Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the southeast, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west, and Sudan to the northwest. Ethiopia covers a land area of . , it has around 138 million inhabitants, making it the 10th-most populous country in the world and 2nd most populous country in Africa. The national capital and largest city, Addis Ababa, lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African and Somali tectonic plates.
Anatomically modern humans emerged in what is now Ethiopia. In 980 BC, the Kingdom of D'mt extended its realm over Eritrea and the northern region of Ethiopia, while the Kingdom of Aksum maintained a unified civilisation in the region for 900 years. Christianity arrived to the kingdom in 330 AD, while Islam gained influence during the first Hijra in 615. After the collapse of Aksum in 960, the Zagwe dynasty ruled the north-central parts of Ethiopia. The Shewan usurper, Yekuno Amlak, overthrew the dynasty in 1270 at the Battle of Ansata, inaugurating the Ethiopian Empire and the Solomonic dynasty – asserting its lineage through Aksumite legitimacy by the biblical Solomon and Queen of Sheba, and Menelik I was the first emperor. Under Emperor Amda Seyon I (r. 1314–1344), the empire grew in prestige through territorial expansion against neighbouring Muslim territories. Later, the Ethiopian–Adal War (1529–1543) weakened the empire and opened the way for the Oromo expansion. The growing influence of the Oromo at the Gondarine court ultimately contributed to the fragmentation known as Zemene Mesafint, beginning in 1769. Emperor Tewodros II ended the Zemene Mesafint at the beginning of his reign in 1855, marking the reunification and modernisation of Ethiopia.
In the late 19th century, Ethiopia repelled foreign invasions from both Egypt and Italy, most notably defeating an Italian invasion at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. Under Emperor Menelik II, it also expanded its territory, remaining independent during the Scramble for Africa and establishing its current borders. Ethiopia lost its sovereignty in 1936, when Italy under Benito Mussolini invaded during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, and following Ethiopia's defeat, Italian East Africa was established. In 1941, during World War II, it was liberated by the British Army, and its full sovereignty was restored in 1944. The Derg, a Soviet-backed military junta, took power in 1974 after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie and the Solomonic dynasty, and ruled the country for nearly 17 years amidst the Ethiopian Civil War. Following the dissolution of the Derg in 1991, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) dominated the country with a new constitution and ethnic-based federalism. Since then, Ethiopia has suffered from prolonged and unsolved inter-ethnic clashes and political instability marked by authoritarianism. From 2018, regional and ethnically based factions have carried out armed attacks in multiple ongoing wars throughout Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic state with over 80 different ethnic groups. Christianity is the most widely professed faith in the country, with the largest denomination being the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, followed by Islam and a small percentage of traditional faiths. The country is a founding member of the UN, and hosts the headquarters of the African Union Commission and many other global non-governmental organisations focused on Africa, also becoming a full member of BRICS in 2024. Ethiopia is one of the least developed countries but is sometimes considered an emerging power, having the fastest economic growth in sub-Saharan African countries because of foreign direct investment in expansion of agricultural and manufacturing industries; agriculture is the country's largest economic sector, accounting for over 37% of the GDP as of 2022. Although the Ethiopian economy has experienced consistent growth, in terms of per capita income and the Human Development Index the country remains among the poorest in Africa. Ethiopia faces numerous challenges, including high rates of poverty, human rights violations, widespread ethnic discrimination, and a literacy rate of 60%.
Names
Tradition holds that the name Ethiopia (ኢትዮጵያ) comes from the name of the first King of Ethiopia, Ethiop, or Ethiopis.
Ayele Berkerie explains: According to an Ethiopian tradition, the term Ethiopia is derived from the word Ethiopis, a name of the Ethiopian king, the seventh in the ancestral lines. Metshafe Aksum or the Ethiopian Book of Aksum identifies Itiopis as the twelfth king of Ethiopia and the father of Aksumawi. The Ethiopians pronounce Ethiopia እትዮጵያ with a Sades or the sixth sound እ as in incorporate and the graph ጰ has no equivalent in English or Latin graphs. Ethiopis is believed to be the twelfth direct descendant of Adam. His father is identified as Kush, while his grandfather is known as Kam.In the 15th-century Ge'ez Book of Axum, the name is ascribed to a legendary individual called Ityopp'is. He was an extra-biblical son of Cush, son of Ham, said to have founded the city of Axum.
The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from , 'an Ethiopian') is a compound word, later explained as derived from the Greek words and (eithō "I burn" + ōps "face"). According to the Liddell-Scott Jones Greek-English Lexicon, the designation properly translates as burnt-face in noun form and red-brown in adjectival form. The historian Herodotus used the appellation to denote those parts of Africa south of the Sahara that were then known within the Ecumene (habitable world).For all references to Ethiopia in Herodotus, see: this list at the Perseus Project. The earliest mention of the term is found in the works of Homer, where it is used to refer to two people groups, one in Africa and one in the east from eastern Turkey to India.Homer, Odyssey 1.22–4. This Greek name was borrowed into Amharic as ኢትዮጵያ, ʾĪtyōṗṗyā.
In Greco-Roman epigraphs, Aethiopia was a specific toponym for ancient Nubia. At least as early as ,Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. Αἰθιοπία; see also Aethiopia the name Aethiopia also occurs in many translations of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in allusion to Nubia. The ancient Hebrew texts identify Nubia instead as Kush.Cp. Ezekiel 29:10 However, in the Christian Bible, the Greek term Aithiops does occur, referring to a servant of the Kandake, the queen of Kush.Acts 8:27
Following the Hellenic and biblical traditions, the Monumentum Adulitanum, a 3rd-century inscription belonging to the Aksumite Empire, indicates that Aksum's ruler governed an area that was flanked to the west by the territory of Ethiopia and Sasu. The Aksumite King Ezana eventually conquered Nubia the following century, and the Aksumites thereafter appropriated the designation "Ethiopians" for their own kingdom. In the Ge'ez version of the Ezana inscription, Aἰθίοπες is equated with the unvocalised Ḥbšt and Ḥbśt (Ḥabashat), and denotes for the first time the highland inhabitants of Aksum. This new demonym was subsequently rendered as ḥbs ('Aḥbāsh) in Sabaic and as Ḥabasha in Arabic. Derivatives of this are used in some languages that use loanwords from Arabic, for example in Malay Habsyah.
In English, and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was historically known as Abyssinia. This toponym was derived from the Latinised form of the ancient Habash.
History
Prehistory
Several important finds have propelled Ethiopia and the surrounding region to the forefront of palaeontology. The oldest hominid discovered to date in Ethiopia is the 4.2 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi) found by Tim D. White in 1994. The most well-known hominid discovery is Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy). Known locally as Dinkinesh, the specimen was found in the Awash Valley of Afar Region in 1974 by Donald Johanson, and is one of the most complete and best-preserved adult Australopithecine fossils ever uncovered. Lucy's taxonomic name refers to the region where the discovery was made. This hominid is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago.
Ethiopia is also considered one of the earliest sites of the emergence of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens. The oldest of these local fossil finds, the Omo remains, were excavated in the southwestern Omo Kibish area and have been dated to the Middle Paleolithic, around 200,000 years ago. Additionally, skeletons of Homo sapiens idaltu were found at a site in the Middle Awash valley. Dated to approximately 160,000 years ago, they may represent an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens, or the immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans. Archaic Homo sapiens fossils excavated at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco have since been dated to an earlier period, about 300,000 years ago, while Omo-Kibish I (Omo I) from southern Ethiopia is the oldest anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeleton currently known (196 ± 5 kya).
According to some anthropologists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations arrived in the region during the ensuing Neolithic era from the family's proposed urheimat ("original homeland") in the Nile Valley, or the Near East. The majority of scholars today propose that the Afroasiatic family developed in northeast Africa because of the higher diversity of lineages in that region, a telltale sign of linguistic origin.
In 2019, archaeologists discovered a 30,000-year-old Middle Stone Age rock shelter at the Fincha Habera site in Bale Mountains at an elevation of above sea level. At this high altitude, humans are susceptible both to hypoxia and to extreme weather. According to a study published in the journal Science, this dwelling is proof of the earliest permanent human occupation at high altitude yet discovered. Thousands of animal bones, hundreds of stone tools, and ancient fireplaces were discovered, revealing a diet that featured giant mole rats.
Evidence of some of the earliest known stone-tipped projectile weapons (a characteristic tool of Homo sapiens), the stone tips of javelins or throwing spears, were discovered in 2013 at the Ethiopian site of Gademotta, which date to around 279,000 years ago. In 2019, additional Middle Stone Age projectile weapons were found at Aduma, dated 100,000–80,000 years ago, in the form of points considered likely to belong to darts delivered by spear throwers.
Antiquity
In 980 BC, Dʿmt was established in present-day Eritrea and the northern part of Ethiopia in the Tigray Region, and is widely believed to be the successor state to Punt. This polity's capital was located at Yeha in what is now northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilisation to be a native Ethiopian one, although in earlier times many suggested it was Sabaean-influenced because of the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea.Munro-Hay, p. 57
Other scholars regard Dʿmt as the result of a union of Afroasiatic-speaking cultures of the Cushitic and Semitic branches; namely, local Agaw peoples and Sabaeans from Southern Arabia. However, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is thought to have developed independently from the Sabaean language. As early as 2000 BC, other Semitic speakers were living in Ethiopia and Eritrea where Ge'ez developed.Tamrat, Taddesse (1972) Church and State in Ethiopia: 1270–1527. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 5–13.Uhlig, Siegbert (ed.) (2005) Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, "Ge'ez". Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, p. 732. Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century. It may have been a trading or military colony in alliance with the Ethiopian civilisation of Dʿmt or some other proto-Axumite state.