СНАР. 30. HISTORY OF THE DESERTERS. 45. who, to the number of two hundred and forty thousand, went over to the Ethiopians in the reign of king Psammetichus. The cause of their desertion was the following:-Three garrisons were maintained in Egypt at that time, one in the city of Elephantiné against the Ethiopians, another in the Pelusiac Daphnæ,5 against the Syrians and Arabians, and a third, against the Libyans, in Marea. (The very same posts are to this day occupied by the Persians, whose forces are in garrison both in Daphne and in Elephantiné.) Now it happened, that on one occasion the garrisons were not relieved during the space of three years; the soldiers, therefore, at the end of that time, consulted together, and having determined by common consent to revolt, marched away towards "King Psamatichus having come to Elephantiné, those who were with Psamatichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this. They sailed, and came to above Kerkis, to where the river rises (?) .... the Egyptian Amasis. The writer is Damearchon, the son of Amoebichus, and Pelephus (?) the son of Udamus" (?). (This Ph looks rather like the old K or Q.) In the same place are several other inscriptions, some of the same style and time, and others written by Phoeni cians in their language, the date of which is unknown. If this was the 3rd, instead of the 1st Psammetichus, "the Egyptian Amasis" may have been the general, afterwards king of Egypt; for Herodotus, who only mentions one Psammetichus, may have been wrong in supposing the deser. tion of the troops took place under the son of Neco. This would bring the date of the inscription within 600 B.C. (See note 8 on ch. 161, and hist. notice App. CH. viii. § 34.) There is a coin of Thrace of date about 550 B.C. which has the (in Millingen), though many much later have not the long vowels. Coins and vases are no authorities against their use, as the archaic style was imitated to a late time. Some inscriptions, as that of Potidea in the British Museum, as late as 432, have no H nor . The E It was always the custom of the Egyptians to have a garrison stationed, as Herodotus states, on the frontier, at Elephantiné, at Daphnæ of Pelusium, and at Marea; but in the time of the victorious kings of the 18th dynasty others were stationed at Semneh, above the second cataract, and also further south in Upper Ethiopia, as well as in various parts of Asia, where they had extended their conquests, which last were only finally taken from them in the time of Neco II., the son and successor of this Psammetichus.-[G. W.] 5 Daphnæ, Daphné, or Daphnes was 16 Roman miles from Pelusium, according to the Itinerary of Antoninus. It was the Tahpanhes of Scripture. See Jer. xliii. 8; Ezek. xxx. 18.[G. W.] 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. no one has any certain knowledge of its course, since the country is uninhabited by reason of the excessive heat. Beyond, 32. I did hear, indeed, what I will now relate, from certain natives of Cyrêné. Once upon a time, they said, they were 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. 47 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 sources were unknown to all men. Etearchus upon this 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 temple are still seen. The oracle 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 pateræ 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 propitiate the deity, and induce him to return a satisfactory answer." See 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 fices, accommodaverunt, umbriculo 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 palmtrees, villages, and gardens, transported to the desert, without its river, and bordered by a sandy plain reaching to the hills that surround it, in which stunted tamarisk bushes, coarse grasses, and desert plants struggle to keep themselves above the drifted sand that collects around them.-[G. W.] 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 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 inclined 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). Herodotas, 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 ce, and u having the same sound in Greek. Carthaginian signified properly the people of Carthage, as Tyrians did the "Phoenicians of Tyre;" for the Phoenicians 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. Carthagena (Carthagina, Carthage) was Kartha Yena, the "new city' (Kaiǹ TÓXIS), 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 according 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," Carthagena, was the "nova Carthago" of Dido (Ovid, Ep. Dido to Æn.; 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 |