Israel’s African Homeland: The Ethiopian Sacred Center and the Western Provinces

A working reconstruction of Israelite geography, migration, and the names preserved in West Africa

The evidence we have examined over the years points toward a layered African model of Israelite history. The original sacred center of Israel appears to fit the Ethiopian Highlands, especially the Lalibela region, more closely than the flatter and drier landscape traditionally identified with Jerusalem. At the same time, historical maps, geographical texts, African place names, and the writings of Josephus point toward a major Israelite presence extending westward through Central Africa, Negroland, Guinea, Ghana, Niger, Accra, and the historical Kingdom of Benin.

The strongest reconstruction does not require us to choose between Ethiopia and West Africa. The Ethiopian Highlands can represent the original sacred and royal center, while Negroland and West Africa represent western Israelite provinces, migration territories, refugee communities, and daughter kingdoms. The Israelites carried their identity, customs, tribal names, and geographical names as they moved westward. Over time, those western territories developed their own political centers while preserving memories of the original land.

This reconstruction provides a possible explanation for Josephus’ references to Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, Oruba, and Acrabbene, while preserving the Ethiopian Highlands as the strongest candidate for the original Jerusalem and Mount Zion.

Upper Ethiopia and Lower Ethiopia

Modern political borders distort the way earlier geographers understood Africa. Ethiopia was once a much broader geographical term than the present nation called Ethiopia.

Early modern maps divided extensive portions of Africa into Upper Ethiopia and Lower Ethiopia. Upper Ethiopia usually included Abyssinia, Nubia, the upper Nile regions, and adjoining eastern and central territories. Lower Ethiopia could include large portions of Central, western, and southern Africa. The exact boundaries varied by cartographer, but the terminology shows that “Ethiopia” could describe an enormous African world rather than one modern country. A 1695 Sanson map, for example, labels Abyssinia and Nubia as Upper Ethiopia.

The mapping tradition we have studied places Negroland, Guinea, the Congo, Abyssinia, and other regions within this wider Ethiopian world. Emanuel Bowen’s 1747 map identifies a vast territory called Negroland adjoining Upper Guinea, demonstrating that these names once described large regions rather than the small modern states that now carry some of them.

Our previous research divided the Israelite world accordingly:

Upper Ethiopia contained the mountainous eastern sacred center, including the Ethiopian Highlands, the upper Nile world, Abyssinia, and the territories associated with Zion and Jerusalem.

Lower Ethiopia included Central Africa, Negroland, West Africa, and the western Israelite territories that developed around the Niger, Guinea, Ghana, Benin, and neighboring regions.

This model turns the promised land into a vast African inheritance rather than a narrow strip of territory.

Genesis gives Abraham a broad territorial promise:

Genesis 15:18:

“In the same day Yahuah made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.”

The stronger possibility is that the Niger preserved a migrated or carried-over form of the name Euphrates after Israelites moved westward from the Ethiopian Highlands. The original Euphrates belonged to the eastern sacred geography and may correspond to the Blue Nile, while later Israelite communities transferred the name Efra, Eufrates, or Euphrates to the Niger River system in Lower Ethiopia and Negroland.

The Niger would therefore represent a western namesake of the original river rather than the primary Euphrates of the biblical heartland. Its source near Guinea, its course through Negroland, and its lower reaches near the historical Kingdom of Benin would reflect the westward expansion and migration of Israelite populations who carried ancestral place names into their new provinces and daughter kingdoms. The Ethiopian Highlands would remain the original sacred center containing Jerusalem, Zion, and the principal river geography, while the Niger preserved that geography in renamed western territories.

Why the Ethiopian Highlands fit the original Jerusalem

The biblical Jerusalem was elevated, mountainous, fertile, watered, and naturally protected. Scripture repeatedly presents Zion as a commanding mountain surrounded by other mountains.

Psalm 125:2:

“As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so Yahuah is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.”

Psalm 48:2:

“Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.”

The description is more substantial than that of a small hill. Jerusalem was a mountain city approached through difficult terrain. The Letter of Aristeas describes the city and temple in connection with considerable elevation, steep approaches, ravines, water channels, reservoirs, and an abundant water supply. Our previous research found that this description resembles the Ethiopian Highlands and Lalibela far more closely than the conventional Jerusalem site.

The land surrounding Jerusalem was also productive and supplied by natural water.

Deuteronomy 8:7-9:

“For Yahuah thy Elohim bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.”

Deuteronomy 11:11-12:

“But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which Yahuah thy Elohim careth for: the eyes of Yahuah thy Elohim are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.”

These passages describe mountains and valleys, regular rain, flowing water, agriculture, trees, metals, and mineral-bearing hills. The Ethiopian Highlands contain deep valleys, elevated plateaus, seasonal rains, fertile agricultural zones, springs, rivers, and substantial mineral resources. This combination is central to the case for locating the original Israelite heartland there. The Ethiopian Highlands also provide the natural fortification expected of Jerusalem. Deep ravines, narrow mountain passages, cliffs, escarpments, and elevated observation points would make a highland capital difficult to attack. Our earlier research connected these features with both biblical descriptions and the highland terrain around Lalibela.

Lalibela, Mount Zion, and the temple center

Lalibela occupies a mountainous region in the heart of Ethiopia. UNESCO describes its eleven monolithic churches as a medieval “New Jerusalem.” The churches were carved directly from living volcanic rock and remain active places of pilgrimage. The town stands at approximately 2,500 meters, or 8,200 feet, above sea level. Its churches, trenches, passages, and water systems were cut into the living rock.

Lalibela’s geographical and architectural characteristics include:

The site stands in an elevated mountain region.

The churches were excavated downward and carved from solid rock.

The complex contains trenches, passageways, channels, and reservoirs.

A waterway within the complex is traditionally called the Jordan.

Sites representing Golgotha, the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, and other Jerusalem traditions are incorporated into the sacred landscape.

Natural springs and carefully directed waterways supplied the site.

Our earlier research also connected Lalibela’s drainage systems with the temple description in the Letter of Aristeas. Aristeas describes abundant water, underground reservoirs, pipes, and systems used to cleanse the temple area. Lalibela contains spring-fed channels, trenches, and reservoirs serving a similarly sacred and practical function.

The common medieval dating of the Lalibela complex rests largely on its association with King Lalibela and his royal patronage. Ethiopian oral history, however, maintains that the sacred buildings or their earliest foundations existed before his reign. Under this understanding, King Lalibela did not create the entire site from nothing. He restored, expanded, organized, or monumentalized an older sacred landscape whose origins may reach much further into antiquity.

The surviving structures should therefore be examined as layers of construction rather than assigned entirely to one medieval period. Later royal work may have altered or enlarged buildings that were already present, while preserving the original location, rock-hewn design, waterways, trenches, and sacred traditions. This possibility strengthens the argument that Lalibela retained the memory and physical geography of an ancient holy center long before the king whose name the town now bears.

The exact civic location of Jerusalem may still involve a broader highland network, possibly including Aksum and other ancient centers. Lalibela, however, remains the strongest candidate within our research for the geography of Mount Zion and the temple mountain.

Isaiah 51 and the rock from which Israel was hewn

Isaiah 51 presents a powerful symbolic connection to Lalibela.

Isaiah 51:1-2:

“Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek Yahuah: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.”

The primary meaning of the passage is genealogical. Israel is commanded to remember Abraham and Sarah, the ancestral rock from which the nation was formed. Israel came from one man whom Yahuah called, blessed, and multiplied.

Lalibela gives that metaphor a remarkable physical expression.

The buildings were literally hewn from rock. Workers dug downward into the earth, forming deep trenches or pits around solid masses of stone. They then carved those masses into houses of worship. The churches were not assembled by stacking stones brought from another location. They emerged from the rock already present in the mountain.

Israel, in Isaiah’s imagery, was hewn from Abraham. Lalibela’s sacred structures were hewn from the mountain. Israel was “digged” from the ancestral source. Lalibela was excavated from holes, trenches, and deep cuts in the earth. The passage does not independently prove that Lalibela is Zion. Its primary meaning remains Abrahamic descent. Yet the visual and architectural correspondence is striking within the larger model. A sacred city hewn from living rock, in a land associated with ancient Israelite traditions, physically embodies Isaiah’s command to remember “the rock whence ye are hewn.”

Jubilees and the sacred geography of Zion

The Book of Jubilees connects Mount Zion with a larger sacred geography involving Eden, Sinai, and the center of the earth.

Jubilees 8:19:

“And he knew that the Garden of Eden is the holy of holies, and the dwelling of Yahuah, and Mount Sinai the centre of the desert, and Mount Zion—the centre of the navel of the earth: these three were created as holy places facing each other.”

Jubilees does not present Zion as an insignificant hill on the edge of a dry region. Zion occupies a central place within a divinely ordered landscape. It is connected conceptually with Eden, Sinai, and the dwelling of Yahuah.

Our earlier research connects Jubilees’ geography with Africa through the Gihon, Cush, the Nile, the Egyptian Sea, mountains of fire, and the “middle of the earth.” The Ethiopian Highlands lie near the sources of major Nile tributaries and within a region of volcanic mountains, high plateaus, fertile valleys, and ancient sacred traditions.

Genesis 2:13 states:

“And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.”

The Gihon is explicitly connected with Ethiopia in the KJV wording. Solomon was also anointed at a place called Gihon near the royal center.

1 Kings 1:32-33:

“And king David said, Call me Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And they came before the king. The king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to Gihon.”

The relationship between the royal city and Gihon strengthens the argument that Jerusalem should be examined in relation to the Ethiopian and Nile world, rather than being separated entirely from it.

Scripture establishes migration and renamed cities

The presence of Israelite names in West Africa does not require every western location to be the original biblical place. Scripture itself shows that migrating or conquering Israelites renamed cities after ancestors, tribes, and earlier places.

Numbers 32:38:

“And Nebo, and Baalmeon, their names being changed, and Shibmah: and gave other names unto the cities which they builded.”

Judges 18:29:

“And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.”

Genesis 28:19:

“And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.”

Israelite history therefore contains a clear pattern:

People migrated or conquered territory.

Cities received new names.

Ancestral and tribal names were transferred to new places.

Old and new names sometimes existed together.

A place name could refer first to a city and later to an entire district.

This pattern offers a straightforward explanation for duplicated or transplanted Israelite names across Africa. Israelites moving westward could establish another Juda, Dan, Samar, Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, or related place without making the western settlement the original location of the older city.

Captivity, memory, and movement into distant lands

The Apocrypha describes Israelites remembering themselves in captivity and migrating into distant regions.

Baruch 2:30-33:

“For I knew that they would not hear me, because it is a stiffnecked people: but in the land of their captivities they shall remember themselves. And shall know that I am Yahuah their Elohim: for I will give them an heart, and ears to hear: And they shall praise me in the land of their captivity, and think upon my name, And return from their stiff neck, and from their wicked deeds: for they shall remember the way of their fathers, which sinned before Yahuah.”

Baruch’s language allows for more than one place of captivity. Israel would remember itself “in the land of their captivities.” The recovery of identity would happen among dispersed descendants who had lost knowledge of themselves, their ancestors, and their land.

Second Esdras describes a major migration of the northern tribes.

2 Esdras 13:40-45:

“Those are the ten tribes, which were carried away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanasar the king of Assyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt,That they might there keep their statutes, which they never kept in their own land. And they entered into Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river. For the most High then shewed signs for them, and held still the flood, till they were passed over. For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth.”

This passage establishes several principles relevant to the African reconstruction.

Israelite tribes moved as organized populations.

They entered another land after captivity.

They deliberately sought a distant territory.

They travelled through a region connected with the Euphrates.

They intended to restore statutes that they had failed to keep in their former land.

The text does not by itself identify West Africa or the Niger. It does, however, preserve the pattern of large Israelite migrations through river corridors into distant territories.

If the Niger or an associated African river preserved the name Euphrates, the passage becomes relevant to possible Israelite movement through the Niger basin. The Niger could have functioned as a migration route, political boundary, commercial system, and source of settlement.

The movement from Upper Ethiopia into Lower Ethiopia

The proposed migration was probably not one event. It may have unfolded in waves over many centuries. The first stage was settlement in the eastern sacred core. Jerusalem, Zion, the temple center, Samaria, and the original highland districts were situated within Upper Ethiopia, particularly the Ethiopian Highland world. The second stage was expansion. Israelite tribes, merchants, soldiers, administrators, priests, and agricultural communities moved into Central Africa. These movements could have followed the Nile, highland routes, lake regions, savanna corridors, and major river systems. The third stage was forced dispersion. Political division, foreign invasion, internal war, religious judgment, famine, and captivity drove additional groups away from the original center.

The fourth stage was the establishment of western provinces. Communities in Lower Ethiopia and Negroland preserved tribal identities and founded settlements using ancestral names.

The fifth stage was political separation. As the eastern kingdom weakened, western provinces became independent daughter kingdoms. Some remained Israelite in identity, while others mixed with surrounding nations or adopted different religions.

The sixth stage involved later enslavement and deportation. The trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean, and transatlantic slave trades removed descendants from these western provinces and carried them into further captivities.

This sequence explains why strong Israelite traditions appear in both Ethiopia and West Africa. Ethiopia preserves the sacred highland center. West Africa preserves the names and political remains of dispersed provinces and daughter kingdoms.

The earlier geographical accounts also preserve an important spiritual distinction between the Israelites of Upper Ethiopia and those living in Lower Ethiopia or Negroland. According to the material we examined from Herman Moll’s Atlas Geographus, the African Jews of Lower Ethiopia were described as having departed from the pure worship of Yahuah. Many worshipped the sun, moon, stars, water, fire, and other parts of creation. Their presence in Negroland still identified the region as an Israelite territory, but their worship showed that many of its inhabitants had fallen into the same idolatry that repeatedly brought judgment upon Israel in Scripture.

This means that the Israelite presence in West Africa should not be measured only by whether every western community continued to observe Torah perfectly. Scripture repeatedly records Israel retaining its tribal and national identity while abandoning the covenant. The western provinces could preserve names such as Juda, Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, Oruba, and Acrabbene while their inhabitants gradually mixed the worship of Yahuah with the worship of celestial bodies, natural forces, ancestral spirits, and surrounding national deities.

Their apostasy would not make them another people. It would identify them as Israelites behaving exactly as Israel had behaved throughout the biblical record.

Deuteronomy 28:15 states:

“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of Yahuah thy Elohim, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.”

The earlier research connected this covenant warning directly with Lower Ethiopia and Negroland. The western Israelites had inherited fertile lands, political kingdoms, trade routes, and access to the Niger river system, but many turned away from Torah. The same region later became one of the principal sources of captives taken through the trans-Saharan and transatlantic slave trades. Within this reconstruction, their enslavement was not evidence that they were unrelated to Israel. Their captivity followed the precise covenant pattern pronounced against Israel for idolatry and disobedience.

Deuteronomy 28:68 states:

“And Yahuah shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.”

Upper Ethiopia presents the other side of the Israelite story. Moll’s description identified African Jews in Upper Ethiopia, including Abyssinia, as worshippers of the “Lord of Heaven.” The account stated that this worship existed before the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon and that the Law of Moses and the Prophets became even more established after her return. Upper Ethiopia therefore remained a stronghold of the worship of Yahuah while many Israelites in Lower Ethiopia moved deeper into idolatry.

The survival of Torah observance among the Beta Israel strengthens this distinction. Their highland communities preserved the books of Moses, Passover, unleavened bread, the Day of Atonement, clean slaughter, ritual purification, a hereditary priesthood, linen priestly garments, and other practices resembling pre-exile Israelite worship. Their traditions developed outside the later rabbinic system, which supports the possibility that they preserved an older form of Israelite religion rooted in the Ethiopian Highlands.

The distinction between Upper and Lower Ethiopia was therefore spiritual and political rather than racial or national. Israelites occupied both regions. Upper Ethiopia preserved a more faithful remnant near the sacred highland center, while many communities in Lower Ethiopia and Negroland became western provinces and daughter kingdoms that retained Israelite names but departed from Israelite worship. This reproduces the pattern seen throughout Scripture, where one part of the nation descended into open idolatry while another part preserved the covenant, the priesthood, the Law, and the memory of Zion.

The mountainous geography of Upper Ethiopia also helped faithful communities remain independent. Earlier accounts described populous Israelite nations under their own rulers in inaccessible mountain regions between Abyssinia, the Nile, the Congo, and the equatorial interior. Their natural defenses allowed them to remain “free and absolute” while western Israelite kingdoms became increasingly exposed to foreign conquest, religious assimilation, commercial exploitation, and enslavement.

This distinction explains why Ethiopia and West Africa preserve different parts of the same Israelite history. The Ethiopian Highlands preserved the stronger continuity of Zion, Torah, priesthood, sacred geography, and covenant worship. Negroland and West Africa preserved provincial place names, political kingdoms, tribal customs, migration memories, and the consequences of national apostasy. One region preserved the sacred center more clearly, while the other preserved the scattered names and daughter kingdoms of a people moving farther from that center.

The transatlantic captivity therefore appears as the final stage of a much older decline. Israelites migrated westward carrying the names of their homeland. They established provinces and kingdoms. Many later abandoned Torah and adopted the worship of the nations around them. The western kingdoms weakened, fractured, and became vulnerable to foreign powers. Their descendants were then taken from Lower Ethiopia and Negroland in ships, stripped of their national identity, and scattered throughout the Americas.

Upper Ethiopia retained a remnant near the mountains of Israel. Lower Ethiopia supplied many of the captives who would fulfill the curses and eventually remember themselves in the lands of their captivity. Both histories belong to the same people, but they preserve two different responses to the covenant: remembrance in the highlands and judgment in the western provinces.

Sanuto’s Tabula X and the Country of the Jews

Livio Sanuto’s Geographia of 1588 is one of the earliest major atlases devoted specifically to Africa. It contained twelve engraved regional maps and combined Ptolemaic traditions with information received through Portuguese, Venetian, and other geographical networks.

Sidney Mendelssohn later discussed Sanuto’s placement of the terra de’ Giudei, the “Country of the Jews,” on African Tabula X. Mendelssohn states that Sanuto placed this Israelite territory near the equatorial region and made it “adjoin the ancient Kingdom of Benin,” with Benin lying to its west.

This evidence matters for several reasons.

Sanuto did not merely mark an individual synagogue or merchant settlement. He used territorial language, identifying a country associated with Jews.

The territory was placed within Africa.

It was connected geographically with the Benin region.

It stood between the western African world and the interior regions leading toward Abyssinia and the Congo.

Historical accounts collected by Mendelssohn also referred to populous Israelite communities living in inaccessible mountain territories near Abyssinia and the upper Nile. These communities were described as maintaining their own rule because their mountainous lands were difficult to conquer.

Sanuto’s map does not prove that every part of his interior geography was exact.

Renaissance cartographers often depended upon inherited reports, traders, travelers, and classical authorities. Duke University notes that Sanuto’s interior African geography included both improved contemporary information and speculative elements.

Nevertheless, the map establishes that a recognized cartographic tradition placed a territorial “Country of the Jews” in Africa near Benin. That evidence fits the theory of an Israelite corridor extending from Upper Ethiopia through Central Africa into Lower Ethiopia and West Africa.

Tabula Africae III and preserved African names

Tabula Africae III must be distinguished from Sanuto’s Tabula X.

The 1540 Tabula Africae III associated with Sebastian Münster and Claudius Ptolemy is a Renaissance reconstruction of Ptolemaic geography. It covers eastern Libya, Egypt, the Nile world, the Red Sea, and adjoining territories. It includes cities, rivers, mountains, and other classical place names.

It demonstrates that Renaissance cartographers preserved multiple layers of African names:

Names inherited from classical geography.

Names transmitted through Greek and Latin forms.

Names received from African, Arab, and European reports.

Regional names that later disappeared or changed spelling.

Political names that moved as kingdoms rose and fell.

Tabula Africae III shows how heavily African geography depended upon transmission. A local African name might appear in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Portuguese, or Italian spelling before reaching an English translation. Consonants could be doubled, vowels changed, endings added, and compound territorial names compressed.

This method becomes especially important when we turn to the geographical names preserved by Josephus. In his descriptions of Samaria and the cities connected with the surrounding regions, Josephus records names such as Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, Oruba, and Acrabbene. Several of these names appear to have possible counterparts in West Africa. Because ancient African names passed through Greek, Latin, Arabic, Portuguese, and English forms, they must be compared by pronunciation, consonantal structure, location, and their relationship to neighboring places rather than by modern spelling alone. These possible correspondences will be examined in greater detail in the next section, “Josephus and the boundaries of Samaria.”

The map also keeps Egypt, the Nile, the Red Sea, Libya, and Ethiopia inside one continuous African geographical system. It supports the need to read ancient Israelite geography in relation to Africa as a whole rather than dividing northeastern Africa from the rest of the continent.

Josephus and the boundaries of Samaria

Josephus gives a valuable description of Samaria in The Wars of the Jews.

He writes that Samaria lay between Judea and Galilee. He says that “it begins at a village that is in the great plain called Ginea” and “ends at the Acrabbene toparchy.”

Josephus then describes Samaria and Judea as lands of hills and valleys, productive agriculture, abundant trees, cultivated and wild fruit, rainfall, sweet water, excellent grass, cattle, milk, and dense population.

That environmental description deserves careful attention.

Josephus does not describe a barren desert. He describes a fertile, inhabited, agricultural landscape containing hills, valleys, grasslands, trees, fruit, cattle, rain, and fresh water. The Ethiopian Highlands fit that overall profile well. Parts of West Africa also fit it, especially the Guinea savanna, highland, and forest-transition zones.

The question is whether Josephus was describing the original highland Samaria, a western province carrying the name Samaria, or a geographical tradition in which names from both areas had become connected.

Samar in Ethiopia remains a strong candidate for the original name of Samaria. Its location within the Ethiopian world also better preserves the relationship between Samaria, Jerusalem, and the highland sacred center.

Ginea and Acrabbene, however, have possible western African correspondences. This suggests that the name Samaria may have been transferred westward, or that a western Israelite province preserved administrative names originating in the eastern heartland.

Ginea and Guinea

Josephus’ Ginea stood at one limit of Samaria and near a great plain.

The similarity between Ginea and Guinea is direct:

Ginea Guinea Guiné

The historical term Guinea described a broad West African region, not merely the modern Republic of Guinea. It included extensive coastal and inland territories. The Niger also rises in the wider Guinea Highland region, giving Guinea an important position in the proposed Niger-Euphrates system.

Under the migration model, Ginea may represent one of two things.

It may have been an original name in the eastern sacred geography that was carried westward and preserved as Guinea.

It may have become the western boundary marker of a later province called Samaria, established by Israelites or Samaritans who migrated into Lower Ethiopia.

The second explanation allows Samar in Ethiopia to remain the original Samaria while Guinea preserves the name Ginea in a western daughter province.

Naballo and Nabolo

Josephus lists twelve cities that Alexander Jannaeus had taken from the Arabians:

“Medaba, Naballo, Libias, Tharabasa, Agalla, Athone, Zoar, Orone, Marissa, Rudda, Lussa, and Oruba.”

The presence of Nabolo in Ghana presents a possible survival of Naballo.

The consonantal structure is almost unchanged:

N-B-LN-B-L

The principal difference lies in the vowels and the doubled consonant of the Greek or Latin form. A local Nabolo could easily be rendered Naballo by a writer adapting an unfamiliar place name to another language.

One name alone establishes little. Nabolo becomes important because it appears within the same wider region as Guinea, Accra, Niger, Benin, and the other proposed correspondences.

Rudda and Ruda

Josephus’ list also contains Rudda.

A place called Ruda in Niger provides another close correspondence:

Rudda Ruda

Again, the difference is mainly the doubled consonant. Niger lies within the historical Negroland region and along the river system proposed as the African Euphrates. A Rudda-Ruda correspondence would therefore fit both the name and the developing geographical model. The identification remains a candidate rather than a completed demonstration. The exact coordinates, neighboring settlements, historical spellings, and relative position must still be compared with the other cities in Josephus’ list.

Oruba and Yoruba

Oruba resembles Yoruba, especially when the initial consonant is treated as a possible later development or loss.

Oruba Yoruba

The Yoruba world lies within the broader Nigeria-Benin region and near the historical Kingdom of Benin. This places the possible Oruba correspondence inside the same western cluster as Acrabbene and Sanuto’s Country of the Jews.

The similarity deserves investigation, although a linguistic connection has not yet been established.

Acrabbene as an Accra-Bini or Accra-Benin district

Josephus calls Acrabbene a toparchy. A toparchy was an administrative district, not necessarily one city.

This opens the possibility that Acrabbene preserves a compound or regional name:

Accra-Bini Akra-Bini Akrabini Acrabene Acrabbene

The historical Kingdom of Benin, also called Edo, was centered in the region of present-day Edo State in Nigeria, with Benin City as its capital. It belonged to the wider West African trade and political world connected with the Niger basin and the Guinea coast.

The relevant Benin is therefore the historical kingdom in present-day Nigeria, not merely the modern Republic of Benin.

Under the proposed reading, Acrabbene could identify:

A district extending from Accra toward Bini territory.

A frontier between an Accra-centered region and the historical Benin Kingdom.

A political designation joining two territorial names.

A Greek or Latin rendering of an African compound name.

This interpretation explains more of the complete word than identifying Acrabbene solely with Accra. It also places the boundary near the region where Sanuto later located the Country of the Jews.

The proposed sequence becomes:

Ginea or Guinea Western Samaria Nabolo and related settlements Accra-Bini or Acrabbene

The historical Benin region Sanuto’s Country of the Jews

The interior route toward Central Africa and Upper Ethiopia

This sequence does not place Jerusalem in Ghana or Nigeria.

It describes a western Israelite provincial world connected historically or culturally with the eastern sacred center.

What Josephus may have been describing

Three possibilities must remain under consideration.

The first possibility is that Josephus was describing original locations whose names survive in altered form in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa. Under this model, Ginea and Acrabbene must still be located within the original eastern geography.

The second possibility is that Josephus was describing a western Israelite administrative system. Israelites who migrated into Negroland may have reused the names Samaria, Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, and other ancestral places.

The third possibility is that Josephus inherited a composite geographical tradition. Names from the original highland center and names from later western provinces may have been brought together through political changes, copying, translation, and renamed territories.

The second and third possibilities currently provide the best explanation for the combined evidence.

The terrain surrounding Jerusalem and Zion points strongly toward the Ethiopian Highlands. Samar in Ethiopia strengthens the case for an original highland Samaria. Yet the cluster of Ginea, Nabolo, Ruda, Accra, Bini, Benin, Oruba, Juda, and the mapped Country of the Jews points toward a western Israelite political world.

Josephus may therefore preserve names connected with western Israelite provinces or successor territories without relocating the original Mount Zion to West Africa.

This interpretation must still be tested against all of Josephus’ distances, roads, rivers, adjoining districts, and military routes. The place-name correspondences form a serious research hypothesis, while the complete geographical network will determine whether the theory holds.

The Kingdom of Juda and the western daughter kingdoms

Historical maps also preserve a Kingdom of Juda, Juida, Whydah, or Ajuda in West Africa.

The existence of such a kingdom does not require it to be the original kingdom ruled from David’s Jerusalem. It may represent a daughter kingdom founded by migrants from Judah or a later political territory preserving the Judah name.

This follows the same pattern seen in Scripture. Migrating tribes renamed cities after their fathers and ancestral lands. A western Juda could preserve Judean identity while the original Jerusalem remained in the Ethiopian Highlands.

The same principle may apply to western Samaria.

A group from Samaria could establish a new province in Lower Ethiopia or Negroland.

That territory could preserve names such as Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, and Oruba.

Its boundary district could become known as Acrabbene.

Political collapse could later separate the province from the highland center.

Sanuto’s Country of the Jews could preserve the memory of one of the resulting Israelite states.

The refined African Israelite map

The current reconstruction can be summarized geographically.

The Ethiopian Highlands form the eastern sacred core.

Lalibela is the strongest candidate for Mount Zion and the temple-mount landscape.

The exact civic limits of ancient Jerusalem may involve a wider highland network, including other royal and sacred centers.

Samar in Ethiopia is a stronger candidate for the original Samaria than Guinea.

Upper Ethiopia contains the original Israelite highland world, the upper Nile territories, Abyssinia, and adjoining eastern and central regions.

Central Africa forms a bridge between the highland center and the western provinces.

Sanuto’s Country of the Jews represents a mapped Israelite or Jewish territory in this central-western corridor adjoining the historical Benin region.

Lower Ethiopia and Negroland contain western Israelite provinces, refugee territories, renamed cities, and daughter kingdoms.

Guinea may preserve Ginea.

Nabolo in Ghana may preserve Naballo.

Ruda in Niger may preserve Rudda.

Yoruba may preserve a relationship with Oruba.

Accra and Bini or Benin may preserve the compound territorial name Acrabbene.

The historical Kingdom of Juda may represent a western daughter kingdom of Judah.

The Niger may represent the African Euphrates or a river preserving the Euphrates name and serving as a major western boundary and migration route.

What likely happened to the Israelites

The Israelites first occupied a large African land with its sacred center in the Ethiopian Highlands.

Jerusalem and Zion stood within a mountainous, watered, fertile, and highly defensible region. The highlands preserved the temple traditions, the royal memory of David and Solomon, and the geographical relationship between Zion, Gihon, Cush, and the upper Nile world.

The nation then expanded through Upper Ethiopia and Central Africa. Israelite populations established agricultural communities, military settlements, trade routes, religious centers, and provincial governments.

Repeated rebellion brought division and judgment. The northern and southern kingdoms weakened. Foreign wars, internal conflicts, captivities, religious changes, and dynastic struggles drove groups farther from the sacred center.

Some Israelites moved west through Central Africa into Lower Ethiopia and Negroland. They travelled through river systems and established settlements along trade and migration corridors. They carried the names of their tribes, cities, districts, and ancestors.

Western Samarian and Judean territories developed.

Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, Oruba, Acrabbene, Juda, and related names survived in these provinces.

Some western provinces later became independent kingdoms.

Sanuto’s map preserves knowledge of a Country of the Jews near Benin. Other sources describe free Israelite mountain communities between Abyssinia, the Nile, the Congo, and equatorial Africa. These territories may represent remnants of the migration corridor connecting Upper Ethiopia with the western daughter kingdoms.

Over time, Christianity, Islam, indigenous religious systems, conquest, and political fragmentation altered the identities of these communities. Some retained explicit Israelite traditions. Others preserved only names, customs, royal genealogies, circumcision, dietary practices, Sabbath customs, purity laws, or oral histories.

The slave trades then struck the western provinces most heavily. Large numbers of descendants were removed from Guinea, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, the Niger basin, the Congo, and surrounding regions. Their captors stripped them of their names, languages, tribal histories, and knowledge of the land.

Baruch’s prophecy then becomes especially meaningful:

“But in the land of their captivities they shall remember themselves.”

The awakening of descendants in the Americas and throughout the diaspora is therefore not separate from the geographical investigation. Finding the people leads back to finding the land.

A theory that brings the evidence together

The evidence does not require us to move Mount Zion to Guinea simply because Ginea resembles Guinea.

It does not require us to ignore West Africa because the Ethiopian Highlands better fit Jerusalem.

The evidence points toward a larger history.

The Ethiopian Highlands preserve the original sacred geography.

Lalibela preserves the strongest physical symbolism and landscape for Mount Zion and the temple center.

Upper Ethiopia preserves the eastern Israelite heartland.

Central Africa preserves an Israelite corridor and independent Israelite territories.

Lower Ethiopia and Negroland preserve western provinces, migrated names, and daughter kingdoms.

Josephus preserves names that may correspond to this western provincial system.

Sanuto preserves a mapped Country of the Jews adjoining Benin.

Tabula Africae III preserves the older cartographic method through which African names were transmitted, altered, and sometimes relocated.

The Kingdom of Juda preserves the name of Judah in West Africa.

Guinea, Nabolo, Ruda, Accra, Bini, Benin, and Yoruba provide a cluster of names requiring systematic comparison with Ginea, Naballo, Rudda, Acrabbene, and Oruba.

The most coherent working theory is that Israel’s sacred center stood in the Ethiopian Highlands, while Israelite migration, expansion, captivity, and political fragmentation produced western provinces and daughter kingdoms across Lower Ethiopia, Negroland, and West Africa.

The Israelites carried the names with them because the names carried their memory.

They named new lands after old lands.

They formed new kingdoms after the original kingdom fractured.

They preserved fragments of their identity long after the political unity of Israel disappeared.

Then, in the lands of captivity, their descendants began to remember themselves. For a deeper examination of Israelite history, biblical geography, and Africa’s central place in Scripture, explore my books:

True Jerusalem: The Lost Kingdoms of the Israelites https://a.co/d/09VWVNRl

The Book of Our Fathers: The Bible Is an African Book, and It Must Be Read Through an African Lens https://a.co/d/03dVWgBf

These books expand on the historical maps, ancient sources, migrations, lost kingdoms, and African biblical connections discussed in this article.