Aethiopia

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

EUROPE BC) speaks of Memnon as the king of Aethiopia.

Oarus

Issedones
ns
s u

Tyras
Lyc

hia Sauromates
Agathyrsi yt
r Sc MAEOTIAN
LAKE
Iste
is

In 515 BC, Scylax of Caryanda, on orders from Darius I

is
rp
Alp

Ca Getae Caucasus Massagetes

Celts
CASPIAN
BLACK SEA xes
SEA Ara

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

(c. 500 BC) is also said to have written a book about

Nile Meroe Arabia
Ethiopians ERYTHREAN SEA

Macrobians Aethiopia, but his writing is now known only through

AUSTRAL SEA
quotations from later authors. He stated that Aethiopia
was located to the east of the Nile, as far as the Red Sea
The inhabited world according to Herodotus. Libya (Africa) is and Indian Ocean; he is also quoted as relating a myth
imagined as extending no further south than the Horn of Africa, that the Skiapods (Shade feet) lived there, whose feet
terminating in uninhabitable desert. All peoples inhabiting the were supposedly large enough to serve as shade.
southernmost fringes of the inhabitable world are known as
Ethiopians (after their dark skin). At the extreme south-east of
the continent are the Macrobians, so called for their longevity.
2 In Herodotus

In his Histories (c. 440 BC) Herodotus presents some

a geographical term in classical documents in reference of the most ancient and detailed information about
to the upper Nile region, as well as all certain areas south Aethiopia.[3] He relates that he personally traveled up
of the Sahara desert and south of the Atlantic Ocean. Its the Nile to the border of Egypt as far as Elephantine
earliest mention is in the works of Homer: twice in the (modern Aswan); in his view, Aethiopia is all of the
Iliad,[1] and three times in the Odyssey.[2] The Greek his- inhabited land found to the south of Egypt, beginning at
torian Herodotus specically uses the appellation to refer Elephantine. He describes a capital at Mero, adding that
to such parts of Sub-Saharan Africa as were then known the only deities worshipped there were Zeus (Amun) and
within the inhabitable world.[3] Dionysus (Osiris). He relates that in the reign of Pharaoh
In classical antiquity, Africa (or Ancient Libya) referred Psamtik I (c. 650 BCE), many Egyptian soldiers deserted
to what is now known as the Maghreb and south of their country and settled amidst the Aethiopians. He fur-
the Libyan Desert and Western Sahara, including all the ther wrote that of Egypts 330 Pharaohs, there were 18
desert land west of the southern Nile river. Geographi- Aethiopian Pharaohs before Shabaka of the Twenty-
cal knowledge of the continent gradually grew, with the fth Dynasty of Egypt (i.e., the Eighteenth Dynasty). He
rst century AD Greek travelogue the Periplus of the Ery- asserts that Aethiopia was one of the countries that prac-
thraean Sea describing areas as far south as Zimbabwe. ticed circumcision.
(Aithiops), meaning burnt-face, was used as a Herodotus tells us that king Cambyses II (c. 570 BC)
vague term for dark-skinned populations since the time of of the Achaemenid Empire sent spies to the Aethiopi-
Homer.[4][5] It was applied to such dark-skinned popula- ans who dwelt in that part of Libya (Africa) which bor-
tions as came within the range of observation of the an- ders upon the southern sea. They found a strong and
cient geographers i.e. primarily in what was then Nubia, healthy people. Although Cambyses then campaigned to-
and with the expansion of geographical knowledge, suc- ward their country, by not preparing enough provisions
cessively extended to certain other areas below the Sa- for the long march, his army completely failed and re-
hara. turned quickly.

1
2 6
In Book 3, Herodotus denes Aethiopia as the far-
thest region of Libya (i.e. Africa): Where the south
declines towards the setting sun lies the country called
Aethiopia, the last inhabited land in that direction. There
gold is obtained in great plenty, huge elephants abound,
with wild trees of all sorts, and ebony; and the men
are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere
else.[6]
3 Other Greco-Roman historians
The Egyptian priest Manetho (c. 300 BC) listed Egypts
Kushite (25th) dynasty, calling it the Aethiopian dy-
nasty. Moreover, when the Hebrew Bible was trans-
lated into Greek (c. 200 BC), the Hebrew appellation
Kush, Kushite became in Greek Aethiopia, Aethiopi-
ans, appearing as Ethiopia, Ethiopians in the English
King James Version.
Agatharchides provides a relatively detailed description
of the gold mining system of Aethiopia. His text was
copied almost verbatim by virtually all subsequent an-
cient writers on the area, including Diodorus Siculus and
Photius.[7]
With regard to the Ethiopians, Strabo indicates that
those who are in Asia, and those who are in Africa, do
not dier from each other.[8] Pliny in turn asserts that the
place-name Aethiopia was derived from one Aethiop,
a son of Vulcan[8] [the smith-god Hephaestus[9] ]. He
also writes that the Queen of the Ethiopians bore the
title Kandake, and avers that the Ethiopians had con-
quered ancient Syria and the Mediterranean. Following
Strabo, the Greco-Roman historian Eusebius notes that
the Ethiopians had emigrated into the Red Sea area from
the Indus Valley and that there were no people in the re-
gion by that name prior to their arrival.[8]
The rst century AD Greek travelogue known as the
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea rst describes the Horn
of Africa littoral, based on its authors intimate knowl-
edge of the area. The Periplus does not mention any dark-
skinned Ethiopians among the areas inhabitants. They
only later appear in Ptolemy's Geographia, but in a re-
gion far south, around the Bantu nucleus of northern
Mozambique. According to John Donnelly Fage, these
early Greek documents altogether suggest that the orig-
inal inhabitants of Azania, the Azanians, were of the
same ancestral stock as the Afroasiatic-speaking popu-
lations to the north of them in the ancient Barbara re-
gion along the Red Sea. Subsequently, by the tenth cen-
tury, these original Azanians had been replaced by early
waves of Bantu settlers.[5]
REFERENCES
4 Greek and medieval literature
Several notable personalities in Greek and medieval lit-
erature were identied as Aethiopian, including sev-
eral rulers, male and female: Memnon and his brother
Emathion, King of Arabia. Cepheus and Cassiopeia, par-
ents of Andromeda, were named as king and queen of
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.
5 See also
White Aethiopians
Aethiopian Sea
Sigelwara Land
6 References
[1] Homer Iliad I.423; XXIII.206.
[2] Homer Odyssey I.22-23; IV.84; V.282-7.
[3] For all references to Ethiopia in Herodotus, see: this list
at the Perseus project.
[4] in Liddell, Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon:
" , , , fem. , , ( as
fem., A.Fr.328, 329): pl. '' Il.1.423, whence
nom. '' Call.Del.208: (, ): prop-
erly, Burnt-face, i.e. Ethiopian, negro, Hom., etc.; prov.,
'to wash a blackamoor white', Luc.Ind.
28. Cf. Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. [[:wikt:|]],
Etymologicum Gudianum s.v.v. . "".
Etymologicum Magnum (in Greek). Leipzig. 1818.
[5] Fage, John. A History of Africa. Routledge. pp. 2526.
ISBN 1317797272. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
[6] Herodotus Histories III.114.
[7] Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
Ireland. Cambridge University Press for the Royal Asiatic
Society. 1892. p. 823. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
[8] Turner, Sharon (1834). The Sacred History of the World,
as Displayed in the Creation and Subsequent Events to the
Deluge: Attempted to be Philosophically Considered, in a
Series of Letters to a Son, Volume 2. Longman. pp. 480
482. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
[9] Pliny the Elder Natural History VI.35. Son of Hephaes-
tus was also a general Greek epithet meaning black-
smith.
 3

7 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1 Text
Aethiopia Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethiopia?oldid=761553006 Contributors: Frecklefoot, Fred Bauder, Ijon, M-Henry, Es-
nible, Florian Blaschke, Dbachmann, Paul August, Bender235, Enric Naval, Ogress, BDD, WilliamKF, Codex Sinaiticus, Malcolma, Jun-
glecat, SmackBot, Edgar181, Gilliam, Full Shunyata, Egsan Bacon, Akhilleus, Yom, Mksword, J 1982, Tim Q. Wells, DIEGO RICARDO
PEREIRA, Orecalimo, Richard Keatinge, Cydebot, Doug Weller, Avjoska, DBWikis, Simon Peter Hughes, VirtualDelight, Artaxiad,
M-le-mot-dit, Feudonym, FKmailliW, Thanatos666, Scrawlspacer, Queentopaz, Til Eulenspiegel, Martarius, Parkwells, RafaAzevedo,
SchreiberBike, Addbot, Nubia123, Favonian, Soupforone, Middayexpress, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Ptbotgourou, AnomieBOT, Helixer, Xu-
fanc, DirlBot, Xqbot, Gilo1969, Isababa7, Bootney Farnsworth, Thehelpfulbot, Fingerz, FrescoBot, HJ Mitchell, Perhelion, Thecheesykid,
Reichscythe, Navops47, Trivia-for-knowledge, Bahnheckl, GuitarDudeness, Davidiad, DrLewisphd, Loriendrew, AcidSnow, Tertltank,
ArthurMayeld79, Ermahgerd9, Bender the Bot and Anonymous: 42

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
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