Agaw

The Agaw are Cushitic highlanders speaking Central Cushitic, or Agaw, languages, who held much of the northern Ethiopian plateau before Ethio-Semitic speech spread. They appear as the Athagaus in the third-century Monumentum Adulitanum, and the sixth-century traveller Cosmas described a gold route through Agau west of the Tekezé, ruled by a governor of King Kaleb.

From Lasta the Agaw built the Zagwe dynasty, which ruled Ethiopia from about 1137 to 1270; its most celebrated king, Lalibela, ordered the rock-hewn churches of Roha, later renamed Lalibela. After Yekuno Amlak overthrew the Zagwe in 1270 and restored the Solomonic line, the deposed family kept the Wagshum title and governed Wag and Lasta.

Later, Agaw speech survived in scattered enclaves among the Bilen, Qemant and Awi. Many Agaw entered the Ethiopian church, while others, notably in Semien, lived as Beta Israel.