the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Ethiopia
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Ethio´pia is the name by which the English and most other versions render the Hebrew Cush. As used among the Greeks and Romans, the word was employed, in all the latitude of its etymological meaning, to denote any of the countries where the people are of a sable, sunburned complexion. But we have shown in the article Cush (to which we refer the reader) that its use in the language of Scripture is much more restricted, and that while it may sometimes include part of Southern Arabia, it for the most part exclusively designates the 'Ethiopia of Africa,' which is the subject of the present article.
By Ethiopia, or African Cush, in the widest acceptation of the name, the Hebrews understood the whole of the region lying south of Egypt above Syene, the modern Assouan (; ). Its limits on the west and south were undefined; but they probably regarded it as extending eastward as far as the Red Sea, if not as including some of the islands in that sea, such as the famous Topaz Isle (). It thus corresponded, though only in a vague and general sense, to the countries known to us as Nubia and Abyssinia, so famous for the Nile and other great rivers.
But that part of the vast region of Cush which seems chiefly intended in these and most other passages of Scripture is the tract of country in Upper Nubia, which became famous in antiquity as the kingdomsof Ethiopia, or the state of Meroë. The Ethiopian nations generally ranked low in the scale of civilization; nevertheless (to use the language of Heeren), there did exist a better cultivated, and, to a certain degree, a civilized Ethiopian people; who dwelt in cities; who erected temples and other edifices; who, though without letters, had hieroglyphics; who had government and laws; and the fame of whose progress in knowledge and the social arts spread in the earliest ages over a considerable part of the earth. Meroë Proper lay between the river Astaboras (now the Atbara or Tacazzé) on the east, and the Nile on the west. Though not completely enclosed with rivers, it was called an island, because, as Pliny observes, the various streams which flowed around it were all considered as branches of the Nile. Its surface exceeded that of Sicily more than a half, and it corresponded pretty nearly to the present province of Atbara, between 13° and 18° N. lat. In modern times it formed a great part of the kingdom of Sennaar, and the southern portion belongs to Abyssinia. Upon the island of Meroë lay a city of the same name, the metropolis of the kingdom, the site of which has been discovered near a place called Assur, about twenty miles N. of the town of Shendy, under 17° N. lat. The splendid ruins of temples, pyramids, and other edifices found here and throughout the district attest the high degree of civilization and art among the ancient Ethiopians.
According to Josephus, the ancient name of Meroë was Seba. Now in the Scriptures this country of African Seba is classed with the Arabian Sheba as a rich but far-distant land (). In , God says to Israel, 'I have given Egypt for thy ransom; Cush and Seba in thy stead:' and in , 'The wealth of Egypt, and the merchandise of Cush and of the Sebaim, men of stature, shall pass over to thee and shall be thine.'
In the age of Herodotus, the countries known to us as Nubia and Sennaar were occupied by two different races, one of whom he includes under the general appellation of Ethiopians, the other an immigratory Arabian race leading, for the most part, a nomadic life. This distinction has continued down to the present day. Among the aboriginal inhabitants the first place is due to the Nubians, who are well-formed, strong, and muscular, and with nothing whatever of the negro physiognomy. They go armed with spear, sword, and a shield of the skin of the hippopotamus. South of Dongola is the country of the Scheygias, whose warriors are horsemen, also armed with a double-pointed spear, a sword, and a large shield (comp. , the 'Cushites who handle the shield'). They were completely independent till subdued by Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt. It is in their country that the pyramidal monuments which adorned the ancient Meroë are first met with. Next comes the territory of the Berbers, strictly so called, who, though speaking Arabic, evidently belong to the Nubian race. Above these regions beyond the Tacazzé and along the Nile the great mass of the inhabitants, though sometimes with a mixture of other blood, may be regarded as of Arab origin. But between the valley of the Nile and the Red Sea there is still, as of old, a variety of scattered aboriginal tribes, among whom the Arabic is much less common. Some of them spread themselves over the plains of the Astaboras, or Tacazzé, being compelled to remove their encampments, sometimes by the inundations of the river, at other times by the attacks of the dreaded zimb, or gad-fly, described by Bruce, and which he supposes to be the 'fly which is in the utmost part of the rivers of Egypt' (). Another remarkable Ethiopic race in ancient times was the Macrobians, so called from their supposed longevity. They were represented by the ambassadors of Cambyses as a very tall race, who elected the highest in stature as king: gold was so abundant that they bound their prisoners with golden fetters—circumstances which again remind us of Isaiah's description of Ethiopia and Seba in .
With regard to the ancient civilization of Ethiopia Proper, or the kingdom of Meroë, it was closely connected with the religion of the country, which was the worship of Ammon and his kindred deities, and the 'Oracles of Ammon' were its main support. The government was in the hands of a race or caste of priests, who chose from among themselves a king; and this form continued down to the reign in Egypt of the second Ptolemy, when Ergamenes, at that time king, massacred the priests in their sanctuary, and became absolute monarch.
Of the history of Ethiopia, previous to that last revolution, only scanty information has been preserved, but it is enough to evince its high antiquity and its early aggrandizement. In the Persian period it was certainly an independent and important state, which Cambyses in vain endeavored to subdue. But its most flourishing era was between the years B.C. 800 and 700, when arose three potent kings, Sabaco, Sevechus, and Tarhako, or Tirhakah, who extended their conquests over a great part of Egypt. Sevechus is supposed to have been the So or Sua king of Egypt, to whom an embassy was sent by Hoshea, king of Israel (), whose reign ended B.C. 722. He was thus the contemporary of Salmanassar, king of Assyria, as was Tirhakah of the next Assyrian monarch, Sennacherib, who (about the year B.C. 714) was deterred from the invasion of Egypt merely by the rumor that Tirhakah was advancing against him (). There seems no reason to doubt that the remarkable prophecy in Isaiah 18 was addressed to Tirhakah and his people, to announce to them the sudden overthrow of the Assyrian host before Jerusalem. In almost verbatim, it is intimated that, struck at the mighty deeds of the God of Judah, this distant people should send gifts to his dwelling-place at Zion. They were, no doubt, among the 'many' who are described in , as having 'brought gifts unto Jehovah at Jerusalem, and presents to king Hezekiah, so that he was magnified in the sight of all the nations.' But it is remarked by Gesenius that the expectation of the entire conversion of the Ethiopians is frequently expressed by the Hebrew prophets (;;; ); and he adds, 'Those who take pleasure in tracing the fulfillment of such predictions in subsequent history may find it in (the conversion both to Judaism and Christianity of the treasurer of Queen Candace), and still more in the circumstance that Abyssinia is to this day the only great Christian state in the eastern world.'
If we go back about two centuries, to the reign of Asa, king of Judah (B.C. 950), we read of Zerah, or rather Zerach, an Ethiopian going out against him with a host of a thousand thousand men and three hundred chariots (). It is doubtful whether this was an Ethiopian monarch or commander, or only a mere Cushite adventurer; but that his army was mainly of African and not Arabian original is evident from the fact of its having included Libyans as well as Cushites (), and from the mention of war-chariots, which never were in use in Arabia. Farther back than this the records of history are silent.
The state of Meroë appears to have resembled the larger states in the interior of Africa at the present day, comprising a number of different races or tribes united together by no strong political bond, but by a common form of worship, which placed the rule in the hands of the priesthood, the dominant caste of the country. There is every reason to conclude that the separate colonies of the priest-caste spread from Meroë into Egypt; and the primeval monuments in Ethiopia strongly confirm the native traditions reported by Diodorus Siculus, that the worship of Ammon and Osiris originated in Meroë, and thus render highly probable the opinion that commerce and civilization, science and art, descended into Egypt from Nubia and the upper regions of the Nile. One great cause of the early prosperity and grandeur of Ethiopia was the carrying-trade, of which it was the center, between India and Arabia on the one hand, and the interior of Africa, and especially Egypt, on the other.
Queen Candace, who is mentioned in , was doubtless the reigning sovereign of Meroë [CANDACE], where it is likely a form of Judaism was at that period professed by a portion of the inhabitants, as seems to have been the case in the adjacent region of Abyssinia. The prophets (e.g. ) sometimes allude to the Jews who were scattered throughout Cush. Ebed-melech, the benevolent eunuch of King Zedekiah, who showed such kindness to the prophet Jeremiah, was an Ethiopian (; comp. ). Josephus calls the queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, and with this agrees the tradition of the Abyssinians. But Sheba was undoubtedly in Arabia Felix, though it is possible that, in remote antiquity, the sovereignty of its monarchs extended across the Red Sea to the coast of Ethiopia.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Ethiopia'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/e/ethiopia.html.
