a large empire in Africa, formerly bounded on the north, by Egypt; on the west, by Libya Interior; on the east, by the Red Sea; and on the south, by a part of Africa unknown to the ancients; as indeed its boundaries, and the kingdom itself, are to this day very much unknown to our modern geographers. This country had various names given it by the ancients. Sometimes they called it India, and the inhabitants Indians; which name they applied to many other remote nations. It was likewise denominated Atlantis and Eteria, and in very early ages Cephenia. The most usual name, however, was Abafene; a word somewhat resembling Abaffa, one of the modern names of Ethiopia. On the other hand, we find Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, &c. styled Ethiopia by some authors; and it is certain that the ancients called all those countries extending along the Red Sea, indifferently by the names of India and Ethiopia. By the Jews it was called Cush and Ludim.
The history of this country is almost totally unknown, except where its kings had wars with some other nations, as the Egyptians, Jews, or Romans; for an account of which, see the articles EGYPT, JUDEA, ROMA, &c. Concerning the manners and customs of its inhabitants, ancient authors give us the following information.
They had many laws which were very different from those of other nations; especially their laws relating to the election of kings. The priests chose the most reputable men of their body, and drew a large circle around them, which they were not to pass. A priest entered the circle, running and jumping like an Ægipian or a satyr. He of those that were inclosed in the circle who first caught hold of the priest, was immediately declared king; and all the people paid him homage, as a person entrusted with the government of the nation by Divine Providence. The new-elected king immediately began to live in the manner which was prescribed to him by the laws. In all things he exactly followed the customs of the country; he paid a most rigid attention to the rules established from the origin of the nation, in dispensing rewards and punishments. The king could not order a subject to be put to death, though he had been capitally convicted in a court of justice. But he sent an officer to him, who showed him the signal of death. The criminal then shut himself up in his house, and was his own executioner. It was not permitted him to fly to a neighbouring country, and substitute banishment for death; a relaxation of the rigour of the law, with which criminals were indulged in Greece.
We have the following extraordinary information with regard to the death of many of their kings.—The priests of Meroë, who had acquired great power there, when they thought proper, dispatched a courier to the king to order him to die. The courier was commissioned to tell him, that it was the will of the gods, and that it would be the most heinous of crimes to oppose an order which came from them. Their first kings obeyed these groundless despotical sentences, though they were only constrained to such obedience by their own superstition. Ergamenes, who reigned in the time of Ptolemy the second, and who was instructed in the philosophy of the Greeks, was the first who had the courage to shake off this iniquitous and fæcedotal yoke. Having formed a resolution which was truly worthy of a king, he led an army against Meroë, where, in more ancient times, was the Ethiopian temple of gold. He put all the priests to the sword, and instituted a new worship.
The friends of the king had imposed on themselves a very singular law, which was in force in the time of Diodorus Siculus. When their sovereign had lost the use of any part of his body, by malady, or by any other accident, they inflicted the same infirmity on themselves; deeming it, for instance, shameful to walk straight after a lame king. They thought it absurd not to share with him corporal inconveniences; since we are bound by the ties of mere friendship to participate the misfortunes and prosperity of our friends. It was even customary among them to die with their kings, which they thought a glorious testimony of their constant loyalty. Hence the subjects of an Ethiopian king were very attentive to his and their common preservation; and therefore, it was extremely difficult and dangerous to form a conspiracy against him.
The Ethiopians had very particular ceremonies in their funerals. According to Ctesias, after having salted the bodies, they put them into a hollow statue of gold which resembled the deceased; and that statue was placed in a niche on a pillar which they set up for that purpose. But it was only the remains of the richest Ethiopians that were thus honoured. The bodies of the next class were contained in silver statues; the poor were entombed in statues of earthen ware.
Herodotus informs us, that the nearest relations of the dead kept the body a year in their houses, and offered sacrifices and first-fruits during that time to their deceased friend; and at the end of the year, they fixed the niche in a place set apart for the purpose, near their town.
The Ethiopians made use of bows and arrows, darts, lances, and several other weapons, in their wars, which they managed with great strength and dexterity. Circumcision was a rite observed amongst them, as well as Ethiopia, among the Egyptians, from very early antiquity; nor which of these nations first received it, cannot certainly be known. The Ethiopian soldiers tied their arrows round their heads, the feathered part of which touched their foreheads, temples, &c. and the other projected out like to many rays, which formed a kind of crown. These arrows were extremely short, pointed with sharp stones instead of iron, and dipped in the virus of serpents, or some other lethiferous poison, inasmuch that all the wounds given by them were attended with immediate death. The bows from which they shot their arrows were four cubits long; and required so much strength to manage them, that no other nation could make use of them. The Ethiopians retreated fighting, in the same manner as the Parthians; discharging volleys of arrows with such dexterity and address whilst they were retiring full-speed, that they terribly galled the enemy. Their lances or darts were of an immense size, which may be deemed a farther proof of their vast bodily strength.
Thus far chiefly with regard to the Ethiopians who lived in the capital, and who inhabited the island of Meroë and that part of Ethiopia which was adjacent to Egypt.
There were many other Ethiopian nations, some of which cultivated the tracts on each side of the Nile, and the islands in the middle of it; others inhabited the provinces bordering on Arabia; and others lived more towards the centre of Africa. All these people, and among the rest those who were born on the banks of the river, had flat noses, black skins, and woolen hair. They had a very savage and ferocious appearance; they were more brutal in their customs than in their nature. They were of a dry adult temperament; their nails in length resembled claws; they were ignorant of the arts which polish the mind; their language was hardly articulate; their voices were shrill and piercing. As they did not endeavour to render life more commodious and agreeable, their manners and customs were very different from those of other nations. When they went to battle, some were armed with bucklers of ox's hide, with little javelins in their hands; others carried crooked darts; others used the bow, and others fought with clubs. They took their wives with them to war, whom they obliged to enter upon military service at a certain age. The women wore rings of copper at their lips.
Some of these people went without clothing. Sometimes they threw about them what they happened to find, to shelter themselves from the burning rays of the sun. With regard to their food, some lived upon a certain fruit, which grew spontaneously in marshy places; some ate the tenderest shoots of trees, which were defended by the large branches from the heat of the sun; and others sowed Indian corn and lotos. Some of them lived only on the roots of reeds. Many spent a great part of their time in shooting birds; and as they were excellent archers, their bow supplied them with plenty. But the greater part of this people were sustained by the flesh of their flocks.
The people who inhabited the country above Meroë, made remarkable distinctions among their gods. Some, they said, were of an eternal and incorruptible nature, as the sun, the moon, and the universe; others, having having been born among men, had acquired divine honours by their virtue, and by the good which they had done to mankind. They worshipped Isis, Pan, and particularly Jupiter and Hercules, from whom they supposed they had received most benefits. But some Ethiopians believed that there were no gods; and when the sun rose, they fled into their marshes, execrating him as their cruellest enemy.
These Ethiopians differed likewise from other nations in the honours which they paid to their dead. Some threw their bodies into the river, thinking that the most honourable sepulture. Others kept them in their houses in niches: thinking that their children would be stimulated to virtuous deeds by the sight of their ancestors; and that grown people, by the same objects, would retain their parents in their memory. Others put their dead bodies into coffins of earthen ware, and buried them near their temples. To swear with the hand laid upon a corpse, was their most sacred and inviolable oath.
The savage Ethiopians of some districts gave their crown to him who of all their nation was best made. Their reason for that preference was, that the two first gifts of heaven were monarchy and a fine person. In other territories, they conferred the sovereignty on the most vigilant shepherd; for he, they alleged, would be the most careful guardian of his subjects. Others chose the richest man for their king; for he, they thought, would have it most in his power to do good to his subjects. Others, again, chose the strongest; effecting those most worthy of the first dignity, who were ablest to defend them in battle.
Some of the most remarkable of these savage nations the reader may see more particularly described (from the above quoted authors), at the words ACRI-DOPHAGI, HYLOGONES, HYLOPHAGI, ICHTHYOPHAGI, RHIZOPHAGI, STEUTROPHAGI, and TROGLODYTES.
The empire of Ethiopia is now called Abyssinia; but very little either is or can be known concerning it, because the emperors will not allow any European to enter their dominions. This is entirely owing to the Jesuit missionaries, who for some time resided in that country. They were totally expelled about the middle of the last century; no doubt for very good reasons, though they themselves did not think proper to relate them. The most probable accounts of the present state of Ethiopia may be seen under the article ABBYSSINIA and AFRICA.