There were parts of the diaspora that went into Africa very early on, down along the Persian Gulf. They were closely allied with the Carthaginians (present day Lebanese), so they felt comfortable along the trade routes to India, the Red Sea specifically, and that would include Ethiopia to where they also immigrated.
Always at the mercy of the status-quo-ante they would've married into the local population and blended early on.
I have in my files somewhere, an argument about how when the Jews we know today were a tribal people, they left Egypt, and in their travels they entered into an area of the mideast/levant where there were a people who had a monist faith or one god belief system. It is suggested here is where the tribal group that leaves Egypt, absorbs the one true god idea. Before the Jews enter into the promised land they worship many false idols. The Patriarchs are always going to the mountains to worship the old gods -- or something like that.
anyway, it's a great theory based on mythologies that exist at the time and historical records. also, the idea that some people mention Moses parting the Red Sea during the time of some Pharaoh, only in the 20th century(?) we discover that Pharaoh's tomb. If that particular Pharaoh and his army were swept up and engulfed in the Red Sea .. anyway, interesting stuff.
It's said they got their monotheism from the ancient Egyptians, and their singular god Ra. That was the greatest early religious influence on them, supposedly. The Phoenicians are a very interesting people. They spawned the Carthaginians, who had a very interesting mythology/religion.
The Phonicians/Carthaginians dominated the coast coastal region of the Levant, a narrow strip of land with the mountains to their backs, present day Lebanon. They always founded their city-colonies on very difficult and inaccessible sites, and used the natives in the back-country as their agents and as their support system. They allied with the ancient Hebrews who lived just across the mountains. Recall that the Phoenicians created the first phoenetic alphabet, created for the management of inventories and recording stock as merchants in their shipping empire.
Eric Hoffer suggests in his books
Before the Sabbath and Between the Devil and the Dragon that the ancient Hebrews, as agents of the Phoenicians in managing their warehouses in the Levant, became their scribes, giving rise to a society of "intellectuals" or a literate class. When the Phoenicians declined and were harassed by foes in the region the intellectuals were left without status and in their frustration became the first "prophets" of the old testament. That is, they became a class of literate men, with time to think, that wrote about and challenged the status quo in the conflict with the ruling classes. That resulted from their frustration from their loss of status, thus they were the first "fanatics" which are of course those who guide and lead the "true believers."
The Phoenicians dug the first canal to open the Mediterranean Sea to the Red sea to advance their trade into the Indian Ocean, and to the east. There are some interesting connections between the ancient founding Romans and Carthaginians, the basis of their conflict, given rise when the Carthaginians were allies with the Etruscans who supplied them cattle, and who in turn dominated early Rome with their nobles/patricians/best families/kings. That resentment was critical to the Roman cause to destroy Carthage, coming as it did from an ancient hatred of their early days under the servitude of Etruscan kings.
