46

EXTENT OF KNOWN COURSE OF THE NILE.

BOOK II.

Ethiopia. Psammetichus, informed of the movement, set out in pursuit, and coming up with them, besought them with many words not to desert the gods of their country, nor abandon their wives and children. "Nay, but," said one of the deserters with an unseemly gesture, "wherever we go, we are sure enough of finding wives and children." Arrived in Ethiopia, they placed themselves at the disposal of the king. In return, he made them a present of a tract of land which belonged to certain Ethiopians with whom he was at feud, bidding them expel the inhabitants and take possession of their territory. From the time that this settlement was formed, their acquaintance with Egyptian manners has tended to civilise the Ethiopians."

31. Thus the course of the Nile is known, not only throughout Egypt, but to the extent of four months' journey either by land or water above the Egyptian boundary; for on calculation it will be found that it takes that length of time to travel from Elephantiné to the country of the Deserters. There the direction of the river is from west to east.' Beyond, no one has any certain knowledge of its course, since the country is uninhabited by reason of the excessive heat.

32. I did hear, indeed, what I will now relate, from certain natives of Cyrêné. Once upon a time, they said, they were

6 This would be a strong argument, if required, against the notion of civilization having come from the Ethiopians to Egypt; but the monuments prove beyond all question that the Ethiopians borrowed from Egypt their religion and their habits of civilization. They even adopted the Egyptian as the language of religion and of the court, which it continued to be till the power of the Pharaohs had fallen, and their dominion was again confined to the frontier of Ethiopia. It was through Egypt too that Christianity passed into Ethiopia, even in the age of the Apostles (Acts viii. 27), as is shown by the eunuch of

queen Candace (see note on this chapter). Other proofs of their early conversion are also found, as in the inscriptions at Farras, above Aboosimbel, one of which has the date of Diocletian, though the Nobatæ are said not to have become Christians till the reign of Justinian. The erroneous notion of Egypt having borrowed from Ethiopia may perhaps have been derived from the return of the Egyptian court to Egypt after it had retired to Ethiopia on the invasion of the Shepherds.-[G. W.]

7 This only applies to the white river, or western branch of the Nile. -[G. W.]

CHAP. 30-32.

INTERIOR OF LIBYA.

on a visit to the oracular shrine of Ammon,8 when it chanced that in the course of conversation with Etearchus, the Ammonian king, the talk fell upon the Nile, how that its Etearchus upon this sources were unknown to all men.

mentioned that some Nasamonians had once come to his court, and when asked if they could give any information concerning the uninhabited parts of Libya, had told the following tale. (The Nasamonians are a Libyan race who occupy the Syrtis, and a tract of no great size towards the east.1) They said there had grown up among them some wild young men,

8 This was in the modern Oasis of
See-wah (Siwah), where remains of
The oracle
the temple are still seen.
long continued in great repute, and
though in Strabo's time it began to
lose its importance (the mode of
divination learnt from Etruria having
superseded the consultation of the
distant Ammon), still its answers
were sought in the solution of difficult
questions in the days of Juvenal,
'after the cessation of the Delphic
oracle." In consulting the God at the
Oasis of Ammon, it was customary,
says Quintus Curtius, "for the priests
to carry the figure of the God in a
gilded boat, ornamented with nume.
rous silver patera hanging from it on
both sides, behind which followed a
train of matrons and virgins singing a
certain uncouth hymn, in the manner
of the country, with a view to propi-
See
tiate the deity, and induce him to
return a satisfactory answer."
the boat or ark of Nou (Nef) in the
Temple of Elephantiné in Pl. 56, 57 of
Dr. Young and the Egyptian Society.
Of the appearance of the God he says,
"id quod pro Deo colitur, non eandem
effigiem habet, quam vulgo Diis arti-
umbriculo
fices, accommodaverunt,

maxime similis est habitus, smaragdis
et gemmis coagmentatus;" but the
word umbriculo has perplexed all

commentators.

All the cultivable spots, abounding with springs, in that desert, are called Wah; the chief of which are the See

wah, the Little Oasis, the Wah sur-
named e' Dakhleh, i.e., "the inner,"
or western, and the Wah el Khargeh,
"the outer Oasis," to the east of it,
which is the Great Oasis. The others,
of El Hayz, Faráfreh, and the Oases
of the Blacks, in the interior, to the
westward, are small, and some of them
only temporarily inhabited; but those
above mentioned are productive, and
abound in palms, fruit-trees, rice,
barley, and various productions. They
are not, as often supposed, cultivated
spots in the midst of an endless level
tract of sand, but abrupt depressions
in the high table-land, portions of
which are irrigated by running
streams, and, being surrounded by
cliffs more or less precipitous, are in
appearance not unlike a portion of
the valley of the Nile, with its palm-
trees, villages, and gardens, trans-
ported to the desert, without its river,
and bordered by a sandy plain reach-
bushes,
ing to the hills that surround it, in
which stunted tamarisk
desert plants
coarse grasses, and
struggle to keep themselves above the
drifted sand that collects around
them.-[G. W.]

66

9 This word seems to be "Nahsi Amun," or 'Negroes of Ammonitis," or Northern Libya; Nahsi being the Egyptian name for the Negroes of Africa. See my note on ch. 182, Book iv.-[G. W.]

1 Vide infra iv. 172, 173.

CHAP. 32.

INTERIOR OF LIBYA.

49

the sons of certain chiefs, who, when they came to man's estate, indulged in all manner of extravagancies, and among other things drew lots for five of their number to go and explore the desert parts of Libya, and try if they could not penetrate further than any had done previously. (The coast of Libya along the sea which washes it to the north, throughout its entire length from Egypt to Cape Soloeis, which is its furthest point, is inhabited by Libyans of many distinct tribes who possess the whole tract except certain portions which belong to the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Above the coast

2 This is supposed by Rennell to be Cape Cantin, near Mogador, on the W. coast of Africa; but, with great deference to so high an authority, I am in. clined to think it Cape Spartel, near Tangier, as the Persian Sataspes, condemned by Xerxes to undertake the voyage round Africa, is said, after sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar (Pillars of Hercules) and dou. bling the Libyan promontory called Soloeis, to have steered southwards, for here the southerly course evidently begins (see Book iv. ch. 42). Herodotus, too, measures the breadth of Libya from Egypt to the extreme end of the northern coast, not to the most westerly headland to the south of it, which too he is not likely to have known; and Aristotle (De Mundo, 3) shows the Greeks measured the extent of Africa E. and W., only along the northern coast, by saying "it extends to the Pillars of Hercules."[G. W.]

3 That is, the Cyrenaica, and the possessions of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, or more properly the Poni, on the N. and W. coasts. Pœni, Punici, and Phoenices were the same name of the race, oi, or œ, and u having the same sound in Greek. Carthaginian signified properly the people of Carthage, as Tyrians did the "Phoenicians of Tyre; " for the Phonicians called themselves from the name of their towns, Tyrians, Sidonians, &c. Cartha, the "city," was first applied to Tyre, from which Hercules ob

VOL. II.

8

Baal of Tyre."

Carthagena (Carthagina, Carthage)
was Kartha Yena, the "new city
(Kaiǹ móλIs), in opposition to the
parent Tyre, or to Utica, i.e. Atíka,
the "old" (city), which was founded
before by the Phoenicians on the
African coast about B. C. 1520, or ac-
cording to Velleius Paterculus (i. 2),
at the same time as Megara, B.C. 1131.
Utica was probably not so called till
after the building of Carthage (as
Musr-el-Atika received that name
after the foundation of the new Musr,
or Cairo). The "new town," Cartha-
gena, was the nova Carthago" of
Dido (Ovid, Ep. Dido to En.; Virg.
Æn. i. 366); but it was founded B.C.
1259, long before Dido's supposed
time. Some think it was built more
than two centuries after Gades and
Tartessus in Spain, and Velleius
Paterculus says Gades was a few
years older than Utica. He dates
the building of Carthage by Elissa,
or Dido, 60 years before Rome, or 813
B.C. (i. 6); but his authority is of no
weight. (Cp. Justin. xviii. 5.) Car.
tha is the same as Kiriath, common
in Hebrew names. Some object to
the above derivation of Cartha-jena,

E

50

CROSSING THE DESERT.

BOOK II.

line and the country inhabited by the maritime tribes, Libya is full of wild beasts; while beyond the wild-beast region there is a tract which is wholly sand, very scant of water, and utterly and entirely a desert. The young men therefore, despatched on this errand by their comrades with a plentiful supply of water and provisions, travelled at first through the inhabited region, passing which they came to the wild-beast tract, whence they finally entered upon the desert, which they proceeded to cross in a direction from east to west. After journeying for many days over a wide extent of sand, they came at last to a plain where they observed trees growing; approaching them, and seeing fruit on them, they proceeded to gather it. While they were thus engaged, there came upon them some dwarfish men," under the middle height, who seized

because jena or yena, "new," is not a Semitic, but a Turk or Tartar word, and is properly yengi or yeki; and they prefer the Greek Carchedo as the name of the city, deriving it from Caer or Car, and hedish or hedith, "new." The latter word is found in Bezetha, "New-town" (Joseph. Bell. Jud. v. 4). But whether jena is admissible or no, Cartha is the substantive, as in Melkarth, or Melek Kartha, "Lord of the City" applied to Hercules in Phoenician inscriptions, and found in Carteia and Kiriath. The resemblance of the name of its citadel Byrsa (said to have been called from the hide) to those of Borsippa, or BirsNimroud, and the Arab Boursa near Babylon, is singular.

A record seems still to be preserved of the Phoenician trade on the western coast of Africa, in the peculiar glassbeads found there, which are known to be ancient, and are now highly prized. The Venetians send out a modern imperfect imitation of them to Africa. They are also said to have been found in Cornwall and in Ireland.—(G. W.]

4 Vide infrà, iv. 181, for the division of Africa into three regions; and for the true character of the desert, see note on iv. 185.

5 Men of diminutive size really exist

in Africa, but the Nasamones probably only knew of some by report. Those to the S.W. of Abyssinia are called Dokos. Dr. Krapf says they have dark olive complexions, and live in a completely savage state, having neither houses, temples, nor holy trees, like the Gallas; yet with an idea of a higher Being called Yer, to whom they pray with their head upon the ground and their feet supported upright against a tree, or a stone. They have no laws, and no arms, but feed on roots, mice, serpents, honey, etc. They are about 4 feet high. They are not Negroes. (See Ethnological Journal, No. 1, p. 43, and No. 2.) Some have thought the Simia Sylvanus of Africa gave rise to the story, agreeing as it does with their description by Photius (Cod. iii. Bibl. p. 8): “ ὑπὸ δὲ τριχῶν δεδασυμένους διὰ παντὸς τοῦ σώματος.” The pigmies are mentioned by Homer (Il. iii, 6) and others, and often represented on Greek vases. Homer and Aristotle (Hist. An. viii. 12) place them near the sources of the Nile, which might agree with the Dokos. Pliny (vi. 19), Philostratus (Vit. Apoll. Ty. iii. 47), and others, place them in India (see Ctesias Ind. § 11). Strabo (i. p. 50) says the fable was invented by