Agʿazi is the name of a region of the Aksumite Empire in what consists today of Eastern
Tigray, Amhara and Southern
Eritrea
Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...
.
History
The earliest attestation of this name can be found in the determined ''nisba''-form yg'ḏyn in three pre-Aksumite Royal inscriptions: ''
b/mlkn/sr'n/yg'ḏyn/mkrb/d'mt/web''
' 'RBH, the victorious king, he of (the tribe?) YG'Ḏ, ''mukarrib'' of D'MT and SB' (RIE 8:1-2); ''lmn/mlkn/sr'n/yg/ḏyn/mkrb/d'mt/wsb'/bn/rbb'' 'LMN, the victorious king he of (the tribe?) YG'Ḏ, ''mukarrib'' of D'MT and SB', son of RBH' (RIE 5 A:1-2, the same formula in RIE 10:1-5). YG'Ḏ seems to be the name of the leading tribe or royal family settled in the region of
Akele Guzai
The Provinces of Eritrea existed between Eritrea's incorporation as a colony of Italy until the conversion of the provinces into administrative regions.
Overview
In Italian Eritrea, the Italian colonial administration had divided the colony into e ...
.
In Aksumite inscriptions this name never appears. In the Greek Monumentum Adulitanum (RIE 277), the author (an Aksumite king of the 2nd-3rd century AD) states: Γάζη έθνος έπολέμηα ("I fought the Gaze-people"). This people's name has been connected with the term
Ge'ez. The Sinaiticus and Laurentianus manuscripts (both 11th century) explain in margin: "Gaze means the Aksumites. Until now they are called Agaze". The reconstruction ''
gzә
ān' in RIE 264 from Zafār (Yemen) (late 5th-early 6th century AD) has been proposed by Müller, but the fragment is too badly damaged to provide any help as to who could be meant by this name.
The only certain attestation is found in
Abraha
Abraha (Ge'ez language, Ge’ez: አብርሃ) (also spelled Abreha, died after CE 570;Stuart Munro-Hay (2003) "Abraha" in Siegbert Uhlig (ed.) ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: A-C''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. r. 525–at least 553S. C. Munro-Hay ...
's Sabaean dam-inscription CIH 541 from Mārib (dated 543/548 AD), where he calls himself ''mlkn gzyn''. The meaning of this title remains enigmatic, especially since Abraha is at this time not any longer the Aksumite viceroy, but the autonomous king.
A connection between ''agāzī'' and the people Agēzāt, mentioned in two of Ezana's inscriptions seems questionable.
References
Regions of Ethiopia
Tigray Region
Regions of Eritrea
Aksumite Empire
Aksumite cities
{{Tigray-geo-stub