Libyans

“ Now the Libyans have their dwelling as follows:—Beginning from Egypt, first of the Libyans are settled the Adyrmachidai, who practise for the most part the same customs as the Egyptians, but wear clothing similar to that of the other Libyans. Their women wear a bronze ring 150 upon each leg, and they have long hair on their heads, and when they catch their lice, each one bites her own in retaliation and then throws them away. ”

“ It must be known that all the northern seacoast of Libya—from Egypt as far as the promontory of Soloeis, which is the end of Libya—is inhabited through its whole length by Libyans, many tribes of them, except the part held by Greeks and Phoenicians; the region of Libya above the sea and the men of the seacoast is infested by wild beasts; and farther inland than the wild-beast country all is sand, exceeding waterless and wholly desert. ”

“ 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-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. ”

“ West of Lake Tritonis the Libyans are no longer wanderers, nor do they practise the same customs as the wandering people, or treat their children in the same way. For the wandering Libyans, many of them at any rate, if not all- concerning which I cannot speak with certainty- when their children come to the age of four years, burn the veins at the top of their heads with a flock from the fleece of a sheep: others burn the veins about the temples. ”

“ The Libyans occupied a greater portion of Northern Africa than any other nation, extending from the borders of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Great Desert, with the exception of the foreign settlements on the coast, to the Mediterranean Sea. ”

“ Through the foresight of the subtle Libyans, who hid the tripod, the prophesy was unfulfilled, but many noble cities were afterward built north and east of Tritonis, and along the coast of Syrtis Minor. Indeed, so numerous were they, and so flourishing as trade-centres, that the country was named Emporia. All the ancient writers agree in praising it for its wonderful riches and fertility. Says Scylax: "This region, which is occupied by Libyans, is most magnificent and fertile; it abounds in fine cattle, and its inhabitants are most beautiful and wealthy." ”

“ From other accounts it is clear that the Libyans of this district, and with them the inhabitants of the oasis of Ammon, had to contribute salt to the Persians, and Herodotus tells us that these Libyans of the north coast, clad in the skins of animals and armed with poles hardened in the fire, served in the army of the Persian kings along with the curly-haired negroes living beyond Egypt. ”

“ Further, to my thinking the ceremonial chant first took its rise in Libya: for the women of that country chant very tunefully. And it is from the Libyans that the Greeks have learnt to drive four-horse chariots.
190. The dead are buried by the nomads in Greek fashion, save by the Nasamones. These bury their dead sitting, being careful to make the dying man sit when he gives up the ghost, and not die lying supine. Their dwellings are compact of asphodel-stalks twined about reeds; they can be carried hither and thither. Such are the Libyan usages. ”

“ Since Libya touched the western boundary of Lower Egypt, barbarians made frequent inroads on the territory of his holiness, and were terribly punished. Convinced at last that war with Libyans was resultless, the pharaohs, or, more accurately, the priesthood, decided on another system: real Libyan families were permitted to settle in the swamps of Lower Egypt, near the seacoast, while adventurers and bandits were enlisted in the army, and became splendid warriors. ”

“ Ibn Khaldun divides the Libyans into two families descended from the eponymous heroes, Branes and Madghis, a theory which recognises the difficulties involved by the assumption that they all belonged to a single stock. The division may be traced even to-day. In many Libyan villages the inhabitants are divided into two factions which, without being hostile, are conscious of being different. ”

“ Thus it is with this region. But westward of the Tritonian lake the Libyans are not nomads; they follow not the same usages, nor treat their children as the nomads are wont to do. For the practice of many Libyan nomads (I cannot with exactness say whether it be the practice of all) is to take their children when four years old, and with grease of sheep’s wool to burn the veins of their scalps or sometimes of their temples, that so the children may be never afterwards afflicted by phlegm running down from the head. They say that this makes their children most healthy. ”

“ As America’s representative, he helped the Libyan people as they coped with violent conflict, cared for the wounded, and crafted a vision for the future in which the rights of all Libyans would be respected. And after the revolution, he supported the birth of a new democracy, as Libyans held elections, and built new institutions, and began to move forward after decades of dictatorship. ”

“ Their kinship to the Libyans is proved by numerous linguistic identities between the ancient Coptic and the Libyan dialects, and by their physical appearance. In color they are yellowish-white, passing to a reddish-brown though the women who are not exposed to the sun would pass in Europe as merely dark brunettes. In the bony structure, the skull, the face, and the proportions, they assimilate entirely with 128 the white race and the Libyan type. ”

“ Presently the tables were turned, and Dynasty XXII., which reigned so gloriously in Egypt, was Libyan in origin. No attempt was made thenceforth for many years to check the peaceful entrance of Libyans into Egypt, and soon that nation held a large part of the Delta. Occasional mention is made of troubles upon the north-west frontier, but little more is heard of any serious invasions. In Arabic times disturbances are not infrequent, and certain sovereigns, as for example, El Mansur Kalaun, were obliged to invade the enemy's country, thus extending Egypt's power as far as Tunis. ”

“ These fair Libyans, as well as the fair red-haired people who appear about Syria, and are known to us as forming a type among the Jews, may perhaps be connected in race with the fair nations who were already settled over the north of Europe when the classic writers begin to give accounts of its barbarous inhabitants, from the Goths northward to the dwellers in Thule. ”

“ The agricultural villages of the surrounding region—agriculture appears to have been introduced among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt—were subdued by force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. ”

“ In a country bounded by the Red Sea on the one side, and by a wilderness on the other, and presenting but a narrow strip of land for its inhabitants, laws would at once become necessary for mutual protection; and we may suppose that while one portion of the Mizraimites embraced these social restrictions, another, impatient of control, passed beyond the desert barrier on the west, and spreading themselves over the north of Africa, became those nomadic tribes to which the earliest annals give the name of Libyans. ”

“ As the troops marched on to the quay they were formed up in parties by the side of the ships which were to convey them. Very different was the demeanour of the men of the different nationalities. The Libyans were stern and silent, they were part of the contingent which their state was bound to furnish to Carthage, and went unwillingly, cursing in their hearts the power which tore them from their homes to fight in a war in which they had neither concern nor interest. ”

“ The invaders had even gained a firm footing in some places, and had ventured to settle themselves in the neighbourhood of the towns, whilst the fortifications of Memphis itself had been suffered to fall into neglect. The Libyan people apparently regarded these settlements as a sort of advanced posts, and in the fifth year of Menephtah they were followed up by the further advance upon Egypt of an immense host, composed of the Libyans, their mercenary troops, and allies drawn from every part of North Africa, and possibly from more distant regions still. ”

“ This view is suggested by Ibn Khaldun’s classification, and also by the result of a detailed examination of the different constituent elements of the Libyan population. Among the Tuareg, whom I consider belong to a single stock, different from that of the various races which composed the other Libyans, these factions do not exist even in the villages where tribal organisation [339] is in process of breaking down and people of different clans live together under one headman. ”

“ But their tempers were provoked by want of employment; there were constant disputes between horse-soldiers and foot-soldiers, Barbarians and Greeks, while there was a never-ending din of shrill female voices.
Every day men came flocking in nearly naked, and with grass on their heads to protect them from the sun; they were the debtors of the rich Carthaginians and had been forced to till the lands of the latter, but had escaped. Libyans came pouring in with peasants ruined by the taxes, outlaws, and malefactors. ”

“ The kingdom of Mâraîû and Kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from Mînephtah and Ramses III., but the Mashaûasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the Egyptians became accustomed to look on all the Libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from Libya under the common name of Mashaûasha.* Egypt was thus slowly flooded by Libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed. ”

“ And they do this for this reason, namely, that they may not in succeeding time be troubled with any disease of the head. For this leason they say that they enjoy admirable health. For truly the Libyans enjoy the strongest health of any men we know. ”

“ There is a mine of salt on it every ten days’ journey, and men dwell there. Their houses are all built of the blocks of salt; for even these are parts of Libya where no rain falls; for the walls, being of salt, could not stand firm if there were rain. The salt there is both white and purple. Beyond this ridge the southern and inland parts of Libya are desert and waterless; no wild beasts are there, nor rain, nor forests; this region is wholly without moisture.
186. Thus from Egypt to the Tritonian lake, the Libyans are nomads that eat meat and drink milk ”

“ In the blind flight which followed some of them ran foul of their own rear-guard, who were still advancing, and caused their own destruction or that of their comrades; but the greater part were trampled to death by the cavalry and elephants who immediately charged. As many as six thousand of the Libyans and foreign troops were killed, and about two thousand taken prisoners. The rest made good their escape, either to the town on the bridge or to the camp near Utica. ”

“ One of the problems of the Libyan Desert, beyond the western frontier of Egypt, is that of the oasis known as Zerzura, or “The oasis of the Blacks.” It was, I believe, first heard of by Rohlfs, who, in his attempt to go westward from Dakhla Oasis to Kufara, found the sand dunes [53] impassable for his big caravan, and so had to turn up to the north and make for the oasis of Siwa instead. During this journey he encountered three blacks, who said that they were escaped slaves from the oasis of Zerzura, a place that they described as being some distance to the west of his route. ”

“ But making an approximate estimate of the extent of territory which has become to be destitute of inhabitants, I should say that a myriad myriad of myriads perished. For in the first place, Libya, which attains to so large dimensions, has been so thoroughly ruined that for the traveller who makes a long journey it is no easy matter, as well as being a noteworthy fact, to meet a human being. ”

“ Libya is an immense box of sand which never had any value, nor has it now. Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan cover more than one million one hundred thousand square kilometres and have less than nine hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom even now, after ten years, less than a third are under the effective control of Italy. With the war and expenses of occupation, Libya has cost Italy about seven milliard lire, and for a long time yet it will be on the debit side in the life of the nation. ”

“ Libya, in like manner, will include the modern Tunis and Tripoli: it will begin on the west with St. Augustine's town of Hippo; and its coast is colonized from Tyre and Greece, dividing it into the two districts of Carthage and Cyrene. Egypt, the country of the River, and Arabia, the country of no River, are to be thought of as the two great southern powers of separate Religion. ”

“ Libya belongs to one of the above-mentioned tracts, for it adjoins on Egypt. In Egypt the tract is at first a narrow neck, the distance from our sea to the Erythraean not exceeding a hundred thousand fathoms, in other words, a thousand furlongs; but from the point where the neck ends, the tract which bears the name of Libya is of very great breadth.
For my part I am astonished that men should ever have divided Libya, Asia, and Europe as they have, for they are exceedingly unequal. ”