Negus [a] is the word for "king" in the Ethiopian Semitic languages and a title [2] which was usually bestowed upon a regional ruler by the Negusa Nagast, or "king of kings," [3] in pre-1974 Ethiopia.
Negus [a] is the word for "king" in the Ethiopian Semitic languages and a title [2] which was usually bestowed upon a regional ruler by the Negusa Nagast, or "king of kings," [3] in pre-1974 Ethiopia.
Negus is a noun derived from the Ge'ez Semitic root ngś, meaning "to reign". The title Negus literally translated to Basileus (Greek: βασιλεύς) in Ancient Greek, which was seen many times on Aksumite currency. The title has subsequently been used to translate the word "king" or "emperor" in Biblical and other literature. In more recent times, it was used as an honorific title bestowed on governors of the most important provinces (kingdoms): Gojjam, Begemder, Wello, Tigray and the seaward kingdom, (where the variation Bahri Negasi (Sea King), was the title of the ruler of present-day central Eritrea). The military title "Meridazmatch" was initially used by the rulers of Shewa until the reign of Sahle Selassie, when he and his successors adopted the royal title as well. [4] [5]
Sometime during the development of the Ethio-Semitic language family "m-l-k," the original triconsonantal root for king, was elevated to the generic word for "god" in the form of the broken plural "ʾämlak/ʔamlāk." During this time period the semitic term for a ruler or lord, n-g-s, began to mean "king." In an ancient Aramaic inscription mentioning the god ʿAṯtar his name is followed by the title 𐡍𐡂𐡔 (ngš), corresponding to Ancient North Arabian 𐪌𐪔𐪆 (ngś), meaning "the ruler." [6]
Geʽez is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Amharic is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns in Ethiopia.
Menelik I was the legendary first Emperor of Ethiopia, According to Kebra Nagast, a 14th-century national epic.
The emperor of Ethiopia, also known as the Atse, was the hereditary ruler of the Ethiopian Empire, from at least the 13th century until the abolition of the monarchy in 1975. The emperor was the head of state and head of government, with ultimate executive, judicial and legislative power in that country. A National Geographic article from 1965 called Imperial Ethiopia "nominally a constitutional monarchy; in fact it was a benevolent autocracy".
Zewditu was Empress of Ethiopia from 1916 until her death in 1930. The first female head of an internationally recognized country in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the first and only empress regnant of the Ethiopian Empire, her reign was noted for the reforms of her Regent and designated heir Ras Tafari Makonnen, about which she was at best ambivalent and often stridently opposed, due to her staunch conservatism and strong religious devotion. She is the most recent empress regnant, as well as the last female Ethiopian head of state until the 2018 election of Sahle-Work Zewde as president.
The Solomonic dynasty, also known as the House of Solomon, was the ruling dynasty of the Ethiopian Empire from the thirteenth to twentieth centuries. The dynasty was founded by Yekuno Amlak, who overthrew the Zagwe dynasty in 1270. His successors claimed he was descended from the legendary king Menelik I, the supposed son of the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, in order to legitimize the dynasty's assumption of power. Although this claimed ancestry gave the dynasty its name, there is no credible evidence that the dynasty was descended from Solomon or the Davidic line. The Solomonic dynasty remained in power until 1974, when its last emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown by a coup d'état.
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Tigray Province, also known as Tigre, was a historical province of northern Ethiopia that overlayed the present day Afar and Tigray regions. Akele Guzai borders with the Tigray province. It encompassed most of the territories of Tigrinya-speakers in Ethiopia. Tigray was separated from the northern Tigrinya speaking territories by the Mareb River, now serving as the state border to Eritrea, bordering Amhara region in the south.
The Zemene Mesafint was a period in Ethiopian history between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries when the country was ruled by a class of Oromo elite noblemen who replaced Habesha nobility in their courts, making the emperor merely a figurehead. For the most part, the regional lords were tightly related by marriage and constituted a stable ruling elite that prevailed until the mid-20th century. In short, during the Zemene Mesafint, the emperors from the Solomonic dynasty were reduced to little more than figureheads confined to the capital city of Gondar.
The Ethiopian Empire, historically known as Abyssinia or simply Ethiopia, was a sovereign state that encompassed the present-day territories of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It existed from the establishment of the Solomonic dynasty by Yekuno Amlak around 1270 until the 1974 coup d'état by the Derg, which ended the reign of the final Emperor, Haile Selassie. In the late 19th century, under Emperor Menelik II, the empire expanded significantly to the south, and in 1952, Eritrea was federated under Selassie's rule. Despite being surrounded by hostile forces throughout much of its history, the empire maintained a kingdom centered on its ancient Christian heritage.
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The Kingdom of Aksum also known as the Kingdom of Axum, or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom in East Africa and South Arabia from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, based in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, and spanning present-day Djibouti and Sudan. Emerging from the earlier Dʿmt civilization, the kingdom was founded in 1st century. The city of Axum served as the kingdom's capital for many centuries until it relocated to Kubar in the 9th century due to declining trade connections and recurring external invasions.
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Ethiopian literature dates from Ancient Ethiopian literature up until modern Ethiopian literature. Ancient Ethiopian literature starts with Axumite texts written in the Geʽez language using the Geʽez script, indigenous to both Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Ethiopian historiography includes the ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern disciplines of recording the history of Ethiopia, including both native and foreign sources. The roots of Ethiopian historical writing can be traced back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum. These early texts were written in either the Ethiopian Ge'ez script or the Greek alphabet, and included a variety of mediums such as manuscripts and epigraphic inscriptions on monumental stelae and obelisks documenting contemporary events. The writing of history became an established genre in Ethiopian literature during the early Solomonic dynasty (1270–1974). In this period, written histories were usually in the form of royal biographies and dynastic chronicles, supplemented by hagiographic literature and universal histories in the form of annals. Christian mythology became a linchpin of medieval Ethiopian historiography due to works such as the Orthodox Kebra Nagast. This reinforced the genealogical traditions of Ethiopia's Solomonic dynasty rulers, which asserted that they were descendants of Solomon, the legendary King of Israel.
The history of Ethiopia in the Middle Ages roughly spans the period from the decline of the Kingdom of Aksum in the 7th century to the Gondarine period beginning in the 17th century. Aksum had been a powerful empire during late antiquity, appearing in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and mentioned by Iranian prophet Mani as one of the "four great kingdoms on earth", along with the Sasanian Empire of Persia, the Roman Empire, and China's Three Kingdoms. The kingdom was an integral part of the trade route between Rome and the Indian subcontinent, had substantial cultural ties to the Greco-Roman world, and was a very early adopter of Christianity under Ezana of Aksum in the mid-4th century. The use of "Ethiopia" to refer to the region dates back to the 4th century. At its height, the kingdom spanned what is now Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, eastern Sudan, Yemen and the southern part of what is now Saudi Arabia. However, by the 7th century, the kingdom had begun a slow decline, for which several possible political, economic, and ecological reasons have been proposed. This decline, which has been termed the "Post-Aksumite Period", saw extreme loss of territory and lasted until the ascension of the Zagwe dynasty.
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