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Ethiopia today, are also often found. Great quantities of pottery have been found at all excavated Aksumite sites. Some common ancient styles of pottery are still made and can be bought in Tigrayar markets.
Language, writing and evangelization
From the third century onward, though Greek was used for com- mercial and monumental purposes and on coins, the use of Ge'ez spread. It became the lingua franca of the empire. The origins of Ge'ez are unclear. It is a rich, highly evolved Semitic language stil used in Ethiopia for church liturgy, like Latin in Europe, and alsc like Latin, the source of new terms in Amharic and Tigrinya. Where does the name come from? It is probably related to that of the south- ernmost Eritrean province, Akele Guzay, and that may derive fron a group mentioned in Aksumite inscriptions, the Agazain, who are thought by some historians to have been one of the original groups of immigrants from South Arabia.7
Ge'ez was first written in the South Arabian script. Like all Semitic alphabets, this script has a peculiar disadvantage: only consonants are indicated. Vowels were not shown. Ge'ez, like the modern Ethiopiar anguages derived from it, has seven vowels and several diphthongs which must be indicated in writing if the meaning is to be clear. By the fourth century Aksumites were using an ingenious vowel system involving appendagesor changes in the formofthe consonants This system has continued in Ethiopia to this day for all the Semitic languages. The Ge'ez vowel system was either an original invention or may have been inspired by Indian examples. Indian alphabets, which also ultimately derive from Syro-Palestinian originals, had by this time developed systems for noting vowels. The possibility of Indian alphabetic influence is credible, for Red Sea navigators hac learned how to exploit the monsoons and opened water routes to Per- sia, India and CeyIon. Indian traders may alsohave come to Ethiopian ports. Aksumite traders even made contact with traders from China.
" See ibid., pp. 27, 63, 85, for the hypothesis that the term Agazain eventually came to be applied to all of the early Aksumites.
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