Ethiopia, the biblical Kush. Originally, all the nations inhabiting the southern part of the globe, as known to the ancients, or rather all men of dark-brown or black colour, were called Ethiopians (assumed by the Greeks to be from the two Greek words aithō—ōps, and to mean 'sunburned'; but it may be possibly a form of an unknown Egyptian word). Later, this name was given more particularly to the inhabitants of the countries south of Libya and Egypt, on the Upper Nile, extending from 10° to 25° N. lat., 28° to 40° E. long.—the present Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan, Abyssinia. The accounts which the ancients have left us with respect to this people are, even where they are not of an entirely fabulous nature, extremely scanty and untrustworthy, as both Greeks and Romans never got beyond Napata, 19° N. lat. From the Homeric age down to Ptolemy, these regions were understood to be peopled by Pygmies, Troglodytes ('dwellers in caverns'), Blemmyes ('hideous men'), Macrobii ('long-lived men'), &c., besides being divided into the lands of cinnamon, myrrh, of elephant-eaters, fish-eaters, tortoise-eaters, serpent-eaters, &c. Homer frequently refers to the 'blameless Ethiopians.' The only portion of ancient records which does contain something akin to historical accounts is that which refers to Meroë, an island formed by the rivers Astaphus and Astaboras, tributaries of the Nile. There stood, from time immemorial, an oracle of Jupiter
Ammon. This and the central portion of the island, together with the extraordinary fertility of its soil, the abundance of animals, metals, &c., made it not only the chief place of resort for all the inhabitants of the adjacent parts, especially the numerous nomad tribes, but also the emporium for India, Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, and Carthage. Thus it grew so rapidly that about 1000 B.C. it counted among the most powerful states of the ancient world; and about 760, having ever since Sesostris been tributary to Egypt, it succeeded, under Sabacus, in shaking off the Egyptian yoke, and continued, in its turn, to hold Egypt for about sixty years. During the reign of Psammetichus, 240,000 Egyptians settled in Meroë, which, the greater part of the immigrants being artisans, traders, &c., rose still higher. Many new cities were built, and the state was in the most flourishing condition when it was conquered by Cambyses, about 530 B.C. He fortified the capital town, and called it Meroë. After the destruction of Thebes by Cambyses, most of the inhabitants of that city took refuge there, and made the country still more Egyptian. Ergamenes transformed its theocracy into a military monarchy in the 3d century. Under Augustus, Meroë was conquered, and a Queen Candace is mentioned as his vassal. Under Nero nothing but ruins marked the place of this once powerful and highly civilised state. Up to this day remnants of mighty buildings, covered with sculptures—representations of priestly ceremonies, battles, &c.—and half-defaced inscriptions hevn in rocks, besides rows of broken sphinxes and colossi, are frequently met with in those parts.
According to the scanty native chronicles, the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Makeda as they, Balkis as the Arabian historians call her), named Menilehek, was the first king of the Ethiopians. Few kings' names occur up to the time of Christ, when Bazen occupied the throne. The missionary Frumentius (330) found two brothers (Christians) reigning—Abreha and Azbeha. During the time of the Greek emperor Justin (522), King Elezbaas destroyed the state of the Homerites in Asia, in order to revenge their persecutions of Christians, and was canonised. From 960 to 1300 another dynasty, the Zagean, held the chief power, all the members of the Solomonic dynasty, save one, having been murdered by Esal, who made her son king. In 1300 Ikon-Amlak, a descendant of this one scion of the house of David, regained possession of the throne. The history of the country, down to the reign of the Negus John (killed near Galabat in May 1889, in battle with the dervishes), is given under ABYSSINIA.
Emigrants from the other side of the Arabian isthmus, as were, beyond doubt, the earliest settlers in Ethiopia, it is but natural that the structure of their language, as well as that of their own bodies, should bear traces of their Semitic origin. The fact of this emigration is expressed in the very name of this language, which is called Ge'ēz—possibly 'free,' affording a parallel to the designation Franc—French, though more probably the word means 'migration,' hence 'emigrants.' The name Ethiopia, or, as they call it, Ityōpyā (adj. Ityōpyāwī), they adopted from the Greeks at a very late period. Thus their oldest language, Lesāna Ge'ēz, was suppressed by a royal decree of Ikon-Amlak, in the 14th century, and the Amharic adopted as the court language. Ever since, it has, with exception of the province of Tigré, where it is still spoken (with slight idiomatic changes), remained the Lesāna Mazhaf, the language of books and of the church. It is exclusively used in writing, even of ordinary letters, and the educated alone understand it. Its general structure comes as close to that of the Arabic as a sister-dialect can and must. A great many of its words are still classical Arabic; others resemble more the Hebrew and the Aramaic; others, again, belong to African dialects; and many, as the names of the months,
ኤስመ : ከመዝ : ኤፍቀር : ኤግዚኤ
ብሔር : ላግላም : ኤስከ : ወልደ :
ቀሕደ : ወሀበ : ቢዛ : ከመ : ከሱ :
ዘየኤምን : ቦቱ : ኢደትሐጉል : ኤላ :
ደረክብ : ሕደወተ : ዘላግላም ::
The text John, iii. 16, in Ethiopic, as printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society. are Greek. It has twenty-six letters, twenty-two of which bear the ancient Semitic stamp, and exhibit the greatest likeness to the Phœnician—the common original alphabet—though no doubt derived immediately from the Sabean or South Arabic alphabet (see ALPHABET). There are seven vowels, including a very short e, which sounds precisely like the Hebrew Shêva, when open, and like e in 'men,' when shut. These vowels are represented by little hooks, and remain inseparably attached to their respective letters; and as the Ge'ez, unlike all its sister-languages, is never written without vowels, the alphabet becomes a syllabary with 182 characters. In addition to this, four consonants (g, k, and h sounds) interject a u sound before the principal vowel, gua, guî, guê, &c. Another difference exists in its being written from left to right—a circumstance from which some have concluded that the Greeks introduced writing in Ethiopia; forgetting, in the first place, that Greek itself was frequently written from right to left, and that Zend, certain cuneiforms, hieroglyphs, &c. are likewise written from left to right. As was to be expected among emigrants from South Arabia, the verbal system has most resemblances to the Arabic, although it differs from this, and agrees with Aramaic, in discarding the passive and using for it the reflexive; there is a double infinitive, only a passive participle and participial words formed by m prefixed; traces of a dual remain, though it is no more in use; the formation of the so-called broken plural, and of declension generally, a special accusative termination, the distinction of the subjunctive from the imperfect, and other peculiarities distinguish the Ge'ez from the Northern Semitic, while the want of the article distinguishes it from Arabic; and in power to subordinate clauses by means of particles and form a concatenated sentence it is superior to all other Semitic dialects. There are no diacritical marks employed in writing; the letters are not combined, and the words are separated by two dots.
Although there may have been some literature in a flourishing country like Ethiopia anterior to Christ, still, owing both to frequent internal convulsions and other causes, no traces of it remain, even the few inscriptions that have been found being of the Christian age. The earliest existing document of post-Christian literature is a complete translation of the Bible, according to tradition by Frumentius, most probably by missionaries from the north, whose native language was Aramean (see FRUMENTIUS). The Old Testament, a translation from the Alexandrine version, or LXX, consists of four parts: (1) the Law or Octateuchos (five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth); (2) Kings; (3) Solomon; (4) Prophets, and two books of the Maccabees. The New Testament consists of: (1) Gospels; (2) Acts; (3) Paulus; (4) Apostolus. The Book of Enoch belongs also to the literature of the Old Testament (see ENOCH), besides the Book of Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, and some others. The New Testament comprises the Shepherd of Hermas, and likewise another book, Synodos, containing the pseudo-Clementine or Apostolic Constitutions, in two recensions, with the Apostolic Canons, the canons of various councils, and much other matter. The Ethiopians have a liturgy (Kanon Kedāsē—'Holy Canon'), and a symbolico-dogmatical work (Haimanōta Abaw—'Belief of the Fathers'), containing portions of homilies of the Greek Fathers, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen. Besides these they have martyrologies, called Seneksār (Synaxaria). They employ in this their sacred literature a peculiar kind of rhythm without a distinct metre. Any number of rhyming lines forms a stanza, without reference to the number of words constituting the verse, or of verses constituting the stanza. They also use certain phrases as a refrain. Ethiopic literature consists chiefly of translations, in earlier times from the Greek, and more recently from the Arabic. In the translations from Greek some interesting works have been preserved which had otherwise disappeared—e.g. the Book of Enoch. Among the translations from the Arabic are books of philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, and history. The native literature consists chiefly of sacred poetry and chronicles, among the last the Gloria Requum (Kebrā Nagast), a work in praise of Axum and the royal family of Ethiopia (Chronicle of Axum). They are very fond, however, of riddles, wise saws, and the like, so fascinating to the Eastern mind. They have native vocabularies, Ethiopic and Amharic, though not of great value to the modern lexicographer. No wonder the learned in Europe should have been sorely puzzled by such a language, and that they should, after long consideration, have pronounced it to be either 'Chaldee' or 'Indian,' while Bruce held it to be the language of Adam and Eve. Potken, a Cologne church-dignitary, happening to be at Rome at the beginning of the 16th century, there made the acquaintance of native Ethiopians, and became the first to enlighten the world on the nature of this occult language. After him came the Carmelite Jacob Marianus Victorius from Reate, who wrote Institutiones Linguae Chaldaee seu Ethiop. (Rome, 1548), an entirely worthless book; then Wemmers, who in 1683 published an Ethiopian grammar and dictionary. The principal investigator, however, was Job Ludolf from Gotha, who, aided by the Abba Gregorius, and supported by his own extraordinary linguistic talents and indomitable energy, acquired such a power over this language that, notwithstanding the number of eminent Orientalists, such as Platt, Lawrence, Dorn, Hupfeld, Hoffmann, Roediger, Ewald, Isenberg, Blumenbach, Dillmann, &c., who have since worked in this field, his books still hold their own place. It is hardly necessary to add that the Ethiopic is one of the most important and indispensable languages to the Semitic scholar.
The great advances made in Ethiopic studies in recent years have greatly superseded earlier works. (1) Texts: The Psalter, by Potken (Rome, 1513, 1518); by Ludolf (Frank, 1701, and often). The Gospels (Lond. 1826); New Testament (Lond. 1830), both by T. Pell Platt (already in Walton's Polyglott); Jonah in 4 oriental versions, by W. Wright (Lond. 1857); Joel, by Dillmann (in Merx, Comm. on Joel) (1879); The Old Testament (vol. i. 1853; vol. ii. 1861-71), by Dillmann. Dillmann has also edited the following: The Book of Enoch (1851; previously by Lawrence, Oxford, 1838; recent Eng. trans. by G. H. Schodde); the Ascension of Isaiah (1877; previously by Lawrence, Oxford, 1819); the Book of Jubilees, or Little Genesis (1859). The Pastor of Hermas, by D'Abbadie (1860); the Ethiopian Didascalia, or Apost. Constitutions, by T. Pell Platt (1834). Besides these, various texts have been edited, including some parts of the secular literature. (2) Grammars and Dictionaries: Ludolf, Gramm. Æth. (Frank. 1702); Dillmann, Gramm. d. Æth. Sprache (Leip. 1857); good small grammar by Prætorius (Leip. 1886); Ludolf, Lex. Æth.-Lat. (Frank. 1699); Dillmann, Lex. Ling. Æth. (Leip. 1865); Chrestomathy, by same (Leip. 1856). The ancient Ge'ez is now represented by various dialects: (1) by the Tigré, which has best preserved the features of the original language, spoken in the north-east of Abyssinia, and particularly by populations just outside the north border of the kingdom; vocabulary by Munzinger in Dillmann's Lexicon; (2) by the Tigrîna, or, more properly, Tigrâi, spoken about Axum, the ancient seat of the kingdom, which, however, has suffered more from the influence of Amharic (Prætorius, Gramm. d. Tigrîna Sprache, Halle, 1871; Schreiber, Manuel de la langue Tigrat, Vienna, 1887); (3) by the Amharic, the state language since end of 13th century, and extending far to the south, which has drawn into itself a multitude of elements from the African languages, and developed many forms altogether alien to Semitic (Grammar and Dictionary by Isenberg, Lond. 1841; Prætorius, Gramm. d. Amh. Sprache, Halle, 1879; Dictionnaire de la langue Amariña, par D'Abbadie, Paris, 1881). Since the English expedition to Abyssinia, the British Museum possesses a larger number of Ethiopic MSS. than any other library. Catalogue of Ethiopic MSS. in British Museum (Lond. 1847); Catalogue of Ethiopic MSS. in Bodleian, (Oxford, 1848), both by Dillmann; Catalogue of Ethiopic MSS. in British Museum, acquired since 1847, by W. Wright (Lond. 1877), including the Magdala Collection.