ETHIOPIA - Land of origins

Discover Ethiopia – Towards the origins of coffee: Land of the former kingdom of the mysterious Saba region (Sheba), Ethiopia is an Orthodox enclave on the continent marked by ethnic and religious contrasts of Africa. Ethiopia's distant historical past is lost in biblical halo legends. According to some historians, the origin of humanity is considered to be this area of Africa and is similar to Eden. Ethiopia is the second state in history (after Armenia) to adopt Christianity as the state religion; with over 35 million followers, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the second largest after the Russian Church. Ethiopian Orthodoxy has preserved many of the traditions of early Christianity. Ethiopian Christian mythology claims that the Holy Ark in which the tablets of the law of Moses (the Tablets of the Convenient) are kept were brought to Ethiopia by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and are kept in the church of St. Mary – Mother of God in Axum. The original population of this area was of Semitic origin, the majority to this day (Habasii); the Axumite language has become the sacred liturgical language – in which the Old and New Testaments are written and in which the services of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church take place. In its history, Ethiopia has experienced two periods of balance: that of 1936-1941, when it was a colony of Italy (one of the African countries with the shortest colonial period) and that of 1974 and 1991, when, following a coups, the monarchy was abolished and was led by a military junta that established a socialist regime. The oppressive regime was overthrown in 1991, a constitution was adopted in 1994 and the first democratic elections took place in 1995.