Cushite
Cushites, denoting the ancient inhabitants of the region known as Cush or Nubia south of Egypt, were dark-skinned African peoples centered along the Nile in present-day Sudan.[1] They formed successive kingdoms, beginning with Kerma around 2000 BC, followed by Napata and Meroë, which endured until approximately 350 AD and exerted influence over Egypt through military conquests and cultural exchanges.[2] The most notable achievement of the Cushites was their establishment of the 25th Dynasty (c. 747–656 BC), during which Nubian rulers governed Egypt, ushering in an era of pharaonic revival with the construction of numerous pyramids at sites like Jebel Barkal and Nuri, surpassing Egypt's later output in quantity while adapting Egyptian architectural and religious motifs to local practices.[3] Cushite society emphasized archery, horsemanship, and early iron smelting at Meroë—one of Africa's pioneering centers for metallurgy—alongside a matrilineal succession system that elevated queens and royal women to political prominence.[2] Their Meroitic script, though undeciphered, attests to a distinct written tradition, and archaeological evidence reveals extensive trade networks extending to the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan regions.[3] In biblical accounts, Cushites appear as descendants of Cush, son of Ham, symbolizing distant southern lands, with references highlighting their physical traits like height and smooth skin, though interpretations vary between literal ethnography and symbolic geography.[4] While the term "Cushite" historically evokes these Nilotic peoples, modern linguistic usage applies "Cushitic" to unrelated Afroasiatic-speaking groups in the Horn of Africa, reflecting nominal rather than genetic or cultural continuity.[1]Etymology and Terminology
Origins of the Term
The term "Cushite" originates from the Hebrew biblical name Kūš (כּוּשׁ), which denoted the ancient Nubian region immediately south of Egypt, encompassing the Nile Valley between the First and Sixth Cataracts. This Hebrew designation likely derives from the Egyptian hieroglyphic term Kš (or Kash), attested in pharaonic inscriptions from the Old Kingdom period circa 2686–2181 BCE, referring to the territory and its inhabitants as a distinct southern polity often in military or trade contexts.[5][6] In Assyrian records, such as those from the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th–7th centuries BCE, Kuši appears as an ethnonym for warriors and rulers from this same Nubian area, exemplified by references to Taharqa as "King of Cush" during conflicts with Assyrian forces around 701–689 BCE. Greek authors, including Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, employed Aithiopes ("burnt-faced" people) to describe dark-skinned populations south of Egypt, overlapping with but not identical to the narrower Hebrew and Egyptian geographic focus on Nubia proper, thus broadening the connotation to include various sub-Saharan groups without precise equivalence.[4][7] These ancient usages emphasized verifiable territorial and political references rather than inherent ethnic or racial categorizations, with Cushite as an adjectival form emerging later in scholarly contexts to describe peoples or attributes tied to this core region, distinct from later linguistic or modern applications.[7]Biblical, Classical, and Historical Usage
In the Hebrew Bible, the term "Cush" first appears in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10:6-8, where Cush is enumerated as the eldest son of Ham and progenitor of Nimrod, along with other figures such as Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca, positioning Cush as an ancestral eponym for peoples inhabiting regions south of Egypt. This genealogical framework associates Cushites with Hamitic descent, and the land of Cush is consistently depicted as a territorial entity bordering Egypt to the south, corresponding to the Nubian corridor along the upper Nile rather than distant eastern territories.[4] Biblical texts portray Cushites primarily in military contexts, as formidable warriors allied with or opposing Egyptian forces; for instance, Jeremiah 46:9, a prophecy dated to circa 605 BCE during the Babylonian threat to Egypt, invokes "Cush and Put, who carry shields," highlighting their role as shield-bearing auxiliaries in Egyptian armies.[8] Additional references, such as Jeremiah 13:23, emphasize physical traits like dark skin, reinforcing an ethnographic depiction tied to Nile Valley inhabitants.[9] Classical Greek and Roman authors employed "Cushite" or equivalent terms like "Aethiopes" (Aethiopians) to designate dark-skinned populations south of Egypt, often blending geographic, somatic, and cultural observations derived from Ptolemaic and Roman interactions with Nubian intermediaries. Strabo, in his Geography (circa 7 BCE–23 CE), describes Aethiopians in the region beyond Egypt's first cataract as subsisting on millet and barley, anointing themselves with butter or tallow in lieu of olive oil, and inhabiting a vast territory extending along the Nile and into adjacent deserts, portraying them as semi-nomadic herders and traders rather than unified urbanites. Pliny the Elder, in Natural History (circa 77 CE), similarly catalogs Ethiopian tribes such as the nomads along the Astragus River, noting their endurance and distinct customs while situating them within the broader "Aethiopia" intra and extra Meroë, emphasizing height, ebony complexion, and martial prowess informed by expeditionary reports from the Nero-era voyage up the Nile.[10] These accounts reflect empirical encounters via trade routes and military forays, distinguishing Cushites from sub-Saharan interior groups by their proximity to Egyptian civilization.[11] Medieval Arabic usage preserved "Kush" (or variants like "al-Kush") as a toponym for Nubia, denoting the Christian kingdoms of Makuria, Nobatia, and Alodia that succeeded the ancient Kingdom of Kush, with references in geographical treatises and diplomatic correspondence underscoring continuity in designating the Nile's middle reaches and its dark-skinned, riverine peoples. For example, 11th–12th-century Arabic documents from Nubian sites employ the term to identify local rulers and territories in interactions with Fatimid Egypt, evoking the biblical and classical legacy without implying ethnic uniformity or migration from unrelated eastern locales.[12] This semantic persistence, rooted in Ptolemaic-era adaptations of Egyptian "Kš," highlights "Cushite" as a durable exonym for Nubian polities, detached from later linguistic applications to Afro-Asiatic speakers in the Horn of Africa.[2]Ancient Cushites of Nubia
Pre-Kushite Periods and Origins
The earliest archaeological evidence of human presence in the Nubian region of northern Sudan and southern Egypt dates to the Middle Stone Age, with Middle Paleolithic artifacts such as those from the Khormusan industry indicating technological variability and occupation along the Nile Valley and adjacent deserts by approximately 100,000–50,000 years ago.[13] More recent findings in the Eastern Desert have uncovered Acheulean and Middle Stone Age tools suggestive of hominin activity extending back toward 300,000 years ago, though these represent sporadic foraging rather than permanent settlements.[14] Continuous habitation along the Nile intensified during the Neolithic, around the late 6th millennium BCE, as climatic shifts toward aridity post-Holocene Wet Phase prompted reliance on the river's resources for survival.[15] The A-Group culture, active from circa 3800 to 3100 BCE in Lower Nubia between the First and Second Cataracts, represents the first archaeologically distinct society with pastoralist economies centered on cattle herding and supplemented by hunting and gathering.[16] Communities constructed tumulus burials with grave goods including pottery, beads, and copper tools, evidencing emerging social hierarchies and exchange networks.[17] Trade with predynastic Egypt involved Nubian exports of gold, ivory, cattle, carnelian, and animal skins for Egyptian grain, pottery, and faience, fostering material influences like Egyptian-style artifacts in A-Group sites without evidence of political subordination.[2] This period ended abruptly around 3100 BCE, possibly due to environmental shifts or Egyptian expansion, leaving a cultural hiatus until subsequent developments.[18] The C-Group culture, spanning approximately 2300 to 1500 BCE in Lower Nubia, featured semi-sedentary cattle pastoralists who built circular stone enclosures for villages and produced distinctive black-topped, incised pottery alongside bronze tools and jewelry.[19] Funerary practices included oval tumuli with capstones, often containing multiple burials and offerings like cattle remains, underscoring the centrality of pastoral wealth and mobility in social organization.[20] Material continuities with A-Group traditions, combined with parallels to sub-Saharan pastoralist cultures, have led some researchers to hypothesize affiliations with proto-Cushitic speakers migrating from the eastern Sudan or Ethiopian highlands, though this remains uncertain absent decipherable inscriptions or genetic corroboration.[21] Annual Nile floods played a causal role in promoting sedentism across these periods by depositing nutrient-rich silt on floodplains, enabling reliable dry-season grazing for livestock and incipient flood-recession agriculture in an otherwise hyper-arid landscape constrained by desert barriers.[22] Sites clustered near the river attest to adaptive strategies exploiting these predictable inundations, which averaged 7–9 meters in height during the Holocene, contrasting with upstream variability that limited large-scale farming until later hydraulic innovations.[23] This environmental determinism grounded early Nubian economies in fluvial dependence, prefiguring the resilience of later Cushite societies without invoking unsubstantiated migration narratives.[24]Rise of the Kingdom of Kush
The Kerma culture emerged in Upper Nubia around 2500 BCE, developing into a sophisticated urban center that evidenced early centralized authority and social stratification by circa 2000 BCE. Excavations at the Kerma site reveal a fortified settlement spanning over 100 hectares, alongside the Eastern Cemetery's massive tumuli—some exceeding 40 meters in diameter—containing elite burials with hundreds of sacrificed human retainers and thousands of bucrania deposits. These cattle skulls, often with intentionally deformed horns, underscored a hierarchical elite class whose power derived from control over vast pastoral resources, as bucrania quantities correlated directly with tomb scale and status.[25][26] The culture persisted until approximately 1500 BCE, when Egyptian conquest disrupted its independence, but indigenous Nubian polities reasserted autonomy following Egypt's New Kingdom withdrawal around 1070 BCE. By the 8th century BCE, the Kingdom of Kush coalesced during the Napatan period, with Napata serving as the primary political and religious hub, fostering renewed centralized governance distinct from prior Egyptian administration. Kushite elites incorporated Egyptian-inspired temple architecture at sites like Jebel Barkal, yet centered worship on indigenous variants of Amun, blending local theologies with adopted forms to legitimize rulership.[3][27] Kush's rise featured metallurgical innovation, with iron smelting commencing around 500 BCE, as indicated by slag heaps, furnace remnants, and iron artifacts at proto-urban sites transitioning toward Meroë. This bloomery process, involving slag-tapping techniques, antedated ironworking's diffusion in most sub-Saharan regions, where evidence postdates the 1st millennium BCE in many areas, positioning Kush as an early African innovator in ferrous technology.[28][29]Interactions with Ancient Egypt
During the New Kingdom period (c. 1550–1070 BCE), Egypt exerted military dominance over Nubia, conquering Kushite territories to secure access to valuable resources such as gold and to control trade routes along the Nile. Pharaoh Thutmose III (r. 1479–1425 BCE) conducted multiple campaigns into Nubia, extending Egyptian control southward to the Fourth Cataract and establishing administrative structures including viceroys to govern the region and extract tribute.[3][30] These conquests were driven by competition for mineral wealth, with Egyptian forces systematically subduing local resistance to integrate Nubian production into Egypt's economy. Archaeological evidence from sites like Kawa and Kerma reveals Egyptian-style temples and fortifications built to maintain control, alongside records of tribute demands that included ivory, ebony, exotic animals, and slaves, fostering economic interdependence despite underlying tensions.[31] Kushite elites, while administering local affairs under Egyptian oversight, occasionally mounted revolts, such as those suppressed during the reigns of later pharaohs like Ramesses II, reflecting persistent resistance to exploitation but ultimately limited by Egypt's superior military organization. Gold mining operations in Nubia, intensified under pharaohs including Tutankhamun (r. 1332–1323 BCE), supplied Egypt's temples and armies, with inscriptions detailing the forced labor of captives to yield thousands of deben of gold annually.[32] Cultural exchanges occurred amid this subjugation, with Kushites adopting Egyptian hieroglyphic writing for administrative and monumental purposes while retaining distinct artistic elements, such as localized iconography emphasizing Nubian physical traits and motifs not fully aligned with Egyptian canons.[33] This selective borrowing facilitated governance but preserved Kushite identity, as seen in hybrid artifacts blending Egyptian forms with indigenous styles. As Egypt's central authority weakened toward the end of the New Kingdom (c. 1100 BCE) due to internal strife and invasions, reduced oversight allowed Kushite polities to regain autonomy, setting the stage for their later expansion northward without direct conquest at this stage.[31][3]The 25th Dynasty and Rule over Egypt
The 25th Dynasty began with the invasion of Egypt by Piye, king of Kush, around 744 BCE, when he campaigned northward from Nubia to subdue fragmented Libyan-dominated principalities in the Nile Delta and Middle Egypt, culminating in the submission of key rulers at Memphis.[34] Piye's Victory Stela, erected at Jebel Barkal, details his conquests, emphasizing ritual piety and the defeat of opponents through divine favor from Amun, while sparing compliant elites to maintain administrative continuity.[34] This marked the extension of Kushite authority over a unified Egypt, with Piye adopting pharaonic titles but retaining Napata as a primary power base alongside Thebes.[35] Piye's successors, including Shabaka (r. c. 716–702 BCE), consolidated rule through infrastructure revival, as evidenced by Shabaka's restoration of the Temple of Ptah at Karnak and additions to Amun's precinct, reflecting a policy of legitimizing Kushite kingship via patronage of Egyptian cults.[36] Shebitku (r. c. 702–690 BCE) and especially Taharqa (r. c. 690–664 BCE) pursued expansionist policies, with Taharqa leading campaigns into the Levant around 690 BCE to counter Assyrian influence, as recorded in inscriptions from the Mut temple at Karnak listing subdued Asiatic principalities.[37] These efforts demonstrated Kushite military capacity, incorporating Egyptian-style chariotry and infantry, though reliant on alliances with local Levantine states.[37] Artistic expressions under Taharqa, such as his stelae from Kawa and Gem-Aten, fused Nubian royal motifs—like the emphasis on martial prowess and divine kingship—with Egyptian conventions, portraying the king in traditional pharaonic garb while invoking Kushite deities alongside Amun.[38] Kushite dominion ended amid Assyrian pressure, as Esarhaddon invaded Egypt in 671 BCE, sacking Memphis, capturing Taharqa's family, and installing vassal princes after the Kushite forces retreated south.[39] Taharqa briefly reasserted control post-Esarhaddon's death in 669 BCE, but subsequent Assyrian campaigns under Ashurbanipal in 667–663 BCE expelled the Kushites from the Delta, confining their rule to Upper Egypt until Tanutamani's (r. c. 664–656 BCE) final, unsuccessful counteroffensive.[39] Administrative records indicate Kushite governance preserved Egyptian bureaucratic norms, with Nubian overseers in key posts, but inherent cultural divergences—such as stronger emphasis on Napatan religious centers—limited full assimilation and contributed to vulnerability against coordinated Mesopotamian assaults.[40]Decline and Legacy of the Kingdom
Following the expulsion from Egypt by the Assyrians in 656 BCE, the Kingdom of Kush shifted its political center southward to Meroë around 300 BCE, marking the onset of the Meroitic period that lasted until approximately 350 CE.[41] Meroë emerged as a major hub for iron production, with extensive slag heaps indicating large-scale smelting operations that supplied weapons, tools, and trade goods, positioning it as Africa's premier ironworking center south of the Mediterranean.[42] This era saw the construction of over 200 smaller pyramids at Meroë and nearby sites like Begarawiyah, contrasting with the larger Egyptian pyramids at Giza through steeper angles and more modest bases, primarily serving as royal tombs.[43] The Meroitic kingdom developed its own cursive script around the 3rd century BCE, derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs but featuring phonetic elements; while partially understood, it remains largely undeciphered, obscuring administrative and religious texts.[44] Prominent female rulers known as kandakes (or Candaces) exercised significant authority, often as regents or co-rulers, with evidence from stelae and reliefs suggesting matrilineal succession influences where queens derived legitimacy through maternal lines, as seen in figures like Amanirenas (c. 40–10 BCE) who led military campaigns against Roman forces.[45] Decline accelerated in the 3rd–4th centuries CE due to internal factors including political fragmentation, elite infighting evidenced by disrupted pyramid construction, and environmental strain from deforestation tied to iron smelting and agriculture.[41] External pressures culminated in the Aksumite invasion around 350 CE under King Ezana, who sacked Meroë, dismantled its royal infrastructure, and claimed victory in inscriptions, effectively ending centralized Kushite power amid Aksum's rising [Red Sea](/page/Red Sea) dominance.[41] The kingdom's legacy endures in archaeological remnants, including the UNESCO-listed sites of Meroë's royal quarter with its iron forges and temples, Naqa's well-preserved Roman-influenced kiosk and Amun temple dedicated to local deities, and Musawwarat es-Sufra's labyrinthine "Great Enclosure" complex, reflecting hydraulic engineering and pilgrimage functions.[46] Post-collapse, Nubian successor polities adopted Christianity from the 6th century CE onward, blending Kushite motifs into church architecture before Arab incursions from the 7th century led to gradual Islamization, though Kush's metallurgical and monumental traditions influenced regional material culture.[41]Cushitic Languages and Linguistic Classification
Structure and Branches of Cushitic Languages
The Cushitic languages form one of the primary branches of the Afroasiatic language family, comprising approximately 30 distinct languages spoken by around 55 million people primarily in the Horn of Africa and adjacent regions.[47] Scholars traditionally classify Cushitic into four main branches based on phonological, morphological, and lexical innovations reconstructed from comparative methods: North Cushitic (Beja), East Cushitic, Central Cushitic (Agaw), and South Cushitic.[48] This classification, advanced through seriation of sound changes, positions East Cushitic as the most innovative and diverse subgroup, while North Cushitic shows retention of archaic features like preserved pharyngeals.[49] East Cushitic, the largest branch, includes major languages such as Oromo (over 40 million speakers, mainly in Ethiopia) and Somali (around 24 million speakers across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and diaspora communities), where Somali functions as a lingua franca in Somalia.[50][51] Central Cushitic consists of the Agaw languages, spoken by fewer than 2 million people in northern Ethiopia, characterized by substrate influences from neighboring Semitic languages. South Cushitic, found in Tanzania and Kenya, encompasses languages like Iraqw and Dahalo (the latter with click consonants from Bantu contact), totaling under 1 million speakers. North Cushitic is represented solely by Beja (also known as Bedawi), with about 3-4 million speakers in Sudan, Eritrea, and Egypt, retaining conservative traits such as gender distinction in second-person verb forms.[47] Omotic languages, once grouped under a "West Cushitic" label, are now widely regarded as a separate Afroasiatic branch due to fundamental differences in morphology, such as reduced consonant roots and divergent pronoun systems, though some lexical parallels persist from areal contact.[52] Grammatically, Cushitic languages exhibit subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, contrasting with the verb-subject-object (VSO) pattern dominant in Semitic and ancient Egyptian branches of Afroasiatic.[53] They feature two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine) marked via suffixation on nouns and agreement in verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, with a notable "gender polarity" in plurals where feminine singulars often yield masculine plurals and vice versa, as reconstructed in Proto-Cushitic.[54][55] Phonologically, innovations include labiovelar stops (e.g., /kʷ/, /gʷ/, /kp/, /gb/) in East and South branches, derived from Proto-Afroasiatic velars, alongside five-vowel systems with length contrast and frequent gemination.[56] These traits, per Ehret's Proto-Cushitic reconstructions, reflect internal diversification over millennia, with verb morphology relying on prefixal subject agreement and suffixal tense-aspect markers.[57]Historical Development and Proto-Cushitic
Proto-Cushitic, the reconstructed ancestor of the Cushitic languages within the Afroasiatic family, is posited to have diverged from Proto-Afroasiatic approximately 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, based on glottochronological modeling of lexical retention rates across daughter branches.[58] This divergence aligns with linguistic reconstructions placing Proto-Afroasiatic origins in Northeast Africa, supported by shared phonological and morphological features like the retention of pharyngeal consonants and a tri-consonantal root system, corroborated by comparative lexicon such as terms for body parts and numerals.[59] The comparative method yields a Proto-Cushitic inventory including seven vowels (short and long pairs of *a, *i, *u, *e, *o), emphatic consonants (*ṭ, *ḍ, *ṣ, *ẓ), and glottal features, with innovations like the development of labialized velars distinguishing it from Semitic or Egyptian branches.[60] Reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic prehistory from circa 4000 BCE onward emphasizes lexical and grammatical correspondences rather than speculative homelands, revealing a proto-lexicon with terms for pastoralism (*gama- "cow," *hulo- "goat") and environment (*bar- "land," *ʕaw- "water"), reflecting adaptation to savanna and semi-arid zones.[61] Branching into North (e.g., Beja), East, Central, and South Cushitic involved sound shifts, such as the fronting of *k to *č in East Cushitic, dated via shared innovations to around 4,000–5,000 years ago.[62] Early substrate influences from adjacent Nilo-Saharan languages are evident in sporadic phonological traits, though direct evidence remains limited to potential areal features like tonal developments in some South Cushitic varieties, with more robust data showing Cushitic lexical overlays into Nilo-Saharan rather than vice versa due to later expansions. In the Horn of Africa, Proto-Cushitic descendants later incorporated Semitic superstrate elements from South Arabian migrations starting circa 1000 BCE, including loanwords for metallurgy (*ḥdd "iron") and governance, integrated into East Cushitic frameworks without displacing core morphology.[63] Ancient Egyptian inscriptions provide tentative lexical matches, such as Cushitic-derived etymologies for Nubian toponyms and personal names (e.g., *medə "milk" linking to dairy terms), prioritizing systematic correspondences over isolated speculation.[64] Proposed links to C-Group culture (circa 2300–1500 BCE) rely on toponymic strata with possible Cushitic isoglosses, but these remain unconfirmed without broader inscriptional corpora confirming phonological regularity.[65] Overall, Proto-Cushitic evolution underscores endogenous diversification via pastoral mobility, with external contacts manifesting as asymmetric lexical exchanges verifiable through cognate sets.Geographic Distribution of Speakers
Cushitic languages are primarily distributed across the Horn of Africa, encompassing Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, with extensions into adjacent regions of Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania. The total number of speakers exceeds 55 million, concentrated in these areas where East Cushitic languages predominate.[47] In Ethiopia, the epicenter hosts the largest populations, including speakers of Oromo and other East Cushitic varieties, while Somalia accounts for a significant portion through Somali, reflecting dense settlement patterns shaped by pastoralist adaptations to arid lowlands and highlands.[66] South Cushitic languages, such as Iraqw and Gorwa, mark extensions into central Tanzania and northern Kenya, where small communities persist amid Bantu and Nilotic expansions. Linguistic and archaeological evidence, including Cushitic-derived toponyms and pastoralist site distributions, indicates migrations of these speakers southward from the Horn of Africa approximately 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, predating Bantu arrivals and influencing local substrate vocabularies in agriculture and herding.[67] These patterns are corroborated by settlement traces in northwest Kenya, linking proto-Cushitic dispersals to Neolithic pastoral economies.[68] North Cushitic Beja extends the range northward into northeastern Sudan and southeastern Egypt, with around 2.2 million speakers inhabiting Red Sea coastal and desert zones, distinct from Nilo-Saharan Nubian languages in the Nile Valley core.[69] Oromo migrations from southeastern Ethiopia in the 16th and 17th centuries further broadened East Cushitic presence, incorporating central, western, and southern Ethiopian highlands through phased expansions documented in regional chronicles.[70] Contemporary diaspora, driven by conflicts since the late 20th century, has scattered Somali and other speakers to urban centers in Europe and North America, though native African ranges retain over 95% of the speaker base.[71]Modern Cushitic Peoples
Ethnic Groups and Demographics
The Oromo constitute the largest Cushitic ethnic group, with an estimated population of approximately 40 million, primarily residing in Ethiopia where they comprise about 35.8% of the national total of 116 million as of 2023, alongside smaller communities in northern Kenya and other neighboring regions. Traditionally pastoralists, many Oromo maintain livelihoods centered on livestock herding, though significant portions have shifted toward agriculture and urban employment.[72] The Somali people, numbering around 20 million, are distributed across Somalia (estimated at 17 million in 2023), eastern Ethiopia (about 8.3 million), northeastern Kenya, and Djibouti, forming a clan-based society that emphasizes patrilineal kinship and nomadic pastoralism.[73] Their social organization relies on extended family clans for resource allocation, conflict resolution, and mobility in arid environments.[74] The Afar, a nomadic group of about 3.3 million, inhabit the Rift Valley and Danakil Depression across Ethiopia (2.7 million), Eritrea (0.3 million), and Djibouti (0.34 million), where they engage in camel and goat herding adapted to extreme desert conditions.[75]| Ethnic Group | Estimated Population | Primary Locations |
|---|---|---|
| Oromo | ~40 million | Ethiopia, Kenya |
| Somali | ~20 million | Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti |
| Afar | ~3.3 million | Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti |
| Sidama | ~5.7 million | Ethiopia |
| Rendille | ~60,000 | Kenya |