Ethiopia is an ancient country located in north-east Africa, or, as it is generally known, the Horn of Africa, so called because of the hornshaped tip of the continent that marks off the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean. It is bounded by Sudan in the west, Eritrea in the north and north-east, Kenya in the south, Somalia in the south-east, and Djibouti in the east. To the outside world, it has long been known by the name of Abyssinia. This appellation apparently derived from ‘Habashat’, one of the tribes that inhabited the Ethiopian region in the pre-Christian era.

The term Ethiopia is of Greek origin, and in classical times was used as a generic and rather diffuse designation for the African landmass to the south of Egypt. The first known specific application of the term to the Ethiopian region is found in the Greek version of a trilingual inscription of the time of Ezana, the Aksumite king who introduced Christianity into Ethiopia towards the middle of the fourth century AD. This adoption of the term continued with the subsequent translation of the Bible into Ge'ez, the old literary language. The Kebra Nagast (‘Glory of Kings’), written in the early fourteenth century, which gave the ‘received’ account of the story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, not only linked the Ethiopian kings to the House of Israel, but also sealed the identification of the term Ethiopia with the country: since the thirteenth century, when a dynasty that claimed to represent the restoration of the Solomonic line came to rule the country, its rulers have styled themselves ‘King of Kings of Ethiopia’. While it is not uncommon for Ethiopians to refer to themselves, particularly in informal circumstances, as ‘Habasha’ (Abyssinians), officially they prefer to be called Ethiopians.

Present-day Ethiopia is located between longitudes 33° and 48°E, and latitudes 3° and 15°N. Although thus lying very near the Equator, the country on the whole is far from ‘tropical’ in the accepted sense of the term. On the contrary, the elevated nature of its highlands, rising to over 1,500 metres, gives it a decidedly cooler climate than its geographical location seems to suggest.