What Does Ethiopia Mean For You?
The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from Αἰθίοψ, Aithiops, 'an Ethiopian') appears twice in the Iliad and three times in the Odyssey.[30] The Greek historian Herodotus specifically uses it for all the lands south of Egypt,[31] including Sudan and modern Ethiopia. Pliny the Elder says the country's name comes from a son of Hephaestus (aka Vulcan) named Aethiops.[32]
Similarly, in the 15th century Ge'ez Book of Aksum, the name is ascribed to a legendary individual called Ityopp'is, an extrabiblical son of Cush, son of Ham, said to have founded the city of Axum. In addition to this Cushite figure, two of the earliest Semitic kings are also said to have borne the name Ityopp'is according to traditional Ethiopian king lists. At least as early as c. 850,[33] European scholars considered the name to be derived from the Greek words aitho "I burn" + ops "face".[34][35]
The name Ethiopia also occurs in many translations of the Old Testament, but the Hebrew texts have Kush, which refers principally to Nubia.[36] In the New Testament, however, the Greek term Aithiops, 'an Ethiopian', does occur,[37] referring to a servant of Candace or Kentakes, possibly an inhabitant of Meroe which was later conquered and destroyed by the Kingdom of Axum. The earliest attested use of the name Ityopya in the region itself is as a name for the Kingdom of Aksum in the 4th century, in stone inscriptions of King Ezana,[38] who first Christianized the entire apparatus of the kingdom.
In English, and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was also once historically known as Abyssinia, derived from Habesh, an early Arabic form of the Ethiosemitic name "Ḥabaśāt" (unvocalized "ḤBŚT"). The modern form Habesha is the native name for the country's inhabitants (while the country has been called "Ityopp'ya"). In a few languages, Ethiopia is still referred to by names cognate with "Abyssinia", e.g., modern Arabic Al-Ḥabashah.......
.......Ethiopia (/ˌiːθiˈoʊpiə/; Amharic: ኢትዮጵያ?, ʾĪtyōṗṗyā, listen (help·info)), officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea to the north and northeast, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With about 92,000,000 inhabitants,[9] Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world, as well as the second-most populated nation on the African continent (after Nigeria). It occupies a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi), and its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa.[2]
Some of the oldest evidence for modern humans is found in Ethiopia,[10] which is widely considered the region from which [deleted] sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond.[11][12][13] Tracing its roots to the 2nd millennium BC, Ethiopia was a monarchy for most of its history. During the first centuries of the Common Era the Kingdom of Aksum maintained a unified civilization in the region. [14] [15][16][17]
Ethiopia derived prestige for its uniquely successful military resistance during the late 19th-century Scramble for Africa, and subsequently many African nations adopted the colors of Ethiopia's flag following their independence. Ethiopia was the only African country to defeat a European colonial power and retain its sovereignty as an independent country.[18][19][20] It was the first independent African member of the 20th-century League of Nations and the UN.[21] In 1974, at the end of Haile Selassie I's reign, power fell to a communist military junta known as the Derg, backed by the Soviet Union, until it was defeated by the EPRDF, which has ruled since about the time of the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
Ethiopia is a multilingual society with around 80 ethnic groups, with the two largest being the Oromo and the Amhara. It is the origin of the coffee bean. Ethiopia is a land of natural contrasts; with its vast fertile West, jungles, and numerous rivers, the World's hottest settlement in its north, Africa's largest continuous mountain ranges and the largest cave in Africa at Sof Omar.[22] Ethiopia has the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa.[23] Ethiopia's ancient Ge'ez script, also known as Ethiopic, is one of the oldest alphabets still in use in the world.[24] The Ethiopian calendar, which is seven years and about three months behind the Gregorian calendar, co-exists alongside the Oromo calendar. The majority of the population is Christian and a third is Muslim; the country is the site of the first Hijra in Islamic history and the oldest Muslim settlement in Africa at Negash. A substantial population of Ethiopian Jews, known as Beta Israel, resided in Ethiopia until the 1980s but most of them have since gradually emigrated to Israel.[25][26] Ethiopia is also the spiritual homeland of the Rastafari movement, which globalized its flag colors worldwide via pop culture and Reggae music.
Ethiopia is one of the founding members of the UN, the Group of 24 (G-24), the Non-Aligned Movement, G-77 and the Organisation of African Unity, with Addis Ababa serving as the headquarters of the African Union, the Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the UNECA, African Aviation Training HQ, the African Standby Force and much of global NGOs focused on Africa. Despite being the main source of the Nile, the longest river on earth, Ethiopia underwent a series of famines in the 1980s, exacerbated by civil wars and adverse geopolitics. The country has begun to recover recently, and it now has the largest economy by GDP in East Africa and Central Africa.[27][28][29]. Read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia