Ethiopian empire

I`d like to open this topic about one of the greatest Sub-Saharan empire- the Ethiopian. Land with very old culture and traditions, marked from ancient Egypt influence and Christianity of late Roman empire, but substantive at all. Once every year Ethiopian emperor sent an ambassador to the court of Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople. They shared information, books and ideas. Also goods. This practice continued until Ottoman conques. Ethiopian church is represent in Jerusalem with it`s own temple. Ethiopia manage to create own unique civilization and defend their freedom first from Arab expansion, and secondly from Italian aggression in 1896. This was one of the few instances where army armed mostly with spears and bows defeat a modern army in Battle of Adowa. On top of it`s power Ethiopian empire control region of all African Horn, with ports on both Indian Ocean and Red Sea.

Edited by Kanas_Krumesis - 29-Jun-2010 at 10:03

There's a theory the modern-day Ethiopians are descended from Jews who left the Holy Land either when Solomon lapsed into idolatry or when the Temple was destroyed.

Not the whole thing though, just the southern tip.

No magic Baal. Just conversion and intermarriage with the locals. Having suffered heavy losses from the various conflicts in the Middle East the Jewish refugees needed to replenish their numbers

Originally posted by Bulldog69 To be fair, if you follow your own link about the Battle of Adowa, you'll see that the Ethiopian Army had 80,000 men with firearms (and another 20,000 with spears) plus 40 field pieces.   The Italian army was just over 14000 men strong.Hardly a surprising result, when you think about it.

Weren't most of the Ethiopians' weapons obsolete? Only half of their small arms were modern bolt-action magazine rifles and their cannons were muzzle-loaders

Good point. However, you can't deny that the Italians underestimated the Ethiopians. The defeat at Adowa put the brakes on Italian expansionism until Mussolini became dictator