(c) Thirdly, on the E. side of the Ethiopian range, and ex- tending to the Red Sea and the Gulf of .\den, is a vast tract inhabited now by three Hamitic races called Oromo or Gallas, Afar or Danakils, and Somalis, not yet thoroughl.v explore'I, ainong the descriptions of which may be mentioned Horelli'a J'Jthwpie 3f**n'(/j«/m^r (Paris, 18f!0), and Paulitsche's Klhmdogie Ont-Afrika's (Wieti, 1803), 'The geology, botany, and zoology of 'Ethiopia' are elattorately treated in Decken's Reisen in Ost- A/rika (1879), ap. iii. 3.
3. Sketch of History. — Portions of this vast region were under some sort of government during the existence of the ancient kingdom of Napata, the earlier history of which has been sketched in tlie article CusH. In the time of Ptolemy I'hila- delphus wo find an Amonian king Ergamenes reigning at Meroe (Diod. iii. G), whose name (Erlvamon, 'oath of Amon') was found in cartouches on Nubian monuments shortly after the commence- ment of hieroglyphic studies (see Champollion, Vnynge en Nuhie, 119; Rosellini, Monuinenti Storichi, ii. 321). To the .time of the same Ptolemy, Hrugsch (Zschr. f. Aqypt. Sprnrhe, etc. 1890, p. 29) assigns the reign of a king Horsiatef or Arsiotes (whose stele with a lengthy inscription is reproduced by Mariette, Monuments iHrcrs, plate 11); and two kings of the same family aa Ergamenes, Onclimachis and Honuachis, after the death of Ptolemy Philopator seized the Tliebaid, where they reigned twenty years (ISrugsch, I.e.; K6villout, Eev. &gyptol. v. 39)r. ). As Euergetesl. is said to have sent an expedition into Lower Nubia (Mon. Adttl.), the two powers must have been long at variance. The invaders of the The- baid wore ejected by Ptolemy Epipliane.s — if the combinations of IWvillout V)c correct— by the aid of the Hlemmyans, an Ethiopian tribe, whose princes henceforth become supreme at Meroe, though acknowledging the suzerainty of the Egyptians and their heirs the Romans, whence it comes that
790
ETHIOPIA
ETHIOPIAX WOMAN
inscriptions in lionour of Tiberius and Nero have been found at Dakke (the ancient Pselcis).
An att«ropt was made during the reign of Augustus by a queen named Candace to drive the Romans out of the Thebaid, resulting in the taking of Napala and Meroe by C. Petronius in B.C. 24 ; but as peace was m.ade with the Ethiopian queen by Augustus at Samos in B.C. 21, the defeat of the former may not have been so complete as Strabo represents it (Book xvii. ; Ittivillout, i.e.). The same queen has been identified with a Kvpi» paW^jfl-ff-ot, who is mentioned in an inscription of the year B.C. 13 as sending an embas.<!y into Rom. territory (Wilcken in Hermes for 1893. p. 145 on Clii iii. 5080) ; and this name Kandake (in Kg^-p. RfiMki-i with family name Ainn-arit ; Lepaius, Denk- jmi/er, v. 47 a and b ; ap. Bruj^ch, Enlziff. der Meroit. Deilkin. p. 7) is said to have been the official name of the queen of Ethiopia (Bion of Soli, Frag. Hut. Greece, Iv. 351, 6). Beyond a solitary allusion to the queen of Meroe in Ac 8^7 the history of this state is blank till a much later period, when the Blemmyans came into collision with the Roman empire (R6viliout, iUm. sur leu Ulcitimyens in * if^m. pr«^s. par divers savants ^ rAcad^mie,' \\n. 2. 371) ; and Pliny asserts that a tribune with some praatorians sent to reconnoitre by Nero, who was con- templating an Ethiopian war, reported that the regions about MeroS were deserted (A'af. Hist. \i. 35). It has been con-
iectured by Dillmann (* Uber die Anfange des Aksumitischen teiches' in Abhandll. der Akad. zu Berlin, 1S78, p. 204) that the downfall of Meroe was the result of the campaijcn of Petronius. Though this ma.v seem doubtful, he is probably right in connecting with the fall of MeroS the rise of another state in Abyssinia ; for whereas the classical geographers prior to A.D. 50 (Agatharchides of Cnidus, of the 2nd cent. B.C., excerpted in Photii Bibliotheca ; Artemidorus of Ephesus, of the Ist cent. B.C.; Diodorus Siculus, who relies in his elaborate account of Ethiopia, Bk. iii. 10-37, chiefly on Agatharchides, but partly on information which he had himself collected m Egypt ; Strabo, and Pliny) know of no other state but that of Meroe, the author of the Periplus Maris Erythrcei (of the second half of the 1st cent. A.n.) knows of a metropolis of the AuxoraitiB (A!^|»/^Taj) situated at a distance of eight days from Adulis, ' whither all the ivory from beyond the Nile is brought through Cyenium to Adulis' for exportation. It was governed by a king named Zoskales ; and in one of the inscriptions of Adul recorded by Cosmas Indicopleustes, the king, inferred from the phrases he employs to have been king of Axum, a worshipper of the Greek gods Ares, Zeus, and Poseidon, enumer- ates conquests extending over a great portion of modern Abyssinia, and into neighbouring tribes and countries, in a Ust wherein many extant names figure for the first time. Since this king claims to have been the first of his line to conquer tribes which, in the time of the Periplus, were subject to Zoskales, Dillmann (I.e. 200) argues plausibly that the monu- ment of Adulis is earher than the Periplus ; whence it would appear that the empire of Axum came into being somewhere in the middle of the 1st cent. A.D. The date cannot be much earlier, since othenvise its existence could not have escaped the Greeks, who had many factories on the Red Sea coast, dating from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who is said to have organized elephant-hunting expeditions. Although there follows a gap of some centuries in the history of Axum, it is clear that the great antiquity claimed for their empire by the native Abyssinian chroniclers is fabulous (see Dillmann, ZDMO vii.) as well as its supposed Jewish basis. Besides Meroe and Axum, the classical writers know only of tribes existing in Ethiopia in various stages of savagery, some of whose characteristics may well be preserved in extant races, while some may be relegated to tbe region of fable. (See further CusB.)