Ethiopia of Old

The usage of the terms ‘Ethiopia’ and ‘Ethiopians’ were very ambiguous among ancient writers. They do not at all correspond to our present-day understanding of the words. For ancient Greek writers, the term ‘Ethiopia’ did not denote a particular country defined by certain geographical boundaries.¹ Instead they used the term to refer to parts of the world inhabited by races with dark skin color.²

Scholars agree that the word “Ethiopians” itself is derived from the Greek word “Aithiopes”. It is a compound word made up of “aithos” (meaning burnt) and “ops” (meaning face). It thus literally means “burnt-faced” people.³ “Aithiops” in its adjective form also translates into red-brown.⁴

As a result, the people that the Greeks called ‘Ethiopians’ were not just limited to the African continent, let alone the Horn of Africa. Although Africa, being the principle home of black peoples, naturally contained the greater portion of ‘Ethiopians’, a large tract of Asia was also occupied by races who bore the same designation. Besides, as ancient Greeks thought that India was the southern division of the African continent, they frequently described ‘Ethiopia’ as including Southern India.⁵ It is, therefore, no surprise that the ancient Greek poet Homer, who seems to have put together all the fragments of historical and geographical knowledge which were scattered among the learned of his age, spoke of ‘Ethiopians’ as extending from where the sun rises to where it sets:⁶

“Now, though, [the sea-god] was visiting the distant Ethiopians,
the most remote of all, a divided people,
some of whom live where [the sun-god] sets
the others where he rises,
to accept a hecatomb of sacrificial bulls and rams,
and there he sat, enjoying the feast…”

Likewise, Roman writers often confused Indians with Ethiopians, owing to the similarity of complexion between South Indians and East Africans. Consequently, they frequently called South Indian tribes ‘Ethiopians’, and referred to inhabitants of East Africa and South Arabia as ‘Indians’.⁷

Even as late as the 17th century, Europeans were still using the term ‘Ethiopia’ to refer to large sections of Africa and Asia. The Portuguese Jesuit priest, Balthazar Tellez, in his preface to “The Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia,”⁸ wrote that the name ‘Ethiopia’ was very comprehensive, and that it embraced all the regions whose inhabitants are black. He further stated that the word ‘Ethiopia’ denoted those countries lying along the Red Sea on the side of Arabia as far as Palastine, and all the lands beyond Egypt, down the Red Sea, reaching Cape Guardafui,⁹ and from there all the lands extending to the Cape of Good Hope,¹⁰ and then turning that Cape, it continued all along as far as Angola¹¹ and Cape Verde¹². He added that the inhabitants of all the areas mentioned are called ‘Ethiopians’.

At this period, some Europeans started using the phrase ‘Ethiopia Proper’ in an attempt to narrow down the broad usage of the term ‘Ethiopia’. But still, it was very liberal in comparison with our modern understanding of the word. Moreover, there was no agreement on the geographical scope of ‘Ethiopia Proper’. For example, some¹³ said it included all the lands from the Egyptian border with Sudan to Cape Guardafui, and thereafter much further on to Malindi¹⁴ and Mombasa¹⁵; while others¹⁶ claimed that ‘Ethiopia Proper’ was made up of Nubia, Sennar and Abyssinia.

By the end of the 17th century, Europeans started restricting their usage of the term ‘Ethiopia’ to the African continent.¹⁷ Nevertheless, they assumed ‘Ethiopia’ to be extended from the Western shore of the Red Sea and the East African coast on the Indian Ocean to the West African coast on the Atlantic Ocean.

However, we should understand that all of Africa was not ‘Ethiopia’, and that Europeans did not call all Africans ‘Ethiopians’. Even ancient Greek historians first tended to divide Africans into two great classes, the ‘Libyans’ and the ‘Ethiopians’.¹⁸ To these African groups, later Herodotus added the ‘Greeks’ and ‘Phenicians’, who as settlers occupied the northern coasts of Africa.¹⁹ By the 18th century Europeans were classifying Africa at the minimum into five portions.

Reference Notes

1. Russell, Michael (1833) Nubia and Abyssinia: Comprehending their Civil History, Antiquities, Arts, Religion, Literature, and Natural History. Oliver and Boyd: Edinburgh. ↩︎
2. Ibid: pp.23-24. ↩︎
3. Mitchell, Daniel (2023) ‘Ethiopians: Herodotos on southern peoples at the ends of the earth (mid-fifth century BCE)’. Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World. Accessed 03/02/2024. ↩︎
4. Liddell, Henry George, and Scott, Robert (1940) “Aithiops”. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Clarendon Press: Oxford. Available on Perseus online catalog. Accessed 03/02/2024. ↩︎
5. Russell pp.23-24. ↩︎
6. The Odyssey. Book I. Lines 21-25. Translated by A. S. Kline. 2004. ↩︎
7. Pierre Schneider. The so-called confusion between India and Ethiopia: the eastern and southern edges of the inhabited world from the Greco-Roman perspective. S. Bianchetti, M. R. Cataudella, H. J. Gehrke. Brill’s Companion to Ancient Geography. The Inhabited World in Greek and Roman Tradition, pp.184-205, 2015, Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies, ￿10.1163/9789004284715_012￿. ￿hal-03648391. ↩︎
8. Tellez, Balthazar (translated into English 1710). The Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia. London : Printed for J. Knapton, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, etc. ↩︎
9. Cape Guardafui is a headland in the autonomous Puntland region in Somalia. ↩︎
10. Cape of Good Hope is a headland on the Atlantic coast of South Africa. ↩︎
11. Angola is a country on the west-central coast of Southern Africa. ↩︎
12. Cape Verde or Cabo Verde officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelago and island country of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean. ↩︎
13. C.F. Beckingham and G.W. B. Huntingford (2016) Some Records of Ethiopia, 1593–1646. Being Extracts from The History of High Ethiopia or Abassia by Manoel de Almeida Together with Bahrey’s History of the Galla. Routledge: Oxford. ↩︎
14. Malindi is a resort town located on the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya. ↩︎
15. Mombasa is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It is 120 kilometres Southwest of Malindi. ↩︎
16. Moryson, Fynes (1617) An Itinerary Written by Fynes Moryson gent. first in the Latine tongue, and then translated by him into English. London, Printed by J. Beale. ↩︎
17. Ludolf, Hiob. 1684. A New History of Ethiopia. 2nd edition. Translated into English by J. P. (Gent.). London: Printed for Samuel Smith. ↩︎
18. Russell p.24. ↩︎
19. The History of Herodotus. By Herodotus (400 B.C. Translated into English by George Rawlinson. Accessed 03/02/2024. ↩︎