The perfect time to pick up some lip balms ! I wish I could get every one . <| sep |> Most games totally give that option . <| sep |> Calm down and have a tendie . <| sep |> You are correct that Amhara elites had dominated Ethiopian politics and culture throughout the imperial period . I wouldn ' t agree with your presumption that Bahir Dar should be the capital , given that it exists as the capital of the Amhara Region of Ethiopia . In fact , the current administrative divisions of Ethiopia only date to 1992 . If you look back to the older provinces of ethiopia and compare them sidebyside to the current regions you will see the older administrative divisions don ' t correspond to the ethnic homelands of today . I should also say that prior to the 20 th century , the imperial government of Ethiopia was quite decentralized . The rulers of each of these provinces were called Negus which literally means king , and they ideally owed their loyalty to the Negusa Negast , the King of Kings i . e . the emperor . In reality , there were often rebellions or attempts to overthrow the emperor by ambitious neguses . I will also note that these kings and other nobles spoke amhara , and were culturally amhara even if they ruled over a province that was populated by nonamhara peoples . The origins of Addis Ababa date to 1881 , when the negus of Shewa , Sahle Maryam , founded the town and moved his capital from Ankober to Addis Ababa . Later on , in 1889 the emperor Yohannes IV died in battle , leaving the throne to his son Mengesha Yohannes who ruled Tigray province . However , Sahle Maryam said that he had a better claim to be emperor because he could trace an allmale line back to a Solomonic emperor , while Yohannes IV and Mengesha Yohannes had a claim that went through a female line . In the conflict that ensued , the armies of Shewa defeated the armies of Tigray , and Sahle Maryam took the throne as Emperor Menelik II in 1891 and ruled until 1913 . So , as Menelik rose to power , Addis Ababa also rose in importance , from being the capital of Shewa to being the capital of all of Ethiopia . After Menelik died , his descendants would continue to control the imperial throne through the last Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie . At the same time , the capital remained in Addis Ababa where the House of Shewa had power . By the time of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974 , Addis Ababa had been the capital for such a long time , and the infrastructure of governance had been built up around it , the Derg and the current EPRDF government haven ' t chosen to move the capital anywhere else .