In modern geography the name Ethiopia is
confined to the country known as Abyssinia,
an extensive territory in East Africa. In
ancient times Ethiopia extended over vast
domains in both Africa and Asia. "It seems
certain," declares Sir E. A. Wallis Budge,
"that classical historians and geographers
called the whole region from India to Egypt,
both countries inclusive, by the name of
Ethiopia, and in consequence they regarded
all the dark-skinned and black peoples who
inhabited it as Ethiopians. Mention is made
of Eastern and Western Ethiopians and it is
probable that the Easterners were Asiatics
and the Westerners Africans." ( History of
Ethiopia , Vol. I., Preface, by Sir E. A. Wallis
Budge.) In addition Budge notes that, "Homer
and Herodotus call all the peoples of the
Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine and Western
Asia and India Ethiopians." (Ibid., p. 2.)
Herodotus wrote in his celebrated History
that both the Western Ethiopians, who lived
in Africa, and the Eastern Ethiopians who
dwelled in India, were black in complexion,
but that the Africans had curly hair, while the
Indians were straight-haired. (The aboriginal
black inhabitants of India are generally
referred to as the Dravidians, of whom more
will be said as we proceed.) Another
classical historian who wrote about the
Ethiopians was Strabo, from whom we quote
the following: "I assert that the ancient
Greeks, in the same way as they classed all
the northern nations with which they were
familiar as Scythians, etc., so, I affirm, they
designated as Ethiopia the whole of the
southern countries toward the ocean." Strabo
adds that "if the moderns have confined the
appellation Ethiopians to those only who
dwell near Egypt, this must not be allowed to
interfere with the meaning of the ancients."
Ephorus says that: "The Ethiopians were
considered as occupying all the south coasts
of both Asia and Africa," and adds that "this
is an ancient opinion of the of the Greeks."
Then we have the view of Stephanus of
Byzantium, t
