Abyssinians crossed the Bab el Mandeb straits of the Red Sea in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE

The rise of the oldest Abyssinian kingdom in the coastland around Massawa and the mountains around Yeha and Axum comes after more than 1,500 years of Somali Kushitic existence and after the long lasting radiation of the Kingdom of Punt nearby the Cape Guardafui.

Archeological and textual evidence testifies to uninterrupted presence of Somali Kushitic populations in the wider Horn of Africa region for about four millennia.

Abyssinia’s expansion in the Horn of Africa, a vast area to which the mountainous Amharas and Tigrays have always been totally alien, did not relate to the interest of the invaded lands and the conquered nations but to the Anglo-French interests against Italy, major rival of both England and France in the wider Horn of Africa region. Without knowing it, the illiterate pseudo-king Menelik merely played the part.

Abyssinia was a tiny, barbaric, and otherwise isolated kingdom that expanded at the prejudice of many Horn of Africa nations during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Reference
 

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