ETHIOPIA I Gk. Aithowla, Aithiopia ). The name given by the Greeks to a country south of Egypt variously conceived as including only Nubia (.Ethiopia .Egypti ) . or Nubia, Sennar, Kordofan. and Abyssinia. or a region extending indefinitely east and west from the Upper Nile, but applied after the fall of Meroe more par ticularly to Abyssinia. The vagueness of the term is largely due to the significance attached to it by the Greeks. who seem to have derived it from arOuv, to burn, and 61G, face, and ex plained it as the country of sunburnt faces. Some scholars regard AtOlowes, as an original Greek designation of the negroes. Others prefer to look upon it as an attempt by Greek folk etymology to extract a suitable sense from an unintelligible native name. It has been plausibly suggested that this name may have been At yu Lynn, 'incense-gatherers,' from tayib, pl. at !Jab, `aromatics.' and that this was the equivalent of Uabashat, the Egyptian Hbst. the modern Habesh, or Abyssinia. In common use. the name is given to the West African peoples of Nubia and Abys sinia (Ithiopiavian). Deniker (Races of Man, London, 1900) applies it to the third of his twenty-nine human races. including Bejas and Gallas modified by Arab blood among the Somalis. Abyssinians, etc., and by negro blood among the Zandeh and Keane (Ethnology, Cam bridge, 1S96), while relegating the Ethiopians to their proper place in the Hamitic section of the Caucasic division of man. names the generalized negro Hoino .Ethiopieus. At least since the mid dle of the second millennium B.C. Eretria and the Somali coast were not unknown to the Egyptians. Through the expeditions of Queen Hatshepsut Matasul (n.c. 1512-14S1) down the Red Sea to Punt, the lands on both sides of Bab el Mandeb became more familiar than the territory on the Upper Nile. Yemen was looked upon as the land
of the gods; while the products brought from Punt-}lbst caused many a marvelous tale to be told of that country. That the people of Punt were not negroes, hut belonged to the Mediter ranean race, is quite evident from the pictorial representations. From accounts of them, the Creeks have derived their earliest notions of the men who lived in the farthest south. In the Homeric poems (Odyssey, i. 23 sq.; Iliad, i. 423; xxiii. 206) the Ethiopians are represented as dwelling at the utmost limits of the earth and enjoying per sonal intercourse with the gods. This ideal pic ture is regarded by some scholars, not as an echo of the popular Egyptian conception of Punt or 'the divine land,' but as a reflection of the admiration felt in priestly circles in Egypt for the theocratic 1.(g,ime introduced by the Ammon priesthood in Napata during the Dynasty (t.c. 960-774). In Nesiod the term seems to be used vaguely of a territory south of Egypt and Libya. Tlerodotus (iii. 114) describes the Ethiopians as Aarp613toc. long-lived, and re gards their country as extending to the Southern Sea. This apparently implies that he includes Abyisinia. Eretria, and Somaliland. Later Greek writers use the term soinettnies as a designation of Nubia, sometimes in a much wider sense. His. torically there are three distinct kingdoms known as Ethiopia, those of Napata, Meroe, and Aksum. There is no definite evidence that either of these included at any time all the territory between the southern border of Egypt and Bab el Mandeb. Only the Kingdom of Aksum seems to have claimed the name Ethiopia ; in the case of the others it was apparently a Greek and Roman designation solely.