Ethiopians & Rastafari
Aster Sellassie, Millennium Ed.
NEW
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photos 2005
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Culture
People
Religion
Ethiopians & Rastafari Aster Sellassie, Millennium Ed. NEW
Culture People Religion
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indexThe Three Pillars
Imperial power without Faith and Nation is meaningless. How to understand God, Crown or the Nation is the task. I placed the Culture among the three, because in today's conditions monarchy is a part of the national cultural makeup. In the past a monarch was a ruler, who governed the state, developing what we call nowadays "culture": today it is a historical heritage and the culture develops the society (more than a state). Perhaps, for a more scientific exploration of this topic, the reader should take a close look at Cultural Studies, new and very productive method.
Monarchy and traditions of aristocracy survived in the most advanced western nations. The less developed countries lost its past and unlikely will ever be able to compete without a process of restoration of their genetic composition.
Very often we point at the United States as a example of a new fully modern nation, which exists without autocratic tradition. The Americans had no common religion and weren't a nation in its origins. How much is America a nation still a questionn. Country doesn't necesserely constitutes the nation, as we can see ion the cases of great emprires of the past.
The empires rise and fall, the culture stays. The Americans after several centuries of existence hadn't develop even their own language. Burke and Tocqueville wrote about the stenght of democracy which is a the long-term weakness.
The American Age is a shorter than a ce. Country doesn't necesserely constitutes the nation, as we can see ion the cases of great emprires of the past.
The empires rise and fall, the culture stays. The Americans after several centuries of existence hadn't develop even their own language. Burke and Tocqueville wrote about the stenght of democracy which is a the long-term weakness.
The American Age is a shorter than a century and ecomonic power never preserved the great civilization from disintegration.
The dichatomy of culture and civilization is well established and our task is examine the monarchy institution in cultural aspects.
The subject is not purely academic. The Soviet Union was based exclusevely on the state machine and even its name is vanished now.
The spectacular raise and impressive existence of the Nazi Germany lasted only twelve years precicely because there were little cultural foundations for such a state. We saw the cult of personality (Hitler, Stalin, Mao), when the autocratic powers were surpassing of any monarchy of the past.
The socialist doctine prevented national ideology from affiliation with the Protestantism. Socialism and nationalism is a strange mix.
All the famous tyrrants of the century became barbaric King-Gods, which was an outdated concept even before the Greko-Roman times.
We can see how the post-Soviet countries are struggling with the issue of self-identity. Contrary to the popular opinion, Russia's problems are not in economy, but in their cultural crisis, which has over hundrend years of history.
The triad "Monarch, God, Nation" wasn't an accidental combination and had the life of the universal formula.
Any country which is not originated in a the fashion of the North American colonies, will have a taugh time going through transfiguration.
The paths of the present are abvious, we have enough data to understand what the modernist trend can offer us.
The issue is the free from revolutionary politics future. The future which we see even today. How long will the American super-modernist model continue to diminate our minds?
At the end of the century USA became a number ten in the standarts of living and the American educational standarts perhaps can tell more about the future.
Civilization is about big numbers, but the big is not the best survival.
...why should we be concerned with the "life after us" (and therefore -- before us)? "Now" is a dangerous place to be.
You never know what is next. The nmass hysteria known as "news" is a direct result of our paranoic existence.
We need 24-hour non-stop information because we do not know what to expect. Our prosperous postmodern man is a neroutic full of supressed panic, denied fears and he is extremely unstable. That is the fate of man without culture.
His peace is occupied by inticipation of crashes and bad news. He has to elect, re-elect, re-evaluate and keep choosing without any rest. The only unchangable is the pace of changes. How pleasant is his wonderful life? The use of drugs should tell you.So, how did they live in their "static" universe before us? Frazer made an interesting observation about the mind of a prehistorical man: his world was the place of constant changes, he knew next to nothing about his world, understood no laws which governed his environment.
Everything was "news" to a primitive. Frazer writes that this state of mind was resposible for the stagnation when it was impossible to develop anything.
That was the reason for our giant leap into "History," where the world became familiar and friendly. Did men "invented" gods?
What difference does it make if with the establishing of the LOGIC, we imagine many childish pictures and thoughts? More important was the DISCOVERY of ORDER! The Idea of God was very scientific in nature.Now, what about the superiority of man? Over woman? But how about over animals?
The non-equality came into action to define the idea of QUALITY. Everything was important in the barbaric mind which was too busy to THINK about anything. With positioning himself between the animal kingdom and God man began his history, because now he had the priority of values.[to be continued, see Monarchy Directory!]
Anatoly Antohin
http://www.ethiopianart.org/contents.html
from qustia.com:
One of the most important events in Ethiopian art history occurred around 330 A.D., when Ezana, the Askumite ruler of the highlands of northeastern Africa, accepted Christianity. This occurred not long after the emperor Constantine declared Christianity a legal religion of the Roman Empire. Ezana's acceptance of Christianity is not surprising in light of the commercial ties between Rome and Askum. By round 500, the most sacred of Christian texts - the Gospels - had been translated into Ethiopia, and the foundations of a Christian artistic tradition, setting the course of artistic development in the region, had been firmly established. Pre-Christian Askumite rulers celebrated their victories by setting up monumental statues to the gods of heaven and earth, but because the East Christian Orthodox Churches eschewed the making of "graven images," the Christian art of Ethiopia includes no sculpture. Therefore, Ethiopia's Christian rulers celebrated their majesty by building churches and endowing monasteries. The city of Askum became symbolically the New Jerusalem, and the cathedral there was dedicated to St. Mary of Zion, after the church of the Apostles on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Until the twentieth century, Ethiopia's rulers considered themselves latter-day Israelites who, like King David and King Solomon, ruled by the grace of God.
The exhibition African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia, currently traveling to venues in the United States, features the little-known as Abyssinia, from which the modern state of Ethiopia developed in the late nineteenth century. African Zion consists of a rich stylistic variety of devotional images, most of which are painted on wooden panels or on the parchment pages of hand-copied books. Many come from the collection of the Museum of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University.(1)
(1) Marilyn E. Heldman et al., African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia (New Haven, 1993). The exhibition will appear at Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History through February 1995. All photos by Malcolm Varon, NYC.[R] 1993.
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