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Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Book 1

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Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire represents the crowning achievement of Ms. Drusilla Dunjee Houston. The work was originally published in Oklahoma City in 1926. It is the first known attempt by a Black woman, and perhaps anyone, to produce a multi-volume work on African history told from an African perspective.

Ms. Houston herself was an educator, journalist and historian. She spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Arizona and succumbed to tuberculosis in Phoenix, Arizona in 1941.

Her work is broad and comprehensive and was quite advanced for its time. Its audience was not confined to scholars but the layperson, particularly Black folk, who were in need of a accurate tonic to boost Black self-esteem. It retains a powerful value even today, more than seventy years since its initial publication.

Western civilization has grudgingly recognized that homo sapiens evolved in Africa, within the last 40 years through the work of Richard and Louis Leakey and the discovery of the "Lucy" skelital evidence in Ethiopia.

However, Drusilla Huston's book copiously documents legends of of African culture before the dessication of the Sahara and the Egyto-Nubian desserts. She continued with ancient references to the ancient Kushite and Ethiopian civilizations and Kings refered to by Homer, Heroditus, Diodorus, Massey Champoleon and others to flesh out the stories of the Nubian, Nahesey, Napatan, Meroic, Alumic, Egyptian, Summarian and Ethiopean nations over 75 years ago.

It is therefore, a prophetic and profound example of pioneering African-American scholarship operating in a bleak and hostile environment over many decades. It's veracity is only enhanced and fortified with the passage of time and recent production of books such as "Black Athena" by Martin Bernal, "Civilization or Barbarism" by Cheik Anta Diop and the 1996 "African Exodus" by Chris Skinner and "Egypt Revisited" edited by Ivan Van Sertima and numerous others.

This book explores the forgotten reality of human history from the source. Genuinely educating book.

Astonishing work, love this book, taught me so much off the unexplained truths of nubia and nubian antiquity.

Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire represents the crowning achievement of Ms. Drusilla Dunjee Houston. The work was originally published in Oklahoma City in 1926. It is the first known attempt by a Black woman, and perhaps anyone, to produce a multi-volume work on African history told from an African perspective.

Ms. Houston herself was an educator, journalist and historian. She spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Arizona and succumbed to tuberculosis in Phoenix, Arizona in 1941.

Her work is broad and comprehensive and was quite advanced for its time. Its audience was not confined to scholars but the layperson, particularly Black folk, who were in need of a accurate tonic to boost Black self-esteem. It retains a powerful value even today, more than seventy years since its initial publication.

This woman is my hero. For One, I am amazed that this African-American woman living in Oklahoma was able to write this book (with so much information) and get it published in the early 1900s (around 1926). It must be noted that her father traveled throughout the country starting Baptist Churches which probably enabled her to travel as well and gather up different books for research. Never-the-less, still remarkable for that time period of American History and World History. From her research, she was able to piece together a history, now considered ancient, of black people she calls Cushites or Cushitic which should be familiar to those who read the Christian Bible. According to the author, the Cushites were the ones who started humankind on the road to the development of civilization throughout this world; unlike what some nations say they are doing when it commits to war. Civilization today does not carry the same weight it carried in what we call ancient times. The sciences, astronomy, religion, geography, land and sea navigation, etc were all developed by the Cushites long before Europeans and Asians were on the scene. When the Europeans and Asians began to travel the world, they found traces of an Ancient Cushitic world, which some have become extinct recently. Also, for religious folk. Understand that the Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are new. Hinduism is the oldest and closest modern religion to the ancient religion of the Cushites. However, as the ancient Cushitic culture began to fall off the map of history, other religious practices introduced to its decendants by outsiders wore away the pure religion (philosophy, practice, etc). In other words, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others are flawed. Each have an element of truth to them but they also contain elements the dominant culture added to the religion. The author's research is impeccable and still holds up to this day. For example, there was a recent article that says many other pyramids were found buried in the sands of Egypt along the Nile. Ms Houston did state that the sands of Egypt remains a graveyard of information that has yet to be dug up. This also true of Ethiopia (once called Cush), which, according to the author, was the colonial master over Egypt. You can do the research yourself. While many articles, journals, or the like do not reference her book outright, much of what is said in those documents (including Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica) contain much of what she researched back in Oklahoma.

A marvelous truly "wonderful" treatise on the ancient Cushites, and their contributions to world history. Dunjee mentions many exotic details concerning the Cushites not read about in your average book on the subject. When I purchased this book many years ago it took about 6 months to receive, it was considered a rare and hard find in books. Glad to see it more readily available. I believe this was to be a 2 volume collection but Mrs Dunjee met an untimely death preventing her from completing vol. 2. The publishers should be commended for this reprint. Definately to be put among the classics.

This book will open your eyes to Africas contribution to Asia, Europe & the world over. The author provides fact after fact with references and quotes from many authorities on the subject of religion, history & civilization. The book was written in the 1920's by an amature author so there are a few mispelled words but how genuine is that. If you consider that time period in America & the fact that no publisher would publish this type of book that obviously underminded the current belief about human history. Simply BRILLIANT...

A must read!!!!!!


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One thing is inaccurate though. The Cushites (ancient Ethiopians) actually predate Kemet(ancient Egypt). Kemet and even Mesopotamia (Sumer) began as Cushite colonies. They received their culture and knowledge from their parent civilization which predates them both by thousands of years. See Cheikh Anta Diop, et al.