Dʿmt


was a kingdom located in current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom exist, as very little archaeological work has taken place. As a result, it is not known whether D`mt ended as a civilization before Aksum's early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Aksumite kingdom possibly around the beginning of our era.[1]

The capital is thought to have been Yeha. It developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons.

Most modern historians like Stuart Munro-Hay, Rodolfo Fattovich, Ayele Bekerie, Felder, and Isaac consider this civilization to be indigenous, although Sabaean-influenced due to the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea, while others like Michels, de Contenson, Mekouria, and Burstein view D`mt as the result of a mixture of "culturally superior" Sabaeans and indigenous peoples.[2][3] However, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is now known to not have derived from Sabaean, and there is evidence of a Semitic speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at least as early as 2000 BC.[4][5]Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of D`mt or some other proto-Aksumite state.[6] After the fall of D`mt in the 5th century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms, until the rise of one of these kingdoms, the Aksumite Kingdom, ancestor of medieval and modern Ethiopia, during the first century BC, which was able to reunite the area.[7]

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