ABSTRACT
“Ethiopia” is a Greek name (Aithiopia) which it attributes to the inhabitants of that land, the Aithiopes, “sun-burnt faces.” However, the name Ethiopia, which for the ancients generically designated the land of blacks, was restricted shortly thereafter roughly to the modern nation. Ethiopia has a surface area of 1,128,211 square kilometers and is bordered by Eritrea – which was a part of Ethiopia until it was declared independent in 1993 – and Djibouti to the north, by Somalia to the east, by Kenya to the south, and by the Sudan to the west (Lain and Calloni 2001). The trench of the Great Rift Valley, marked by the Danakil Depression and further to the south by a series of lakes, divides the country in half: the Ethiopian plateau to the west and the highlands to the east, descending toward the planes of Ogaden. The shape of the territory results from volcanic activity and tectonic shifts and is characterized by canyons crossed by rivers. The most famous of these rivers is the Blue Nile, which flows from Lake Tana, the largest Ethiopian lake. The typical shape of the mountains are ambe: rocky mountains that descend precipitously, accessible only with difficulty, with leveled summits that make for natural fortresses and that have an average altitude of 2,000–2,500 meters. The highest peak, Ras Dascian, climbs to 4,620 meters.
