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Negus

Royal title of Ethiopia and Eritrea, equivalent to "king" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Negus
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Negus[a] is the word for "king" in the Ethiopian Semitic languages and a title[2] which was usually bestowed upon a regional ruler by the Negusa Nagast, or "king of kings,"[3] in pre-1974 Ethiopia. The negus is referred to as Al-Najashi (النجاشي) in the Islamic tradition.

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Tekle Haymanot, negus of Gojjam

History

Negus is a noun derived from the Ge'ez Semitic root ngś, meaning "to reign". The title Negus literally translated to Basileus (Greek: βασιλεύς) in Ancient Greek, which was seen many times on Aksumite currency. The title has subsequently been used to translate the word "king" or "emperor" in Biblical and other literature. In more recent times, it was used as an honorific title bestowed on governors of the most important provinces (kingdoms): Gojjam, Begemder, Wello, Tigray and the seaward kingdom, (where the variation Bahri Negasi (Sea King), was the title of the ruler of present-day central Eritrea). The military title "Meridazmatch" was initially used by the rulers of Shewa until the reign of Sahle Selassie, when he and his successors adopted the royal title as well.[4][5] It was mistakenly used to refer to the Atse in early western sources and was loaned into Hindi through Arabic as "नजाशी."

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Etymology

Sometime during the development of the Ethio-Semitic language family "m-l-k," the original triconsonantal root for king, was elevated to the generic word for "god" in the form of the broken plural "ʾämlak/ʔamlāk." During this time period the semitic term for a ruler or lord, n-g-s, began to mean "king." Along with the term, in the earliest Ethiopian state of D'mt the South Semitic term Mukarrib (priest king), mostly associated with the Kingdom of Sheba, was in use and the Ge'ez malak remained in throne names into the Gondarine period. In an ancient Aramaic inscription mentioning the god ʿAṯtar his name is followed by the title 𐡍𐡂𐡔 (ngš), corresponding to Ancient North Arabian 𐪌𐪔𐪆 (ngś), meaning "the ruler."[6] The vocabularies of various other East and West Semitic languages such as Akkadian contained cognates to the Habesha term "negus" with definitions ranging from regional lord to tyrant.

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See also

Footnotes

  1. English pronunciation: /ˈnɡəs/ or /nɪˈɡs/;[1] Ge'ez: ንጉሥ, nəgueś [nɨgueɬ]; cf. Amharic: ነጋሲ nəgus [nɨgus]

References

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