page_title: Cushitic peoples
section_title: Ethnonym
hierarchical_section_title: Cushitic peoples / Ethnonym
caption_attribution_description: An Afar man in traditional nomad attire.
context_page_description: The Cushitic peoples are a grouping of people who are primarily indigenous to Northeast Africa and speak or have historically spoken Cushitic languages of the Afroasiatic language family. Cushitic languages are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, as well as the Nile Valley, and parts of the African Great Lakes region. Some examples of these peoples include the Cushitic speaking ethnic groups.
  Linguistic evidence indicates that Cushitic languages were spoken in Lower Nubia, an ancient region which straddles present day Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan, before the arrival of North Eastern Sudanic languages from Upper Nubia. Many extinct populations of northern Nubia such as the Medjay and the Blemmyes spoke Cushitic languages related to the modern Beja language. Less certain are hypotheses which propose that Cushitic languages were spoken by the people of the C-Group culture in northern Nubia, or the people of the Kerma culture in southern Nubia. Historical linguistic analysis indicates that the languages spoken in the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture of the Rift Valley and surrounding areas, may have been languages of the South Cushitic branch.
context_section_description: The word Cushi or Kushi (Hebrew: כּוּשִׁי‎ kuši) appears several times in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a dark-skinned person of Northeast African descent, equivalent to Greek Aethiops. The word has later been changed to "Ethiopia/Ethiopian" in non-Hebrew versions of the Bible to match the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. 
  Cushi is a derivation of Cush (כּוּשׁ Kūš), referring to the ancient Kingdom of Kush. In the Hebrew Bible, Cushites are considered descendants of Noah's grandson, Cush the son of Ham. In biblical and historical usage this continued, the term "Cushites" (Ethiopid race) referring to individuals of East African origin (Horn of Africa and Sudan). The Cushitic-speaking peoples today comprise the Agaw, Oromo, Somali, Afar, and several other tribes, and were considered offspring of Cush in Masudi's Meadows of Gold from 947 AD. The Beja people, who also speak a Cushitic language, have specific genealogical traditions of descent from Cush.
  The term Cushite then derives from the ancient peoples of northeastern Africa, whose heritage can be traced most clearly in the languages descended from those of the ancient peoples who inhabited the corridor between present day Southern Egypt and Tanzania. In broad terms the peoples now designated as Cushite are the cultural descendants of those peoples. The term Cushite today is an ethnolinguistic designation, languages have a much more stable and traceable identity and heritage than cultural groups. The Cushite peoples are thus those who speak languages or have historically spoken languages of the Cushite cluster in the Afro-Asiatic language family. These cultural groups may be of diverse types and exhibit a variety of unique features but with powerful common cultural, ethnic and linguistic traits, including nomadic cattle pastoralist traditions.
caption: Afar man in traditional nomadic attire.
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