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This article is about the Classical Greek term. For the 1 Before Herodotus
modern country, see Ethiopia.
Ancient Aethiopia (Greek: ) rst appears as Homer (c. 8th century BC) is the rst to mention
Aethiopians (, ); he mentions that
they are to be found at the east and west extremities of
the world, divided by the sea into eastern (at the sun-
rise) and western (at the sunset). Hesiod (c. 8th century
Androphagi
Tanais Arimaspians
Hyperboreans
Issedones
ns
s u
Tyras
Lyc
hia Sauromates
Agathyrsi yt
r Sc MAEOTIAN
LAKE
Iste
is
Iberia
Thracians
Araxes Bactra
Sogdians
of the Achaemenid Empire, sailed along the Indus River,
Niniveh Medes
ATLANTIC
Tartessus
Assyria
Ecbatana
Susa
ASIA
Persia
Ind
us Indian Ocean and Red Sea, circumnavigating the Arabian
Carthage Cyrene
SEA Memphis
Babylon
Indians
Peninsula. He mentioned Aethiopians, but his writ-
Atlas
LIBYA Thebes
ings on them have not survived. Hecataeus of Miletus
Syene
1
2 6 REFERENCES
In Book 3, Herodotus denes Aethiopia as the far- 4 Greek and medieval literature
thest region of Libya (i.e. Africa): Where the south
declines towards the setting sun lies the country called Several notable personalities in Greek and medieval lit-
Aethiopia, the last inhabited land in that direction. There erature were identied as Aethiopian, including sev-
gold is obtained in great plenty, huge elephants abound, eral rulers, male and female: Memnon and his brother
with wild trees of all sorts, and ebony; and the men Emathion, King of Arabia. Cepheus and Cassiopeia, par-
are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere ents of Andromeda, were named as king and queen of
else.[6] Aethiopia. Homer in his description of the Trojan War
mentions several other Aethiopians. Ptolemy the geog-
rapher and other ancient Greek commentators believed
that the Aethiopian Olympus" was where the gods lived
when they were not in Greece.
With regard to the Ethiopians, Strabo indicates that [4] in Liddell, Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon:
those who are in Asia, and those who are in Africa, do " , , , fem. , , ( as
not dier from each other.[8] Pliny in turn asserts that the fem., A.Fr.328, 329): pl. '' Il.1.423, whence
place-name Aethiopia was derived from one Aethiop, nom. '' Call.Del.208: (, ): prop-
erly, Burnt-face, i.e. Ethiopian, negro, Hom., etc.; prov.,
a son of Vulcan[8] [the smith-god Hephaestus[9] ]. He
'to wash a blackamoor white', Luc.Ind.
also writes that the Queen of the Ethiopians bore the
28. Cf. Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. [[:wikt:|]],
title Kandake, and avers that the Ethiopians had con- Etymologicum Gudianum s.v.v. . "".
quered ancient Syria and the Mediterranean. Following Etymologicum Magnum (in Greek). Leipzig. 1818.
Strabo, the Greco-Roman historian Eusebius notes that
the Ethiopians had emigrated into the Red Sea area from [5] Fage, John. A History of Africa. Routledge. pp. 2526.
the Indus Valley and that there were no people in the re- ISBN 1317797272. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
gion by that name prior to their arrival.[8] [6] Herodotus Histories III.114.
The rst century AD Greek travelogue known as the
[7] Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea rst describes the Horn
Ireland. Cambridge University Press for the Royal Asiatic
of Africa littoral, based on its authors intimate knowl- Society. 1892. p. 823. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
edge of the area. The Periplus does not mention any dark-
skinned Ethiopians among the areas inhabitants. They [8] Turner, Sharon (1834). The Sacred History of the World,
only later appear in Ptolemy's Geographia, but in a re- as Displayed in the Creation and Subsequent Events to the
gion far south, around the Bantu nucleus of northern Deluge: Attempted to be Philosophically Considered, in a
Mozambique. According to John Donnelly Fage, these Series of Letters to a Son, Volume 2. Longman. pp. 480
482. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
early Greek documents altogether suggest that the orig-
inal inhabitants of Azania, the Azanians, were of the [9] Pliny the Elder Natural History VI.35. Son of Hephaes-
same ancestral stock as the Afroasiatic-speaking popu- tus was also a general Greek epithet meaning black-
lations to the north of them in the ancient Barbara re- smith.
gion along the Red Sea. Subsequently, by the tenth cen-
tury, these original Azanians had been replaced by early
waves of Bantu settlers.[5]
3
7.2 Images
File:Herodotus_world_map-en.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Herodotus_world_map-en.svg Li-
cense: Public domain Contributors: Own work (based on the GIF by Marco Prins and Jona Lendering from www.livius.org, see
http://www.livius.org/a/1/maps/herodotus_map.gif, with xes from http://www.mediterranees.net/geographie/herodote/cartes.html, http:
//www.meer.org/herodotus-world-map-1a.jpg and http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ancientimages/109A.GIF). Compare this map
from The Challenger Reports, 1895. Original artist: User:Bibi Saint-Pol
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Contributors:
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