Talk:Kingdom of Aksum

Article is full of deliberate fallacies
Awfully written and clearly agenda driven 94.8.242.219 (talk) 10:23, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

'ākʷsəm redux
I semi-mistakenly said that I had started a Talk page discussion about this. I did, but had not realised that it had been archived (here). Here's the text from the earlier discussion from 17 August 2022:


 * I just changed the representation ኣኵስም 'ākʷsəm back to አክሱም 'äksum. I find this latter Gəʕz form & representation in the Tropper/Hasselbach-Andee grammar, Dillmann's dictionary, and Dillmann's Chrestomathy (without any indication of emendation of manuscript sources). Wikipedia is meant to draw on secondary sources rather than primary, but I thought I'd check the primary to see if there was some error: RIÉ 188 has አክሱም 'äksum pretty clearly on the second line. The published version of RIÉ claims the same for the second line of RIÉ 189, but to be honest I can't make the photograph out. አክሱም 'äksum also appears in Conti Rossini's published edition of the Book of Axum. The editor (not signed in) who changed this to ኣኵስም 'akʷsəm claimed that 'äksum is the Amharic name. It's true that this name is used in Amharic. It's also used in Tigre, which is a close relative of Gəʕz. The Kane Tigrinya dictionary gives ኣኽሱም 'aḵsum, which comes close to the anonymous editor's preferred version. The only reference I've been able to find for ኣኵስም 'akʷsəm is a paper by Ennno Littmann from 1906 about a Tigrinya-Arabic manuscript glossary. Is there any secondary source that suggests that ኣኵስም 'akʷsəm is more representative of actual Aksumite usage?

I'll address the most recent edits in a comment below this. Pathawi (talk) 02:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Yebrehu23 made this edit bringing in አኵስም ('äkʷsəm, so a little different), citing Kane's Amharic-English Dictionary page 1263 and Corpus scriptorum christianorum Orientalium: Scriptores aethiopici. The former citation does indeed check out, but it's an Amharic dictionary: Not Gəʕz. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Scriptores Aethiopici is a publication series with 115 volumes, & I wasn't able to guess which one this might be. I think it's unlikely that any volume would be a more authoritative source than the Gəʕz dictionaries, however. Pathawi (talk) 02:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The word አኵስም appears in Kidne Wold-Kifle Ge’ez Dictionary (መጽሐፈ፡ሰዋስው፡ወግስ፡ወመዝገበ፡ቃላት፡ሐዲስ). The dictionary is not in English but it is written in the Amharic language. You can find it on ፪፻፲፱ or page 219. Yebrehu23 (talk) 06:28, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * My university library doesn’t have a copy of this dictionary. I’ll look into what to do about that. Can you give a volume for the Corpus citation? Which book in that series were you looking at? Pathawi (talk) 13:39, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * All right. I've looked at the book by Kidanä Wäld Kəfle. I read Gəʕz, but I only have the absolute most basic skills in navigating Amharic. From what I can gather, this entry is talking about the Cushites introduced in Genesis 10:7—not the city of Aksum. Am I misunderstanding this entry? Pathawi (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes read the second definition of the word. The entry starts with the word ዐማሮች and then continue on. Yebrehu23 (talk) 06:03, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I believe it’s volume 595 Yebrehu23 (talk) 05:43, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * “Tomus 105” Yebrehu23 (talk) 05:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This is La «Vita» e i «Miracoli» di Libānos, edited by Alessandro Bausi. The book states that the narrative is recorded in multiple manuscripts. In the majority, the spelling is አክሱም 'äksum. Two manuscripts sometimes have አኵስም 'äkʷsəm. I don't think the purpose of this section is to record every variant that has occurred in some manuscript (especially as most manuscripts available to us were not written by native speakers). Pathawi (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Did you look over the second definition? The ancestors of the Amhara used to call it አኵስም. http://www.gzamargna.net/html/gzmezgebeqalat193.html Yebrehu23 (talk) 19:28, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I did. That’s an argument for an Amharic name. Pathawi (talk) 19:39, 19 July 2024 (UTC)