| Group: | Tigrinya |
| Native Name: | ትግርኛ |
| Regions: | Eritrea |
| Population: | 2 million[1] –3.3 million[2] |
| Religions: | Christianity (predominantly Eritrean Orthodox) |
| Related: | Tigrayans • Tigre • Zay • Amhara • Gurage • Harari • other Habesha peoples |
The Tigrinya people (Tigrinya: ትግርኛ, Tigrinya: ብሄረ ትግርኛ), also known as the Biher-Tigrinya or Kebessa, are an ethnic group native to Eritrea. They speak the Tigrinya language.[3] [4] There also exists a sizable Tigrinya community in the diaspora.
One view believes that the name comes from the word (Tigrinya: ተገረት), meaning "she ascended". The word (Tigrinya: ተገሩ) "they ascended" describes the ascension of the earliest indigenous people to the mountainous highlands of Eritrea as the plateau's first settlers. The Tigrinya tribe were first mentioned around the 8th to 10th centuries, in which period manuscripts preserving the inscriptions of Cosmas Indicopleustes (fl. 6th century) contain notes on his writings including the mention of a tribe called Tigretes.
The word kebessa (in the form khebsi) has also been found in Ancient Egyptian inscriptions in reference to puntites,[5] however concentrating later on during the Ptolemaic period, the word khebsi roughly translates to "those who cut or detach the incense from the tree".[6]
Tigrinya is a North Ethiopic language. It is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea, and the fourth most spoken language in Ethiopia after Amharic.
Tigrinya dialects differ phonetically, lexically, and grammatically.[7]
The oldest settled pastoral and agricultural community lived in Ona (the villages and towns around Asmara) around 800 BC. It was the oldest known indigenous culture in the Horn Africa.[8] Archaeologist Peter Schmidt compared the Asmara settlement to Athens and Rome.[9] The language known as Tigre was believed to be spoken in the region around 1000 BC.
D'mt (Daamat) was believed to be home to a settled community in Southern Eritrean and Tigray from around 8th century BC to 4th century BC. There is little archaeological evidence of the D'mt Kingdom.[10]
Metera was a major city in the Dʿmt and Aksumite kingdoms. Since Eritrean independence, the National Museum of Eritrea has petitioned the Ethiopian government to return artifacts removed from the site, though their efforts have been rebuffed.[11] Hawulti, a pre-Aksumite or early Aksumite era obelisk, is situated here.
Rock art near Qohaito appears to indicate habitation in the area since the fifth millennium BC, while the town is known to have survived until the sixth century. Mount Emba Soira, Eritrea's highest mountain, and a small successor village lies near the site.
Qohaito is often identified as the town Koloe described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greco-Roman document dated to the end of the first century,[12] which thrived as a stop on the trade route between Adulis and Aksum. It is thought that crops were interspersed with buildings in the town. Old edifices included the pre-Christian Temple of Mariam Wakino and the Sahira Dam, which might also be pre-Aksumite.[13]
The ruins at Qohaito were first located in 1868, though they were erroneously identified as a "Greek depot" at the time.[14] A related site outside of Senafe, Matara, lies about 15 kilometres to the south and was excavated in the 1960s.