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Ethiopia is one of the most ancient countries in the world. Officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, it is the third most populous nation in Africa and the tenth largest by area. The capital is Addis Ababa.

Whereas most African states are far less than a century old, Ethiopia has been an independent country continuously since ancient times. A monarchial state for most of its history, the Ethiopian dynasty traces its roots to the 10th century BC. When Africa was divided up by European powers at the Berlin Conference, Ethiopia was one of only two states that retained its independence. Ethiopia was one of only three African members of the League of Nations, and after a brief period of Italian occupation, Ethiopia became a charter member of the United Nations. When other African nations received their independence following World War II, many of them adopted the colors of Ethiopia's flag, and Addis Ababa became the location of several international organizations focused on Africa. In 1974, the dynasty led by Haile Selassie was overthrown. Since then, Ethiopia has been a secular state with a variety of governmental systems. Today, Addis is still the site of the headquarters of the African Union and UNECA.

Besides being an ancient country, Ethiopia is one of the oldest sites of human existence known to scientists today—having yielded some of humanity's oldest traces, it might potentially prove to be the place where homo sapiens originated. Ethiopia has the largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa. It also has close historical ties to all three of the world's major Abrahamic religions. Ethiopia was one of the first Christian countries in the world, having officially adopted it as the state religion in the 4th century. It still has a Christian majority, but a third of the population is Muslim. Ethiopia is the site of the first Hijra in Islamic history and the oldest Muslim settlement in Africa at Negash. It is also the spiritual homeland of the Rastafarian religion. Until the 1980s, a substantial population of Ethiopian Jews also resided in Ethiopia. In addition, there are altogether around 80 different ethnic groups in Ethiopia today, with the largest being the Oromo followed by the Amhara, both of which speak Afro-Asiatic languages. The country is also famous for its rock-hewn churches and as the place where the coffee bean originated.

In the period after the overthrow of the monarchy, Ethiopia devolved into one of the poorest countries on earth. It underwent a series of tragic famines in the 1980s, resulting in perhaps a million deaths. Slowly, however, the country has begun to recover, and today the Ethiopian economy is one of the fastest growing in Africa. Unfortunately, as in many places, this growth is having negative impacts on the environment.

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It is not very certain how old Ethiopia is; its earliest attested use appears in the Bible in Genesis chapter two as the origins of where Adam and Eve lived. And also in the Iliad, where it appears twice, and in the Odyssey, where it appears three times. The earliest attested use in the region is as a Christianized name for the Kingdom of Aksum in the 4th century, in stone inscriptions of King Ezana. Pliny the Elder similarly states the tradition that the nation took its name from someone named Aethiops. A third etymology, suggested by the late Ethiopian scholar and poet laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, traces the name to the "old black Egyptian" words Et (Truth or Peace) Op (high or upper) and Bia (land, country), or "land of higher peace".

In English and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was also once historically known as Abyssinia, derived from Habesh, an early Arabic form of the Ethiosemitic name "Ḥabaśāt" (unvocalized "ḤBŚT"), modern Habesha, the native name for the country's inhabitants (while the country was called "Ityopp'ya"). In a few languages, Ethiopia is still referred to by names cognate with "Abyssinia," e.g., and modern Arabic Al-Ḥabashah, meaning land of the Habasha people.

The term Habesha, strictly speaking, refers only to the Amhara and Tigray-Tigrinya people who have historically dominated the country politically, and which combined comprise about 36% of Ethiopia's population. Sometimes, the term is used to label the nearly 45% of Ethiopian population who used Semitic languages since ancient times like the Amharic (30.1% of Ethiopian population), Tigray (6.2%), Gurage (4.3%) and other smaller Semitic speaking communities like the Harari people in South east Ethiopia. Though since Amharic became the official language of the country, most of the population of the SNNPR and a significant portion of the Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz regions use it as a second language. In contrast, in contemporary Ethiopia, the word Habesha is often used to describe all Ethiopians and Eritreans. Abyssinia can strictly refer to just the northwestern Ethiopian provinces of Amhara and Tigray as well as central Eritrea, while it was historically used as another name for Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has also been known to be considered the land of Kush. The name was originally derived from the Hebrews to refer to the nations on the eastern coast of the Red Sea. However, the Bible is clear in stating that the Cush people are actually Ethiopians. When Moses referred to the people of Cush, it was in reference of a kindred nation to the Egyptians. Because of the close political relations of Egypt and Ethiopia, both nations at one point in time were under the term Cush according to late Hebrew historians. Even though the original intentions of the word were in reference to both sides of the Red Sea, evidence has shown that parts of the eastern coast did belong to the Ethiopians.