ETHIOPIA (Gr. (lieu, to burn, and OC countenance), the biblical Cum, in ancient geography, the name originally given by the Greeks to the southern parts of the lcnown world. It is divided in the poems of Homer into eastern and western Ethiopia, and this dis tinction is repeated by Herodotus, and by the later Greek and Roman geographers. Homer gives the southern limit of Ethiopia as the northern boundary of the Southern Sea. Some ancient writers give the boundaries of the three Ethiopian kingdoms, Meroe, Aksum and Napata. Eastern Ethiopia appears to have in cluded southern India, whose inhabitants were called Ethiopians from their color. There were also other Asiatic Ethiopians, an equestrian race, of a darker color than their neighbors, who wore crests made of the hides and manes of horses, and are supposed to have been a Mon golian tribe which had wandered into the steppes of Koordistan. The name Ethiopia was more usually and definitely applied to the coun try south of Libya and Egypt, between the Red Sea on the east and the desert of Sahara on the west, and embracing the modern regions of Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan and Abyssinia. In a still narrower sense, the designation was restricted to the province or kingdom of Meroe, which was also called the civilized Ethiopia. African Ethiopia, which is called in the Bible the land of Cush, embraced, according to Pliny, 45 distinct kingdoms; yet as neither the Greeks nor Romans ever penetrated beyond Napata, in lat. 19° N., we are indebted for most ac counts of it to Greek imagination. Meroi, be tween the Nile and. the Astaboras, formed the most powerful kingdom, and had a theocratic constitution. The other principal divisions were
the Blemmyes, whose aspect was hideous; the Troglodytm, who lived in caverns; the Macrobii, or long-lived men; the Ichthyophagi, or fish eaters; and the Creophagi, Chelonophagi, Elephantophagi, Struthophagi, and Ophiophagi, respectively the eaters of flesh, tortoises, ele phants, ostriches and serpents. Fable placed also in this region the race of pygmies. Some parts of Ethiopia were named from their pro ductions; as the land of cinnamon, and of myrrh, and the Jews and Phoenicians went thither to obtain aromatics and ivory. The Ethiopian kings seem to have been chosen from among the priests, and the order of succession gave the crown to the nephew of the king, the son of his sister; and in default of an heir, an election was made. The people practised circumcision, and embalmed their dead in a manner similar to that of the Egyptians. They were of an intrepid, impetuous and violent character, and yet are represented as loving and practising justice. Homer makes Jupiter visit them, and sit at their feasts. There were many Ethiopian queens named Candace, one of whom became subject to the Emperor Augus tus. Under the Romans the population of Ethiopia became almost wholly Arabian, and so continued after the introduction of Chris tianity in the 4th century. When the followers of Mohammed overran the entire region some centuries later, the Arabic element gained com plete predominance in it. During the Middle Ages the Christians and clergy of Abyssinia were designated as the Ethiopian Church. See