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Tagged: Ethiopia

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Josef Menges and the Early Mapping of Somaliland

Josef Menges and German Exploration in the Horn of Africa Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the coastal territories of the Horn of Africa became the focus of increasing interest by foreign powers, agencies, and individuals, who were attracted by the logistical, commercial, and geopolitical potential of these territories. Josef Menges (1850–1910), a Hessian, was one of...

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A Cartographer in the Archives. Ernst Debes’ Manuscript Map of Eduard Rüppell’s Abyssinian Journey (1867)

Maps are made from maps. This can also be traced in August Petermann’s commentary for his latest map of Northern Abyssinia in 1867, published in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (PGM). The senior cartographer of the Perthes publishing house in Gotha stated that an entirely new map had been made from a journey undertaken by Eduard Rüppell to this very area 35...

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The Map of Ethiopia by Hiob Ludolf and Abba Gorgoryos (1683) as a Source for Cultural Concepts and Indigenous Knowledge

The Orientalist Hiob Ludolf stands at the beginning of Ethiopian philology and early ethnographic research on north-east Africa. Ludolf’s works are remarkable in their richness of cultural information and their breadth. Especially his cooperation with the Ethiopian scholar and theologian Abba Gorgoryos is to be noted, who travelled from Rome to Gotha in 1652. With his help, Ludolf described the...

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Mapping the Source Region of the Abbay/Blue Nile

The Nile, which traverses about 6,825 kilometres, from its farthest and most remote source in southern Rwanda to the Mediterranean Sea, is the longest river system on earth. It comprises two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Abbay, also called Blue Nile. The Abbay contributes the lion’s share to the Nile’s annual water flow (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia...

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Mapping an Entangled Past: An Interconnected Historical Map of Kafa (South-West Ethiopia) by Friedrich Julius Bieber (1905)

The development of the European cartography of north-east Africa was strongly associated with the 18th-, 19th‑ and early 20th-century missionaries and explorers. These travellers’ insights were informed by the local knowledge of indigenous people. Prior to the mid-19th century, European geographic knowledge about the diverse kingdoms in the south and south-west of Ethiopia was sparse compared to the more northern...

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Milash as a Border-Marking Concept in the Setting of the Geohistory of Northern Ethiopia: The Case of Mereb-Milash

Northern Abyssinia (northern Ethiopia) is home to the ancient Aksumite Kingdom. Although its capital was in Aksum, the cultural boundaries of the kingdom extended as far as the modern state of Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. According to Ethiopian and Eritrean sources, local borders were formulated using indigenous techniques to separate autonomous and semi-autonomous provinces. Borders that fall under this...