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9.7.3.2.1.1
Structural Details |
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The Ethiopian calendar is an Alexandrian style calendar with a year of 12 uniform months of 30 days, an epagomenal period of five days at the end of the year, and a leap year rule that adds a sixth epagomenal day every four years, starting with the third year. |
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The epagomenal period is considered to be a 13th month for the purposes of computation and date formatting. |
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The accuracy of the calendar as a solar calendar is thus the same as the Julian calendar, since it postulates a year length of 365.25 days per year. |
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9.7.3.2.1.2
Historical Background |
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In classical times, "Aethiopia" was a term applied to an area of northeast Africa. The word is a straight translation from the Greek for "burned faces". |
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The Cushites, a Hamito-Semitic language group, occupied the north and central parts of the Ethiopian plateau and dominated a number of tribes in the south and west which spoke Nilotic or Sudanese languages. |
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New immigrants, probably traders, entered this area from south Arabia in the fifth century B.C. and eventually founded a a kingdom known as Aksum. The kingdom was important by virtue of its geography, since it was situated along the sea route from the Mediterranean to India. |
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The founding of Alexandria and the exploration of the Persian coast by Alexander's fleets led to the establishment of Greco-Egyptian colonies along the Red Sea to serve as ports and markets along this trade route. |
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Egypt became a Roman province in 30 B.C., and safeguarding the route became a Roman imperial interest. Commercial rivalry between Rome and Persia influenced the development of the area and the activities of the kingdom of Aksum. |
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According to tradition, recorded in the Historia Ecclesiastica of Rufinus, Christianity was spread among the ruling class of Aksum by Frumentius, who was shipwrecked with his brother in A.D. 341 on a voyage to India from Tyre. After gaining the confidence of king Ezana, he began to evangelize the people. Frumentius was later consecrated as the first bishop of the Ethiopian church. Whatever the truth of the tradition, Christianity reached Ethiopia via the Greco-Roman merchant communities in the Red Sea ports. |
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The fortunes of Aksum declined in the sixth century A.D. Kaleb, the king of Aksum, invaded Yemen during the war of the Roman emperor Justin I with Persia. Persia intervened in the area and ended Ethiopian rule in Arabia about A.D. 572. The later rise of Islam severed the contact of Ethiopia with the Mediterranean and ushered in the Ethiopian Middle Ages, from which little historical evidence remains. |
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