Ethiopian realm

“ No records indeed were discovered of the founders of the first great Ethiopian kingdom from Piankhi to Tirhakah, nor has any fresh light been thrown upon the relations which that remarkable king Ergamenes maintained with the Egyptian Ptolemies. But the exploration of sites in the southern half of Lower Nubia has revealed the existence of a wholly unsuspected independent civilization which grew up during the first six centuries after Christ. ”

“ There were tribes among the Ethiopians which were of a low grade of civilization, just as in the most civilized countries of the present times, there are peoples of a very low grade, not only in civilization but in intelligence. But, there existed a highly cultured and civilized Ethiopian people, who dwelt in cities, erected temples and other edifices, and who had good government and humane laws. Moreover, their fame and progress in knowledge and their social arts spread in the earliest ages over a considerable part of the earth. ”

“ The records show that Mizraim found the Nile in possession of the Ethiopians, who were spread thence through the African desert; a people of rich, fantastic genius, wholly given to the worship of nature. The Poetic Persian sacrificed to the sun, as the completest image of Ormuzd, his God; the devout children of the far East carved their deities out of wood and ivory; but the Ethiopian, without writing, without books, without mechanical faculty of any kind, quieted his soul by the worship of animals, birds, and insects, holding the cat sacred to Re, the bull to Isis, the beetle to Pthah. ”

“ The Abyssinians have from time immemorial expended an entire tree in the reduction to suitable dimensions of every beam or plank employed in their primitive habitations; and it is not therefore surprising that Sáhela Selássie should have been equally delighted and astonished at the economy of time, labour, and material attending the use of the cross-cut saw. From age to age, and generation to generation, the Ethiopian plods on like his forefathers, without even a desire for improvement. Ignorance and indolence confine him to a narrow circle of observation from which he is afraid to move. ”

“ They may be such that in the ordinary course of nature, and so far as its forces and laws are concerned, they are never found to be absent from their connatural substances—inseparable accidents. Thus the colour of the Ethiopian is an inseparable accident of his human nature as an Ethiopian ”

“ Since no creature created in Your image and to Your pattern gives up hope that everything he begs of You will be done for him until the day You sever his soul from his body, we beseech You that Ethiopia should not remain with her freedom extinct and prostrate under an alien ruler, so that the mouth of her people be silenced for fear of a foreign governor, but rather, that You will save them by Your deeds of kindness lest they remain with their hearts oppressed through being deprived of their own Ethiopian ruler who was leading them towards civilization under a light yoke and with gladness. ”

“ I expect every moment the transport-boats requested of Hassan Pasha, which set out eleven days ago, and are to take up our Ethiopian treasures, and bring ourselves to Dongola. The results of our researches at this place are not without importance. On the whole, it is perfectly settled that Ethiopian art is only a later branch of the Egyptian. It does not begin under native rulers until Tahraka. The little which yet remains to us of a former age belongs to the Egyptian conquerors and their artists. It is wholly confined here, at least, to one temple, which Ramses the Great erected to Amen-Ra. ”

“ Standing at the mouth of the Blue Nile, which flows down from the gold and iron mountains of Abyssinia, and of the White Nile, the only avenue to a dozen Negro kingdoms, rich in ivory and gum, and being nearly equidistant from the conquered provinces of Sennaar, Kordofan, Shendy and Berber, it speedily outgrew the old Ethiopian cities, and drew to itself the greater part of their wealth and commercial activity. Now it is the metropolis of all the eastern part of Soudân, and the people speak of it in much the same style as the Egyptians speak of their beloved Cairo. ”

“ A caravan scarcely ever ventured forth by any road, that it was not plundered by the opposing partisans, and merchants as well as trade gradually departed south of the Arabian Gulf, to sea-ports which in earlier times had been the emporia of commerce with the East. Raheïta, Zeyla, Tajúra, and a number of other towns in the Indian Ocean, thus recovered their importance and their lost prosperity. The conquest of the Abyssinian territories in Arabia, drove every Ethiopian to the African shores. ”

“ But the Ethiopian people, notwithstanding the slave-trade which has extended its degrading influence far and wide among them, and though civilization long since departed from their tribes, have continued to increase till now they are the most numerous of the human families except the Chinese. ”

“ Taking their cue from the feelings of the people, the Shoan sorcerers gave out that Sáhela Selássie was to be the last of the Ethiopian dynasty, descended from the house of Solomon, who should sit upon the throne of his forefathers, and that a foreign king would come by way of Alio Amba to usurp the dominion. It is, amusing to trace the progress of these crafty insinuations among an ignorant and weak-minded people. ”

“ Egyptian culture, however, gradually conquered Ethiopia where her armies could not, and Egyptian religion and civil rule began to center in the darker kingdom. When, therefore, Shesheng I, the Libyan, usurped the throne of the Pharaohs in the tenth century B.C., the Egyptian legitimate dynasty went to Nepata as king priests and established a theocratic monarchy. Gathering strength, the Ethiopian kingdom under this dynasty expanded north about 750 B.C. and for a century ruled all Egypt. ”

“ The outbreak of the Egyptian power from Ethiopia at the founding of the New Egyptian Kingdom, and its advance even far into Asia, was transferred from the Ethiopian country to the Ethiopian people, first in the Asiatic and afterwards in the Greek traditions respecting this event ”

“ The Ethiopian Dynasty. Ethiopian rule of the XXVth Dynasty was now firmly established, and the resources of the two countries together might have been employed in conquest in Syria and Phoenicia; but at this very time the Assyrian empire, risen to the highest pitch of military greatness, began to menace Egypt. The Ethiopian could do no more than encourage or support the Syrians in their fight for freedom against Sargon and Sennacherib. ”

“ Most European explorers who have visited the Ethiopian uplands have penetrated from the east, where these highlands present the most imposing aspect. Above the samhar or mudun, a naked plain separating the coast from the plateau, the outer terraces of the escarpment are seen piled up in domes and pyramids, barren rocks or verdant slopes, whose sharp hazy crests seem to merge in a single irregular range. ”

“ According to the Abbé Grégoire, all black skinned races descend from the Ethiopian. He founds his opinion upon the works of Herodotus, Theophrastes, Pausanias, Athenœus, Eusebius, Heliodorus, Josephus, Pliny, and Terence; all of whom, in speaking of negroes, call them Ethiopians. As regards their origin, all we know is, that the Ethiopians are from the interior of Africa, and that their ancestors had short and woolly hair, black skins, and thick lips. ”

“ To be sure, Ethiopian kings took on Egyptian civilization—as a matter of fact, their country had long been Egyptianized. They tried to rule as pharaohs before them had done, worshipping Egyptian gods and keeping temples in repair. To the average citizen, life was no doubt much as it had been in former periods. But the old ideas were steadily falling away. The Assyrians invaded the country, and later, the Persians under Cambyses conquered it. Now and then a native prince would temporarily get control and repulse the Libyans and Ethiopians on the west and Asiatic peoples on the east. ”

“ With regard to the Ethiopian province of the Persian empire and to the Ethiopian neighbours of Egypt whom Cambyses subdued, the latter are not necessarily Ethiopians of Napata. Herodotus himself says that the Ethiopians dwelt in the country above Elephantine, and that half of what he calls the island of Takhompsô was inhabited by Ethiopians: the subjugated Ethiopians and their country plainly correspond with the Dodekaschênos of the Græco-Roman era. ”

“ And this abundance of water in the land to the south of Sevēnēh, and still farther south beyond Seba (or Meroë) , might very well have been known to the prophet as a general fact. The land “beyond the rivers of Cush” is the land bounded by the sources of the Nile, i.e., (including Ethiopia itself in the stricter sense of the word) the south land under Ethiopian rule that lay still deeper in the heart of the country, the land of its African auxiliary tribes, whose names (which probably include the later Nubians and Abyssinians) , as given in 2Ch 12:3 ”

“ Abyssinia, or ancient Ethiopia, comprehends a vast region in the interior parts of Africa, whose inhabitants, previous to the acquaintance of their Queen with the Jewish king Solomon, were involved in a dark and gloomy superstition, resembling in many respects the idolatrous worship of the Egyptians. The connexion and intimacy that subsequently existed between the Jewish and Ethiopian courts resulted in the conversion of this people to Judaism, in the profession of which they remained until the time of our Saviour. ”

“ It was, they said, from Ethiopia that Egyptian civilization had come. A colony of Ethiopian priests from the island of Meroè in Upper Nubia, had introduced their religion, their written characters, their art and their civil institutions into the country. The exact opposite of this is the truth. "It was the Egyptians who advanced up the banks of the Nile to found cities, fortresses, and temples in Ethiopia; it was the Egyptians who carried their civilization into the midst of savage negro tribes. ”

“ The mounds near the river, which cover an extent of between one and two miles, point out the site of the city, the capital of the old Hierarchy of Meroë, and the pyramids are no doubt the tombs of its kings and priests. It is rather singular that the city has been so completely destroyed, as the principal spoilers of Egypt, the Persians, never penetrated into Ethiopia, and there is no evidence of the stones having been used to any extent by the Arabs, as building materials.
The examination of Meroë has solved the doubtful question [236] of an Ethiopian civilization anterior to that of Egypt. ”

“ I love to look at American slavery in connection with the future history of that great African continent, containing one hundred and fifty millions of people. History and discovered relics make the Ethiopian race to be older even than Egypt. The once powerful nations of Northern Africa, Numidia, Mauratania, as well as the Egyptian builders of pyramids, have disappeared, or they exist only in a few Coptic tribes ”

“ However, the Ethiopian people have heroically and victoriously repulsed the repeated aggressive attempts of invaders and colonialists to occupy their motherland. Even when capitalism evolved into the monopoly stage and imperialists set out to divide the world among themselves, Ethiopia still remained impregnable. Especially, the great victory scored at Adwa in 1896 over a colonial army that was modern by contemporary standards, has earned Ethiopia a special place of honour and a glorious history in the annals of the world anti-imperialist struggle. ”

“ Be it known to all who judge our institutions by the labels We have inherited from our past civilisation, that Ethiopian institutions, regardess of their nomenclature, are the fruits of Ethiopianism - this optimum combination that the people of Ethiopia themslves have fashioned to serve the fulfilment of their national destiny. ”

“ Thus converted at an early period of the Christian age, Ethiopia spread her new religion deep into the recesses of heathen Africa. Extending her wide empire on every side, the praise of the Redeemer soon arose from the wildest valleys and the most secluded mountains. From the great river Gochob to the frontiers of Nubia, the crutch and the cowl pervaded the land. Churches were erected in every convenient spot; and the blue badge of nominal Christianity encircled the necks of an ignorant multitude. ”

“ Thin and slender, the Ethiopians have fine ankles and wrists, long and very sinewy limbs (especially the fore-arm) , broad shoulders, and conical-shaped trunk like the ancient statues of Egypt. In short, they are good representatives of the Ethiopian race.
III. Fulah-Zandeh Group.—Under this term we include the whole series of populations resulting from the intermingling of the Ethiopians and the Nigritians (or Sudanese Negroes) , and extending from east to west across the whole of Africa, over a belt of 5 to 6 degrees in width. ”

“ But the Nile does not traverse the whole of Ethiopia, nor alone, nor in a straight line, nor a country which is well inhabited. But Egypt it traverses both alone and entirely, and in a straight line, from the lesser cataract above Syene and Elephantina, (which are the boundaries of Egypt and Ethiopia,) to the mouths by which it discharges itself into the sea. The Ethiopians at present lead for the most part a wandering life, and are destitute of the means of subsistence, on account of the barrenness of the soil, the disadvantages of climate, and their great distance from us. ”

“ In this system resides our superiority over all neighbors. The Ethiopians were as numerous as we, but their king himself took care of his own cattle, and beat his own subjects with a club; he knew not how many subjects he had, nor was he able to collect them when our troops invaded his country. There was not a united Ethiopia, but a great crowd of unorganized people. ”