Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in Africa; the emergence of Ethiopian civilization dates back thousands of years. Abyssinia or rather "Ze Etiyopia" was inhabited by Abyssinians (Habesha), specifically the Amhara and Tigrayans (speakers of Semitic languages) and the Cushitic, Oromo and Agaw. The Eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian highlands and the lowlands were the home of the various Muslim groups that formed the Ifat and Adal sultanates such as the Argobba, Afars, Harari/Harla and Somalis. In the central and south were found the ancient Sidama, Semitic Gurage and Omotic Wolaita, among others. One of the first kingdoms to rise to power in the territory was the kingdom of Damot in the 10th century BC, which established its capital at Yeha. In the first century AD, the Aksumite Kingdom rose to power in the modern Tigray Region with its capital at Aksum and grew into a major power on the Red Sea, subjugating South Arabia and Meroe and its surrounding areas. In the early fourth century, during the reign of Ezana, Christianity was declared the state religion and not long after, the Aksumite empire fell into decline with the rise of Islam in the Arabian peninsula, which slowly shifted trade away from the Christian Aksum. It eventually became isolated, its economy slumped and Aksum's commercial domination of the region ended. The Aksumites gave way to the Zagwe dynasty, who established a new capital at Lalibela before giving way to the Solomonic dynasty in the 13th century. During the early Solomonic period, Ethiopia underwent military reforms and imperial expansion, allowing it to dominate the Horn of Africa.
Etymology The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from , Aithiops, "an Ethiopian") is a compound word, later explained as derived from the Greek words and (aithō "I burn" + ōps "eye"), sharing the same root as the Greek word Cyclops, which literally means "round-eye" (kyklos + ops). According to the Liddell-Scott Jones Greek-English Lexicon, the designation properly translates as fiery-eye in noun form and red-brown in adjectival form. The historian Herodotus used the appellation to denote those parts of Africa south of the Sahara that were then known within the Ecumene (habitable world).For all references to Ethiopia in Herodotus, see: this list at the Perseus Project. The earliest mention of the term is found in the works of Homer, where it is used to refer to two people groups, one in Africa and one in the east from eastern Turkey to India.Homer, Odyssey 1.22–4. In ancient times, the name Ethiopia was primarily used about the modern-day nation of Sudan which is based in the Upper Nile valley and is located south of Egypt, also called Kush, and then secondarily about Sub-Saharan Africa in general.Richard Lobban, Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia, Scarecrow Press, 2004. p. 1–1iDavid M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, p. 18.Noah Webster, The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments, in the Common Version, p. xivReilly, W. (1908). Cush. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved April 19, 2012, from New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04575c.htmRodney Steven Sadler, Can a Cushite Change His Skin?: An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, And Othering in the Hebrew Bible.ETHIOPIACUSH.
The Kingdom of Aksum (designated as Ethiopia) dates back to the union of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon in the bible. Following these Hellenic and biblical traditions, the Monumentum Adulitanum, a 3rd-century inscription belonging to the Aksumite Empire, indicates that Aksum's ruler governed an area that was flanked to the west by the territory of Ethiopia and Sasu. The Aksumite King Ezana eventually conquered Nubia. In the following century, a Ge'ez version of the Ezana inscription, Aἰθίοπες is equated with the unvocalized Ḥbšt and Ḥbśt (Ḥabashat), and denotes for the first time the highland inhabitants of Aksum. This new demonym was subsequently rendered as ḥbs ('Aḥbāsh) in Sabaic and as Ḥabasha in Arabic.
In the 15th-century Ge'ez Book of Axum, the name is ascribed to a legendary individual called Ityopp'is. He was an extra-biblical son of Cush, son of Ham, said to have founded the city of Axum.
Antiquity
Land of Punt
It has been hypothesized that Punt was a kingdom in the Horn of Africa, based on stable isotope analysis of Egyptian mummified baboons suggesting they originated from an area encompassing modern-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. Egyptian traders from about 3000 BC refer to lands south of Nubia or Kush as Punt and Yam. The Ancient Egyptians had myrrh (found in Punt), which Richard Pankhurst interprets to indicate trade between the two countries was extant from Ancient Egypt's beginnings. Egyptian records indicate this possession of myrrh as early as the First and Second dynasties (3100–2888 BC), which was also a prized product of the Horn of Africa Region; inscriptions and pictorial reliefs also indicate ivory, panther and other animal skins, myrrh-trees and ostrich feathers from the African coastal belt; and in the Fourth Egyptian Dynasty (2789–2767 BC) a Puntite is mentioned to be in the service of the son of Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid.Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to The End of the 18th century (Asmara: Red Sea Press, Inc., 1997), pp. 4–5, https://books.google.com/books?id=zpYBD3bzW1wC J. H. Breasted posited that this early trade relationship could have been realized through overland trade down the Nile and its tributaries (i.e. the Blue Nile and Atbara). The 2nd-century BC Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides had documented seafaring among the early Egyptians: "During the prosperous period of the Old Kingdom, between the 30th and 25th centuries BC, the river-routes were kept in order, and Egyptian ships sailed the Red Sea as far as the myrrh-country."Agatharchides, in Wilfred Harvey Schoff (Secretary of the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia) with a foreword by W. P. Wilson, Sc. Director, The Philadelphia Museums. Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century, Translated from the Greek and Annotated (1912). New York, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., pp. 50 (for attribution) and 57 (for quote).
The first known voyage to Punt occurred in the 25th century BC under the reign of Pharaoh Sahure. The most famous expedition to Punt, however, comes during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut probably around 1495 BC, as the expedition was recorded in detailed reliefs on the temple of Deir el-Bahri at Thebes. The inscriptions depict a trading group bringing back myrrh trees, sacks of myrrh, elephant tusks, incense, gold, various fragmented wood, and exotic animals. Detailed information about these two nations is sparse, and there are many theories concerning their locations and the ethnic relationships of their peoples. The Egyptians sometimes called the Land of Punt, "God's-Land", due to the "large quantities of gold, ivory, and myrrh that could be easily obtained".Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to The End of the 18th century (Asmara: Red Sea Press, Inc., 1997), p. 4, https://books.google.com/books?id=zpYBD3bzW1wC.
Evidence of Naqadan contacts include obsidian from Ethiopia and the Aegean. Though not much is known, Punt likely fell due to ethnic tensions between proto-Cushites and Habesha peoples, splitting to form two different kingdoms, Macrobia and D'mt at around the 1st millennium BC.Laurent Bavay, Thierry de Putter, Barbara Adams, Jacques Novez, Luc André, 2000. The Origin of Obsidian in Predynastic and Early Dynastic Upper Egypt, MDAIK 56 (2000), pp. 5–20. See on-line post: .
Pre-Aksumite/D'mt Civilization: The Mai Adrasha Site Recent archaeological excavations in Mai Adrasha, located near Shire in Northern Ethiopia, have uncovered a significant early settlement that predates the Kingdom of Aksum and D'mt by centuries. Findings at this site date back to circa 1250 BC, making it one of the oldest known town in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mai Adrasha appears to have been a major center for metalworking, with evidence of large-scale slag deposits and remnants of substantial stone-walled buildings. The scale of the settlement suggests a high degree of social complexity and possibly long-distance trade connections with Arabia.
Dʿmt
Aside from Mai Adrasha, and Land of Punt, the first kingdom that is epigraphically known to have existed in Ethiopia was the kingdom of Dʿmt, which rose to power around the year 980 BC. Its capital was at Yeha, where a so-called Sabean style temple was built around 700 BC although no evidence of such architecture being found in Yemen. The D'mt kingdom was influenced by the Sabaeans in Yemen, however it is not known to what extent. While it was once believed that D'mt was a Sabaean colony, it is now believed that Sabaean influence was 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.Munro-Hay, Aksum, p. 57. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom survive and very little archaeological work has taken place. As a result, it is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before Aksum's early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Aksumite kingdom possibly around the beginning of the 1st century.Uhlig, Siegbert (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D–Ha. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. p. 185.
Aksum
The first verifiable great power to rise in Ethiopia was that of Axum in the 1st century CE. It was one of many successor kingdoms to Dʿmt and was able to unite the northern Ethiopian Highlands beginning around the 1st century BCE. They established bases on the northern highlands of the Ethiopian Plateau and from there expanded southward. The Persian religious figure Mani listed Axum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time. The origins of the Axumite Kingdom are unclear, although experts have offered their speculations about it. Even who should be considered the earliest known king is contested: although Carlo Conti Rossini proposed that Zoskales of Axum, mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, should be identified with one Za Haqle mentioned in the Ethiopian King Lists (a view embraced by later historians of Ethiopia such as Yuri M. KobishchanovYuri M. Kobishchanov, Axum, Joseph W. Michels, editor; Lorraine T. Kapitanoff, translator, (University Park, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, 1979), pp .54–59. and Sergew Hable Sellasie), G.W.B. Huntingford argued that Zoskales was only a sub-king whose authority was limited to Adulis, and that Conti Rossini's identification can not be substantiated.Expressed, for example, in his The Historical Geography of Ethiopia (London: the British Academy, 1989), p. 39.
Inscriptions have been found in southern Arabia celebrating victories over one GDRT, described as "nagashi of Habashat [i.e. Abyssinia] and of Axum." Other dated inscriptions were used to determine a floruit for GDRT (interpreted as representing a Ge'ez name such as Gadarat, Gedur, Gadurat or Gedara) around the beginning of the 3rd century CE. A bronze sceptre or wand has been discovered at Atsbi Dera with an inscription mentioning "GDR of Axum". Coins showing the royal portrait began to be minted under King Endybis toward the end of the 3rd century CE.
Christianity, Judaism and Islam