#arwe

So for this African History Month, I decided to do a series of posts about African mythical creatures that actually are very similar to dragon myths and probably have a common origin or are at least connected through mutual influences.

The first such dragon is Arwë (also known as Wainaba). This giant serpent is said to have been worshipped in Ethiopia before king Ezana of Axum embraced Christianity in the 4th century.

According to legend, a stranger came to Arwë's land and met a woman who cried because her daughter was about to be sacrificed to the dragon. The stranger asked her for a white lamb and the juice of the poisonous Euphorbia tree. Then he offers the lamb and juice to Arwë, who is poisoned and dies. The people of Ethiopia make the man their king, and after his reign he is followed on the throne by his daughter, the Queen of Sheba. With king Solomon she becomes the mother of Menelik I., the first historical king of Ethiopia.

There are many alternative versions of the tale. In one of them, the stranger is a wizard who fires flame from his palms to kill the serpent, while in another version one of the seven saints of Ethiopia, Abba Mentelit, kills the dragon with his cross.

In the versions of the story that include human sacrifices, one can clearly see parallels to the legend of St. George, who was and still is a very popular saint in Ethiopia.

Sources:

Edward Ullendorff (1956), The Contribution of South Semitics to Hebrew Lexicography, Vetus Testamentum, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1515723

Ernst Hammerschmidt (1965), Jewish Elements in the Cult of the Ethiopian Church, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1515723

Dorothea McEwan (2007), Sebetat: the Many Lives and Deaths of a Monster, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41988222

How Makeda Visited Jerusalem, and How Menelik Became King in Anthonia C. Kalu (2007), The Rienner Anthology of African Literature, Lynne Rienner Publishers, ISBN 9781588264916

Andrea Manzo (2014), Snakes and Sacrifices: Tentative Insights into the Pre-Christian Ethiopian Religion, Aethiopica, Vol. 17, https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.17.1.737, ISSN 2194-4024

Wainaba, the Serpent Ruler, Oxford Reference

Arwe, also known as Wainaba, in Ethiopian mythology, is a serpent-king who rules for four hundred years before being destroyed by the founder of the Solomonic dynasty. His story comes in a number of versions, all of which have him as a tyrannical rules who demands sacrifice. The myth is part of a wider tradition of serpent- or dragon-kings, such as the Babylonian dragon.

The veneration of Arwe, which was widespread, predates Christianity in Ethiopia,which became a state religion under Ezana of Axum in the early 4th century.Arwe ("wild beast" in Geʽez)is a snake-king who rules for four hundred years) over the land that is to become Ethiopia. He is a giant serpent ("No, Arwe is not beyond the hill, for the hill you see is Arwe") to whom humans must sacrifice their virgin daughters and cattle to calm his endless hunger. He reigns with terror until he is defeated by a man who becomes the next ruler of the land, and his daughter becomes the Queen of Sheba, and then the mother of Menelik I.

It is believed by some Ethiopians that Arwe, or Wainaba, ruled after Aksumawi, who is the great-grandson of Noah and son of Itiopis according to the Book of Aksum. Ethiopis, who was seventh in the ancestral lines, is also believed to be the twelfth direct descendant of Adam

In one version of Arwe's myth, a stranger comes to the land where Arwe reigns and after seeing a woman cry over the fact that she has to give her daughter in sacrifice to the serpent, the man offers to kill the serpent. He requests the woman to provide him with a spotless white lamb and a bowl with juice from the poisonous Euphorbia tree. He faces the serpent and offers him the lamb and the juice, which Arwe accepts not knowing it will be the cause of his death. After Arwe is finally defeated, the people offer the man to become their ruler, a position he gladly accepts until he is ready to let his daughter Makeda reign. She becomes the Queen of Sheba, and its capital city is Axum. In another version of this myth, Wainaba, the serpent ruler, is on his way traveling north from the district Tamben to Aksum when a man called Angabo promises the Aksumites to kill the serpent in exchange for the throne. He applied various forms of magic to the road the serpent traveled on, including an iron instrument that the buried under the road. He attacked Wainaba with fire, and burns him to death. Legend has it he was buried in May Wayno, where his grave still is

The serpent and the saints

Some versions of the myth clearly combine pre-Christian and Christian elements, in order to make Christianity (specifically the Nine Saints) victorious over a pagan monster. One of these is found among tribes in the north and published by Enno Littmann in 1904: the Tigre people worship a dragon; families sacrifice their oldest daughter as well as mead and milk. When it's the turn of Eteye Azeb ("Queen of the South"), a family's oldest child, she is tied to a tree for the dragon to take, but seven saints sit down in the tree's shade. They wonder if she's Mary but she explains she is a human, to be sacrificed. When the dragon comes, two of the saints hesitate but the third, Abba Mentelit, attacks him and then all seven kill the dragon with a cross. Some blood from the dragon lands on the girl's heel, which becomes like the heel of an ass. When she returns to her village, her people send her away because they think she ran away, but the next day she shows them the body, whereupon they make her the leader of the village, and she has a maiden appointed as her second. Her deformity is cured when she visits Solomon with her second, both disguised as men. He tricks them both, and has sex with them; her son is Menelek. This version was written down in 1902, and had been retold by a Tigre man from a village north of Keren, Eritrea.

... Or something like that. Dobranocka said I should do it and she's a wise person so I probably really should. But it doesn't need to be in any particular order, right? 

Things that make Marrons happy:

1. Wind. Because wind is awesome, no matter if it's strong or weak, warm or chilly. It is the awesomest element ever.

2. Tea. 'Nuff said. Every kind of tea. Herbal/black/green/white, with milk or with honey- tea is a deity and forever shall be worshipped.

3. People. Friends, family, my potato. 'Nuff said. Marrons are social beings. My dog has a special place in my heart, but he is unfaithful and now loves someone else more than me, so he doesn't get his own point.

4. My writing projects (Especially 'Entwined' *winks at Arw* and 'Krajm' *waves and Mac*). Thinking up ideas, developing them, writing them down only to lose the notes and trying so hard to remember them- it is amazing. That and creating new characters that seem to slot perfectly into the world as if they were meant to be there all along.

5. Music. I am very fond of listetning to music before going to sleep. Then I am not distracdted by anything or anyone and I can create even more stories, In this regard, Nightwish's albums are my favourites - they are like books to me, since conjuring the stories is particularly easy.

6. Sports. Water sports. Team sports. Everything aside from athlestics. It is not my fault (ok, it kinda is) that I am not able to do the split. But I'd mastered a cartwheel! (Once upon a december, but it is not important.)

7. Board games.

8.In fact, any kind of competition, because Marrons are over-ambitious and always looking for a new way to prove themselves. Mostly to themselves.

9. Cards. They deserve their own point, because card games.

10. Frogs. Gotta catch them all! At least with my phone. Frogs are lovely.

11. Books. I think my escapist addiction to stories is prominent enough, o I will restrain myself from long explanations.

12. Harry Potter. And in fact every other obsession I have, because aside from crying all the time *glares at Sebastian Stan* fandoms actually make me happy. Throwing quotes and references all over the place always makes Marrons cheery.

13. Singing. During cooking, vacuuming, ironing and just because - a singing Marron is a happy Marron.

14. Dancing. But it kinda counts as sport. But still... 

15. Flowers.They are pretty, they smell nice and there are everywhere. I especially love elders. The violet ones.  

And I think that pretty much is enough. I mean, there are a lot of things that make me happy, because I am happy by default, so it wasn't easy to generalize.