Ethiopia

One of the great kingdoms in Africa, sometimes called Cush in Scripture, from Cush, blackness. Blessed are the promises concerning the call of Ethiopia to the Lord, in the latter dispensations of the gospel. (Ps. l18. 31; lxx2: 10, 11. Isa. xlv. 14).

See CUSH.

Ethio´pia is the name by which the English and most other versions render the Hebrew Cush. As used among the Greeks and Romans, the word was employed, in all the latitude of its etymological meaning, to denote any of the countries where the people are of a sable, sunburned complexion. But we have shown in the article Cush (to which we refer the reader) that its use in the language of Scripture is much more restricted, and that while it may sometimes include part of Southern Arabia, it for the most part exclusively designates the ’Ethiopia of Africa,’ which is the subject of the present article.

By Ethiopia, or African Cush, in the widest acceptation of the name, the Hebrews understood the whole of the region lying south of Egypt above Syene, the modern Assouan (Eze 29:10; Eze 30:6). Its limits on the west and south were undefined; but they probably regarded it as extending eastward as far as the Red Sea, if not as including some of the islands in that sea, such as the famous Topaz Isle (Job 28:19). It thus corresponded, though only in a vague and general sense, to the countries known to us as Nubia and Abyssinia, so famous for the Nile and other great rivers.

But that part of the vast region of Cush which seems chiefly intended in these and most other passages of Scripture is the tract of country in Upper Nubia, which became famous in antiquity as the kingdomsof Ethiopia, or the state of Meroë. The Ethiopian nations generally ranked low in the scale of civilization; nevertheless (to use the language of Heeren), there did exist a better cultivated, and, to a certain degree, a civilized Ethiopian people; who dwelt in cities; who erected temples and other edifices; who, though without letters, had hieroglyphics; who had government and laws; and the fame of whose progress in knowledge and the social arts spread in the earliest ages over a considerable part of the earth. Meroë Proper lay between the river Astaboras (now the Atbara or Tacazzé) on the east, and the Nile on the west. Though not completely enclosed with rivers, it was called an island, because, as Pliny observes, the various streams which flowed around it were all considered as branches of the Nile. Its surface exceeded that of Sicily more than a half, and it corresponded pretty nearly to the present province of Atbara, between 13° and 18° N. lat. In modern times it formed a great part of the kingdom of Sennaar, and the southern portion belongs to Abyssinia. Upon the island of Meroë lay a city of the same name, the metropolis of the kingdom, the site of which has been discovered near a place called Assur, about twenty miles N. of the town of Shendy, under 17° N. lat. The splendid ruins of temples, pyramids, and other edifices found here and throughout the district attest the high degree of civilization and art among the ancient Ethiopians.

According to Josephus, the ancient name of Meroë was Seba. Now in the Scriptures this country of African Seba is classed with the Arabian Sheba as a rich but far-distant land (Psa 72:10). In Isa 43:3, God says to Israel, ’I have given Egypt for thy ransom; Cush and Seba in thy stead:’ and in Isa 45:14, ’The wealth of Egypt, and the merchandise of Cush and of the Sebaim, men of stature, shall pass over to thee and shall be thine.’

In the age of Herodotus, the countries known to us as Nubia and Sennaar were occupied by two different races, one of whom he includes under the general appellation of Ethiopians, the other an immigratory Arabian race leading, for the most part, a nomadic life. This distinction has continued down to the present day. Among the aboriginal inhabitants the first place is due to the Nubians, who are well-formed, strong, and muscular, and with nothing whatever of the negro physiognomy. They go armed with spear, sword, and a shield of the skin of the hippopotamus. South of Dongola is the country of the Scheygias, whose warriors are horsemen, also armed with a double-pointed spear, a sword, and a large shield (comp. Jer 46:9, the ’Cushites who handle the shield’). They were completely independent till subdued by Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt. It is in their country that the pyramidal monuments which adorned the ancient Meroë are first met with. Next comes the territory of the Berbers, strictly so called, who, though speaking Arabic, evidently belong to the Nubian race. Above these regions beyond the Tacazzé and along the Nile the great mass of the inhabitants, though sometimes with a mixture of other blood, may be regarded as of Arab origin. But between the valley of the Nile and the Red Sea there is still, as of old, a variety of scattered aboriginal tribes, among whom the Arabic is much less common. Some of them spread themselves over the plains of the Astaboras, or Tacazzé, being compelled to remove their encampments, sometimes by the inundations of the river, at other times by the attacks of the dreaded zimb, or gad-fly, described by Bruce, and which he supposes to be the ’fly which is in the utmost part of the rivers of Egypt’ (Isa 7:18). Another remarkable Ethiopic race in ancient times was the Macrobians, so called from their supposed longevity. They were represented by the ambassadors of Cambyses as a very tall race, who elected the highest in stature as king: gold was so abundant that they bound their prisoners with golden fetters—circumstances which again remind us of Isaiah’s description of Ethiopia and Seba in Isa 45:14.

With regard to the ancient civilization of Ethiopia Proper, or the kingdom of Meroë, it was closely connected with the religion of the country, which was the worship of Ammon and his kindred deities, and the ’Oracles of Ammon’ were its main support. The government was in the hands of a race or caste of priests, who chose from among themselves a king; and this form continued down to the reign in Egypt of the second Ptolemy, when Ergamenes, at that time king, massacred the priests in their sanctuary, and became absolute monarch.

Of the history of Ethiopia, previous to that last revolution, only scanty information has been preserved, but it is enough to evince its high antiquity and its early aggrandizement. In the Persian period it was certainly an independent and important state, which Cambyses in vain endeavored to subdue. But its most flourishing era was between the years B.C. 800 and 700, when arose three potent kings, Sabaco, Sevechus, and Tarhako, or Tirhakah, who extended their conquests over a great part of Egypt. Sevechus is supposed to have been the So or Sua king of Egypt, to whom an embassy was sent by Hoshea, king of Israel (2Ki 17:4), whose reign ended B.C. 722. He was thus the contemporary of Salmanassar, king of Assyria, as was Tirhakah of the next Assyrian monarch, Sennacherib, who (about the year B.C. 714) was deterred from the invasion of Egypt merely by the rumor that Tirhakah was advancing against him (2Ki 19:9). There seems no reason to doubt that the remarkable prophecy in Isaiah 18 was addressed to Tirhakah and his people, to announce to them the sudden overthrow of the Assyrian host before Jerusalem. In Isa 18:7 almost verbatim, it is intimated that, struck at the mighty deeds of the God of Judah, this distant people should send gifts to his dwelling-place at Zion. They were, no doubt, among the ’many’ who are described in 2Ch 32:23, as having ’brought gifts unto Jehovah at Jerusalem, and presents to king Hezekiah, so that he was magnified in the sight of all the nations.’ But it is remarked by Gesenius that the expectation of the entire conversion of the Ethiopians is frequently expressed by the Hebrew prophets (Isa 45:14; Zep 3:10; Psa 68:31; Psa 87:4); and he adds, ’Those who take pleasure in tracing the fulfillment of such predictions in subsequent history may find it in Act 8:27 (the conversion both to Judaism and Christianity of the treasurer of Queen Candace), and still more in the circumstance that Abyssinia is to this day the only great Christian state in the eastern world.’

If we go back about two centuries, to the reign of Asa, king of Judah (B.C. 950), we read of Zerah, or rather Zerach, an Ethiopian going out against him with a host of a thousand thousand men and three hundred chariots (2Ch 14:9). It is doubtful whether this was an Ethiopian monarch or commander, or only a mere Cushite adventurer; but that his army was mainly of African and not Arabian original is evident from the fact of its having included Libyans as well as Cushites (2Ch 16:8), and from the mention of war-chariots, which never were in use in Arabia. Farther back than this the records of history are silent.

The state of Meroë appears to have resembled the larger states in the interior of Africa at the present day, comprising a number of different races or tribes united together by no strong political bond, but by a common form of worship, which placed the rule in the hands of the priesthood, the dominant caste of the country. There is every reason to conclude that the separate colonies of the priest-caste spread from Meroë into Egypt; and the primeval monuments in Ethiopia strongly confirm the native traditions reported by Diodorus Siculus, that the worship of Ammon and Osiris originated in Meroë, and thus render highly probable the opinion that commerce and civilization, science and art, descended into Egypt from Nubia and the upper regions of the Nile. One great cause of the early prosperity and grandeur of Ethiopia was the carrying-trade, of which it was the center, between India and Arabia on the one hand, and the interior of Africa, and especially Egypt, on the other.

Queen Candace, who is mentioned in Act 8:27, was doubtless the reigning sovereign of Meroë [CANDACE], where it is likely a form of Judaism was at that period professed by a portion of the inhabitants, as seems to have been the case in the adjacent region of Abyssinia. The prophets (e.g. Isa 11:11) sometimes allude to the Jews who were scattered throughout Cush. Ebed-melech, the benevolent eunuch of King Zedekiah, who showed such kindness to the prophet Jeremiah, was an Ethiopian (Jer 38:7; comp. Act 8:27). Josephus calls the queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, and with this agrees the tradition of the Abyssinians. But Sheba was undoubtedly in Arabia Felix, though it is possible that, in remote antiquity, the sovereignty of its monarchs extended across the Red Sea to the coast of Ethiopia.

One of the great kingdoms in Africa, frequently mentioned in Scripture under the name of Cush, the various significations of which in the Old Testament have been mentioned under the article CUSH, which see. Ethiopia proper lay south of Egypt, on the Nile; and was bounded north by Egypt, at the cataracts near Syene; east by the Red Sea, and perhaps a part of the Indian ocean; south by unknown regions of the interior of Africa; and west by Libya and deserts. It comprehended of course the modern countries of Nubia or Sennaar, and Abyssinia. The chief city in it was the ancient Meroe, situated on the island or tract of the same name, between the Nile and the Astaboras, now the Tacazze, not far from the modern Shendi, Isa 18:1-7 Zep 3:10 .\par The name of Seba was given to the northern part of Ethiopia, afterwards Meroe, but the eldest son of Cush, Gen 10:7 . This country was in some parts mountainous, and in others sandy; but was to a great extent well watered and fertile. Ebony, ivory, spices, gold, and precious stones were among its articles of traffic. Its history is much involved with that of Egypt, and the two countries are often mentioned together in Bible, Isa 20:3-6 43:3 45:15 Eze 30:1-26 Dan 11:43 .\par Zerah "the Ethiopian" who invaded Judah in the reign of Asa, B. C. 944, 2Ch 14:9-15, is thought by some to have been an Egyptian king of an Ethiopia on both sides of the Red Sea; that is, of the Arabian as well as African Cush. This would explain how he could obtain access to the land of Palestine without passing through Egypt. But the whole question is involved in uncertainty. The Ethiopian queen Candace, whose treasurer is mentioned in Mal 8:27, was probably queen of Meroe, where a succession of females reigned who all bore this name. As this courtier is said to have gone up to Jerusalem "to worship," he was probably a Jew by religion, if not by birth. There appear to have been many Jews in that country. The gospel gained adherents among them; and early in the forth century the entire Bible was translated into the ancient Ethiopic language, from the Greek.\par

Ethio’pia. (burnt faces). The country which the Greeks and Romans described as "Aethiopia" and the Hebrews as "Cush", lay to the south of Egypt, and embraced, in its most extended sense, the modern Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan and northern Abyssinia, and in its more definite sense, the kingdom of Meroe. Eze 29:10.

The Hebrews do not appear to have had much practical acquaintance with Ethiopia itself, though the Ethiopians were well known to them through their intercourse with Egypt. The inhabitants of Ethiopia were a Hamitic race. Gen 10:6. They were divided into various tribes, of which the Sabeans were the most powerful.

The history of Ethiopia is closely interwoven with that of Egypt. The two countries were not unfrequently united, under the rule of the same sovereign. Shortly before our Saviour’s birth, a native dynasty of females, holding the official title of Candace, (Plin. Vi. 35), held sway in Ethiopia, and even resisted the advance of the Roman armies. One of these is the queen noticed in Act 8:27.

Hebrew; Cush. (See CUSH; BABYLON.) Isa 11:11. S. of Egypt. Now Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan, and N. Abyssinia. In a stricter sense the kingdom of Meroe from the junction of the Blue and the White Nile to the border of Egypt. Syene on the N. marked the boundary from Egypt (Eze 29:10; Eze 30:6). The Red Sea was on the Ethiopia, the Libyan desert on the W. The native name was Ethaush; the Greek "Ethiopia" means the land of the sunburnt. Compare Jer 13:23, "can the Ethiopian change his skin?" "The rivers of Ethiopia" (Zep 3:10) are the two branches of the Nile and the Astabbras (Tacazze). The Nile forms a series of cataracts here. The dispersed Israelites shall be brought as an offering by the nations to the Lord (Zep 3:8-9; Isa 66:20; Isa 60:9), from both the African and the Babylonian Cush, where the ten tribes were scattered in Peter’s time (1Pe 1:1; 1Pe 5:13; Isa 11:11, "from Cush and from Shinar".)

The Falashas of Abyssinia are probably of the ten tribes. In Isa 18:1, "the land shadowing with wings" is Ethiopia shadowing (protecting) with its two wings (Egyptian and Ethiopian forces) the Jews, "a nation scattered and peeled" (loaded with indignity, made bald) though once "terrible" when God put a terror of them into surrounding nations (Exo 23:27; Jos 2:9), "a nation meted out and trodden down whose land the (Assyrian) rivers (i.e. armies, Isa 8:7-8) have spoiled"; the Jews, not the Ethiopians. Ethiopia had sent her ambassadors to Jerusalem where they now were (Isa 18:2), Tirhakah their king shortly afterward being the ally whose diversion in that city’s favor saved it from Sennacherib (Isa 36:37). Isaiah announces Sennacherib’s coming overthrow to the Ethiopian ambassadors and desires them to carry the tidings to their own land (compare Isa 17:12-14; not "woe" but "ho," calling attention (Isa 18:1-2); go, take back the tidings of what God is about, to do against Assyria, the common foe of both Ethiopia and Judah.

Queen Candace reigned in this Nile-formed is land region; the name is the official designation of a female dynasty shortly before our Lord’s time (Act 8:27). The "vessels of bulrushes" or papyrus boats are peculiarly suited to the Upper Nile, as being capable of carriage on the shoulders at the rocks and cataracts. Ethiopia" is often used when Upper Egypt and Ethiopia are meant. It is the Thebaid or Upper Egypt, not Ethiopia by itself, that was peopled and cultivated, when most of Lower Egypt was a marsh. Thus Ethiopia and Egypt are said (Nah 3:9) to be the "strength" of "populous No" or Thebes. Zerah the Ethiopian who attacked Asa at Mareshah on the S. of Palestine, and Tirhakah the Ethiopian who advanced toward Judah against Sennacherib, were doubtless rulers of Upper Egypt and Ethiopia combined. Tirhakah’s name is found only on a Theban temple, and his connection with Ethiopia is marked by several monuments there being ascribed to him.

An Azerch-Amen reigned in Ethiopia, we know from the monuments; perhaps = Zerah (Rawlinson). Hincks identifies him with Osorkon I, king of Egypt, second of the 22nd dynasty (See ASA) (2Ch 14:9). Tirhakah was third of the 25th dynasty of Egypt, an Ethiopian dynasty. So or Sevechus or Sabacho was another of this dynasty; the ally of Hoshea king of Israel against Shalmaneser (2Ki 17:3-4). Osirtasin I (Sesostris, Herodotus, 2:110), of the 12th dynasty, was the first Egyptian king who ruled Ethiopia. While the shepherd kings ruled Lower Egypt the 13th native dynasty retired to the Ethiopian capital Napara. Shishak’s army was largely composed of Ethiopians (2Ch 12:3).

The monuments confirm Isa 20:4; Nah 3:5; Nah 3:8-9, by representing Sargon as warring with Egypt and making the Pharaoh tributary; they also make Ethiopia closely united to Egypt. Probably he was provoked by the help which So had given to his rebel tributary Hoshea. The inscriptions tell us Sargon destroyed No-Amon or Thebes in part, which was the capital of Upper Egypt, with which Ethiopia was joined. Esarhaddon, according to the monuments, conquered Egypt and Ethiopia Meroe was the emporium where the produce of the distant S. was gathered for transport either by the Nile or by caravans to northern Africa; compare Isa 45:14.

(1Es 3:2; Est. 13:1; 16:1; Jdt 1:10; Act 8:27; the Hebrew כּוּשׁ, Kush, i.e., CUSH, as it is generally rendered, Gen 2:13; 2Ki 19:9; Est 1:1; Job 28:19; Psa 68:31; Psa 87:4; Isa 18:1; Isa 20:3; Isa 20:5; Isa 27:9; Isa 45:14; Eze 30:4-5; Eze 38:5; Nah 3:9), a country which, as thus designated by the ancients, lay to the south of Egypt, and embraced, in its most extended sense, the modern Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan, and northern Abyssinia, and in its more definite sense the kingdom of Meroe, from the junction of the Blue and White branches of the Nile to the border of Egypt. In one passage in the description of the garden of Eden, an Asiatic Cush or Ethiopia must be intended (Gen 2:13), and the distribution of the descendants of Cush, with later Biblical historical indications, should be compared with the classical mentions of eastern and western Ethiopians, and other indications of profane history. In all other passages, the words Ethiopia and the Ethiopians, with one possible exception, "the Arabians, that [were] near the Ethiopians" (2Ch 21:16), which may refer to Arabians opposite to Ethiopia, may be safely considered to mean an African country and people or peoples. In the Bible, as in classical geography, but one limit of Ethiopia is laid down, its northern frontier, just beyond Syene, the most southern town of Egypt. Egypt is spoken of as to be desolate "from Midol to Syene, even unto the border of Ethiopia" (Eze 29:10), or "from Midol to Syene" (30:6), showing that then, as now, the southern boundary of Egypt was at the First Cataract. In other directions the boundaries can only be generally described as the Red Sea on the E., the Libyan desert on the W., and the Abyssinian highlands on the S. The extent assigned to Ethiopia in ancient times may have been very great, as it was the land of the negroes, and therefore represented all that was known of inner Africa, besides that part of the continent south is of Egypt which is washed by the Red Sea. The references in the Bible are, however, generally, if not always, to the territory which was at times under Egyptian rule, a tract watered by the Upper Nile, and extending from Egypt probably as far as a little above the confluence of the White and Blue Rivers.

The Hebrews do not appear to have had much practical acquaintance with’ Ethiopia itself, though the Ethiopians were well known to them through their intercourse with Egypt. They were, however, perfectly aware of its position (Eze 29:10), and they describe it as a well-watered country lying "from the side of" (A.V. "beyond") the waters of Cush (Isa 18:1; Zep 3:10), being traversed by the two branches of the Nile, and by the Astaboras or Tacazze. ’The Nile descends with a rapid stream in this part of its course, forming a series of cataracts: its violence seen is to be referred to in the words of Isa 18:2, "whose land the rivers have spoiled." The Hebrews seem also to have been aware of its tropical characteristics, the words translated in the A.V. "the land shadowing with wings" (Isa 18:1), admitting the sense of "the land of the shadow of both sides," the shadows falling towards the north and south at different periods of the year, a feature which is noticed by many early writers (compare the expression in Strabo, 2, page 133, αμφισκιοι; Virgil, Ecl. 10:68; Pliny, 2:75). The papyrus boats ("vessels of bulrushes," Isa 18:2), which were peculiarly adapted to the navigation of the Upper Nile, admitting of being carried on men’s backs when necessary, were regarded as a characteristic feature of the country. The Hebrews carried on commercial intercourse with Ethiopia, its "merchandise" (Isa 45:14) consisting of ebony, ivory, frankincense, and gold (Herod. 3:97, 114), and precious stones (Job 28:19; Josephus, Ant. 8:6, 5).

The following close translation of Isaiah’s splendid summons (chapter 18) to the Ethiopians, as auxiliaries to the Egyptians in the struggle against Sennacherib, is inserted here as graphic of many salient features of that warlike state:

Ho! land of whirring wings, That art across the rivers of Cushi; That sendest on the sea ambassadors, Even in vessels of papyrus upon the face of the waters.

Go ye light messengers, To a nation drafted and drilled, To a people fearful henceforth and onward, A nation most valiant and dominant, Whose land rivers have split: All ye inhabitants of the world, And dwellers of the land, At the lifting of the standard of the mountains you shall see, And at the clanging of the trumpet you shall hear.

For thus has Jehovah said to me:I will calmly look in my place — Like serene heat above sunlight, Like the cloud of dew in the heat of harvest; Yet before the harvest, when the blossom has grown perfect,

Or a plump green grape can the flower become, Then has one cut the shoots with the pruning-knives, And the twigs has he removed, lopped. And they shall be left together for the buzzard of the mountains, And for the beast of the earth; And upon him shall the buzzard summer,

And every beast of the earth shall winter upon him. In that time shall a present be led to Jehovah of armies, Of a people drafted and drilled, Even from a people fearful henceforth and onward, A nation most valiant and dominant, Whose land rivers have split, To the place of the name of Jehovah of armies, Mount Zion. The inhabitants of Ethiopia were a Hamitic race (Gen 10:6), and are described in the Bible as a dark-complexioned (Jer 13:23) and stalwart race (Isa 45:14, "men of stature;" 18:2, for "scattered," some substitute "tall"). Their stature is noticed by Herodotus (3:20, 114) as well as their handsomeness. Not improbably the latter quality is intended by the term in Isa 18:2, which in the A.V. is rendered "peeled," but which may mean "fine-looking." Their appearance led to their being selected as attendants in royal households (Jer 38:7). The Ethiopians are on one occasion coupled with the Arabians, as occupying the opposite shores of the Red Sea (2Ch 21:16); but elsewhere they are connected with African nations, particularly Egypt (Psa 68:31; Isa 20:3-4; Isa 43:3; Isa 45:14), Phut (Jer 46:9), Lub and Lud (Eze 30:5), and the Sukkiim (2Ch 12:3). They were divided into various tribes, of which the Sabaeans were the most powerful. SEE SEBA; SEE SUKKIIM.

The name Cush is found in the Egyptian KISH, which is evidently applied to the same territory, though we have the same difficulty in determining its limits, save on the north. The classical Ethiopia (Αἰθιοπια) may have the same origin, through the Coptic ethos, of which, unless it be derived from thos, "a boundary," the Sahidic form esos may be the purest, and connect the classical with the ancient Egyptian name. The Greeks themselves regarded it as expressive of a dark complexion (from αἴθω, "to burn," and ὤψ, "a countenance"). In the Bible there is no certain notice of any Ethiopian race but Cushites.

According to Dr. Brugsch, the first country above Egypt was TA-MERU- PET, or TA-HENS, corresponding to Nubia, and extending, under the Pharaohs, at least as far south as Napata. Dr. Brugsch supposes that TA- HENS was, in the earlier times, the whole tract south of Syene under Egyptian rule [therefore governed by the prince of KISH, and corresponding to or included in that country], and, in the later times, little more than the Dodecasotcenus of the Ptolemies and Romans, the remains of the older territory (Geographische Inschriften, 1:100). As a nome, Nubia, before the formation of the Ombite Nome, included Ombos, Silsilis being probably the first city of the Egyptian Apollinopolite Nome. Although it is not impossible that at Silsilis was anciently the great natural barrier of Egypt on the south, we think that this extension of Nubia was simply for purposes of government, as Dr. Brugsch seems to admit (Geogr. Inschr. 1:100). South of the Nubia of the Pharaohs he places a region of which the name perhaps reads PENT-HEN-NUFRE, which, however, was probably a district of the former country. Still further, and near Merob, he puts the land of KISH, and in and, about Meroe the land of the NEHSI or negroes. Others, however, think that KISH commenced immediately above Egypt, lerobably always at the First Cataract, and included all the known country south of Egypt, TA-MERU-PET or TAKENS, save as a nome, being a part of it, the modern Nubia. Names of conquered negro nations, tribes, or countries occur on the monuments of the empire: of these, the most suggestive are the BARBARTA and TAKRERR (see Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr. 1:100 -107, 150164; 2:4-13, 20; 3:3, 4, and indices s.v. Athiopien, Kes, etc.).

Ethiopia comprises two very different tracts. North of the region of tropical rains, it is generally an extremely narrow strip of cultivated land, sometimes but a few Cards wide, on both sides, or occasionally on one side only, of the Nile. Anciently the watered tract was much broader, but the giving way of a barrier at Silsilis (Jebel es-Silsileh) or Syene (Aswatn) has lowered the level of the river for some distance above the First Cataract; exactly how far cannot be accurately determined, but certainly for the whole space below the Third Cataract. The cultivable soil which was anciently productive is now far above the highest level of the stream. The valley is, however, never broad, the mountains seldom leaving a space of more than a mile within the greater part of the region north of the limit of tropical rains. The aspect of the country is little varied. On either side of the river, here narrower than in its undivided course in Upper Egypt, rise sterile sandstone and limestone mountains, the former sometimes covered by yellow sand-drifts. At the First Cataract, at Kalab’sheh, and at the Second Cataract, the river is obstructed, though at the second place not enough to form a rapid, by red granite and other primary rocks. The groves of date-palms, here especially fine, are the most beautiful objects in the scene, but its general want of variety is often relieved by the splendid remains of Egyptian and Ethiopian civilization, and the clearness of the air throws a peculiar beauty over everything that the traveler beholds. As he ascends the river, the scenery, after a time, becomes more varied, until on the east he reaches the Abyssinian highlands, on the west the long meadows, the pasture-lands of herds of elephants, through which flows the broad and sluggish White Nile. In this upper region the climate is far less healthy than below, save in Abyssinia, which, from its height, is drained, and enjoys an air which is rare and free from exhalations. The country is thus for the most part mountainous, the ranges gradually increasing in altitude towards the S., until they attain an elevation of about 8000 feet in Abyssinia.

The Nile is the great fertilizer of the northern regions of Ethiopia, which depend wholly upon its yearly inundation. It is only towards the junction of the two great streams that the rains take an increasingly important share in the watering of the cultivable land. In about N. lat. 170 40’, the great river receives its first tributary, the Astabloras, now called the Atbarah. In about N. lat. 150 40’ is the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. The Blue Nile, which has its source in Abyssinia, is a narrow, rapid stream, with high, steep mild-banks, like the Nile in Egypt; it is strongly charged with alluvial soil, to which it owes the dark color which has given it its distinctive name. From this stream the country below derives the annual alluvial deposits. The White Nile is a colorless river, very broad and shallow, creeping slowly through meadows and wide in marsh-lands. Of the cultivation and natural products of Ethiopia little need be said, as they do not illustrate the few notices of it in Scripture. It has always been, excepting the northern part, productive, and rich in animal life. Its wild animals have gradually been reduced, yet still the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and the ostrich abound, though the second alone is found throughout its extent. The elephant and lion are only known in its southernmost part.

In the Bible a Cushite appears undoubtedly to be equivalent to a negro, from this passage, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his stripes?” (Jer 13:23); and it is to be observed, that whenever the race of KISH is represented on the Egyptian monuments by a single individual, the type is that of the true negro (Wilkinson, Anc. Eg. 1:404, abridgm.), It is therefore probable that the negro race anciently extended further to the north than at present, the whole country watered by the Nile, as far as it is known, being now peopled by a race intermediate between the negro race and the Caucasian. There is no certain mention in the Bible of this intermediate race in Ethiopia, but the Egyptian and Ethiopian monuments afford us indications of its ancient existence in its modern territory, though probably it did not then extend as far south as now. At the present day, Ethiopia is inhabited by a great variety of tribes of this race: the Kunuz, said to be of Arab origin, nearest to Egypt, are very dark; the Nubeh, the next nation, much lighter; beyond them are some fair Arabs, the Caucasian Abyssinians, with scarcely any trace of negro influence save in their dark color, and tribes as black as the true negro, or nearly so, though not of the pure negro type. The languages of Ethiopia are as various as the tribes, and appear to hold the same intermediate place between the Shemitic group and the Nigritian, if we except the Ethiopic, which belongs to the former family. SEE ETHIOPIC LANGUAGE.

In all that relates to the civilization of ancient Ethiopia we see the same connection with Egypt that is constantly indicated in the Bible. So far as the Egyptian sway extended, which was probably, under the empire, as far as somewhat above the junction of the two Niles the religion of Egypt was probably practiced. While the tract was under Egyptian rule this was certainly the case, as the remains of the temples sufficiently show. We find it as the religion of Tirhakah in his Ethiopian as well as his Egyptian sculptures, and this is also the case with the later kings of Ethiopia who held no sway in Egypt. There were evidently local differences, but apparently nothing more. Respecting the laws and forms of government the same may be supposed. We have very little evidence as to the military matters of the Ethiopians, yet, from their importance to Egypt, there can be little doubt that they were skillful soldiers. Their armies were probably drawn from the Ethiopian or intermediate race, not from the negro. Of the domestic life of this people we have but slight hints. Probably they were more civilized than are their modern successors. Their art, as seen in the sculptures of their kings in Ethiopian temples from Tirhakah downwards, is merely a copy of that of Egypt, showing, after the first, an inferiority in style to the contemporary works of the original art. Their character can scarcely be determined from scanty statements, applying, it may be, to extremely different tribes. In one particular all accounts agree: they were warlike, as, for instance, we equally see in the defiance the Ethiopian king sent to Cambyses (Herod. 3:21), and in the characteristic inscription at Kalab’sheh of Silco, "king (βασιλίσκος) of the Nubadse and all the Ethiopians" (Modern Egypt and Thebes, 2:81, 312), who is to be regarded as a very late Ethiopian king or chief in the time of the Roman empire. The ancients, from Homer downwards, describe them as a happy and pious race. In the Bible they are spoken of as "secure" or "carelessly (Eze 30:9), but this may merely refer to their state when danger was impending. Probably the modern inhabitants of Ethiopia

give us a far better picture of their predecessors than we can gather from the few notices to which we have alluded. If we compare the Nubians with the representations of the ancient Egyptians on the monuments, we are struck by a similarity of type, the same manner of wearing the hair, and a like scantiness of clothing. There can be no question that the Nubians are mainly descended from an Egyptianized Ethiopian people of two thousand years ago, who were very nearly related to the Egyptians. The same may be said of many tribes further to the south, although sometimes we find the Arab type and Arab manners and dress. The Ethiopian monuments show us a people like the ancient Egyptians and the modern Nubians. The northern Nubians are a simple people, with some of the vices, but most of the virtues of savages. The chastity of their women is celebrated, and they are noted for their fidelity as servants. But they are inhospitable and cruel, and lack the generous qualities of the Arabs. Further south manners are corrupt, and the national character is that of Egypt without its humanity, and untouched by any but the rudest civilization.

In speaking of the history of the country, we may include what is known of its chronology, since this is no more than the order in which kings reigned. Until the time of the 12th dynasty of Egypt we have neither chronology nor history of Ethiopia. We can only speculate upon the earlier conditions of the country with the aid of some indications in the Bible. The first spread of the descendants of Cush seems to be indicated by the order in which the Cushite tribes, families, or heads are enumerated in Gen 10:1-32. All the names, excepting Nimrod, might be thought to indicate a colonization of Southern and Eastern Arabia, were there not good reason to suppose that Seba, though elsewhere mentioned with Sheba (Psa 72:10), is connected with Ethiopia, and is probably the Hebrew name of the chief Ethiopian kingdom from the time of Solomon downwards. (Josephus calls Meroh Saba, Ant. 2:10, 2, and Seba of Cush he calls Sabas, ib. 1:6, 2.) If this be the case, it would be remarkable that Nimrod is mentioned at the end of the list and Seba at the beginning, while the intervening names, mostly if not all, are Arabian. This distribution may account for the strongly-Caucasian type of the Abyssinians, and the greater indication of Nigritian influence in all the other Ethiopian races; for a curve drawn from Nimrod’s first kingdom there can, we think, be little doubt that the meaning in Genesis is, that he went northward and founded Nineveh — and extending along the South Arabian — coast, if carried into Africa, would first touch Abyssinia. The connection of Southern Arabia and Abyssinia has been so strong for about two thousand years that we must admit the reasonableness of this theory of their ancient colonization by kindred tribes. The curious question of the direction from which Egyptian civilization came cannot here be discussed. It is possible that it may have descended the Nile, as was, until lately, supposed by many critics, in accordance with statements of the Greek writers. The idea or tradition of which these writers probably build may be due to the Nigritian origin of the low nature- worship of the old Egyptian religion, and perhaps, as far as it is picture- writing, of the hieroglyphic system, of which the characters are sometimes called Ethiopic letters by ancient writers.

The history of Ethiopia is closely interwoven with that of Egypt. The two countries were not unfrequently united under the rule of the same sovereign. The first Egyptian king who governed Ethiopia was one of the 12th dynasty, named Osirtasen I, the Sesostris of Herod. 2:110. During the occupation of Egypt by the Hyksos, the 13th dynasty retired to the Ethiopian capital, Napata; and again we find the kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties exercising a supremacy over Ethiopia, and erecting numerous temples, the ruins of which still exist at Semneh, Amada, Soleb, Abusimbel, and Jebel Berkel. The tradition of the successful expedition of Moses against the Ethiopians, recorded by Josephus (Ant. 2:10), was doubtless founded on the general superiority of the Egyptians at that period of their history.

Under the 12th dynasty we find the first materials for a history of Ethiopia. In these days Nubia seems to have been thoroughly Egyptianized as far as beyond the Second Cataract, but we have no indication of the existence at that time in Ethiopia of any race but the Egyptian. We find an allusion to the negroes in the time between the 12th dynasty and the 18th, in the name of a king of that period, which reads RA?-NEHSI, or "the Sun? of the Negroes," rather than "the Negro Sun?" (Turin Papyrus of Kings, ap. Lepsius Konigsbuch, pl. 18:197; 19:278). The word NEESI is the constant designation of the negro race in hieroglyphics.

Before passing to the beginning of the 18th dynasty, when the Egyptian empire definitely commenced, SEE EGYPT, we may notice two possible references to the Ethiopians in connection with the Exodus, an event which probably occurred at an early period of that empire. In Isa 43:1-28, which though relating to the future, also speaks of the past, and especially mentions or alludes to the passage of the Red Sea (see particularly Isa 43:16-17), Ethiopia is thus apparently Connected with the Exodus: "I gave Egypt [for] thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee" (Isa 43:3). It can scarcely be supposed that this is an emphatic relation of future events, and it is difficult to connect it with any other known past event, as the conquest of Egypt by Sennacherib, which may have already occurred. If this passage refer to the Exodus, it would seem to favor the idea that the Israelites went out during the empire, for then Ethiopia was ruled by Egypt, and would have been injured by the calamities that befell that country. In Amos there is a passage that may possibly connect the Ethiopians with the Exodus: "[Are] ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?" (9:7). But the meaning may be that the Israelites were no better than the idolatrous people of Cush.

At the beginning of the 18th dynasty we find the Egyptians making expeditions into Ethiopia, no doubt into its farther regions, and bringing back slaves. At this time the Egyptians seem to have intermarried with people of Ethiopia, probably of the intermediate race, darker than the Egyptians, but not of the negro race. One of the wives of Adhhmes, or Amosis, the first king of the. 18th dynasty, is represented as black, though not with negro features. A later sovereign of the same dynasty, Amenoph III, is seen by his statues to have been partly Ethiopian, and this may have been one cause of his identification by the Greeks with Memnon. Daring this and the dynasty which succeeded it, the 19th, we have no proof that the regularly-governed Egyptian dominions extended beyond Napata, but it is probable that they reached a little beyond the junction of the White and Blue Niles. There can be no doubt that Ethiopia remained subject to Egypt as late as the reign of Rameses VI, soon after whom the proper Egyptian empire may be said to have closed, having lasted three centuries from the beginning of the 18th dynasty. Under that empire, Ethiopia, or at least the civilized portion, was ruled by a governor, who bore the title SUTEN-SA- EN-KISH, "Prince," literally "Royal son," "of Cush," etc. The office does not seem to have been hereditary at any time, nor is it known to have been held by a son of the reigning king, or any member of the royal family.

After the reign of Rameses VI, the feebleness of the later Theban kings may have led to the loss of Ethiopia, and we know that in Solomon’s time there was a kingdom of Sehna. Shishak, the first king of the 22d dynasty, probably made Ethiopia tributary. When this king, the Sheeshonk I of the monuments, invaded the kingdom of Judah, he had in his army "the Lubim, the Sukkiim, and the Cushiim" (2Ch 12:13). The Lubinm are a people of Northern Africa, near Egypt and the Sukkiimi are of doubtful place. The indications are of an extensive dominion in Africa; for, though the Lubim and Sukkiim may have been mercenaries, it is unlikely that the Cushim were also. There can be no doubt that Shishak was a powerful king, especially as he was strong enough to invade Judah, and it is therefore probable that he restored the influence of the Egyptians in Ethiopia. SEE SHISHAK.

Zerah the Ethiopian, on account of his army being of Cushim and Lubim, and thus, as well as in consisting of chariots, horsemen, and foot, of like composition with that of Shishak (2Ch 16:8; 2Ch 14:9; 2Ch 14:12-13; 2Ch 12:2-3), seems certainly to have been either a king of this dynasty, or else a general of such a king. In the former case he would probably correspond to Osorkon II. The names Osorkon and Zerah seem very remote, but it must be remembered that Egyptian words transcribed in Hebrew are often much changed, and that in this case it is probable that both Egyptian and Hebrew forms, if they be two orthographical representations of one word, come from a third source. The style "Zerah the Cushite" is unlike that applied to kings of Egypt who were foreigners, or of foreign extraction, as in the cases of "So, king of Egypt," and "Shishak, king of Egypt." On this account, and especially from the omission of the word king, or any royal appellation, though we cannot infer positively from the few instances in Scripture, Zerah may be rather supposed to have been a general, but the army that he commanded must, from the resemblance of its composition to that of Shishak’s, have been that of a king of the same line. Mr. Kenrick rather too hastily remarks as to the term Cushite, that "no king of the Bubastite [22d] dynasty could have been so designated," and is at some pains to explain what he considers to be a mistake (Ancient Egypt, 2:297 sq.). It is recorded that Asa had an army of 580,000, and that Zerah the Ethiopian came against him with 1,000,000, and 300 chariots. These high numbers have been objected to; but the history of our times shows that war upon this large scale is not alone possible to great kingdoms, but also to states of no very large population which put forth their whole strength. It is to be noticed that Asa was evidently struck by the greatness of the hostile army, to which the prophet Hanani alludes, reproving him at a later time (2Ch 16:8). SEE NUMBER. Asa encountered Zerah "in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah, and, praying for God’s aid against this huge army, it was put to the rout, and he pursued it to Gerar, and smote all the cities round Gerar, which seem to have been in alliance with the invaders, and took much spoil from the cities, and also smote the tents of cattle, from which he took many sheep and camels (14:8-15). This great overthrow may have been a main cause of the decline of the power of the 22d dynasty, which probably owed its importance to the successes of Shishak. SEE ZERAH.

During the later period of this dynasty, it is probable that Ethiopia became wholly independent. The 23d dynasty appears to have been an Egyptian line of little power. The 24th, according to Manetho, of but one king, Bocchoris the Saite, was probably contemporary with it. In the time of Bocchoris, Egypt was conquered by Sabaco the Ethiopian, who founded the 25th dynasty of Ethiopian kings. The chronology and history of this line is obscure. We take Manetho’s list for the chronology, with a few necessary corrections in the length of the reigns, in the following table SEE EGYPT:

The duration here given to the first and second reigns can only be considered to be conjectural. Herodotus assigns 50 years as the duration of the Ethiopian dominion in Egypt (2:137, 139), and as he lived at no great distance from the time, and is to be depended upon for the chronology of the next dynasty, we should lay some stress upon his evidence did he not speak of but one Ethiopian king, Sabacos. Perhaps he includes in this single reign that of Tirhakah, and omits that of the first Sabacos. There are two Hebrew synchronisms and one Egyptian point of evidence which aid us in endeavoring to fix the chronology of this dynasty. Either the first or second king of the dynasty is supposed to be the So of the Bible, with whom Hoshea, who began to reign B.C. 729-8, made a treaty at least three years before the taking of Samaria: the latter eyent is fixed at B.C. 720; therefore one of these two Ethiopians was probably reigning in B.C. 723, or somewhat, perhaps seven. years, earlier. See So. Nor is it supposable that the treaty may have been made before the conquest of Egypt; for So is expressly called "king of Egypt" (2Ki 17:4), whereas Zerah and Tirhakah are distinctively styled Cushites (2Ch 14:9; 2Ki 19:9). Tirhakah was contemporary with Hezekiah and Sennacherib at the time of the destruction of the Assyrian army. The chronology of Hezekiah’s reign is, with respect to these synchronisms, difficult; but we are disposed to think that the common reckoning, varying not more than three years, is correct, and that the preferable date of the accession of Hezekiah is B.C. 726. Some chronologers follow Dr. Oppert in supposing that the date of Sennacherib’s invasion should be Hezekiah’s 24th year instead of the 14th year (Chronologie des Assyriens et des Babyloniens, pages 14, 15), but we rather infer a long interval between two wars. SEE HEZEKIAH.

The last year of Hezekiah is thus B.C. 697, unless we suppose that his reign was longer than is stated in the Masoretic text, and that it was for the latter part contemporary with Manasseh’s. Tirhakah’s reign is nearly determined by the record in a tablet of the tombs of the Butls Apis, that one of them was born in his twenty-sixth year, and died at the end of the 20th of Psammetichus I. The length of its life is unfortunately not stated, but it exceeded twenty years, and the longest age recorded is twenty-six. Supposing it to have lived twenty-one years, the first year of Tirhakah’s reign would fall in B.C. 690 (see Rawlinson’s Herod. 2:319, where the successor of Psammetichus is proved to date from B.C. 664), which would correspond to the 8th year of Manasseh. The contemporaneousness of Tirhakah and Hezekiah can be explained by one of two suppositions, either that Hezekiah’s reign exceeded twenty-nine years, or that Tirhakah ruled in Ethiopia before coming to the throne of Egypt. It must be remembered that it cannot be proved that the reigns of Manetho’s 25th dynasty form a series without any break, and also that the date of the taking of Samaria is considered fixed by the Assyrian scholars. At present, therefore, we cannot venture on any changes. SEE CHRONOLOGY;

We do not know the cause of the rise of the 25th dynasty. Probably the first king already had an Ethiopian sovereignty when he invaded Egypt. That he and his successors were natives of Ethiopia is probable from their being kings of Ethiopia and having non-Egyptian names. Though Sabaco conquered Bocchoris and put him to death, he does not seem to have overthrown his line or the 23d dynasty: both probably continued in a tributary or titular position, as the Sethos of Herodotus, an Egyptian king of the time of Tirhakab, appears to be the same as Zet, who, in the version of Manetho by Africanus, is the last king of the 23d dynasty, and as kings connected with Psammetichus I of the Salte 26th dynasty are shown by the monuments to have preceded him in the time of the Ethiopians, and probably to have continued the line of the Salte Bacehoris. We think it probable that Sabaco is the "So, king of Egypt," who was the cause of the downfall of Hoshea, the last king of Israel. The Hebrew name סוא, if we omit the Masoretic points, is not very remote from the Egyptian SHEBEK. It was at this time that Egypt began strongly to influence the politics of the Hebrew kingdoms, and the prophecies of Hosea, denouncing an Egyptian alliance, probably refer to the reign of So or his successor; those of Isaiah, of similar purport, if his book be in chronological order, relate to the reign of Tirhakah. Tirhakah is far more fully commemorated by monuments than his predecessors.

At Thebes he has left sculptures, and at Jebel-Berkel, Napata, one temple and part of another. There seems to be no doubt that Sethos (Zet?) was at least titular king of part of Egypt, or the whole country, under Tirhakah, on the following evidence: In the Bible; Tirhakab, when mentioned by name, is called "king of Cush (Ethiopia)," and a Pharaoh is spoken of at the same period (Isa 30:2-3; Isa 36:6; 2Ki 18:21); in the Assyrian inscriptions a Pharaoh is mentioned as contemporary with Sennacherib; and the Egyptian monuments indicate that two or three royal lines centered in that of the 26th dynasty. The only event of Tirhakah’s reign certainly known to us is his advance against Sennacherib, apparently in fulfillment of a treaty made by Hezekiah with the Pharaoh whom we suppose to be Sethos. This expedition was rendered needless by the miraculous destruction of the Assyrian army, but it is probable that Tirhakah seized the occasion to recover some of the cities of Palestine which had before belonged to Egypt. Herodotus gives a traditional account of Sennacherib’s overthrow, relating that when Egypt was ruled by Sethos, a priest-king, the country was invaded by Sennacherib, against whom Sethos, who had offended the military class, marched with an army of artificers and the like, and encamped near Pelusium, where in the night a multitude of field-mice gnawed the bow- strings and shield-straps of the Assyrians, who, being thus unable to defend themselves, took to flight (2:141). It has been well observed that it is said by Horapollo that a mouse denoted "disappearance" in hieroglyphics (Herog. 1:50). Here we have evidently a confused tradition of the great overthrow of the Assyrians. Strabo, on the authority of Megasthenes, tells us that Tirhakab, in his extensive expeditions, rivaled Sesostris, and went as far as the Pillars of Hercules (15:686).

The beginning of the 26th dynasty was a time of disaster to Egypt. Tirhakah was either dead or had retired to Ethiopia, and Egypt fell into the hands of several petty princes, probably the dodecarchs of Herodotus, whose rule precedes, and perhaps overlaps, that of Psammetichus I, who is said to have been at first a dodecarch. In this time Esarhaddon twice invaded and conquered the country; but, after his second invasion, Psammetichus seems to have entirely thrown off the Assyrian yoke, and restored Egypt to somewhat of its ancient power. There are several passages in Scripture which probably refer to these invasions, and certainly show the relation of Ethiopia to Egypt at this time. The prophet Nahum, warning Nineveh, describes the fall of Thebes, "Art thou better than No Amon, that was situate among the rivers, [that had] the waters round about it, whose rampart [was] the sea, [and] her wall from the sea? Cush and Mizraim [were her] strength, and [it was] infinite; Put and Lubim were in thy help" (Nah 3:8-9). The sack and captivity of the city are then related. The exact period of Nahum is not known, but there is much probability that he lived about the time of the invasion of Judaea by Sennacherib (Nah 1:11-12). SEE NAHUM.

He therefore appears, to refer to one of the conquests of Egypt by Sennacherib, Sargon, or Shalmaneser. See No. The close alliance of Cush and Mizraim seen as to point to the period of the Ethiopian rule, when the states would have united against a common enemy. Three chapters of Isaiah relate to the future of Ethiopia and Egypt, and it is probably that they contain what is virtually one connected subject, although divided into a prophecy against Ethiopia, the burden of Egypt, and the record of an event shown to prefigure the fall of both countries, these divisions having been followed by those who separated the hook into chapters. The prophecy against Ethiopia is extremely obscure. (See the version above.) It appears to foretell the calamity of Ethiopia to its farthest people, to whom messengers should be sent in vessels of papyrus, by the sea, here the Nile, as in the description of Thebes by the prophet Nahum (1.c.), bearing, probably, that news which is related in the next chapter. In the end the Ethiopians would send a present to the Lord at Zion (chap. xviii). Then follows " the burden of Egypt," apparently foretelling the discord and strife of the dodecarchy, the delivering of the people into the hand of a cruel lord, probably the Assyrian conqueror, the failure of the waters of Egypt and of its chief sources of revenue, and the partial conversion of the Egyptians, and, as it seems, their ultimate admission to the Church (chapter 19).

We then read how a Tartan, or general; of Sargon, the king of Assyria, took Ashdod, no doubt with a garrison from the Egyptian army. At this time Isaiah was commanded to walk "naked and barefoot," probably without an outer garment, three years, as a sign to show how the Egyptians and Ethiopians, as no doubt had been the case with the garrison of Aehdod, probably of both nations, should be led captive by the king of Assyria. This captivity was to be’ witnessed by the Jews who trusted in Ethiopia and Egypt to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and the invasions of Egypt by Esarhaddon are therefore probably foretold (chapter 20). In the books of later prophets Ethiopia does not take this prominent place: no longer a great power, it only appears as furnishing part of the Egyptian forces or sharing the calamities of Egypt, as in the history of Egypt we find Ethiopia occupying a position of little or no political importance, the successors of Tirhakah in that country being perhaps tributaries of the kings of the 26th dynasty. In the description by Jeremiah of Phaiaob-Necho’s army, the Ethiopians (Cush) are first spoken of among the foreign warriors mentioned as serving in it (Eze 46:9). Ezekiel prophecies the fear of Ethiopia at the overthrow of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar (Eze 30:4-9), and though the helpers of Egypt were to fall, it does not seem that the invasion of their lands is necessarily to be understood. One passage illustrates the difficult 18th chapter of Isaiah: "In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make ["secure" or] careless Ethiopia afraid, and. great pain shall come upon them as in the day of Egypt" (Eze 30:9). Zephaniah, somewhat earlier, mentions the Ethiopians alone, predicting their overthrow (Zep 2:12). It is probable that the defeat of the Egyptian army at Carchemish by Nebuchadnezzar is referred to, or else the same king’s invasion of Egypt.

The kings of Egypt do not appear to have regained the absolute rule of Ethiopia, or to have displaced the native kings, though it is probable that they made them tributary. Under Psammetichus, a revolt occurred in the Egyptian army, and a large body of rebels fled to Ethiopia, and there established themselves. A Greek inscription on one of the colossi of the great temple of Abu-Simbil, not far; below the Second Cataract, records the passage of Greek mercenaries on their return from an expedition up the river, "king Psamatichus" having, as it seems, not gone beyond Elephantine. This expedition was probably that which Herodotus mentions Psammetichus as having made in order to bring back the rebels (2:30), and, in any case, the inscription is valuable as the only record of the 26th dynasty which has been found above the First Cataract. It does not prove, more especially as the king remained at Elephantine, that he governed any part of Ehiopia. The next event of Ethiopian history is the disastrous expedition of Cambyses, defeated by the desert-march, and not by any valor of the invaded nation. From this time the country seems to have enjoyed tranquillity, until the earlier Ptolemies acquired part of Lower Nubia that was again lost to them in the decline of their dynasty. When Egypt became a Roman province, Syene was its frontier town to the south; but when, under Augustus, the garrison of that town had been overwhelmed by the Ethiopians, the prefect Petronius invaded Ethiopia, and took Napata, said to have been the capital of queen Candace. The extensive territory subdued was not held, and though the names of some of the Caesars are found in the temples of Lower Nubia, in Strabo’s time Syene marked the frontier. This part of Ethiopia must have been so unproductive, even before the falling of the level of the Nile, which Sir Gardner Wilkinson supposes to have happened between the early part of the 13th dynasty and the beginning of the 18th, that it may well have been regarded as a kind of neutral ground.

The chronology of the kings of Ethiopia after Tirhakah cannot yet be attempted. Professor Lepsius arranges all the Ethiopians under four periods: 1st. The 25th dynasty, first and 2Ki 2:1-25 d. Kings of Napata, beginning with Tirhakah, who, in his opinion, retired from Egypt, and made this his capital: of these kings, one, named NASTES-SES, or NASTES-NEN, has left a tablet at Dongolah, recording the taking in his wars of enormous booty in cattle and gold (Lepsius, Denkminler, 5:16; Brugsch, Geogr. Istschr. 1:163, 164). 3d. Older kings of Meroe, among whom is a queen KENTAHI, in whom a Candace is immediately recognized, and also MI-AMEN ASRU and ARKAMEN, the latter Ergamenes, the contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who had, according to Diodorus Siculus, received a Greek training, and changed the customs of Ethiopia (3:6). Some of these princes had an extensive dominion. The name of Ergamenes is found from Lower Nubia to Meroe. 4th. Later kings of Meroe, some, at least, of whom ruled both Meroe and Napata, though the former seems to have been the favorite capital in the later period (Konigsbuch, pl. 71, 72, 73). The importance of queens is remarkably characteristic of an African people. SEE MEROE.

The spread of Christianity in Ethiopia is a remarkable event in the history of the country, and one in which the truth of "the sure word of prophecy" has been especially evident. In this case, as in others, the Law may have been the predecessor of the Gospel. The pious eunuch, "Ebed-melech the Ethiopian," who befriended Jeremiah (Jer 38:7-13; Jer 39:15-18), may have been one of many converts from paganism, but it is scarcely likely that any of these returned to their native land. The Abyssinian Jews, being probably a colony of those of Arabia, were perhaps of later origin than the time of the introduction of Christianity. But in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch, who had charge of all the treasure of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, and who, on his return from worshipping at Jerusalem, was baptized by Philip the deacon, we see evidence of the spread of the old dispensation in Ethiopia, and of the reception there of the new (Act 8:27-39). In Psa 68:1-35 (31), in Isaiah (Isa 45:14), and probably in Zephaniah (Zep 3:10), the calling of Ethiopia to God’s service is foretold. Whether conversion to the Law or to Christianity, or indeed to both, is in. tended, it is remarkable that, though-long deprived of its actual geographical contact with the Coptic Church. of which it is a branch, by the falling away of Nubia, the Abyssinian Church yet remains, and the empire and the kingdom of Shoa are the only Christian sovereignties in the whole of Africa. SEE ABYSSINIAN CHURCH.

The ancient monuments of Ethiopia may be separated into two great classes, the Egyptian and the Egypto-Ethiopian. In Lower Nubia the Egyptian are almost universal; at Napata we find Egypto-Ethiopian, as well as higher up in the island of Meroe. In the monuments north of Napata, of which the chief lie between the first and second cataracts, we perceive no difference from those of Egypt save in the occurrence of the names of two Ethiopian kings-ARKAMEN, or Ergamenes, and ATSHERAMEN. The remains attest the wealth of the kings of Egypt rather than that of the country in which they are found; their abundance is partly owing to the scanty modern population’s not having required the ancient masonry for building materials. The nearness of the mountains on either side to the river, and the value of the little tracts of alluvial soil, have rendered wholly or partly rock-hewn temples numerous here. Tombs are few and unimportant. Above the second cataract there are some similar remains, until the traveler reaches Jebel Berkel, the sacred mountain beneath which stood Napata, where, besides the remains of temples, he is struck with the sight of many pyramids. Other pyramids are seen in the neighborhood. They are peculiar in construction, the proportion of the height to the base being much greater than in the pyramids of Egypt. The temples are of Egyptian character, and one of them is wholly, and another partly, of the reign of Tirhakah. The pyramids are later, and are thoroughly Ethiopian. Yet higher up the river are the monuments of Meroe and neighboring places. They are pyramids, like those of Napata, and temples, with other buildings, of a more Ethiopian style than the temples of the other capital. The size and importance of these monuments prove that the sovereigns who ruled at Meroe must have been very rich, if not warlike. The farthest vestiges of ancient civilization that have been found are remains of an Egyptian character at Sobah, on the Blue Nile, not far south of the junction of the two rivers.

The name suggests the Biblical Seba, which, as a kingdom, may correspond to that of Meroe; but such resemblances are dangerous. The tendency of Ethiopian art was to imitate the earliest Egyptian forms of building, and even subjects of sculpture. This is plain in the adoption of pyramids. The same feeling is strongly evident in Egypt under the 26th dynasty, when there was a renaissance of the style of the pyramid period, though no pyramids seem to have been built. This renaissance appears to have begun under, or immediately after, the later part of the 25th dynasty, and is seen in the subjects of sculpture and the use of titles. The monuments of Ethiopian princes, at first as good as those of Egypt at the same time, become rapidly inferior, and at last are extremely barbarous, more so than any of Egypt. The use of hieroglyphics continues to the last for royal names, but the language seems, after the earlier period, to have been little understood. An Ethiopian demotic character has been found of the per iod, which succeeded the hieroglyphic for common use, and even for some inscriptions. We do not offer any opinion on the language of this character. The subject requires full investigation. The early Abyssinian remains, as the obelisk at Axum, do not seem to have any connection with those of more northern Ethiopia: they are of later times, and probably are of Arab oririn. Throughout Ethiopia we find no traces of an original art or civilization, all the ancient monuments save those of Abyssinia, which can scarcely be called ancient, showing that the country was thoroughly Egyptianized. Lepsius has published the Ethiopian monuments in his Denkmdler (part 5; pl. 1-75), as well as the inscriptions in Ethiopian demotic (part 6; pl. 1-11; see also 12, 13).

For the Christian history and relations of Ethiopia, see Titelmann, De fide, religione et moribus AEthiopum (Antwerp, 15034); De Goes, id. (Par. 1541, and since); Dresser, De statu eccles. Ethiopicae (Lips. 1584); De Vereta, Historia de Etiopia (Valentia, 1590); Predicadores en la Etopia (ib. 1611); Godiger, De rebus Abassinorum (Lugd. 1615); Machalt, De rebus in AEthiopia (Paris, 1624-6) ; Da Viega, Christ. religio in Ethiopia (Laus. 1628); Dannhauer, Ecclesia Ethiopica (Argent. 1664); Ludolf, Historia Ethiopica (Fr. ad M. 1681; with the supplemental Specimen, Ib. 1687; Commentarius, ib. 1691; and Adpendix, ib. 1693; the original work in English, Lond. 1684; abridged in French, Par. 1684); Cavatus, Descriptio Congo, Matambe et Angola (Bonn, 1687); Geddes, Hist. of Ethiopia (Lond. 1696); Windham, Einleitung in d. ithiop. Theologie (Helmst. 1719); Lobo, Iter hist. in Abyssiniam (publ. only in a transl. Relation historique d’Abyssinie, Par. 1727, Amst. 1728) La Croze, Christianisme dEthiopie (Hague, 1739, in Germ. 1740); Oertel, Theologia AEthiopum (Wittemb. 1746); Kocker, Fasti Habissinorumn (Berne, 1760); Bruce, Travels in Abyssinia (Edinb. 1790). SEE ABYSSINIA.

Ethiopia (ç’thi-ô’pi-ah), burnt-faces. Called Cash by the Hebrews, a country south of Egypt. Eze 29:10. In the Scriptures "Ethiopia" usually refers to the region extending from Egypt southward beyond the junction of the White and Blue Nile. This was Seba, Isa 43:3, and known to the Romans as the kingdom of Meroe. The country is rolling and mountainous, the elevation increasing toward the south, until it reaches a height of about 8000 feet in Abyssinia. Frequent notices of this country and its people are found in the Bible. It was settled by the children of Ham, Gen 10:6, dark-skinned men of stature. Jer 13:23; Isa 45:14. They were selected as members of royal households. Jer 38:7-13. The treasurer of its queen, Candace was baptized by Philip. Act 8:27-38. It is noticed in, connection with Egypt, Isa 20:4; Isa 43:3; Isa 45:14; with Libya (Phut), Jer 46:9: Lydia and Chub (Lub and Lud), Eze 30:5, and the Sukkiim. 2Ch 12:3. Moses married an Ethiopian, Num 12:1; Ethiopians were in Shishak’s army, 2Ch 12:3; Zerah, an Ethiopian king, had an army of a million soldiers, 2Ch 14:9-12: Job mentioned the precious stones of Ethiopia, Job 28:19; the Israelites were familiar with the merchandise of that country, Isa 45:14; and Isaiah foretold the subjugation of Ethiopia by the Assyrians. Isa 20:4; Isa 20:6. Among the Assyrian inscriptions of Assurbanipal, now in the British Museum, George Smith deciphered several which especially illustrate and confirm the fulfillment of this prophecy. Among other prophecies in respect to Ethiopia are Psa 68:31; Psa 87:4; Isa 45:14; Eze 30:4-9; Dan 11:43; Hab 3:7; Zep 2:12; Nah 3:8-10. The Romans in the reign of Augustus Caesar, b.c. 22, defeated Candace, queen of Ethiopia, and made the country tributary to Rome. Candace was an official title of the queens, one of whom is named in Act 8:27.

[Ethio’pia]

This is the Greek and Roman name for CUSH, a kingdom in Africa to the south of Egypt. The boundary between the two kingdoms is not well defined, indeed, it may have varied at different times. The first cataract, 24° N, is generally taken as its northern boundary: its extent southward is altogether unknown. Gen 2:13; Est 1:1; Eze 29:10. At times Ethiopia conquered Egypt: two of the kings mentioned in scripture were Ethiopians. 2Ch 14:9; Isa 37:9. In some of the prophecies they are mentioned as separate kingdoms. Nah 3:9. See EGYPT, LAND OF.

By: Emil G. Hirsch, W. Max Muller

The translation in the Authorized Version, following the ancient versions, of a name covering three different countries and peoples, viz.: (1) Ethiopia proper; (2) parts of northern Arabia; and (3) the regions east of Babylonia. See Cush for this name and the problems involved.

The versions, beginning with the Septuagint, did not know any other country than Kûsh (Egyptian, "Ko[']sh"), that is, Nubia south of Egypt. In the Bible "Cush," the son of Ham and brother of Mizraim (Egypt; Gen. x. 6; I Chron. i. 8), evidently means the ancestor of the Nubians. Originally the Egyptians used the name Ko[']sh only of tribes living south of the second cataract, extending it after 1500 B.C. to the whole valley of the Nile south of Egypt; never, however, to the highlands of Abyssinia, which, by a late literary usurpation, and much to the confusion of modern scholars, acquired the name "Ethiopia."

The Greeks often included under the term "Ethiopians" (dusky-faced ones) all nations of eastern or central Africa, but designated as Ethiopia proper the Nile valley from Syene (compare Ezek. xxix. 10) to the modern Khartum. The inhabitants of this country were more or less pure negroes. Isa. xviii. 2 (R. V.) calls them "tall and smooth"; but it is very doubtful if that obscure description of a land "rustling with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia" (ib. xviii. 1), could mean Nubia.

Those barbarous tribes were at an early period tributary to the Pharaohs who made the northern part of the country a real Egyptian province after 2000 B.C., and the southern half after 1600. The viceroys of this province became independent about 1000 B.C. Napata and Meroe were the capitals. The Ethiopian kings occupied Thebes about 800, and P'ankhy attempted to conquer the whole of Egypt some fifty years later; but actual possession could only be effected by Shabako about 700. After Shabatako, the third Ethiopian Pharaoh, Taharḳô came to the throne (the Tirhaka of II Kings xix. 9 and Isa. xxxvii. 9). His meddling with Syrian affairs caused the Assyrian conquest of Egypt, which country he and his successor, Tanut-amon (Tandamani), were unable to regain permanently (compare Nahum iii.; Isa. xx. 3). Cambyses fulfilled the threat of Ezek. xxx. 4, and made Ethiopia tributary (compare Esth. i. 1, viii. 9; I Esd. iii. 2). About 210 King Ergamenes broke the power of the high priests of Amon, who, by means of their oracles had virtually been rulers until this time.

Under Augustus a violation of the Roman frontier at Syene caused the punitive expedition of Petronius and the destruction of Napata. A few miserable remnants of the kingdom and of ancient Egyptian culture existed in Meroe for a while; the wild tribes of the Nobades and Blemmyans took the place of the Ethiopians, whose language and race are usually assumed to be represented by the modern Nubas.

The Bible, furthermore, mentions Ethiopia as the type of a remote land (Ps. lxviii. 31, lxxxvii. 4; Amos ix. 7; Zeph. ii. 12, iii. 10; Dan. xi. 43). Isa. xliii. 3 seems to imply Ethiopia's wealth, probably in gold, precious stones, etc. (compare Job xxviii. 19, "the topaz of Ethiopia"; Isa. xlv. 14, "the merchandise of Ethiopia"). Ethiopian mercenaries in Egypt are mentioned in Jer. xlvi. 9. See also Cush.

ETHIOPIA is tr. [Note: translate or translation.] of the Heb. Cush, which is derived from Kosh, the Egyp. name of Nubia (beginning at the First Cataract). The cultivable land in this region is very meagre. The scanty and barbarous population of the valley and the deserts on either side was divided in early times among different tribes, which were completely at the mercy of the Egyptians. Individually, however, the Sudanese were sturdy warriors, and were constantly employed by the Pharaohs as mercenary soldiers and police. In the time of the New Kingdom, Cush southward to Napata was a province of Egypt, dotted with Egyptian temples and governed by a viceroy. With the weakening of the Egyptian power Cush grew into a separate kingdom, with Napata as its capital. Its rulers were probably of Egyptian descent; they are represented as being entirely subservient to Ammon, i.e. to his priests, elected by him, acting only upon his oracles, and ready to abdicate or even to commit suicide at his command. We first hear of a king of Ethiopia about b.c. 730, when a certain Pankhi, reigning at Napata and already in possession of the Egyptian Thebaid, added most of Middle Egypt to his dominions and exacted homage from the princes of the Delta. A little later an Ethiopian dynasty (the XXVth) sat on the throne of the Pharaohs for nearly fifty years (b.c. 715–664). The last of these, Tahraku (Tirhakah [wh. see]), intrigued with the kinglets of Syria and Phœnicia against the Assyrians, but only to the ruin of himself and his dynasty. Tahraku and his successor Tandamane were driven into Ethiopia by the Assyrian invasions, and Egypt became independent under the powerful XXVIth Dynasty. For the Persian period it is known that Ethiopia, or part of it, was included in one satrapy with Egypt under Darius. In the 3rd cent. b.c. king Ergamenes freed himself from the power of the priests of Ammon by a great slaughter of them. From about this time forward Meroë, the southern residence, was the capital of Ethiopia. The worship of Ammon, however, as the national god of ‘Negroland,’ as Ethiopia was then called, still continued. In b.c. 24 the Romans invaded Ethiopia in answer to an attack on Egypt by queen Candace, and destroyed Napata, but the kingdom continued to be independent. The Egyptian culture of Ethiopia had by that time fallen into a very barbarous state. Inscriptions exist written in a peculiar character and in the native language, as yet undeciphered; others are in a debased form of Egyptian hieroglyphic.

The name of Cush was familiar to the Hebrews through the part that its kings played in Egypt and Syria from b.c. 730–664, and recently discovered papyri prove that Jews were settled on the Ethiopian border at Syene in the 6th cent. b.c. See also Cush.

F. Ll. Griffith.

(Greek: aitho, burn; ops, face)

In ancient geography a country south of Egypt and closely connected with it; all the land bounded by the upper Nile on the west, and the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf on the east. A eunuch, minister of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia, was converted to Christianity by the deacon Philip (Acts 8).

Archdioceses, past and present, include

• Addis Abeba

Dioceses, past and present, include:

• Adigrat

Other ecclesiastical divisions include:

• Asmara (Vicariate Apostolic)

• Awasa (Vicariate Apostolic)

• Dessié (Prefecture Apostolic)

• Emdeber (Apostolic Exarchate)

• Endeber (Prefecture Apostolic)

• Gambella (Prefecture Apostolic)

• Gondar (Prefecture Apostolic)

• Harar (Vicariate Apostolic)

• Jimma-Bonga (Prefecture Apostolic)

• Meki (Vicariate Apostolic)

• Nekemte (Vicariate Apostolic)

• Soddo-Hosanna (Vicariate Apostolic)

See also:

• World Fact Book
  

• patron saints index: Ethiopia

New Catholic Dictionary

The name of this region has been derived, through the Greek form, aithiopia, from the two words aitho, "I burn", and ops, "face". It would thus mean the coloured man’s land -- the land of the scorched faces. But a different origin is claimed for the name by many modern writers, some of whom say that the Greeks borrowed the word from the Egyptians, and that as early as the Twelfth Dynasty the Egyptians knew the land under the name Ksh, or Kshi. One form of this word, with the aleph prefix, Ekoshi (the Coptic eshoosh, eshôsh, ethosh) would thus be the real root-word. Others maintain that it is derived from the Arabic word atyab, the plural form of tib, which means "spices", "perfumes" (Glaser, "Die Abissinier in Arabien und Afrika", Munich, 1895), or from an Arabo-Sabean word, atyub, which has the same meaning. (Halévy in "Revue Sémitique", IV.)GeographyIt is not easy to determine to what part of the world the name Ethiopia properly applies in the course of history. The territory it covered, and even the use of the word to denote a territory, have varied in ages and at the hands of different writers. In the early pages of the Bible Ethiopia is used to designate the lands inhabited by the sons of Cush, and is therefore applied to all the scattered regions inhabited by that family. Such a use of the word is purely ethnographical. Elsewhere, however, in the Bible it is applied to a definite region of the globe without consideration of race, and is thus used geographically. It is in this sense that we find it mentioned in all Egyptian documents (Brugsch, Geographische Inschriften alt¨gyptischer Denkm¨ler). It denoted the region of Africa south of Egypt, and its boundaries were by no means constant. Generally speaking, it comprised the countries known in our day as Nubia, Kordofan, Senaar, and Northern Abyssinia. It had one unvarying landmark, however; its northern boundary always began at Syene. We know from the writings of Pliny, Strabo, and Pomponious Mela that in the eyes of Greek geographers Ethiopia included not only all the territory south of Syene on the African continent, but embraced all that part of Asia below the same parallel of latitude. Hence it came to pass that there were two regions with but one name: Eastern Ethiopia, including all the races dwelling to the east of the Red Sea as far as India; Western Ethiopia stretching southward from Egypt and westward as far as the southern boundary of Mauritania. Of all the vast tracks of country to which the name Ethiopia was given at one or other period of history, there are two to which the name has more particularly attached itself: the one is modern Nubia and the Egyptian Sudan (the ancient Ethiopia of the Pharaohs); the other modern Abyssinia (the Ethiopia of our own day), the last of all these regions to preserve the ancient name. NUBIAN ETHIOPIAIn Egyptian inscriptions the name Ethiopia is applied to the region of the Upper Nile lying between the First Cataract and the sources of the Atbara and of the Blue Nile. Greek writers often call this region the kingdom of Napata, or of Meroë, after two cities that were successively the centre of its political life during the second period of its history. The name Island of Meroë, sometimes met with, is an allusion to the rivers that enclose it.EthnologyThe races which peopled these regions differed considerably. In the valley of the Syene as far as the junction of the Arbara the population consisted for the most part of husbandmen of Egyptian extraction. In the plains of the Upper Nile, side by side with some negro tribes, were a people allied to the Himyarites, and who had migrated thither from southern Arabia, while others again showed that they owed their origin to the Egyptians and Berbers.HistoryOf the history of this country we know only what has been handed down to us through the documents of Egypt and those erected by the inhabitants of the country itself in the vicinity of the Cataracts. It was the almost unanimous opinion of ancient historians that this was the cradle of the people occupying all the Nile Valley; and in proof thereof they pointed out the evident analogy of manners and religion between the kingdom of Meroë and Egypt proper. But to-day we know without a doubt that the Ethiopia known to the Greeks, far from the cradle of Egyptian civilization, owed to Egypt all the civilization she ever had. The chronological evidence of the monuments makes this quite clear. Whereas the most ancient monuments are to be found along the Delta, those in the neighbourhood of Meroë are comparatively modern. The antiquity attributed to Ethiopian civilization was disproved as soon as the hieroglyphics had been interpreted. What its beginnings were, we do not know.During the first Egyptian dynasties -- i.e. for nearly thirteen centuries -- its history is hidden behind a veil. It is only under the Sixth Dynasty that this country comes within the ken of history. At that time King Meryra, better known as Pepi I, marched as far south as the Second Cataract, but did not establish a permanent foothold. Ethiopia’s real occupation by Egypt did not begin until the Twelfth Dynasty, when the Pharaohs, being once more in peaceful possession of the Nile Valley, began an era of conquest, and the country of the cataracts became their earliest prey. Amenemhat I and his son Usertsen I, having driven out the priests of Amun-Ra who ruled at Thebes, and having exiled them beyond Philæ, continued their march as far as Wadi-Halfa. Their successors, encouraged by these victories, carried on the work of conquest, and Usertsen III pushed as far as the Fourth Cataract and even beyond Napata, as far as the junction of the Atbara. At his death the frontiers of the Egyptian empire extended as far as Semneh, and Ethiopia was a tributary province of Egypt. The darkness which envelopes the Thirteenth Dynasty does not permit of our tracing the results of this conquest,. but it would seem that the victories of the Egyptian monarchs were far from decisive, and that Ethiopia always retained enough liberty to aspire to independence. Up unto the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty this aspiration persisted, if, indeed, the country did not at times enjoy independence.After the advent of the Eighteenth dynasty, and the overthrow of the shepherd kings, Egypt undertook a series of wars against her isolated neighbours. The tribes along the Upper Nile, though harassed by her troops, resisted stubbornly. In spite of the campaigns of Amenhotep I, son of Amosis, who advanced as far a Napata and Senaar -- in spite of the violence of Thotmes I, his successor, who covered the country with devastation and ruin, it was not until the days of Thotmes II that Ethiopia seems to have become resigned to the loss of her liberty. The country was thereupon divided into nomes on the Egyptian system, and was placed under a viceroy whose power extended from the first Cataract to the Mountains of Abyssinia. The office, entrusted at first to high functionaries, soon became one of the most important in the State, and the custom arose at court of nominating to it the heir presumptive to the throne, with the title Prince of Cush. The glorious reigns of Ramses II, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and of Ramses III, of the Twentieth Dynasty, served to consolidate this conquest for a time, but for a time only. Egypt, worn out, was weary of war, and even of victory, and the era of her campaigns ended with the Ramseid dynasty. Ethiopia, always alert to note the doings of her enemies, profited by this respite to recover her strength. She collected her forces, and soon, having won back her independence, an unexpected event left her mistress of her former conqueror.The descendants of the royal priesthood of Amun-Ra, exiled from Thebes to Ethiopia by the Pharaohs of the Twenty-second dynasty, had infused a new life into the land of their exile. They had reorganized its political institutions and centralized them at Napata, which city, in the hands of its new lords, became a sort of Ethiopian Thebes modelled on the Thebes of Egypt. With the co-operation of the native peoples Napata was soon reckoned among the great political powers. While Ethiopia was developing and flourishing, Egypt, so disintegrated as to be a mere collection of feudal states, was being more and more weakened by incessant revolutions. Certain Egyptian princes having at this period appealed to the King of Napata for help, he crossed over into the Thebaid, and established order there; then, to the surprise of those who had appealed to him , he continued his was northward and went as far as Memphis, nor did he halt until he had subjugated the country and proclaimed the suzerainty of Ethiopia over the whole Nile Valley. Piankhy, to whom belongs the honour of this achievement, caused an account of it to be engraved at Jebel-Barkal, near Napata. After his reign, the throne passed to a native family, and during the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Dynasties Ethiopia had the glory of giving birth to the Pharaohs who ruled all the land from Abyssinia to the shores of the Mediterranean.But at the very time when the Ethiopian armies were advancing from the South to subdue the North, the victorious Assyrian armies of the King of Nineveh were already encamped on the borders of Phoenicia. Menaced by Sargon II in the days of Shabaka, Egypt was invaded fro the first time by Sennacherib’s army during the reign of Shabataka. Taharqa, his successor, was defeated by Earsarhaddon, and forced to retreat as far as Napata, pursued by the Ninevite hosts. The victory, however, was dearly bought by the Assyrians, and the Ethiopians, even in retreat, proved so dangerous that the pursuit was abandoned. Taharqa, encouraged by the fear he inspired in his enemies, tried to win back the Nile Valley. He assumed the offensive a few years after this, and soon entered Memphis almost without striking a blow. But the princes of the Delta, of whom Nechao was the most powerful, far from extending him a welcome, joined forces with the King of Ninevah. Asurbanipal, who had now succeeded his father Earsarhaddon, straightway attacked Taharqa, and the King of Ethiopia fell back once more toward the Cataracts. His son-in-law, Tanuat-Amen, once more victorious, went up as far as Memphis, where he defeated the delta princes, allies of the Assyrians, but a fresh expedition under Asurbanipal completely broke his power. Thereafter Tanuat-Amen remained in his Kingdom of Napata; and thus Ethiopian sway over Egypt was brought to a close.Restricted to its natural limits, the Ethiopian kingdom did not cease to be a powerful State. Attacked by Psamettichus I and Psamettichus II, it was able to maintain its independence and break the ties which bound it to the northern kingdom. In the following century, Cambyses, conqueror of Egypt, attracted by the marvelous renown of the countries along the Upper Nile, set on foot an expedition against Ethiopia, but in spite of the numbers and prowess of his troops he was obliged to retreat. When Artaxerxes II, surnamed Ochus, invaded the Delta, Nectanebo II, King of Egypt, could find no safer refuge that Ethiopia, and in the days of the Ptolemies, one of its kings, Arq-Amen (the Ergamenes of Diodorus Siculus), was powerful enough to commemorate his exploits in the decorations of the temple at Philæ. Nevertheless these last rays of glory were to fade quickly. Abandoned to itself, removed from the civilizing influences of the north, the country fell back, step by step, into its primitive barbarism, and defeat is written upon the last page of its history. The last invasion of Ethiopia was by Roman legions; led by Petronious, they advanced as far as Napata, where a queen occupied the throne, and the city was destroyed. After this, darkness falls upon all these countries of the Upper Nile, and ancient Ethiopia disappears -- to appear again transformed by a new civilization which begins with the history of modern Nubia.InstitutionsThe only civilization we know of in Ethiopia is that which was borrowed from Egypt. We find no record of really native institutions on any of the monuments that have come down to us, and the earliest records extant do not take us beyond the founding of the priestly dynasty of Thebes. At Napata Amun-Ra, King of the Gods, ruled supreme with Maut and Khonsu. The temple there was built on the model of the Karnak sanctuaries; the ceremonies performed there were those of the Theban cult. The priest-kings, above all, as formerly in their native land, were the heads of a purely sacerdotal polity. It was only later in history that the monarchy became elective in Ethiopia. The election took place at Napata, in the great temple, under the supervision of the priests of Amun-Ra, and in the presence of a number of special delegates chosen by the magistrates, the literati, the soldiers, and the officers of the palace. The members of the reigning family, "the royal brethren", were brought into the sanctuary and presented one after another to the statue of the god, who indicated his choice by a signal previously agreed upon. The choice of the priests could undertake nothing without the priests’ consent, and was subject to them for life. Arq-Amen seems to have broken through this tutelage and secured complete independence for the throne.LanguageThe tongues in the land of Kush were as varied as the people who dwelt there, but Egyptian is the language of the Ethiopian inscriptions. On a few monuments dating from the last epoch of Ethiopian history we find a special idiom. It is written by means of hieroglyphics, of which the alphabetical values, however, have been modified. Hitherto undecipherable, this language has recently been held to be related to Egyptian, with a large admixture of foreign (doubtless Nubian) words. The development of the study of demotic, as well as more intimate knowledge of the speech of later times, will, perhaps, eventually bring a fuller knowledge of this idiom. ABYSSINIAN ETHIOPIAGeographyThis region corresponds to a group of territories nowadays known as Abyssinia, extending from the Italian colony of Eritrea to the shores of the Greta Lakes. Yet the ancient empire of this name did not by any means occupy the whole of this area, the boundaries of which rather indicate its greatest extent at any period of its history. Among the countries that have been known under the name Ethiopia, this alone took the name for itself, and calls itself by that name to this day. It rejects the name Abyssinia which is constantly given it by Arab writers. Western writers have often employed both terms, Abyssinia and Ethiopia, indifferently, but in our own day a distinction seems to be growing up in their use. Its seems that with the name of Ethiopia we should connect that portion of the country’s history the documents of which are supplied by the Gheez literature alone; with that of Abyssinia, what belongs to the modern period since the definitive appearance of Amharic among the written languages.EthnologyThe modern Tigré. formerly the kingdom of Axum, would seem to have been the kernel of this State. It was founded by refugees who came to the African continent when the Arsacidæ were extending their sway in the Arabian peninsula, and the power of the Ptolemies was declining in Egypt. These refugees belonged to the Sabean tribes engaged in the gold and spice trade between Arabia and the Roman Empire; their dealings with civilized races had developed them, and, thanks to their more advanced stage of mental culture, they acquired a preponderating influence over the people among whom they had come to dwell. Still, the descendants of these immigrants form a minority of the Ethiopian people, which mainly composed of Cushite tribes, together with an aboriginal race called by the Ethiopians themselves Shangala.HistoryFrom native sources we know nothing accurately of the political beginnings of the State. Its annals open with the rule of monsters in that land, and for many centuries Aruë, the serpent, is the only ruler mentioned. Many writers see in this but a personification of idolatry or barbarism, and the explanation seems probable. According to certain tales written in Gheez, the Ethiopians embraced the Jewish religion at the time of Solomon, and received a prince of that monarch’s family to rule over it. The Queen of Shaba (Sheba), spoken of in the First Book of Kings, was an Ethiopian queen, according to the legend of Kebranagasht (the glory of the kings) and it was through her that Ethiopia received this double honour. But this tradition is of comparatively recent origin, and finds no confirmation in the most ancient native documents, nor in any foreign writings. History still waits for some foundation on which to base this appropriation of the scared text, as well as for proof to justify the variants with which Ethiopian chroniclers have embellished it.The first thing we know with certainty of the history of Ethiopia is its conversion to Christianity. This work was accomplished in the early half of the fourth century by St. Frumentius, known in that country as Abba Salama. Rufinus of Aquileia has preserved the story for us in his history. According to him, a Christian of Tyre, named Merope, had gone on a journey to India with two children, Edesius and Frumentius, his nephews. On their return journey the ship that carried them was captured by pirates off the Ethiopian coast, and everyone on board was put to death except the two children. They were sent as captives to the king and were afterwards appointed tutors to his son, whom they converted to Christianity. Later they returned to their own country. But Frumentius had but one ambition: to be consecrated bishop by the Patriarch of Alexandria. This wish having been fulfilled, he returned to Axum, organized Christian worship, and, under the title of Abba Salama, became the first metropolitan of the Ethiopian church. Missionary monks coming later from neighbouring countries (in the sixth century) completed the work of his apostolate by establishing the monastic life. National traditions speak of these missionaries as the nine saints; they are the abbas Alé, Shema, Aragawi, Garima, Pantalewon, Liqanos, Afsi, Gougo, and Yemata. Henceforth Ethiopia takes its place among the Christian States of the East. One of its kings, Caleb, contemporary with the nine saints, and canonized as St. Elesban, is famous in oriental literature for an expedition he led against the Jewish kingdom of Yemen. The authority of the Ethiopian kings then extended over Tigré, Shoa, and Amhara, and the seat of government was the Kingdom of Axum.But from this time forward the history of this country is enveloped in darkness, and remains almost unknown to us until the thirteenth century. We have nothing to guide us but long, and for the most part, mutually conflicting lists of kings with the indication of a dynastic revolution, which perhaps explains the brevity of the chronicles. Perhaps, in the midst of these troubles, the historical documents of preceding ages were purposely destroyed; and this seems likely since the dynasty of the Zagues, which at that time usurped the throne of the pretended descendants of the son of Solomon, would feel constrained to destroy the prestige of the supplanted dynasty in order to establish itself. According to the abridged chronicle published by Bruce, the Falashas, a tribe professing Judaism, were the cause of this insurrection; but we have no other evidence in support of this assertion. The chronicles we have are silent about the matter; they merely tell us that at the close of the thirteenth century, in the reign of Yekuno Amlak, after a period of exile, the length of which we do not know, the Solomonian dynasty regained power through the aid of the monk Takla Hâymânot. After the restoration of the ancient national dynasty, the country, once more at peace within itself, had to concentrate its whole energy upon resisting the southward progress of Mohammedan conquest. For nearly three centuries Ethiopia had to wage wars without respite for liberty and faith, and it alone, of all the African kingdoms, was able to maintain both. The most famous of these wars was against the Emit of Harar, Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim, surnamed the Left-handed. It took place during the reigns of Kings Lebna Dengel (1508-40) and Galawdéwos (1540-59), and the exhausted country was only saved by the timely help of Portuguese armies. Delivered from its foes, it might have become a great power in the East, but it lacked a capable leader, and its people, deriving but little moral support from a corrupt religion, fell rapidly away until, after a long series of civil wars, Ethiopia became a land of anarchy.Under Minas (1159-63), Sarsa Dengel (1563-97), and Ya’eqob Za Dengel (1597-1607), civil war was incessant. There was a brief respite under Susneos (1607-32), but war broke out afresh under Fasiladas (1632-67), and the clergy, moreover, increased the trouble by their theological disputes as to the two natures of Christ. These disputes, often, indeed, but a cloak for ambitious intrigues, were always occasions of revolution. Under the successors of Fasiladas the general disorder passed beyond all bounds. Of the seven kings that followed him but two died a natural death. There was a short period of peace under Bakafa (1721-30), and Yasu II (1730-55), Yoas (1755) and Yohannes were again victims of an ever-spreading revolution. The end of the eighteenth century left Ethiopia a feudal kingdom. The land and its government belonged to its Ras, or feudal chieftains. The unity of the nation had disappeared, and its kings reigned, but did not govern. The Ras became veritable Mayors of the Palace, and the monarchs were content to be rois fainéants. Side by side with these kings who have left in history only their names, the real masters of events, as the popular whim happened to favour them, were Ras Mikael, Ras Abeto of the Godjam, Ras Gabriel of the Samen, Ras Ali of Begameder, Ras Gabra of Masqal of Tigré, Ras Walda-Sellase of the Shoa, Ras Ali of Amhara, Ras Oubié of Tigré, and the like. But war among these chiefs was incessant; ever dissatisfied, jealous of each other’s power, each one sought to be supreme, and it was only after a century of strife that peace was at length established. A son of the governor of Kowara, named Kasa, succeeded in bringing it about, to his own profit; and he made it permanent by causing himself to be named king under the name of Theodore (1855). With him the ancient Ethiopia took its place as one of the nations to be reckoned with in the international affairs of the West, and Abyssinia may be said to date its origin from his reign.ReligionPrevious to the conversion of the country to Christianity, the worship of the serpent was perhaps the religion of a portion of Ethiopia, i. e., of the aboriginal Cushite tribes. From inscriptions at Axum and Adulis it would seem that the Semites, on the other hand, had a religion similar to that of Chaldea and Syria. Among the gods mentioned we find Astar, Beher, and Medr -- perhaps representing the triad of sky, sea, and land. As to the Jewish religion, and its introduction in the time of Solomon, we have only the assertion found in some recent documents, which, as we have already said, cannot be received as history. The origin of the Judaistic tribe called the Falashas, who nowadays occupy the country, is quite hidden from us, and there is no reason to regard them as representatives of a national religion which has disappeared. After the evangelization by St. Frumentius, and in spite of the resulting general conversion of the people, Paganism always retained some adherents in Ethiopia, and has its representatives there even to this day. Moreover at the time of the Mussulman wars Islam succeeded in securing a foothold here and there. Nevertheless Christianity has always been the really national religion, always practiced and defended by the rulers of the nation.Although converted to Christianity by missionaries of the Catholic Church, Ethiopia today professes Monophysitism. But subject to the influence of Egypt, it has adopted in the course of time the theory of the Egyptian Church regarding the human nature of Christ. Our lack of information about the country prior to the thirteenth century hinders us from following the history of its separation from Rome, or even fixing the date of that event. Like the Egyptians, the Ethiopian Church anathematizes Eutyches as a heretic, yet remains monophysite, and rejects the Catholic teaching as to the two natures. United in their statement of belief, the Ethiopian theologians have divided into two great schools in its explanation. On the one hand, the Walda-Qeb ("Sons of Unction", as they are nowadays called), hold that the most radical unification (tawahedo) exists between the two natures, such being the absorption of the human by the Divine nature that the former may be said to be merely a fantasm. The unification is the work of the Unction of the Son Himself according to the general teaching of Walda-Qeb. Some among them, however, known as the Qeb’at (Unction), teach that it is the work of the Father. Others again, the Sega-ledj or Walda-sega (Sons of Grace), hold that the unification takes place in such a way that the nature of Christ becomes a special nature (bahrey), and this is attributed to the Father, as in the teachings of the Qe’bat. But, as the mere fact of the unction does not effect a radical unification (for this schools rejects absorption), the unification is made perfect, according to them, by what they call the adoptive birth of Christ -- the ultimate result of the unction of the Father. In effect, they recognize in the incarnation three kinds of birth: the first, the Word begotten of the Father; the second, Christ, begotten of Mary; the third, the Son of Mary, begotten the Son of God the Father by adoption, or by his elevation to the Divine dignity -- the work of the Father anointing his Son with the Holy Spirit, whence the name Sons of Grace. However, while rejecting absorption, this latter school refuses to admit the distinction of the two natures. Both schools, moreover, assert that the unification takes place without any blending, with change, without confusion. It is contradiction itself set up as a dogma.The difficulties following from this teaching in regard to the reality of the Redemption, the Monophysite Church calls mysteries; her theologians confess themselves unable to explain them, and simply dismiss them with the word Ba faqadu; it is so, they say, "by the will of God". In sympathy with the Church of Constantinople, as soon as it was separated from Rome, the Ethiopian Church in the course of time adopted the Byzantine teaching as to the procession of the Holy Ghost; but this question never was as popular as the Incarnation, and in reference to it the contradictions to be found in the texts of native theologians are even more numerous than those touching on the question of the two natures. Adrift from the Catholic Church on the dogma of the humanity of Christ and the procession of the Holy Spirit, the Ethiopian Church professes all the other articles of faith professed by the Roman Church. We find there seven sacraments, the cultus of the Blessed Virgin and of the saints; prayers for the dead are held in high honour and fasts without number occur during the liturgical year.The Bible, translated into Gheez, with a collection of decisions of the Councils, called the Synodos, make up the ground-work of all moral and dogmatic teaching. The work of translating the Bible began in Ethiopia about the end of the fifth century, according to some authorities (Guidi, G. Rossini), or, in the opinion of others, (Méchineau), in the fourth century at the very beginning of the evangelization. Notwithstanding the native claims, their Old Testament is not a translation from the Hebrew, neither is its Arabic origin any more capable of demonstration; Old and New Testaments alike are derived from the Greek. The work was done by many translators, no doubt, and the unity of the version seems to have been brought about only by deliberate effort. At the same time as the Solomonian restoration in the thirteenth century, the whole Bible was revised under the care of the Metropolitan Abba Salama (who is often confounded with St. Frumentius), and the text followed for the Old Testament was the Arabic of Rabbi Saadias Gaon of Fayûm. There was perhaps a second revision in the seventeenth century at the time of the Portuguese missions to the country; it has recently been noticed (Littman, Geschicte der ¨thiopischen Literatur). But, just as the great number of translators employed caused the Bible text to be unusual, so also the revision of it was not uniform and official, and consequently the number of variant readings became multiplied. Its canon, too, is practically unsettled and fluctuating. A host of apocryphal or falsely ascribed writings are placed on the same level as the inspired books, among the most esteemed of which we may mention the Book of Henoch, the Kufale, or Little Genesis, the Book of the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth, the Combat of Adam and Eve, the Ascension of Isaias. The Hâymanotâ Abaw (Faith of the Fathers), the "Mashafa Mestir" (Book of the Mystery), the "Mashafa Hawi" (Book of the Compilations), "Qérlos" (Cyrillius), "Zênâ hâymânot" (Tradition of the Faith) are among the principal works dealing with matters moral and dogmatic. But, besides the fact that many of the quotations from the Fathers in these works have been modified, many of the canons of the "Synodos" are, to say the least, not historical.LiturgyIn the general effect of its liturgical rules the Ethiopian Church is allied to the Coptic Rite. Numerous modifications, and especially additions, have, in the course of time, been introduced into its ritual; but the basic text remains that of Egypt, from which, in many places, it differs only in the language. Its calendar and the distribution of festivals are regulated as in the Coptic Church, though the Ethiopians do not follow the era of the martyrs. The year has 365 days, with a leap year every four years, as in the Julian calendar. Its ordinary year begins on 29 August of the Julian calendar, which corresponds to 11 September of the Gregorian calendar. After a leap year the new year begins on the 30th of August (or 12 September). The year has twelve months of thirty days each, and an added month of six days or of five days -- according as the year is a leap year or not. The era followed is seven years behind ours, during the last four months of our year, and eight years during the remaining months. The calendar for each year is arranged in an ecclesiastical synod held in the springtime. It is at this gathering that the dates of the principal movable feasts are settled, as well as the period for the fasts to be observed during the course of the year. The greater feasts of the Ethiopian church are Christmas, the Baptism of Christ, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Ascension Day, Pentecost, the Transfiguration. A great number of feasts are scattered throughout the year, either on fixed or movable dates, and their number together with the two days every week (Saturday and Sunday) on which work is forbidden reduces by almost one-third the working days of the year. Fasts are observed every Wednesday and Friday, and five times annually during certain periods preceding the great festivals; the fast of Advent, is kept during forty days; of Ninevah, three days; of Lent, fifty-five days; of the Apostles, fifteen days; the fast of the Assumption, fifteen days. Most of the saints honoured in Ethiopia are to be found in the Roman Martyrology. Among the native saints (about forty in all) only a few are recognized by the Catholic Church -- St. Frumentius, St. Elesban, the Nine Saints, and St. Taklu Hâymânot. But, deprived of religious instruction, the Ethiopian people mingle with their Christianity many practices which are often opposed to the teaching of the Gospel; some of these seem to have a Jewish origin, such, for instance, as the keeping of the Sabbath, the distinction of animals as clean and unclean, and the custom of marrying a widow to the nearest relative of her deceased husband.Ecclesiastical HierarchyThe Ethiopian Hierarchy is subject to the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria. This dependence on the Coptic Church is regulated by one of the Arabic canons found in the Coptic edition of the Council of Nicea. A delegate from this patriarch, chosen from among the Egyptian bishops, and called the Abouna, governs the Church. All-powerful in matters spiritual, his influence is nevertheless very limited in other directions, owing to the fact that he is a stranger. The administrative authority is vested in the Etchagué, who also has jurisdiction over the regular clergy. This functionary is always chosen from among the monks and is a native. Legislation concerning the clergy is always regulated by a special code, of which the fundamental principles are contained in the Fetha nagasht. Only the regular clergy observe celibacy, and the facility with which orders are conferred makes the number of priests very large.Language and LiteratureAlthough the races inhabiting Ethiopia have very different origins, only the Semitic family of tongues is represented among them. This is one of the results of the conquest made in olden days by immigrants from the African Continent. Two dialects were spoken by these tribes, the Gheez, which is akin to Sabean, and a speech which is more akin to Mineran, the tongue which later developed into Amharic. In the course of time, Gheez ceased to be a spoken language, but it gave rise to two vernacular dialects, Tigré and Tigraï, which have supplanted it. No longer in popular use, Gheez has always remained the language of the Church and of literature. Amharic did not become a literary language till much later. As for the other two, even in our own day they have hardly begun to be written. The beginnings of Gheez literature are connected with the evangelization of the country. The earliest document we possess is the translation of the Bible, which dates from the fifth, or perhaps the fourth century. Christian in its origins, Gheez literature has remained so in its productions, most of which are apocryphal, hagiographical compositions, or theological works. History and poetry have only a secondary place in it, and these are the only subjects in which we find any original effort; almost everything else is translation from the Greek, Coptic, or Arabic. Most of its manuscripts have come down to us without date or author’s name, and it is no easy task to follow the history of letters in this country. As far as we know at present, the fifteenth seems to have been the great literary century of Ethiopia. To the reign of Zar’a Ya’qob (1434-68) belong the principle compositions of which the history is known. The wars against Adal and against Ahmed Ibn Ibraham, in the sixteenth century, arrested this literary movement. The decline began after the civil wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and the coming of Amharic as a literary language completed it. The earliest writings in Amharic date from the fourteenth century, and about the time of the Portuguese mission it was beginning to supplant Gheez. The Jesuits made use of it to reach the people more surely, and henceforward Gheez tends to become almost exclusively a liturgical language. At the present day it is nothing else, Amharic having altogether taken its place in other departments, and it may be that at no distant date Amharic may supplant Gheez even as the language of the Church.Job Ludolf, a German, in the seventeenth century, was the first to organize the study of Ethiopian subjects. To him we owe the first grammar and the first dictionary of the Gheez language. After a period of neglect these studies were taken up once more in the second half of the nineteenth century by Professor Dillman, of Berlin, and besides incomparable works on the grammar and lexicography, we are indebted to him for the publication of many texts. Thanks to the extension of philological, historical, and patristic studies, the study of this language has spread in our own times to a greater and greater degree. Works of the first importance have been published on the literature by Professors Basset, Bezold, Guidi, Littman, and Prætorius, as also by Charles, Esteves-Pereira, Perruchon, and Touraiso. The Amharic, too, has inspired a number of studies, whether of its grammar, of its lexicography, or of its texts; the works of Massaja, Isenberg, d’Abbadic, Prætorius, Guidi, Mondon-Kidailhet, and Afework have served to definitively place it within the domain of Oriental studies.-----------------------------------MASPâRO, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient classique (Paris, 1895-99); BUDGE, A History of Egypt (London, 1902); AMHERST OF HACKNEY, A Sketch of Egyptian History (London, 1906); BASSET, Etudes sur l’histoire d’Ethiope (Paris, 1882); ROSSINI, Note per la storia litteria abissina in Rend. della R. A. dei Lincei (Rome, 1899), VIII; LITTMAN, Geschichte der ¨thiopischen Litteratur in Geschichte der christlichen Litteraturen des Orients (Leipzig, 1907); BECCARI, Notizia e saggi di opere inediti riguardanti la storia di Ethiopia (Rome, 1903--); BRUCE, A Journey to the Sources of the Nile (London, 1790); GLASER, Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika (Munich, 1895); MASSAIA, I miei trenta cinque anni nell’ alta Etiopia (Rome 1895); LUDOLF, Historia Æthiopica (Frankfort, 1681); Id., Ad historiam æthiopicam commentarius (Frankfort, 1691).M. CHAINE Transcribed by M. Donahue The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

ē-thi-ō´pi-a (כּוּשׁ, kūsh; Αἰθιοπία, Aithiopı́a):

1. Location, Extent and Population

Critically speaking Ethiopia may refer only to the Nile valley above the First Cataract, but in ancient as in modern times the term was often used not only to include what is now known as Nubia and the Sūdān (Soudan), but all the unknown country farther West and South, and also at times Northern, if not Southern, Abyssinia. While Ethiopia was so indefinitely large, yet the narrow river valley, which from the First to the Fifth Cataract represented the main agricultural resources of the country, was actually a territory smaller than Egypt and, excluding deserts, smaller than Belgium (W. Max Müller). The settled population was also small, since in ancient as in modern times Egypt naturally drew away most of the able-bodied and energetic youth as servants, police and soldiers. The prehistoric population of Northern Nubia was probably Egyptian but this was displaced in early historic time by a black race, and the thick lips and woolly hair of the typical African are as well marked in the oldest Egyptian paintings as in the latest. But by the side of these natives of K’sh, the artist also represents various reddish-brown varieties; for from the beginning of historic time the pure Negro stock has been mixed with the fellaheen of Egypt and with the Sere population of the Arabian coast. The rulers of Ethiopia were generally of foreign blood. The Negroes, though brave and frugal, were slow in thought, and although controlled for centuries by cultivated neighbors, under whom they attained at times high official prominence, yet the body of the people remained uninfluenced by this civilization. The country which we now know as Abyssinia was largely controlled, from the earliest known date, by a Caucasian people who had crossed the Red Sea from Arabia. The true Abyssinians, as Professor Littmann shows, contain no Negro blood and no Negro qualities. In general they are “well formed and handsome, with straight and regular features, lively eyes, hair long and straight or somewhat curled and in color dark olive approaching brown.” Modern discoveries prove their close racial and linguistic connection with Southern Arabia and particularly with the kingdom of Sheba (the Sabeans), that most powerful people whose extensive architectural and literary remains have recently come to light. The Sabean inscriptions found in Abyssinia go back some 2,600 years and give a new value to the Bible references as well as to the constant claim of Josephus that the queen of Sheba was a “queen of Ethiopia.” The Falashas are a Jewish community living near Lake Tsana, of the same physical type and probably of the same race as other Abyssinians. Their religion is a “pure Mosaism” based upon the Ethiopic version of the Pentateuch, but modified by the fact that they are ignorant of the Hebrew language (Jewish Encyclopedia). It is uncertain when they became Jews. The older scholars thought of them as dating back to the Solomonic era, or at least to the Babylonian captivity. Since the researches of Joseph Halévy (1868), some date within the Christian era has seemed preferable, notwithstanding their ignorance of Talmudic rules. However, the newly discovered fact that a strong Jewish community was flourishing at Syene in the 6th century bc makes it clear that Jewish influence may have been felt in Ethiopia at least that early. Although Abyssinians are noted for their strict adherence to ancient custom, Jewish characteristics are prominent all over the entire country. The opening formula of the king in every official letter - “The Lion of the Tribe of Judah has Conquered!” - is no more Jewish than scores of ordinary phrases and customs. Although it is barely possible that some rites, like circumcision and observance of the Sabbath, may have been received from the ancient Egyptians or Christian Coptics (The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge) yet a strong Hebrew influence cannot be denied. All travelers speak of the “industry” of the Falashas and of the “kindliness and grave courtesy” of the Abyssinians. Besides those named above there are many communities of mixed races in Ethiopia, but the ancient basis is invariably Negro, Semitic or Egyptian

2. History

The ancient Greek writers are full of fantastic and fabulous stories about Ethiopia. Sometimes they become so puzzled in their geography as to speak of Ethiopia as extending as far as India; their notes concerning the miraculous fauna and flora are equally Munchausian. Homer praises the Ethiopians as the “blameless race,” and other writers rank them first among all men for their religious knowledge. This latter notion may have had its origin from a priestly desire to consider the Ethiopian reverence for the priesthood - which had the power of life and death over the kings - as the Divinely ordained primitive custom, or it may have sprung from the fact that the Egyptian “Land of the Gods” was partly situated in Southern Abyssinia. It is suggestive that the Hebrew prophets never fell into these common errors but invariably “gave a very good idea of geographical and political conditions” (W. Max Müller). The oldest important historic document referring to Ethiopia is from the 4th Dynasty of Egypt. when Sneferu laid waste the land, capturing 7,000 slaves and 100,000 cattle.

In the VIth Dynasty the Egyptians reached as far South as the Second Cataract and brought back some dwarfs, but did not establish any permanent control. In the 12th Dynasty Egypt’s real occupation of Ethiopia began. Usertesen III records his contempt by saying: “The Negro obeys as soon as the lips are opened. They are not valiant, they are miserable, both tails and bodies!” Notwithstanding this satiric reference, these naked Ethiopians clad in skins and tails of wild animals, compelled the Pharaoh to make several campaigns before he could establish a frontier at the Second Cataract beyond which no Negro could come without a permit. That the natives were not cowardly may be seen from the songs of triumph over their subjection and from the fact that every later Pharaoh encouraged them to enlist in his army, until finally the very hieroglyphic for archer became a Nubian. The 18th Dynasty pushed the frontier beyond the Third Cataract into the splendid Dongola district and often boasts of the rich tribute from Ethiopia., in one case 2,667 “manloads” of ivory, ebony, perfumes, gold and ostrich feathers besides cattle, wild beasts and slaves. The chairs of ivory and the jewelry sometimes shown seem barbaric in style but excellent in workmanship. Copper and bronze factories and great iron foundries date also to a very early time in Ethiopia (PSBA, XXXIII, 96). The Ethiopian gold mines where hundreds of criminals toiled, with ears and noses mutilated, made gold in Egypt in the 15th century bc as “common as dust.” The choicest son of the Pharaoh, next to him in power, was proud to be called “Prince of Kush.” Amenhotep IV (1370 bc), the religious reformer, built his second greatest temple (the only one of his works now existent) in Nubia. The 19th Dynasty sought to colonize Ethiopia., and some of the most magnificent temples ever built by man can be seen as far South as the Fourth Cataract. For over five centuries Egyptian rule was maintained, until about 1000 bc a war for independence began which was so successful that the victorious Ethiopian kings finally carried their armies against Thebes and Memphis and for a century (763-663) ruled all Egypt from Napata - which in religious architecture became the Southern Thebes - and for another century (and even at times during the Ptolemaic era) controlled upper Egypt. While the leaders of this revolution were doubtless descendants of exiled priests from Thebes, yet the mixture of Ethiopian blood is plainly discernible and is perhaps also shown in their “Puritan morals” (Petrie, III, 276) and spirit of clemency, so different from the legitimate Pharaohs. Shabaka = So (715-707) and Taharka = Tirhaḳah (693-667), both mentioned in the Bible, were the last great kings of Ethiopia. When Tanutamen, son of Shabaka and nephew of Taharka (667-664), was forced by Ashurbanipal to give up his claim to Egypt and retire to the South, the influence of Ethiopia ceased. Cambyses (525-521) made Ethiopia tributary clear to the Third Cataract (compare Eze 30:4), while King Ergamenes, near the close of the 3rd century bc, broke forever the power of the Egyptian priesthood. Though the Romans held a nominal protectorate over Ethiopia, it was of so little importance as to be scarcely ever mentioned. After being expelled from Egypt the Ethiopians still continued to honor the gods of Thebes, but, as foreign influence ceased, the representations of this worship became more and more African and barbaric. Even after Christianity had triumphed everywhere else, the Nubians, as late as the 5th century ad, were still coming to Philae to give honor to the statue of Isis (Erman). In the 6th century ad a native king, Silko, established a Christian kingdom in the Northern Sūdān with Dongola as its capital. This raised somewhat the culture of the land. In the next century the Arabs made Nubia tributary, though it took an immense army to do it. For six centuries thereafter Islam demanded a tribute of 360 slaves annually, and other treasure, though innumerable campaigns were necessary to collect it. The Nubian kings refused all overtures to become Moslems, and Christian churches multiplied along the banks of the Nile. In the 8th century Egypt was invaded by 100,000 Nubians to repay an insult given to the Coptic patriarch and to the sacred pictures in the Egyptian Christian churches. In the 13th century, David, king of Nubia, not only withheld tribute but invaded Egypt. He was terribly punished, however, by the Arabs, who sacked churches and tortured Christians clear to the Fourth Cataract. This was the beginning of the end. By the close of the 15th century almost every Christian altar was desolate and every church destroyed.

3. Bible References

Winckler long ago proved that the Assyrians designated a district in Northern Arabia by the same name which they ordinarily applied to Ethiopia. Skinner (Genesis, 1910, 208) thinks the Hebrews also made this distinction and were therefore entirely right when they spoke of Nimrod as “son of Gush,” since the earliest Babylonian dynasty had as a matter of fact a Semitic origin. There may be other references to an Arabian district, but undoubtedly the African Kush must be the one generally designated. This is referred to once in the New Testament and over 40 times in the Old Testament. Many secular monuments speak of the high honor paid to women in Ethiopia., and Candace (Act 8:27) seems certainly to have been an official or dynastic name for a number of Ethiopian queens. One of the pyramids of Meröe was Candace’s - her picture can still be seen at Kaga - and to her belonged the wonderful treasure of jewelry found in 1834 by Ferlini and now in the Berlin museum. Petronius (24 bc) raided Ethiopia for Rome and stormed the capital, but Candace sent ambassadors to Rome and obtained peace. The “eunuch” who may have been the treasurer of this very queen was probably “no black proselyte but a Jew who had placed the business ability of his race at the service of the Nubian woman” (W. Max Müller). In the Old Testament Ethiopia is spoken of with great respect, and several Bible characters are named Cushi (2Sa 18:21 the King James Version; Jer 36:14; Zep 1:1); even Moses married an Ethiopian wife (Num 12:1), and Ebed-melek the Ethiopian is helper to Jeremiah (Jer 38:7). It is a great land situated beyond the frontiers of the civilized world (Eze 29:10), yet with Jews in its farthest district (Zep 3:10). It is very rich (Job 28:19; Isa 43:3); is engaged in trade with Arabia (Isa 45:14), and its citizens are proud of their nationality (Psa 87:4). Again and again the relation of Cush with Sheba is mentioned (Gen 10:7, Gen 10:28; Isa 43:3, etc.), which latter statement is strangely corroborated by the recently discovered Sabean inscriptions throughout Abyssinia. Its typical inhabitants have a color as unchangeable as the leopard’s spots (Jer 13:23), are careless (Eze 30:9), but very warlike (Eze 38:5; Jer 46:9), giving “infinite” strength to Nineveh (Nah 3:9), but who can be resisted by Israel because of Yahweh’s favor (2Ch 16:8; Isa 20:5; Isa 36:6). Yahweh is interested in the history of Ethiopia as well as Egypt (Isa 20:3), loves the children of Ethiopia as the children of Israel (Amo 9:7), and the time is coming when Ethiopia shall yet stretch out her hands to Yahweh (Psa 68:31). Cush and Mizraim are correctly mentioned as political unit (Isa 20:4 f) , and several kings of Ethiopia are mentioned by name - Zerah (2Ch 14:9), So (2Ki 17:4) and Tirhaqah (2Ki 19:9; Isa 37:9). The statements concerning these kings have been pronounced incorrect because it seemed that Zerah could not possibly be an equivalent for Usarkon or So for Shabaka - the known kings of Egypt at those periods - and also because the reigns of Shabaka and Tirhaḳah did not begin until after the dates at which in the Hebrew records they were called “kings of Ethiopia.”

Recent, information, however, makes it clear that both Shabaka and Tirhaḳah exercised royal authority in the Delta before they were given it farther south, and that the Hebrew transcription of names was very easy and natural. (See W. M. Flinders Petrie, Hist of Egypt, III, 280-309; Egypt and Israel (1911), 76-78.)

4. The Church in Abyssinia

Sem influence entered Abyssinia at least as early as the 7th or 8th century bc (see above), and the kings of Axum claimed descent from Menelek, Son of Solomon, but the first certain information concerning the kingdom of Axum comes from the middle of the 1st century ad, at which time Axum was a rich capital, and its ancient sacredness was so great that from that period clear down to the 19th century the kings of Abyssinia would travel there to be crowned. There is no reason to doubt that Frumentius (circa 330 ad) was the first to introduce Christianity. Merope of Tyre, according to the often-told story, when returning from India with his two nephews, was captured and killed off the Ethiopian coast, but the two boys were carried to the Abyssinian king; and although one perished the other, Frumentius, succeeded in converting the king and his people to Christianity, and later was himself consecrated by Athanasius of Alexandria as the first Metropolitan of Ethiopia, taking as his title Abu Salama (“Father of Peace”). From that time until now, with but one single interruption, the Abuna (“Father”) has always been appointed by the Patriarch of Alexandria and, since the 13th century, has been by legal necessity not a native Abyssinian, but a Copt.

After the Council of Chalcedon (450 ad) condemned all as heretics who did not accept the “double nature” of Christ, both the Egyptian and Abyssinian churches separated themselves from Rome, believing so thoroughly in the Deity of Christ as to refuse to accept His humanity as essential “nature.” In the 5th century a great company of monks entered Abyssinia, since which time the monastic tendency has been strongly marked. About 525, Caleb, king of Axum, attacked the Homeritae across the Red Sea - either for their persecution of Christians or their interference with his trade - and for some half a century controlled a large district of Arabia. At this time Abyssinian trade was extensive. Greek influence was also felt, and the Christian cathedral at Axum was a magnificent work of architectural article The early churches were protected by heavy surrounding walls and strong towers. The invasion of Africa by Islam in the 7th century required 300 years of battle for the preservation of Abyssinian liberty and Christian faith. It alone of all the African states succeeded in preserving both - but its civilization was destroyed, and for 1,000 years it was completely hidden from the eyes of its fellow- Christians in Europe. Occasionally during those centuries a rumor would reach Europe of a “Prester John” somewhere in the Far East who was king of a Christian people, yet it was a thrilling surprise to Christendom when Pedro de Cavilham in the 15th century discovered this lost Christian kingdom of Abyssinia completely surrounded by infidel pagans and bigoted Mohammedans. When, early in the 16th century, the Negus of Abyssinia sent an envoy to the king of Portugal asking his help against the Moslems, the appeal was met with favor. In 1520 the Portuguese fleet arrived in the Red Sea and its chaplain, Father Francisco Alvarez, 20 years later stirred the Christian world by his curious narratives. Not long afterward, when the Arabs actually invaded the country, another Portuguese fleet was sent with a body of military, commanded by Christopher de Gama. These 450 musketeers and the six little pieces of artillery gave substantial aid to the endangered state. Father Lobe tells the story. The Abyssinian king must have been grateful for such help, yet presently the strenuous efforts of the Portuguese clergy to convert him and his people to the Roman Catholic faith became so offensive that Bermudez, the most zealous missionary, was compelled to leave the country and the Jesuits who remained were mistreated. Other efforts to win the Abyssinian Christians to renounce the Monophysitic heresy and accept the doctrine and control of Rome were somewhat more successful. Early in the 17th century Father Pedro Paez, an ecclesiastic of much tact, won the king fully to his faith, and under his direction many churches were erected and advantageous government works carried on. However, his successor Mendez lacked his conciliatory ability and, although a punishment of seven years’ chastisement was proclaimed against recalcitrants, the opposition became so violent and universal that the Negus Sysenius finally abdicated in favor of his son Fasilidas, who in 1633 sent all Jesuits out of the country and resumed official relations with the Egyptian church. Since then, although many efforts have been made, no controlling influence has ever been obtained by Rome. Once more, for over a century, Abyssinia became completely hidden from the eyes of the outside world until James Bruce, the explorer, visited the country, 1770-72, and made such a report as to arouse again the interest of Christendom. The translation of the Bible, which was made by his Abyssinian guide, was adopted and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and in 1829 the Church Missionary Society sent out Gobat and Kugler as the first Protestant missionaries to Abyssinia, who were followed shortly after by some Roman Catholics. Owing chiefly to the opposition of native priests the Protestants were expelled in 1838 and the expulsion of the Roman missionaries followed in 1854. In 1858 a Copt who had been influenced as a youth by a Protestant school, became Abuna, and Protestant missionaries were again admitted, but succeeded in doing little permanent work owing to the political disturbances while King Kesa (Theodore) - the Napoleon of Africa - was attempting to consolidate native resources and build up an African empire. At this period the influence of Great Britain began to be felt in Abyssinia. After the suicide of Theodore (1868) and especially after Menelek II had succeeded in making himself emperor (1899), this influence became great. During the 20th century missionaries have been able to work in Abyssinia without much danger, but the Moslem influence is so preponderating that little has been attempted and little done. The religion of the Crescent seems now almost completely victorious over the strange land which for so many centuries, alone and unhelped, held aloft in Africa the religion of the Cross. (See especially The Mohammedan World of Today, by Zwemer, Wherry, and Barton, 1907; Missionary World, 1910-11.)

5. Beliefs and Practices

In creed, ritual, and practice, the Abyssinian church agrees generally with the Coptic. There are seven sacraments and prayers for the dead, high honor is paid to the Virgin Mary and to the saints; fasts and pilgrimages are in much favor; adults are baptized by immersion and infants by affusion. A blue cord is placed about the neck at baptism. An extract from one of the Gospels, a silver ring, an ear pick and a small cross, often very artistic, are also worn about the neck. No charms or beads or crucifixes (“graven images”) are worn. The Jewish as well as the Christian Sabbath is kept sacred, and on an average every other day during the year is a religious holiday. The people are ignorant and superstitious, yet impress observers with their grave kindliness and seem at times eager to learn. The clergy can marry before but not after ordination. Priests must be able to read and recite the Nicene Creed (the “Apostles’ Creed” is not known), but do not understand the Ge’ez language in which the liturgies are written. They conduct many and long services and attend to the ceremonial purifications. Deacons must also be able to read; they prepare the bread for the Holy Sacrament and in general help the priests. The monastic clergy have chief care of the education of the young - though this consists mainly in Scripture reading - and their head, the Etshege, ranks next to the Abuna.

The ancient churches were often basilican, but modern native churches are quadrangular or circular. The Holy of Holies always stands in the center, and is supposed to contain an ark. Tradition declares that the ark in the cathedral at Axum is the original ark from Solomon’s temple. An outer court surrounds the body of the church, which is freely used by laymen and as a place of entertainment for travelers. Very crude pictures are common. These show both Egyptian and European influence, and are probably not merely decorations but have a relation, as in Egyptian thought, to spiritual advancement in this life or the next (compare Budge, Introduction to the Lives of Mabâ’ Sĕyôn and Gabra Krĕstôs, 1898). The services consist of chanting psalms, reading Scriptures and reciting liturgies.

6. Abyssinian Literature

The Abyssinian canon (Semanya Ahadu) consists of 46 Old Testament and 35 New Testament books. Besides the usually accepted books, they count Shepherd of Hermas, Synodos (Canons), Epistles of Clement, Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 4 Ezra, Ascension of Isaiah, Book of Adam, Joseph ben Gorion, Enoch and Jubilees. The Ethiopic texts of the two latter give these books in the most ancient form, and their discovery has led to much valuable discussion. The use of the Ge’ez language in which these are written dates back to a time shortly before the introduction of Christianity. From the 5th to 7th centuries ad, the literature is almost exclusively translated from Greek writers or adaptations of such writings. Quotations abound from Basil, Gregory, Ignatius, Athanasius, Epiphanus, Cyril, Dioscurus, etc. The second literary period begins 1268, when the old “Solomonic” Dynasty regained its place and continues to the present; it consists mainly of translations from the Arabic. In both periods the topics are few: liturgies, hymns, sermons, the heroic deeds of the saints and their orthodoxy. Each saint uses the four Holy Gospels, as David his four stones, to kill every heretical Goliath (compare Goodspeed and Crum, Patrologia Orientalis, IV, 1908). A large place is given to miracles and magic prayers and secret names (compare Budge, Miracles of the Virgin Mary, 1900, and “Magic Book of Disciples,” JAOS, 1904). The legends or histories are occasionally well written, as the famous “Magda Queen of Sheba” (English Translation by Mrs. J. Van Vorst, 1907), but usually are as inferior in style as in thought (compare Littmann, Bibliotheca-Abessinica, 1904). A few specimens of “popular literature” and many Abyssinian “proverbs” are extant (JAOS, XXIII, 51-53; XXV, 1-48; Jour. asiatique, IV, 487-95).

7. Nubian Literature

The modern Nubian does not write, and his ancient predecessors wrote but little. Even in the days of the Pharaohs the hieroglyphics in most Nubian temples were written so poorly as to be almost unintelligible, and in later pre-Christian monuments put up by native rulers the usual tablets accompanying the Divine tableaux are often left blank. Some centuries before our era the necessary monumental inscriptions began to be composed in the Nubian language, though still written in hieroglyphics. Shortly after the beginning of the Christian era a native cursive writing begins to be used on the monuments, closely resembling the Egyptian demotic, from which undoubtedly its alphabet was derived (F. L. Griffith in Areika). Finally, after Nubia became Christian (6th century), another native system appears written in Greek and Coptic letters. Lepsius found two such inscriptions on the Blue Nile and numbers have since been discovered, but until 1906 these were as unreadable as the other two forms of Nubian writing. In that year Dr. Karl Schmidt found in Cairo two precious fragments of parchment which had been owned by some Nubian Christians of probably the 8th or 9th century. One of these contained a selection of passages from the New Testament - as was ascertained by comparing it with the Greek and Coptic Scriptures. By the aid of bilingual cartouches several proper names were soon deciphered. New inscriptions are now being brought to light every few months, and undoubtedly the translation of this important tongue, which contains the “history of an African Negro dialect for some 2,000 years” and also the religious history of the long-lost Christian church of the Sūdān, will soon be accomplished. The other fragment found by Schmidt was a curious Hymn of the Cross, well representing the ancient Ethiopian hymnology:

“The cross is the hope of Christians;

The cross is the resurrection of the dead;

The cross is the physician of the sick;

The cross is the liberator of the slave,” etc.

- James H. Breasted in Biblical World, December, 1908; Nation, June 2, 1910.

8. Exploration

Scientific observation of Nubia began with Burckhardt (1813), Cailliaud, and Waddington (1821), and especially with Lepsius (1844), but excavation in the proper sense was begun by the University of Chicago (1905-7), followed (1907-10) by expeditions sent out by the Royal Academy of Berlin, University of Pennsylvania, University of Liverpool, and Oxford University.

Literature

Besides the works quoted above, among recent Encyclopedias, see especially Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition) and New Sch-Herz; and among the more recent books: James T. Bent, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893); Glaser, Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika (1895); A. B. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia (1901); R. P. Skinner, Abyssinia of Today (1906); Th. Noeldeke, Die äthiopische Litteratur (1906); Louis J. Morié, Les civilisations africaines (1904); Littmann, Geschichte der äthiopischen Litteratur (1907); W. Max Müller, Aethiopien (1904); Petrie, Hist of Egypt (1895-1901); J. H. Breasted, Temples of Lower Nubia (1906); Monuments of Sudanese Nubia (1908); A. E. Weigall, Report of Antiquities of Lower Nubia (1906); E. A. W. Budge, The Egyptian Sudan (1907); Kromrei, Glaubenslehre und Gebräuche der älteren abessinischen Kirche (1895); M. Fowler, Christian Egypt (1901); Dowling, Abyssinian Church (1909); “Meroe,” the City of the Ethiopians, by Liverpool University Expedition (1909-10); University of Pennsylvania Publications, Egyptian Dept., Eckley B. Coxe, Jr., Expedition to Nubia, I-IV (1909-11); Archeological Survey of Nubia; and Egyptian government reports.

Apart from Egypt, Ethiopia is the most frequently mentioned African country in the Bible. It was sometimes called Cush and its people were dark-skinned. It bordered Egypt to Egypt’s south and, like Egypt, was centred on the Nile River. The region it occupied is today the northern part of Sudan (Isa 18:1-2; Jer 13:23; Eze 29:10; for map of the region see EGYPT).

To most of the people of Palestine, Ethiopia was the southernmost country they knew of. Writers frequently used its name poetically to symbolize the unlimited extent of God’s sovereign rule (Psa 68:31; Isa 11:11; Eze 30:4-5; Zep 3:10).

Individuals from Ethiopia feature occasionally in the Old Testament story. During Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan, Moses married an Ethiopian woman, probably after his first wife had died (Num 12:1). In later times an Ethiopian who worked in the palace of the Judean king saved the life of God’s prophet Jeremiah (Jer 38:7-13; Jer 39:15-18).

Ethiopia features in the biblical record mainly during the period of the divided Israelite kingdom, when it attacked Judah on at least two occasions (2Ch 12:2-4; 2Ch 14:9-15). Later it gained control over Upper Egypt, and for about half a century exercised a strong influence over Egypt. It even challenged Assyria, which was the leading power of the time (2Ki 19:8-9; Nah 3:8-9). The challenge brought little success and soon Ethiopia, along with its ally Egypt, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Assyria (Isa 20:3-6). It subsequently fell under the control of Babylon, and then under the control of Persia (Est 1:1).

In pre-New Testament times, Ethiopia was one of the many countries where Jews settled and established communities. Some Ethiopians attended the Jewish synagogues and became worshippers of the God of Israel (see DISPERSION; PROSELYTE). One of these worshippers of God, or ‘God-fearers’, was among the first non-Jewish people to become Christians in the time of the early church (Act 8:27-38).

Or “Cush,” a country in Africa by

the Red Sea.