Amhara-The Cultural Background

Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture by Donald N. Levine
Review by: Taddesse Tamrat
The Journal of African History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1967), pp. 352-354
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/179492 .
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352 REVIEWS

particularlytrue of the term Hamitic which has no agreedphysical or linguistic

referentand is a fertilesourceof misconception.'There must be manyAfricanists
now who share in this reaction to the Hamite myth and will be grateful to
Professor Southall for phrasing it so incisively. But the lecture is brilliantly
incisive throughout,even though the attemptto reconcile Guthrie to Greenberg
may be a little over-ingenious.
Then there is a very characteristiccontributionby Dr MerrickPosnanskyon
the origins of agriculture and ironworking in southern Africa. Like all his
contributions, it is marked by a strong sanity and by an excessive modesty
which has led him to allot himself far too little space. Only twelve pages are
devoted to this vast and controversy-ladensubject and three of these are largely
coveredby sketchmaps. In the next paperDr J. G. Sutton writeson the problem
of Sirikwaholes, on which his views are alreadyfamiliar.Then there is Mr Kirk-
man's lecture on the history of the coast of East Africa until I700. He provides
an interesting interpretation,though of course it is no longer possible to state
that 'it is not until we arrive at the twelfth century that archaeologicaldata is
available'. This is balancedby Mr Chittick'saccountof Kilwa, written with his
unrivalledauthorityand with his gift for lucid concise exposition.
Finally there are three admirablepapersthat seem to be apartby themselves;
Dr Ogot's short but powerfulappealfor a fuller recognitionof the values of oral
history, Miss Berger's vividly attractiveaccount of her field work methods in
Karagwe,and Mr BrianKirwan'silluminatingsuggestionson the use of proverbs
and idioms as a check on traditionalhistory.
It is a great achievementfor Dr Posnanskythat all this can now be procured
for gs. 6d.
Oxford GERVASE MATHEW

AMHARA-THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND

Wax and Gold: traditionand innovationin EthiopianCulture.By DONALDN.

LEVINE. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1965.
Pp. xvi+3I5. $10.00.
Together with a number of monographsalready published elsewhere, Wax
andGoldconstitutesDr Donald Levine's 'close-up 'of traditionalAmharaculture.
As an essentially sociological work, the book is of peripheral interest to the
student of history. Yet in twenty crowded pages (pp. I8-38), where he seeks to
give 'some historicaldepth' to his study, he makesan excellent,if brief, summary
of a period covering over eight centuries.
What basically emerges from this is the characteristicunity of Ethiopian
history and its recurrent cycles: the thirteenth-centuryrise of the so-called
'Solomonic Dynasty' is a distant precursorof the rise of Shoa in the eighteenth
century; the sixteenth-centuryMuslim and Galla expansion had its parallelin
the tenth-century Agaw rise to power, culminating in the formation of the
Zagwe Dynasty. The Zagwe Dynasty may in turn be comparedwith the later
part of the Gondarperiod, when YejjuGalla elements were predominantat the
court, although for too short a period to grow into a full-fledged dynasty like
their Zagwe counterparts.

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 REVIEWS 353
Being particularly concerned with Amhara culture, Dr Levine's historical
summary logically starts in I270, when the Amhara prince Yikunno-Amlak
successfully establisheda new dynastyfrom which all Ethiopian monarchs have
since derivedtheir mythicalorigin. Neverthelessthe institutionsof the Christian
Kingdom ante-date this, no doubt important, historical event by over nine
centuries. The socio-political legacy and imperial tradition of ChristianAxum
have been carriedon to the present day with little or no basic changes.
This is the crux of the matter in studying the characteristicsof the Ethiopian
national polity, which cannot be fully explained, as Dr Levine seems to think,
by the mere temporary political dominance of one particular section of the
populations of Ethiopia. Dynasties have succeeded dynasties without basically
changingthe patternof the socio-politicalrelationshipsof the people in the long
history of the country.
Dr Levine examines in particularthe role of the Amharain the seemingly
interminable contradictions between 'tradition and modernity' in Ethiopia
today. But in doing this he also suggests some lines of development which
could be valid for all Ethiopians: 'The Ethiopian past can be...a source of
identificationswhich are associatedwith specificvirtues of nationalsignificance'
(p. 54). Nevertheless, in the wider political sphere, 'Ethiopia's modernizers'
will doubtless have to look outside their own history for a more positive and
a more comprehensive 'source of identifications'. It is unfortunate that the
author gives the impression of dismissing this as 'unrealistic demands and
inhumanitarianimpulses' (p. 94).
Much credit should be given to Dr Levine for his preciseunderstandingof the
Ethiopic literaryform of wax and gold (pp. 5-10), which he adopts as the title
of his book. He defines it as 'the formulaused by the Amharato symbolizetheir
favouriteform of verse. It is a form built of two semantic layers. The apparent
figurativemeaning of the words is called wax; their more or less hidden actual
significanceis the gold' (p. 5).
However, he overestimatesits value as a key to Amharaculture and Amhara
behaviour. This literary form of 'dual imagery' is only characteristicof the
clerical literati of Christian Ethiopia. Like all other literary attainments,it is
out of the reachof the ordinaryChristianpeasantry.In Dr Levine's own excellent
descriptionof the 'World of the AmharaPeasant' (pp. 55-92), the wax andgold
complex is significantlymissing. In fact the Amharaof Menz in particularare
noted for calling a spade a spade to a point of naivity.
Dr Levine goes even further in his wax and gold theory. He even seems to
attribute the lack of consistent and clear thinking in Ethiopian development
programmestoday, and the stark inefficienciesof the governmentmachinery,to
the ambiguities characteristicof wax and gold. This clearly falls short of the
mark. The failure of a medieval socio-political structure to cope with modern
conditions surely calls for a more satisfactoryexplanation.
For the student of Ethiopianhistory, a clearunderstandingof the wax andgold
form is very essential for quite a differentreason. The staggeringfrequency of
biblical parallelsin Ethiopic documents-both clericaland secular-has induced
many students of Ethiopian affairs to read too many pre-Christian 'hebraic-
judaic' elements into Ethiopian institutions. The truth of the matter is that
Ethiopian scribes and chroniclers have been assiduously applying the 'dual
imagery' of wax andgold in almost all their compilationsand compositions. For

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354 REVIEWS

the relativelyisolated clericalscholarshipof ChristianEthiopia, the Holy Bible,

and in particular the Old Testament, which is an integral part of Christian
tradition,has alwaysbeen an inexhaustiblesource of inspiration.Not only that.
It also provided the Christian nation with its characteristicpolitico-religious
organizations:the local saints posed as the veritableProphetsof the Old Testa-
ment, and the kings modelled their courts on that of King David of Israel, of
whom the Queen Shebalegend had convenientlymade them the distantoffspring.
This wax and gold relationship with Israel permeates all available Ethiopic
documents, and is extremely misleading for the serious student of Ethiopian
history.
In conclusion it may be said that one is not altogethersure if Dr Levine was
not himself being poetic in calling his book Wax and Gold. If he was, his gold
is most securely enmeshed in his wax!
TADDESSE TAMRAT
School of Oriental and African Studies,
Universityof London

FLEMISH MISSIONARIES IN THE CONGO

au Sohio, Congo,1600-1675. Tentativesmissionnaires

Rivalites luso-nderlandaises
des rdcolletsflamandset tribulationsdes capucinsitaliens,1670-1675. By Louis
JADIN. Bruxelles: from the Bulletin de l'Institut historiquebelge de Rome,
vol. 37, I966. Pp. 223.
This is essentially a book about missionary activities and policies in West
CentralAfrica,but like all Louis Jadin'sworksit also sheds light on such related
topics as commercial activity, colonial ambition and African statecraft.l The
centraltheme, consideringin diplomaticdetailthe Flemish endeavourto establish
a Catholic mission in the Congo areain the face of extremeopposition from the
Italian Capuchins and the Portuguese, will mainly appeal to specialists of
mission history. But the story also conveys a vivid picture of the harsh realities
of seventeenth-centurylife in Africa; when the last Flemish father was finally
expelled, he sailed to Brazilon a ship sixty-eight feet long by eighteenfeet wide,
which carried 480 slaves plus the crew; throughout the voyage he remained
crouched in the poop with the captain, constantly sickened by the stench of
dysentery,which killed 150 men duringthe thirty-six-daycrossing.The mission-
aries may have been right in thinking that the only escape from this terrifying
world was on the spiritualplane, but the work of even the most devoted priests
seems to have been hinderedby factionsand rivalrieswhich must have appeared
to the Bakongolike a tragic projectioninto Africa of Europeantribalism.
The peoples of the Netherlands had more success with their commercial
enterprises than with their evangelistic ones, and M. Jadin reproduces three
most valuable documents from the Dutch West India Archives describing the
trading situation in West CentralAfrica during the I64os. It is relevantto ask,
1 This is the fourth of M. Jadin's books to be published as part of the BIHBR, the
others having appeared in 1961, 1963 and 1964. Each is complete in itself with footnotes,
extensive documentation and an index, but, although available to reviewers in monograph
form, these works are commercially obtainable only as part of the Bulletin.

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