This volume explores the mysteries, myths, and legends surrounding Ethiopia. The book includes four of the author's lectures on the Queen of Sheba, the origin of Ethiopian Christianity, medieval relations, and the Prester John legend.

In this groundbreaking study, the father of African Studies, William Leo Hansberry, examines classical references to the African continent and its people. The writings of Homer, Pliny, Ovid, Virgil, Herodotus and others are discussed and analyzed in a lively and highly readable manner.

This introductory survey provides a rich understanding of the African experience which, until recently, either had been omitted from the curriculum of institutions of higher learning or was distorted in written and oral literature. The book identifies the post-World War II civil rights movement in America and the independence revolution in Africa as the most decisive forces that generated interest in the study of the African/black experience. Includes four theoretical models for interpreting the black experience. The author discusses the place and role of Africa in the development of human civilization, focusing on Africa's Nile Valley civilizations and Western Sudanic empires. It probes aspects of traditional African culture, including the family, traditional political institutions and religion, and analyzes the impact on Africa and its peoples of such historical traumas as slavery, colonialism, and decolonization.

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Ethiopia is clearly one of the most important countries in Africa. First of all, with about 75 million people, it is the third most populous country in Africa. Second, it is very strategically located, in the Horn of Africa and bordering Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya, and Somalia, with some of whom it has touchy and sometimes worse relations. Yet, its capital – Addis Ababa – is the headquarters of the African Union, the prime meeting place for Africa’s leaders. So, if things went poorly in Ethiopia, this would not be good for Africa, and for a long time this was the case, with internal disruption rife, until it was literally suppressed under the strong rule of the recently deceased Meles Zenawi. The Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia, Second Edition covers the history of Ethiopia through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has several hundred cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Ethiopia.

The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, in the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia as well as in the Christian East. As this work shows, their artwork is closely related to Syriac, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian gospel books and to the art of late antique (Coptic) Egypt, Nubia, and Himyar (Yemen). Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of the different versions of the same material in the gospels. Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames, portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are elucidated. The Garima texts and decoration demonstrate how a distinctive Christian culture developed in Aksumite Ethiopia, while also belonging to the mainstream late antique Mediterranean world. Lavishly illustrated in colour, this volume presents all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time and extensive comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated books.