘urine, semen, sperm; reservoir, cataract’; fâčč’aa ‘to vegetate, fecundate, serve, saw’; fâčč’ī > fûččii ‘vulva, vagina’, fáčč’á ‘tail of buffalo; banner, trophy (made of buffalo tail and forehead for buffalo killer)’. The root is ʌfá > ìfa ‘sparkle, splash (sunlight, water)’ to which –ča/-čča ‘determinative accusative’ is added.

All speak to the

motivating factor for sequencing pictures of a cow and ‘sunburst’ sign next to her hind leg. At last, the recent Fig.4I reminds us of the remnant of the ancient skills of systematicalizing social history/memory, social semiosis/signification and syntactic/lexical/phonological structures. The dictionary of the original Greek version of the Bible (Strong, 1997), defines that Αίθĭο means “Ethiopian” (note that the phonological interchange

/f/↔/ / is common and normal).

The Catholic Father and scholar De Salviac has argued well that the “land which the Hebrew Bible designates by the name of Cush, or the land of the Cush, profane historians call it 76

Ethiopia, word that comes from, according to someone, some Greek terms: ‘aitho’ I burn, and ‘ops’ face; but others believe that this word precedes Greek” (De Salviac, 2005[1901]: p. 31). Indeed, it seems the kind of ‘the tail wagged its lion’ argument. Never can a meaningless string ‘I burn face’ or ‘burnt face’ turn a proper name of an ancient superpower, the wonderful Cushites Empire of Ancient Ethiopia. A sentential proper name, which is against linguistic evolution, was impossible in ancient; it must be a descriptive/ontic adjectival lexeme/word of mono-/di-syllabic type. Sentential/periphrastic proper name is calqued translation, usually dogmatically and in trial-and-error fashion, of original as in the English Bible version of King James. Even so, aȥ’oo aa is Oromo expression for ‘scorched, stale, whitened’, which from aȥ’ú ‘the sun’ and adjectivizer suffix – aa/-waa. Thus, it can be inferred that the origin of ‘Ethiopia’ is corruption of Áȥ’aabaa/D’aaba (composite of ÁȦ’a ‘Mother’ + Abā ‘Father’) ‘which is a common toponym across Ethiopia/Oromia which as a deverbial means ‘(to) Parent, Father/Mother, Educate, Discipline, Cultivate’. The same might be true of the so-called Egyptian Theba /θe a/ not only for semantic-formal/phonological reasons (ť↔ ’↔ θ) but also because, in their oral wisdom literature, the Oromos recite “ abboo” (caritive-hypocoristic form of Áȥ’aabaa/D’aaba) the “roots of ancient Oromohood” (Hussein, 2005: 30). The only people, perhaps, in the world that cannot name or accurately pronounce their country’s name are Ethiopian peoples. Except educated sections of the society or their children, the traditional folk, including the Ethiosemites and Cushites, find it hard to articulate the initial /th, θ/ and terminal /p’/ hence substitute them by voiceless retroflex/implosive alveopalatal and semi-voiced/geminated affricate/implosive , respectively.

HIERARCHICAL AND SCALAR RELATIONS AND TRINOCULAR STYLE Gada System Law declares that Qallačča (the Qaallu man) “shall get respect and their cattle have to be given priority to drink water first” (Dirribii, 2011:262). Having this in mind, we must consider the symbolic significance of what an old man skilled in Oromo social epistemology (oral history) says (about an historic event that took place at some antique time that cannot be accurately defined) in a book published by Oromia Cultural and Tourism Bureau (OCTB) almost a decade and half ago: The Qaallu did this. For the daughter/girl of Ǘillee [eponymous clan name] he took a heifer; for the daughter/girl of Elellee [eponymous clan name 106 ] he also took a heifer. Then, for the Elellee girl he erected the heifer of Elellee in such a way that her (the heifer’s) head is faced upwards. For the Ǘillee girl, he erected the heifer of Ǘillee in such 106

Note that one of the rock paintings sites of Hararqee is Goda Elellee/Allele in Č’alanqo.

a way that her (the heifer’s) head is faced downwards. The girl of Ǘillee took siiqqee stick and hit the Mormor River; then, it split into two (OCTB, 1998: 75; My translation from Afan Oromo).

A (Cervicek, 1971 Fig. 47)

C (Laga Oda, trace)

B (Cervicek, 1971 Fig.47)

D (Shinohara, 1993)

E (Ȧ’aȯaa ʈullaa)

G(Buttaa Ğaarraa)

F (Scott, 1950)

H: Ancient Egyptian Portrayal of their Worldview o

FIGURE 6—A: Cervicek’s (1971:129, Fig. 47) Laga; B: Figure A rotated 90 CW, apparently a Qaallu spiritual father at the centre, a horizontal anthropomorphic (?) as his lips, circular sun-/pond-like object as his nose, above it another horizontal anthropomorphic (?) as his eyes and eye-brows, but crossed diagonally by a painting apparently representing the symbolic act of anointing the forehead with sacrificial bull’s blood; one downwards inverted, headless heifer/bullock above the Qaallu, representing qallačča headgear; and behind him to the right handside, a vertical anthropomorphic stretching hands, next on the right handside to which are two cows/bulls, both of whose heads are inverted downwards; on the lefthand of the Qaallu are many horizontal anthropomorphic in line facing the Qaallu and raising their arms, possibly a chorus in praise of him (visible in A standing in line under the belly of a black, headless cow/bull). Also, still in B, a nape of a heifer/cow whose head is faced upwards making the collar of the Qaallu, while her thorax/belly representing/serving as that of the Qaallu’s simultaneously. C: Ostrich incubating eggs (and offspring?). D: Oromo (Konso) roof-pot called ŏḱḱoṭa symbol of Abba Oḱótó/A aoȦa (plura of akka, aga) ‘Father of Spirits of Paterfamilias’ (Foot, 1913:46); or, represented by the k’arra ‘sharp projections’ is Abba Qeellaa/K’arraa (accusative, Qallaʨii>Qululati) ‘Father of Caretaking, Witness Spirit (also means ‘trope, ocular, perspective’) symbol of after-death eschatology. E: Stone at Daa ata, east of Harar Town, etc., known by many names: Ȧ’aȯaa ʈullaa/ȥulaa ‘stone-heap, stone abundance; stone of general’s/chief’s stone’ (hypotactic for ancestral spirits)

or daga-horaa ‘stone of replication, fecundity’, Ȧ’aȯaa koffaya/kaabaa ‘ridged/capped stone/tomb, genitalia-stone, stone/tomb of chief masters’ also known in other parts of Oromia as Ȧ’aȯaa goorroo/gorôroo ‘pyramidial, dribbling, capped stone, stone of descents’; F: Based on Scott (1950): Left: Arsi Oromo memorial irreessa ‘tomb’ (literally ‘hold up, raise hands, be possessed’ from irree ‘arms’; see the carving with the same image of anthropomorphic raising both arms) behind which is aȥamii ‘euphorbia, giant variety’ (borrowed into Amhariňa as qulqual, from Oromo qulqulu ‘absolute purity’ intensification of qulu>qaallu ‘holy’) a tree memorial-symbol of ȥamee ‘branch, pure descent’; Center and Right, Ȧ’aȯa ȥ’iraa ‘male stone, stone of intrepid(ity), stinger stone, seam/seamer stone’ (intensive, ȥirȥiraa ‘be pubescent; alternate, transmutate’, ȥîrȥîra ‘mannish, macho’; ȥirsa/ȥirsi ‘seam, husband’), around the towns of of Sooddoo (central Ethiopia) and Diillaa (southern Ethiopia), respectively. G: the T’iyya ‘Arrow (Stone)’ at Buttaa Ğaarraa site in Sooddoo province, Southern Ethiopia, on which is engraved the symbolic Baallii/ Baalli-yo Buttaa ‘’Knife of Buttaa’ a Gada Ritual of Victory (from buttaa ‘to snatch and then crack, bisect, bust up; buster, anaconda or puff adder, a powerful snake, symbol of incessant victory and indefatigability’ for details on the Buttaa Ritual also called Buttaa Ğaarraa Institution, see Hassen (1994) and Triulzi & Bitima (2005)); H: Left: Ancient Egyptian anthropomorphic surrounded by animal motifs; a portrayal of their worldview/ontology; according to Egyptologists “Nut” the “sky-goddess” is in vaulting position over the recumbent body of “Geb” the “Earth-god” (note the Oromo Quba/Qubata ‘settlement’ and Qee BaȦ’aa ‘The Endowed Land Fertility’), with “Shu” the “air-god” (note the Oromo qɨȹéɀča/qŏɨȹéɀça ‘air, stratosphere, air’ and qaalličča ‘the Qaallu man’) holding her up with both arms, assisted by two “gods”; Right: perhaps Egyptian Bokkuu Scepter/Power Exchange (see also Fig.3H Left), with some funny element of disconfiguring of the original with the intention to Europinize/Whitize the anthropomorphic or the civilization.

The Mormor River that the Ǘillee Girl (metaphorically) “splitted” with siiqqee stick is perhaps the Eastern (Hararqee) Oromo’s allophonic variant of either or both the western Mačč‘a 107 Oromo’s ßirßir River and Baaroo River, both of which are the giant tributaries of Abaá/Abaya River (English’s “Blue Nile”). This story offers us a tremendously important insight. Cervicek (1971: 129) describes his Laga Oda Figure 47 (see Fig.6A): “Seven animal representations, painting of a symbol (centre) and pictures of H-shaped anthropomorphic figures…Painted in graphite grey, the big cattle picture a little darker, the smaller one beneath it in caput mortuum red.” Although Cervicek was not aware, by rotating this motif 90oCW, we get Fig.6B. As usual, it is likely also that this style is designed for syntactic/semotactical reason but the most interesting aspect however is socio-politico-theological. If we look carefully at this motif (Fig.6B), the head of the Qaallu merges with the foreparts (a aoȦa) of the downwards (ȯaȦi) h eifer Ǘillee (=“Lovable, Belle, Amulet”), which makes the latter headless. The Elellee (=“Cowry, Ululation, Lullaby”) heifer apparently with only one horn but full nape (bokk’uu) appears to be another 107

Based on Oromo philosophy of genealogically determined settlement patterns, Mačč‘a occupy lands across Oromia, including Hararqee. But, the western Oromia/Ethiopia Mačč‘a are hyper-clan or federation and descendants of an ancient ancestor or sub-moiety. Their oral history consistently shows that a huge section of their population were forced to frequent exodus, evictions and re-settlements from Massir (they use this to refer to lands from Abbaá/Abbay ‘Nile River’ to up until Northern Africa and Afro-Asian borderlands) due to certain war (s) with alien enemy speaking a language they could not understand. This ancient exodus began when Makkoo Billii, son of Mačč’a Booro/Boorā, whom, Antonio d’ Abbadie described as “African Lycurgus”, their “law-giver” and ‘last pharaoh’ was captured and hung after his Socratic or Christ-like sagacious speech by his enemies (see Gidada, 2006; Bartels, 1983). This story coincides with linguistic and population histories not least the Biblical story. The biblical “Moses” whose meaning is “son, child”, argues Sigmund Freud in his book Moses and Monotheism (1939), is misleading for the terminal consonantal sound was originally Egyptian and never Greek /s/ or Hebrew /š/ (Semitic doesn’t have this phoneme), i.e., it was ejective. That’s exactly what mačč‘a / mûčč‘a means ‘infant, suckler, son; viscosity, teats. Mačč‘a was son of Raya (literally ‘Ray, Sun-disc-in-motion’) son of Horroo (literally ‘Spring(ing) Mineral Water) at land of Genesis called Wo abu (literally ‘Water Drawing, Water of Freedom’). These precisely correspond to the gist of Freud’s discussion. Indeed, both “Moses” and “Ramses” (I, II, III) are all twisted from truth origin or are Stolen Legacy of the Oromo --Mačč‘a Raya/Rāã Horroo, the primogenitors (see Bartels, 1983; Gidada, 1984).

jigsaw making a thorax (ȯûȦeȹča) and ceremonial clothing (qoolloo) of the Qaallu. This is possibly a grammar of the Booreetúma Gada System signifying the institution that the Qaallu are “central”, i.e., “occupy a special position, and their members act as ‘witnesses’ (Galech) on the occasion of weddings or other important transaction” (Werner, 1915:17, 1914a: 140; see Legesse, 2006: 104, 182).

Carefully observed, Fig.6B, the head of the Qaallu motif and that of the foreparts of the downwards (ȯaȦi) facing Ǘillee heifer merge, which makes the latter headless or dehorned (ȯaȦ’ooma) 108

a representation of the political term/concept koɁtooma ‘sovereign’ (-ooma

‘middle voice non-perfective’ = in-power)’ or maybe also ȯaȦ’amoʨii ‘retired Abba Gada’ (See also Stegman (2011:73). 109 Legesse (1973: 63) described similar Gada structure/system: The highest office is that of the Abba Gada Arbora. 110 He is described as the adula fi e or the apical councilor (fi e=apex, pinnacle, top). The next two seniority positions are held by the councilors known as Abba Gada kontoma. These two officers always come from two specific clans from the two sub-moieties of the Gona moiety. The three senior officers of the council are collectively known as gada saden (the gada triumvirate). The remaining three councilors are simply adula hayyu (senior councilors). The three fundaments/senior officials (hayyu or yuba) of Oromo Gada System are, on the left, Abba Bokku/Bokkīčča

‘(upcoming) Proprietor/Holder of the Bokkuu Scepter, ‘the (to be)

Headman of the Law-makers or incumbent Abba Gada’, in the middle, Abba Qallačča ‘ the Headman of Spiritual Direction’, and on the right Abba Gada ‘(out going/retired) President’, to join the group of GaȦ’amoʨii (compare with Egyptian Fig. 6H). Plowman (1918:114) gave details of qallačča headgear components (Fig. 5H): (1) “seven bosses superimposed on a raised rim running round the emblem” 111 ; (2) “upright portion made of polished lead”; (3) 108

Cervicek (1971:132) writes in footnote, quoting the influential scholar Eric Haberland, “even nowadays toy figures of humped cattle without heads are modelled of clay and dung by the Borana Oromo (Haberland, 1963a, PI. 28/6).” A hornless cattle is called qúȥȥ’oo, adjectival of quȥ’a/qooȥa ‘divide, share; quota’ k’u a ‘to cut off, truncate’ or qi a ‘make/be leveled, co-equal’ (see also Tutschek 1844:37, 46). 109 The usual pattern in Afan Oromo is, when the retroflex liquid /ɳ/ appears as an epenthetic consonant the implosive / / turns to /t/ affecting the surrounding vocalic sounds, hence, possibly: ȯaȦ’ooma>koɁtooma. The lexicogrammar ȯaȦ’a-miʨii/-mițții ‘ȯaȦ’a –not.ACCUSATIVE’ and ȯaȦ’(o)-m taa ‘ȯaȦ’-not.NOMINATIVE’ might explain the absence of head (mataa) or being dehorned (ȯaȦ’oomataa) as diagrammatology of the grammatical category: NEGATION. 110 Gada Arbora is either a phonological corruption of Gadaa Boora ‘the Gada of Booran’ (interchanges with ‘the Oromo Gada’, since Boora-na, the ancient moiety, ethnonym and abstract plural (marked by –(a)na, from anthroponomy Boora) binds all the Oromo nation/sub-tribes/clans and, hence, sometimes, even, substitutes “Oromo”; or, it is related to the symbolic cultural meaning of arbora ‘armband (prestigious) worn by the barons, core band’ or as in the phrase olla arbora/ollaabooraa “the original cluster of huts, the part of the camp consisting of the families of the adula councilors” (Legesse, 1973: 69). 111 As Plowman and others (e.g., Werner, 1914b: 272) discuss, in Oromo ethnomathematics, number 7 and all the ‘true’ numbers (1-10) and decadals (20-100) denote mythical concepts. We cannot treat this complex concept here.

“circular base of white polished shell-like substance resembling ivory”; (4) “leather straps for fastening emblem to forehead of weaver” (Plowman, 1918:114). Pertaining to the “seven bosses” is possibly equivalent to Cervicek’s (1971:192) “Seven animal representations”. It is possible that the “seven bosses”, meaning here knobs (bokkuu) of the qallačča headgear, might be

simulacra

the

“seven

bosses’,

meaning

here

superior

commanders

(bokkuu/qaallu/aȮaoȦa), in the structure of the democratic Gada System. Legesse (1973: 82, 107) calls these bosses the “torban Baallii” and translates “the seven assistants” of Abba Gada in “power” (his in-powerness makes the particular person Bokkīčča or “the Bokkuu” i.e., the most superior boss or commander). Long before Legesse’s critical and erudite study of Gada System, Phillipson (1916:180) wrote: The petty chiefs act in conjunction with the king. These are, however, appointed by election of officers called Toib [Torb] or Toibi (= seven councilors or ministers). These are men of standing and character…. They are governed by, and work in unison with, the head. These officers are appointed by the king, and each of the seven has an alternative, so that the number is unbroken. Their office is to sit in council with the king, hear cases, and administer justice…the Toibi stands in the order elected: 1, 2, and c. These seven high ranking officials (aȮåōȦa 112 ) of umaʈaa ‘the people’ (hence by play on wordgrammar, aɂ aoumaʈaa ‘officials of the people’ or aɂ oo-maʈaa ‘power-head’) are purposely represented by forepart of bovine (a aoȦa)—hence, here (Fig. 5A or B), headless bovine motif. This is possible because this body part is the strongest and most powerful part (see also Fig.6D, E), and with metaphoric expression ‘the seven powerful assistants’ of Abba Gada/Bokkuu are referred to as those “On-High in the government of his people” (de Salviac, 2005 [1901]: 212). From more theological perspective, the queue of the fourteen or so anthropomorphic motifs with stretched hands surrounding the bigger anthropomorphic (still in Fig.6A, B) could also be interpreted as representation of the Qaallu’s Irressa, his “righthands” or “emissaries” (Hassen, 1994: 9). Above (Fig.6D), we saw the symbolic roof-pot called ŏkkota and ȯulůllati symbol of okoto (Foot’s 1913:46 spelling) or a aoȦa (-oȦa ‘plural’) ‘headmen, paterfamilias (spirit of)’ or of qallaʨii ‘witness (spirit)’ feeding their spirit (ȯololča) into the current generation i.,e., futurology divinity. With difficulty deciphering the expression, Werner (1914b: 273) defines Torbban Baallii as “The Seven who stand on one side, which quite fits in with … the Jara [Ǘaarra] ceremony” (another term for the Bokkuu ceremony). What is so odd to ‘hear’ is the unheard-of Abyssinian ‘tradition’ of democratic scepter/power exchange unveiled to us by unheared-of document by a British traveler of 19th century in Oromo country: 112

AȮåōȦa>aɂȯa’oʈa is plural noun from aȮoo>aɂ oo ‘power, strength’.

This king [Nakwetalaab], the last reigning

monarch of the native dynasty of Lasta

(claiming descent from Sirak, and known in the histories as the house of Zague), who, after ruling Abyssinia for 36 years, resigned he scepter to Icon Amlac [Yikuno Amlak?], the progenitor of the present imperial family and who is said to be still alive and wandering bout between Jerusalem and Zobul, in expectation of the time when his second reign-which is to be a sort of millennium-- is to commence (Beke, 1844:55).

Indeed, Beke himself admited that the so-called “Lasta” by Europeans (possibly a corruption of Raya or their pre-Islamic/-Christianity Irreečča 113 Institution, no place or community name is claimed by the local people as “Lasta”) are the “pagan” Raya Oromo (Raya-ʔDoobba /Azabo sub-moieties), a fact that confirms that the “pagan” so-called “Zaguwe” or “Zague” is a deliberate kabalistic distortion of Waaqessa ‘Believer/Institution of Waaqeeffata Religion’.

Cervicek (1971:130) was right when he theorized “anthropomorphic representations do not seem to have been painted for their own sake but in connection with the cattle and symbolic representations only.” Nor is the headless cattle drawn for the sake of fun or pastime, but, is possibly intended to capture what Legesse (1973: 63) describes “Borana version of ‘government by committee’” signified as gadaa mura (from legal term mura ‘cut, decide, judge, sentence’). Legesse describes it: “in spite of the fact that they were ordered by seniority, they were a community of equals and shared the same amount of decision-making power.” But, gadaa mura might also be a paronomasia for the aforesaid system of Gada Arbora↔Gadaa Boora. In other words, headless cattle is perhaps stylized to make a grammatical concept of negation or as a realization of the notion of absence of imbalance or presence of seniority-cum-equality simultaneously caput mortuum.

Likewise, at Laga Oda where two floors, qoolloo/ȯoorroo ‘upper floor, private division in a house’ (also qoolloo or the absolutive qŏɨȹéɀça ‘stratosphere, air’) and garbaa/sem’oo ‘lower floor’ (also means “ocean bed” ) are styled in such a way that in the upper floor are drawn in bigger size but “miniatures” in the lower floor (Cervicek, 1971:121-122). Cervicek sees that “the cattle, goat, sheep and

oval representations in red,

white

and

black” predominate the upper floor

“whereas on the lower ‘floor’ practically all the H-shaped man representations and the sunlike symbols” are concentrated. This might be objectification of, in accordance to the 113

Eurocentric lambdization of the local languages’ /r/ and fusion into /st/ of their alveo-palatal affricates/implosives is common.

cosmogonal-theological belief system, the scalar/gradational relations between man and God, earth and sky, man/life and milk/water.

The ‘sunburst’ motifs we saw above (speculated as representation of ‘spring water’, ‘pond’ and/or ‘milk’) could not be whimsical painting because it perfectly fits with Werner’s (1914b: 273) observation of events in Bokkuu / Ǘaarraa Ceremony: “If one of these [above seven] men find it necessary to spit…, he must hold up his staff before his face and spit straight down to the ground behind it.” Spitting ȥaaȦ’ii ‘mead’ or milk and handing the full cup to friends, uttering prayer for his welfare and that of his family and nation, is a unique symbolic act of humility and good wish (in the same manner the Westerner spills champagne over). Also, as well register by Bartels (1983), an Oromo old man cannot pass by children without spitting his/her saliva ptu, ptu, ptu, uttering a river of blesses: GuddaȦ’a ‘Grow!!’; Iǘa’rraa hafaa ‘Be saved from evileye!!’…etc. This is a symbolic-metonymic objectification of the life generating and sustaining liquids (i.e., milk and rain) as per the Qaalluu Institution.

Before we wind up this section, let’s also attempt to explicate the cultural history of the Biblical symbolic act/discourse of ‘Ethiopia’ stretching her hands up towards God. Primarily, this gives us the image of the anthropomorphic motif in line facing the Qaallu and raising their arms, possibly a chorus in praise of him (Fig.6A&B). As the Catholic Father and scholar Lambert Bartels accurately

describes, “the perfect attitude at prayer in the [pre-Christian] in the Oromo’s eyes is to lift the hands towards heaven” (Bartels, 1983: 350). It is Oromo pre-Christian worldview to stretch the arms up to Waaqa ‘sky, Heaven, God’ while praising Waaqayyo ‘Dear God’ (the Oromo do not ‘pray’ in the Christians or others sense, which is tantamount to ‘commanding, ordering God do’s or don’ts, but only praise God). This is enfolded in the word homophonic-homosemic wakkó or aßakkaȦ’a ‘the act of stretching hands up and apart’ and uttering

114

ók’uba “Praise! Praise be

upon God!”, which also refers to “the act of kneeling down and raising one’s hands with open fingers towards the sky (Waaqa) and thus submitting oneself to Waaqa” (Gidada, 2001[1984]:163). 115 This prototypical Oromo theological symbolic-speech act is based on the fundament that “Heaven opens its hands” (Kassam, 2005: 111).

114

Wakkó is deadjectival augmentative word whose first meaning is ‘wide open, prominent ears (e.g. elephant, rodents, mushrooms’) from a-waku ‘to brace, know’ (a- ‘verbalizer’), whose root is etymologically related to the intransitive ßak’a ‘to dissect, bisect, rift, drift apart’ and ßaaqqó ‘wilderness, vacuity’ and the verb a-ßaka ‘to sift, sip, know’. 115 Possibly, Ḫók’uba comes from oɣ “Take! (stretching hand)’ and k’ubo ‘truth, just, finger’.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Muȥ’a Ceremony (from muȥ’a ‘to anoint with butter’ ( an allomorphic category of muȥȥa ‘to boost, tighten, strengthen, fortify’ and mút a ‘(to) awl, sew up, monolith; trans., to mutate, invigorate, shade off (snake)’, mutaraa ‘a being, one body; statuette’) in which the Gada class in power makes an offering of cattle or sheep the Qaallus, the ritual leaders of the moieties, now preserved by the southern Booran Oromo. In the last part of the ceremony the Qaallu puts on a lion or tiger/leopard skin masks and releases the symbolic zoomorphic anaconda snakes (buttaa/buuȥii) or imbira buttaa/qaalluu ‘(a kind of) buteo or sparrowhawk, which catches birds and pecks out the eyes of (dying) animals’ he has brought along for the occasion. 116 This ritual is a variant or allomorphic category of the above discussed (Fig. 6) Butta Ritual or Ǘaarra Ritual 117 of victory held once every 8-years by the west and central Oromians (hence Moo ii interchanges with Gaȥa-čča, the specific elected President, but usually translated as ‘King’, which is not Oromo system, but is of Abyssinian theocraticautocratic absolute-monarchic system). An external paradigm might be unacquainted with the symbolic (metaphoric, metonymic) meanings and only interpret literally the occasion of the symbolic, segmented, pyramidal zoomorphism of serpents or portrayal of their images as a painting, monolith, megalith, stele or obelisk as ritualizing or worshipping of snakes and icons or gods. 118

GOD OF KNOWLEDGE Wilkinson (1840: 183) tells us about Egyptian division of their “Gods”: Mercury, or Hermes Trismegistus, is said to have admitted three classes of Gods. In the first were those whom he called heavenly; in the second, the empyrean; and in the third, the etherean…[or] classed the Gods under the two heads of the natural and the living 116

See also Galgalo Boru Galma (n.d.). Introduction to the Borana Gada System. Privately published. Gnamo (2002: 111) states Muȥ’a Ceremony represente “continuity between the past and the present” (p. 111) and Ǘaarra Ritual “is the name of the ceremony marking the end of Gadaa cycle, where the lubaa, outgoing Gadaa class, passes power to the incoming Gadaa class, lubaa. Jaarra is also the basis of the Oromo calendar based on the eight years term and passage to paternity or fatherhood and a sortof retirement from active political life after covering the five Gadaa grades each lasting eight years. The word Jaarra itself comes from jaaruu, which means getting older” (p. 113) or, philosophically, timespace-travel. 118 It is not haphazard that Oromo words for serpents all express, double-semantically, ‘enlightening’ and moving spatiotemporalities: buttii/buttaa/booȥ’ee ‘puff-adder; to come afterwards; after death’ (booȥa/buȥa ‘last, after’ or mut ’a to shade skin(snake), mutate, regenerate’); ğ’awee/ğ’awi a ‘anaconda; transition, lighting flash, swarming’ (from ǘ’awa, č’aâ ‘cross, traverse’); marrataa ‘cobra; recoiling, recurring, the coming of age’ (from maɋa ‘every time, always; to entwine, wrap, circulate, circle, encircle’), illama ‘a certain snake (after its protruding eyes); witnessing eventful history on the becoming’ from illa ‘(to) behold, eye’, bôóffa ‘python, spatter cobra’, allomorphic category of o aa ‘to come out en masse (for rituals), evolve, kindle’; magarsa ‘boa (green)’ from marga ‘to grow, grass’; lolaa/alaloo ‘a kind of aggressive snake with thrilling fangs’ from loa ‘to move serpentine movement, cross through safely’; ßallač’oo/mallač’oo ‘boa constrictor; to boil, receive new year light, agate, certain star’, etc. APAP is one of Ancient Egyptian serpents representing regeneration (despite Egyptologists insert vowels arbitrarily). 117

Deities: the former consisting of the stars and other physical objects; the latter, of men who had received divine honours. 119 Earlier, we raised Bekerie’s argumentation based on W.E.B. DuBois of parallelism between the Greek/Egyptian cosmological concept of “Sirius”, which is the “beautiful star”, and “the Oromo term for a dog, Sarre” (Bekerie, 2004:116). Although it is interesting and analytical argument, it is

not

deeper

and

broader.

Following

the

usual

sound-semantic-ontic/metonymic

systematicalization one might reasonably also suggest the Oromo ŞuɎɎā “complexion, highpowered intellect; image, beam (sun)”. Still, this trivializes the other, more complex social philosophical-cosmological concept or annual festival of Ȧ’āɎé/ɲaaɋɋii. [Ďāʀé is] the first day of the “Birra” season, or the first light of this season…the greatest ritual that is celebrated each year…is here considered as the spirit attached to the new harvest and the new “Birra” [birraa] season. It is a season of plenty, of weddings…[It] is offered praise. The spirit belongs to , therefore it is protected by God” (Sumner, 1997:260-261). Indeed, the representation for the star is expressed in the praise songs (Sumner, 1997: 260 based on Cerulli, 1922; 137) as by “chick-peas of heaven” a translation of (either of) the two variants of peas, ațțara or šißiraa/ šimbiraa, both of which, when they blossom/flower, are images of starry night sky. True, şaɋɋee ‘dog’ and/or şarra ‘a fabulous creature’ (see Werner, 1914b: 272, footnote) is similar to or an allomorphic category of aȥurree/k’att’urree ‘cat’’ (see Fig.1H; also this creature is known in Egyptian/Meroitic hieroglyphics), are symbolic-semiotic representations not just for phonologic but also for causal reasons (what they can cause) to cognition. That is, not just starry eyes, but also a social mathematical/epistemological memory as in the following: Jan lawon herima = Six are the marriage cattle Toib ban imbulte = The Seven stand on one side Sadiet dal sara [şarra] = Eight is the bringing-forth of the sara (a fabulous animal) Salar hariedi wantoko = Nine is not counted (Werner, 1914b: 272) Similarly, the Oromo word/concept seeri/seera means ‘social order, police, throne’. Professor Legesse affirms that in Oromo Gada System, ‘law’ is symbolized by ‘dog’; he encountered the Oromos legal dictum: “‘Seeri mummee seera sare!’” Legesse points out that the symbolism between ‘law’ and ‘dog’ is yet to be unraveled by “future students of Oromo Democracy” (2006: 200-202). Legesse, nevertheless, tried to interpret: by this, the Oromo mean “People are not 119

This concepts are in Oromo Waaqa ‘God, sky, heaven’; qoollo ‘empyrean’, qarra ‘stars, star beams’, qorça ‘meteorite’ or Qaallu Institution; and, saaba ‘uterus, people, nation’ or Saffuu Institution

required to raise dogs, some do, some do not. But those who do are constrained by the law of the dog…[even in hardest times] people, must remember to feed their dogs”. Here, mummee means ‘limit, final decision, end; riverside’, a metonymic phonological change from uumee ‘nature, creation, natural laws’, from ūma ‘to create (only for God)’. These are social epistemologically

the

Oromo

words/concepts

sirɁa

‘‘system,

institution;

knowledgeable, well-informed’ from the verb sir-/ser- ‘to root, be deep-rooted’. Hence, Seeri (m)uumee seera sare is a play on poly-semantic/-metonymic complex: ‘Law of Nature/Gada institution is fundamental/deep-rooted/is above everyone in policing all of us’. Dog (saré) is a loyal police, indeed. The same root form with same semantic in Egyptian is si3

THE ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY OF OROMO PRE-HISTORIC ROCK ARTS VERSUS THE “LOST CIVILIZATION” NOISE IN ABYSSINIANIST HISTORIOGRAPHIES - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2024)