D’mt 980 BCE - 400 BCED’mt was a kingdom located in Antiquity Eritrea that existed between the 10th and 5th centuries BCE. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom survive and very little archaeological work has taken place.
While some modern historians consider this civilization to be indigenous, although Sabaean influenced due to the latter's dominance of the Red Sea, while other scholars have viewed Dʿmt as the result of a mixture of Sabaeans and indigenous peoples. Some sources consider the Sabaean influence to be minor, limited to a few localities, and disappeared after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Aksumite state.
D’motites developed clever irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons.
It is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before the Kingdom of Aksum’s early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Kingdom of Aksum possibly around 150 BCE.
D’mt Due to the similarity of the name of Dʿmt and Damot when transcribed into Latin characters, these two kingdoms are often confused or conflated with one another, but there is no evidence of any relationship to Damot, a kingdom far to the south and existing a millennium and a half later.