Negus


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

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," as well as the word for angelic or divine when conjugated as melekot. It is possible the word related to Hebrew El or Allah was lost due to a word taboo much like YHWH. During this time the ancient semitic term for a ruler or lord, n-g-s, began to mean "king." Along with that term, in the early Ethiopian state of D'mt the South Semitic term Mukarrib, mostly associated with the Kingdom of Sheba, was in use and the Ge'ez malak remained in throne names into the Gondarine period. The universal existence of a semantic shift in n-g-s across the Ethio-Semitic languages is evidence that it doesn't comprise separate branches of the Semitic language family.
In an ancient Aramaic inscription mentioning the god ʿAṯtar his name is followed by the title ???, corresponding to Ancient North Arabian ???, meaning "the ruler." 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.

History

Negus is a noun derived from the Semitic root, meaning "to reign". The title Negus literally translated to Basileus 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 : Gojjam, Begemder, Wello, Tigray and the seaward kingdom,. 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. It was mistakenly used to refer to the Atse in western sources be they English, Polish, Hungarian or Romanian, and was loaned into Hindi through Arabic as "नजाशी."

In popular culture