services.[1] It is now dead; no one speaks it, even the clergy hardly understand it. It has developed into three modern dialects — Tigre, spoken in the northern mountains; Tigrinya around Aksum; and Amharic, the language of the Government, court and official classes generally.[2]
The ruler of all these people is the Negūsha nagasht za'ītyōpya.[3] He claims to descend from King Solomon by the Queen of Sheba.[4] In Ethiopic legend that lady's name was Mākedā; her son, the first Negus, was Menelek I. The Negus is proud of his supposed Jewish descent; he speaks of "my fathers, the Kings of Israel,"[5] he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah; he uses, as a kind of coat of arms, a lion passant-gardant, crowned imperially, bearing in the sinister jamb a banner of the Ethiopian colours, gules, or, vert, fesswise; and his motto is: "Vicit leo de tribu Iuda." The present King is Menelek II; he drove out the usurper John in 1889. He is an absolute sovereign, whose power is tempered by that of about forty governors or princes (Rās) ruling parts of his domain under him. There are said to be between three and five million inhabitants of Abyssinia, of whom most are members of the national Church. Till 1892 the capital and royal residence was Gondar. Now it is Adis Ababa in the central province (Shoa).
5. The Hierarchy
The head of the Church of Abyssinia (under the Coptic Patriarch) is the Metropolitan of Aksum. He now resides in Adis Ababa. He is called Abūna ("our father");[6] also Aba Salāma ("father of peace"). We have seen that Abūna is always a Coptic monk, chosen and ordained by the Coptic Patriarch.
- ↑ F. Prætorius: Grammatica æthiopica (Karlsruhe u. Leipzig, H. Reuter, Porta ling. orient. 1886). A still more useful grammar is M. Chaine, S.J.: Grammaire éthiopienne (Beyrouth, 1907).
- ↑ Prætorius: Die amharische Sprache (Halle, 1879).
- ↑ "King of the Kings of Ethiopia." He is often called the Emperor of Abyssinia. But this comes only from the silly practice of calling almost any powerful sovereign an emperor.
- ↑ As a matter of fact, the hereditary line has been broken several times in known history.
- ↑ Ludolf: Comm. in hist. æthiop. p. 237.
- ↑ To say "the Abūna" determines a Semitic word twice over, and is as wrong as "the Alcoran."
