# Anacalypsis/Volume 1/Book 1/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
TWO ANCIENT ETHIOPIAS.—GREAT BLACK NATION IN ASIA.—THE BUDDHA OF INDIA A NEGRO.—THE ARABIANS WERE CUSHITES.—MEMNON.—SHEPHERD KINGS.—HINDOOS AND EGYPTIANS SIMILAR.—SYRIA PEOPLED FROM INDIA.
1. In taking a survey of the human inhabitants of the world, we find two classes, distinguished from each other by a clear and definite line of demarkation, the black and white colours of their skins. This distinguishing mark we discover to have existed in ages the most remote. If we suppose them all to have descended from one pair, the question arises, Was that pair black or white? If I were at present to say that I thought them black, I should be accused of a fondness for paradox, and I should find as few persons to agree with me, as the African negroes do when they tell Europeans that the Devil is white. (And yet no one, except a West-India planter, will deny that the poor Africans have reason on their side.) However, I say not that they were black, but I shall, in the course of this work, produce a number of extraordinary facts, which will be quite sufficient to prove, that a black race, in very early times, had more influence over the affairs of the world than has been lately suspected; and I think I shall shew, by some very striking circumstances yet existing, that the effects of this influence have not entirely passed away.
​2. It was the opinion of Sir William Jones, that a great nation of Blacks formerly possessed the dominion of Asia, and held the seat of empire at Sidon. These must have been the people called by Mr. Maurice Cushites or Cuthites, described in Genesis; and the opinion that they were Blacks is corroborated by the translators of the Pentateuch, called the Seventy, constantly rendering the word Cush by Ethiopia. It is very certain that, if this opinion be well founded, we must go for the time when this empire flourished to a period anterior to all our regular histories. It can only be known to have existed from accidental circumstances, which have escaped amidst the ruins of empires and the wrecks of time.
Of this nation we have no account; but it must have flourished after the deluge. And, as our regular chronological systems fill up the time between the flood and what is called known, undoubted history; if it be allowed to have existed, its existence will of course prove that no dependence can be placed on the early parts of that history. It will shew that all the early chronology is false; for the story of this empire is not told. It is certain that its existence can only be known from insulated circumstances, collected from various quarters, and combining to establish the fact. But if I succeed in collecting a sufficient number to carry conviction to an impartial mind, the empire must be allowed to have existed.
3. The religion of Buddha, of India, is well known to have been very ancient. In the most ancient temples scattered throughout Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips, and curly hair of the Negro. Several statues of him may be met with in the Museum of the East-India Company. There are two exemplars of him brooding on the face of the deep, upon a coiled serpent. To what time are we to allot this Negro? He will be proved to have been prior to the god called Cristna. He must have been prior to or contemporaneous with the black empire, supposed by Sir William Jones to have flourished at Sidon. The religion of this Negro God is found, by the ruins of his temples and other circumstances, to have been spread over an immense extent of country, even to the remotest parts of Britain, and to have been professed by devotees inconceivably numerous. I very much doubt whether Christianity at this day is professed by more persons than yet profess the religion of Buddha. Of this I shall say more hereafter.
4. When several cities, countries, or rivers, at great distances from each other, are found to be called by the same name, the coincidence cannot be attributed to accident, but some specific cause for such an effect must be looked for. Thus we have several cities call Heliopolis, or the city of the Sun; the reason for which is sufficiently obvious. Thus, again, there were several Alexandrias; and on close examination we find two Ethiopias alluded to in ancient history—one above the higher or southern part of Egypt, and the other somewhere to the east of it, and, as it has been thought, in Arabia. The people of this latter are called Cushim in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and Ethiopians by the text of the Septuagint, or the Seventy. That they cannot have been the Ethiopians of Africa is evident from a single passage, where they are said to have invaded Judah in the days of Asa, under Zerah, their king or leader. But the Lord smote the Cushim; and Asa and the people that were with him pursued them unto Gerar; and the Ethiopians were overthrown, and they (i. e. Asa and his people) smote all the cities round about Gerar, &c. Whence it plainly follows, that the Cushim here mentioned, were such as inhabited the parts adjoining to Gerar, and consequently not any part of the African Ethiopia, but Arabia.
​When it is said that Asa smote the Cushites or Ethiopians, in number a million of soldiers, as far as Gerar, and despoiled all the cities round about, it is absurd to suppose that the Gerar in the lot of the tribe of Simeon is meant. The expression all the cities and the million of men cannot apply to the little town of that tribe. Probably the city in Wilkinson’s Atlas, in the Tabula Orientalis, at the side of the Persian gulf, which is called Gerra, is the city meant by the word Gerar; and, that Saba was near where it is placed by Dr. Stukeley, or somewhere in the Peninsula, now called Arabia.
In 2 Chron. xxi. 16, it is said, And of the Arabians that were near the Ethiopians. This again shews that the Ethiopians were in the Peninsula, or bordered on it to the eastwards. They could not have lived to the west, because the whole land of Egypt lay between them, if they went by land; and the Red Sea lay between the two nations westwards.
In Habakkuk iii. 7, the words Midian and Cushan are used as synonymes: I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.
It is said in Numbers xii. 1, “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” כושית cusit. It appears that this Ethiopian woman was the daughter of Jethro, priest of Midian, near Horeb, in Arabia.
5. Dr. Wells has justly observed, that the Cush spoken of in scripture is evidently Arabia, from Numbers xii. 1, just cited; and that it is also certain, from Exod. ii. 15—21, that the wife of Moses was a Midianitish woman; and it is proved that Midian or Madian was in Arabia, from Exod. iii, 1, &c.: consequently the Cush here spoken of, and called Ethiopia, must necessarily mean Arabia. He also proves, from Ezek. xxix. 10, that when God says he “will make the land desolate from the tower of Syene to the borders of Ethiopia,” Cush, he cannot mean an African Cush, because he evidently means from one boundary of Egypt to the other: and as Syene is the southern boundary between the African Ethiopia and Egypt, it cannot possibly be that he speaks of the former, but of the other end of Egypt, which is Arabia.
The circumstance of the translators of the Septuagint version of the Pentateuch having rendered the word Cush by the word Ethiopia, is a very decisive proof that the theory of two Ethiopias is well founded. Let the translators have been who they may, it is totally impossible to believe that they could be so ignorant as to suppose that the African Ethiopia could border on the Euphrates, or that the Cushites could be African Ethiopians.
From all the accounts which modern travellers give of the country above Syene, there does not appear, either from ruins or any other circumstance, reason to believe that it was ever occupied by a nation strong enough to fight the battles and make the great figure in the world which we know the people called Cushites or Ethiopians did at different times. The valley of the Nile is very narrow, not capable of containing a great and powerful people. Sheba and Saba were either one or two cities of the Cushites or Ethiopians, and Pliny says, that the Sabæans extended from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, thus giving them the whole of Arabia; one part of which, it is well known, is called from its fertility of soil and salubrity of climate, Felix, or The Happy. ​Dr. Wells states, that the Ethiopians of Africa alone are commonly called Ludim, both by ancient and modern writers.
But the country east of the Euphrates was called Cush, as well as the country west of it; thus giving the capital of Persia, Susan or Susiana, which was said to be built by Memnon, to the Cushites or Ethiopians, as well as Arabia.
Mr. Frey, in his vocabulary, gives the word כוש, cus, as a word whose meaning is unknown; but the Septuagint tells us it meant black. Mr. Hyde shews, that it was a common thing for the Chaldeans to substitute the Tau for the Shin, thus כות cut, for כוש cus. Thus, in their dialect, the Cuthites were the same as the Cushites.
If my reader will examine all the remaining passages of the Old Testament, not cited by me, where the words Ethiopia and Ethiopians are used, he will see that many of them can by no possibility relate to the African Ethiopia.
6. Eusebius states the Ethiopians to have come and settled in Egypt, in the time of Amenophis. According to this account, as well as to the account given by Philostratus, there was no such country as Ethiopia beyond Egypt until this invasion. According to Eusebius these people came from the river Indus, and planted themselves to the south of Egypt, in the country called from them Ethiopia. The circumstance named by Eusebius that they came from the Indus, at all events, implies that they came from the East, and not from the South, and would induce a person to suspect them of having crossed the Red Sea from Arabia: they must either have done this, or have come round the northern end of the Red Sea by the Isthmus of Suez; but they certainly could not have come from the present Ethiopia.
But there are several passages in ancient writers which prove that Eusebius is right in saying, not only that they came from the East, but from a very distant or very eastern part.
Herodotus says, that there were two Ethiopian nations, one in India, the other in Egypt. He derived his information from the Egyptian priests, a race of people who must have known the truth; and there seems no reason either for them or Herodotus to have mis-stated the fact.
Philostratus says, that the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia, who settled near the sources of the Nile, descended from the Bramins of India, having been driven thence for the murder of their king. This, Philostratus says, he learnt from an ancient Brahmin, called Jarchas.
Another ancient writer, Eustathius, also states, that the Ethiopians came from India. These concurring accounts can scarcely be doubted; and here may be discovered the mode and time also when great numbers of ancient rites and ceremonies might be imported from India into Egypt: for, that there was a most intimate relation between them in very ancient times cannot be doubted; indeed, it is not doubted. The only question has been, whether Egypt borrowed from India, or India from Egypt. All probability is clearly, for a thousand reasons, in favour of the superior antiquity of India, as Bailly and many other learned men have shewn—a probability which seems to be reduced to a certainty by Herodotus, the Egyptians themselves, and the other authors just now quoted. There is not a particle of proof, from any historical records known to the author, that any colony ever passed from Egypt to India, but there is, we see, direct, positive historical evidence, of the Indians having come to Africa. No attention can be paid to the idle stories of the conquest of India by Bacchus, who was merely an imaginary personage, in short, the God Sol.
Dr. Shuckford gives an opinion that Homer and Herodotus are both right, and that there were two Ethiopias, and that the Africans came from India.
​7. The Bishop of Avranches thinks he has found three provinces of the name of Chus; Ethiopia, Arabia, and Susiana. There were three Ethiopias, that is, countries of Blacks, not three Chusses; and this is perfectly consistent with what M. Bochart has maintained, that Ethiopia (of Africa) is not named Chus in any place of scripture; and this is also consistent with what is said by both Homer and Herodotus. The bishop shews clearly, that the ancient Susiana is the modern Chuzestan or Elam, of which Susa was the capital. The famous Memnon, probably the Sun, was said to be the son of Aurora. But Eschylus informs us, that Cissiene was the mother of Memnon, and to him the foundation of Susa is attributed; and its citadel was called Memnonium, and itself the city of Memnon. This is the Memnon who was said to have been sent to the siege of Troy, and to have been slain by Achilles; and who was also said, by the ancient authors, to be an Ethiopian or a Black. It seems the Egyptians suppose that this Memnon was their king Amenophis. The Ethiopians are stated by Herodotus to have come from the Indus; according to what modern chronologers deduce from his words, about the year 1615 B. C., about four hundred years after the birth of Abraham, in (1996,) and about a hundred years before Moses rebelled against the Egyptians and brought the Israelites out of Egypt. Palaces were shewn which belonged to this Memnon at Thebes and other places in Egypt, as well as at Susa, which from him were called in both places Memnoniums; and to him was erected the famous statue at Thebes, which is alleged to have given out a sound when first struck by the rays of the morning sun. Bishop Huet thinks, (probably very correctly,) that this statue was made in imitation of similar things which the Jewish traveller Rabbi Benjamin found, in the country where the descendants of Chus adore the sun; and this he shews to be the country of which we speak. It lies about Bussora, where the Sabeans are found in the greatest numbers, and who are the people of whom he speaks.
The bishop thinks this Memnon cannot have been Amenophis, because he lived very many years before the siege of Troy, in which he is said to have been an actor. It seems to me to be as absurd to look to Homer or Virgil for the chronology of historical facts, as to Shakespeare, Milton, or any other epic poet. These poems may state facts, but nothing of a historical or chronological kind can be received without some collateral evidence in confirmation. It never was supposed to be incumbent on any epic poet to tie himself down to mere historical matters of fact. And wherever it is evident, either from the admission of a later historical author or from any other circumstance, that he is relating facts from the works of the poets without any other authority, he can be as little depended upon as they can.
The bishop has shewn that the accounts of modern authors, George Syncellus, Suidas, Pausanias, Dionysius Periegites, &c., &c., are full of contradictions; that they are obliged to suppose two Memnons. All this arises from these persons treating the poem of Homer as a history, instead of a poem. We shall never have an ancient history worthy of the perusal of men of common sense, till we cease treating poems as history, and send back such personages as Hercules, Theseus, Bacchus, &c., to the heavens, whence their history is taken, and whence they never descended to the earth.
It is not meant to be asserted that these epic poems may not be of great use to a historian. It is only meant to protest against their being held as authority by themselves, when opposed either to other histories or to known chronology. This case of Memnon is in point. Homer wanted a hero to fill up his poem; and, without any regard to date, or any thing wrong in so doing, he accommodated the history to his poem, making use of Amenophis or Memnon, or the religious tradition whichever it was, as he thought proper. These poems may also be of great ​use as evidence of the customs and manners of the times, both of when they were written and previously, and very often of dry unconnected facts which may turn out to be of consequence. Thus Virgil makes Memnon black, as does also Pindar. That Pindar and Virgil were right, the features of the bust of Memnon in the British Museum prove, for they are evidently those of the Negro.
8. It is probable that the Memnon here spoken of, if there ever were such a man, was the leader of the Shepherds, who are stated by Manetho and other historians to have come from the East, and to have conquered Egypt. The learned Dr. Shuckford thinks, that the troubles caused in Egypt by the shepherd kings appear to have happened about the time the Jews left it under Moses. He places these events between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses. And he supposes that the Jews left the country in consequence of the oppressions of these shepherd kings. It is very clear that much confusion has arisen in this part of ancient history from these eastern shepherds having been confounded with the Israelites, and also from facts relating to the one having been attributed to the other. Josephus takes the different accounts to relate to the same people. This is attended with great difficulty. The shepherds are said by Manetho, after a severe struggle with the old inhabitants, to have taken refuge in a city called Avaris or Abaris, where they were a long time besieged, and whence at last they departed, two hundred and forty thousand in number, together with their wives and children, (in consequence of a capitulation,) into the deserts of Syria.
If there were two races of people who have been confounded together, one of which came from India and overran Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt, and brought thence its religion to the Egyptians, and was in colour black, it must have come in a very remote period. This may have been the race of shepherd kings, of whom Josephus speaks when he says, they oppressed the Israelites: but the assertion of Josephus can hardly have been true, for they must have been expelled long before the Israelites came. The second race were the Arabian shepherd tribe called captives, who, after being settled some time in the land of Goshen, were driven or went out into the open country of Arabia. They at last, under the command of Joshua, conquered Palestine, and finally settled there. Bishop Cumberland has proved that there was a dynasty of Phenician shepherd kings, who were driven out three hundred years before Moses. These seem to have been the black or Ethiopian, Phenician Memnonites. They may have exactly answered to this description, but to his date of three hundred years I pay no attention, further than that it was a great length of time.
Josephus says that the copies of Manetho differed, that in one the Shepherds were called Captives, not kings, and that he thinks this is more agreeable to ancient history; that Manetho also says, the nation called Shepherds were likewise called Captives in their sacred books; and that after they were driven out of Egypt, they journied through the wilderness of Syria, and built a city in Judea, which they called Jerusalem.
Josephus says, that Manetho was an Egyptian by birth, but that he understood Greek, in which he wrote his history, translating it from the old Egyptian records.
If the author understand Mr. Faber rightly in his Horæ Mosaicæ, he is of opinion that these ​Shepherd Captives were the Israelites. The accounts of these two tribes of people are confused, as may naturally be expected, but there are certainly many striking traits of resemblance between them. Mr. Shuckford, with whom in this Mr. Volney agrees, thinks there were two races of Shepherd kings, and in this opinion he coincides with most of the ancients; but most certainly, in his treatise against Apion, Josephus only names one. We shall have much to say hereafter respecting these shepherds, under the name of Palli.
The only objection which occurs against Amenophis or Memnon being the leader of the Hindoo race who first came from the Indus to Egypt is, that according to our ideas of his chronology, he could scarcely be sufficiently early to agree with the known historical records of India. But our chronology is in so very vague and uncertain a state, that very little dependance can be placed upon it. And it will never be any better till learned men search for the truth and fairly state it, instead of sacrificing it to the idle legends or allegories of the priests, which cannot by any possible ingenuity be made consistent even with themselves.
Mr. Wilsford, in his treatise on Egypt and the Nile, in the Asiatic Researches, informs us, that many very ancient statues of the God Buddha in India have crisp, curly hair, with flat noses and thick lips; and adds, “nor can it be reasonably doubted, that a race of Negroes formerly had power and pre-eminence in India.”
This is confirmed by Mr. Maurice, who says, “The figures in the Hindoo caverns are of a very different character from the present race of Hindoos: their countenances are broad and full, the nose flat, and the lips, particularly the under lip, remarkably thick.”
This is again confirmed by Colonel Fitzclarence in the journal of his journey from India. And Maurice, in the first volume of his Indian Antiquities, states, that the figures in the caves in India and in the temples in Egypt, are absolutely the same as given by Bruce, Niebuhr, &c.
Justin states, that the Phœnicians being obliged to leave their native country in the East, they settled first near the Assyrian Lake, which is the Persian Gulf; and Maurice says, “We find an extensive district, named Palestine, to the east of the Euphrates and Tigris. The word Palestine seems derived from Pallisthan, the seat of the Pallis or Shepherds.” Palli, in India, means Shepherd.
This confirms Sir William Jones’s opinion, in a striking manner, respecting a black race having reigned at Sidon.
9. It seems to me that great numbers of circumstances are producible, and will be produced in the following work, to prove that the mythology, &c., &c., of Egypt were derived from India, but which persons who are of a different opinion endeavour to explain away, as inconclusive proofs. They, however, produce few or no circumstances tending towards the proof of the contrary, viz. that India borrowed from Egypt, to enable the friends of the superior antiquity of India, in their turn, to explain away or disprove.
It is a well-known fact that our Hindoo soldiers when they arrived in Egypt, in the late war, recognized the Gods of their country in the ancient temples, particularly their God Cristna.
The striking similarity, indeed identity, of the style of architecture and the ornaments of the ancient Egytian and Hindoo temples, Mr. Maurice has proved beyond all doubt. He says, “Travellers, who have visited Egypt in periods far more recent than those in which the abovecited authors journeyed thither, confirm the truth of their relation, in regard both to the number and extent of the excavations, the beauty of the sculptures, and their similitude to those carved in the caverns of India. The final result, therefore, of this extended investigation is, that, in ​the remotest periods, there has existed a most intimate connexion between the two nations, and that colonies emigrating from Egypt to India, or from India to Egypt, transported their deities into the country in which they respectively took up their abode.” This testimony of the Rev. Mr. Maurice’s is fully confirmed by Sir W. Jones, who says,
“The remains of architecture and sculpture in India, which I mention here as mere monuments of antiquity, not as specimens of ancient art, seem to prove an early connexion between this country and Africa: the pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues described by Pausanias and others, the Sphinx, and the Hermes Canis, which last bears a great resemblance to the Varáhávatar, or the incarnation of Vishnou in the form of a Boar, indicate the style and mythology of the same indefatigable workmen who formed the vast excavations of Canara, the various temples and images of Buddha, and the idols which are continually dug up at Gayá, or in its vicinity. The letters on many of those monuments appear, as I have before intimated, partly of Indian, and partly of Abyssinian or Ethiopic, origin: and all these indubitable facts may induce no ill-founded opinion, that Ethiopia and Hindostan were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race; in confirmation of which it may be added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Bahar, can hardly be distinguished in some of their features, particularly their lips and noses, from the modern Abyssinians, whom the Arabs call the children of Cush: and the ancient Hindus, according to Strabo, differed in nothing from the Africans but in the straightness and smoothness of their hair, while that of the others was crisp or woolly; a difference proceeding chiefly, if not entirely, from the respective humidity or dryness of their atmospheres: hence the people who received the first light of the rising sun, according to the limited knowledge of the ancients, are said by Apuleius to be the Arii and Ethiopians, by which he clearly meant certain nations of India; where we frequently see figures of Buddha with curled hair, apparently designed for a representation of it in its natural state.”
Again, Sir W. Jones says, “Mr. Bruce and Mr. Bryant have proved that the Greeks gave the appellation of Indians to the nations of Africa, and to the people among whom we now live.” I shall account for this in the following work.
Mons. de Guignes maintains, that the inhabitants of Egypt, in very old times, had unquestionably a common origin with the old natives of India, as is fully proved by their ancient monuments, and the affinity of their languages and institutions, both political and religious.
Many circumstances confirming the above, particularly with respect to the language, will be pointed out hereafter.
10. It is curious to observe the ingenuity exercised by Sir W. Jones to get over obstacles which oppose themselves to his theological creed, which he has previously determined nothing shall persuade him to disbelieve. He says, “We are told that the Phenicians, like the Hindus, adored the Sun, and asserted water to be the first of created things; nor can we doubt that Syria, Samaria, and Phenice, or the long strip of land on the shore of the Mediterranean, were anciently peopled by a branch of the Indian stock, but were afterwards inhabited by that race which, for the present, we call Arabian.” Here we see he admits that the ancient Phœnicians were Hindoos: he then goes on to observe, that “In all three the oldest religion was the Assyrian, as it is called by Selden, and the Samaritan letters appear to have been the same at first with those of Phenice.” Now, with respect to which was the oldest religion, as their religions were all, at the bottom, precisely the same, viz. the worship of the Sun, there is as strong a probability that the earliest occupiers of the land, the Hindoos, were the founders of the solar worship, as the contrary.
​When the various circumstances and testimonies which have been detailed are taken into consideration, there can be scarcely any doubt left on the mind of the reader, that, by the word Ethiopia, two different countries have been meant. This seems to be perfectly clear. And it is probable that by an Ethiopian, a negro, correctly speaking, may have been meant, not merely a black person; and it seems probable that the following may have been the real fact, viz. that a race either of Negroes or Blacks, but probably of the former, came from India to the West, occupying or conquering and forming a kingdom on the two banks of the Euphrates, the eastern Ethiopia alluded to in Numbers, chap. xii.; that they advanced forwards occupying Syria, Phœnicia, Arabia, and Egypt; that they, or some tribe of them, were the shepherd kings of Egypt; that after a time the natives of Egypt rose against them and expelled part of them into Abyssinia or Ethiopia, another part of them into Idumea or Syria, or Arabia, and another part into the African desert of Lybia, where they were called Lubim.
The time at which these people came to the West was certainly long previous to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt; but how long previous to that event must remain doubtful. No system of chronology can be admitted as evidence; every known system is attended with too many difficulties. Perhaps chronology may be allowed to instruct us, in relation to facts, as to which preceded or followed, but certainly nothing more. No chronological date can be depended on previous to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus: whether we can depend upon it quite so far back seems to admit of doubt.
Part of the ancient monuments of Egypt may have been executed by these people. The memnoniums found in Persia and in Egypt leave little room to doubt this. In favour of this hypothesis all ancient sacred and profane historical accounts agree; and poetical works of imagination cannot be admitted to compete as evidence with the works of serious historians like Herodotus. This hypothesis likewise reconciles all the accounts which at first appear discordant, but which no other will do. It is also confirmed by a considerable quantity of circumstantial evidence. It is, therefore, presumed by the writer, he may safely assume in his forthcoming discussions, that there were two Ethiopias, one to the East of the Red Sea, the other to the West of it; and that a very great nation of blacks from India, did rule over almost all Asia in a very remote æra, in fact beyond the reach of history or any of our records.
This and what has been observed respecting judicial astrology will be retained in recollection by my reader; they will both be found of great importance in our future inquiries. In my Essay on The Celtic Druids, I have shewn, that a great nation called Celtæ, of whom the Druids were the priests, spread themselves almost over the whole earth, and are to be traced in their rude gigantic monuments from India to the extremity of Britain. Who these can have been but the early individuals of the black nation of whom we have been treating I know not, and in this opinion I am not singular. The learned Maurice says, “Cuthites, i. e. Celts, built the great temples in India and Britain, and excavated the caves of the former.” And the learned Mathematician, Reuben Burrow, has no hesitation in pronouncing Stonehenge to be a temple of the black, curly-headed Buddha.
I shall leave the further consideration of this black nation for the present. I shall not detain my reader with any of the numerous systems of the Hindoos, the Persians, the Chaldeans, Egyptians, or other nations, except in those particular instances which immediately relate to the object of this work,—in the course of which I shall often have occasion to recur to what I have here said, and shall also have opportunities of supporting it by additional evidence.
* ↑ I do not use the word Negro, because they may not have been Negroes though Blacks, though it is probable that they were so; and I wish the distinction to be remembered.
* ↑ But why should not Babylon have been the place?
* ↑ 2 Chron. xiv. 9—15.
* ↑ Vide Exod. ch. ii. and iii. It is not to be supposed that this great tribe of Israelites had not laws before those given on Sinai. It is perfectly clear that great numbers of those in Leviticus were only re-enactments of old laws or customs. The marriage of Moses with an Ethiopian woman, against which Miriam and Aaron spoke, was a breach of the law, and the children were illegitimate. This was the reason why Aaron succeeded to the priestly office, instead of the sons of Moses. This also furnishes an answer to what a learned author has written about the disinterested conduct of Moses proving his divine mission. The conduct of Moses, in this instance, proves nothing, and all the labour of the learned gentleman has been thrown away. But Moses had two wives, both Ethiopians—one of Meroe, called Tharbis, and the other of Midian, in Arabia. Josephus’ Antiq. L. ii. ch. x.
* ↑ Wells, Vol. I. p. 200.
* ↑ In Chron. ad Num. 402.
* ↑ In vita Apollon. Tyanei.
* ↑ L. vii. C. lxx.
* ↑ Vita Apoll. C. vi.
* ↑ Crawford, Res. Vol. II. p. 193.
* ↑ B. ix. p. 334.
* ↑ Diss. on Parod. Ch. xiii.
* ↑ Phaleg. L. iv. C. ii.
* ↑ Homer, Odyss. á; Herod. Polymn. Cap. lxix. lxx.; also Steph. in Ὁμηρίται.
* ↑ Æneid, Lib. i.
* ↑ Olymp. Od. ii.; vide Diss. of Bishop Huet, ch. xiii. p. 185.
* ↑ Shuckford, Conn. pp. 233, 234.
* ↑ We read of a person coming from the Hyperboreans to Greece, in the time of Pythagoras, called Abaris or Avaris. Josephus also tells us that the city in the Saite Nomos, (Seth-roite,) i. e. Goshen, where the oriental Shepherds resided, was called Avaris. Now I suspect that this man was called from the Hebrew word עבהר ober, as was also the name of the city, and that they both meant stranger or foreigner: the same as the tribe of Abraham, in Syria.
* ↑ Jos. vers. Apion, B. i. § xiv., Whiston, p. 291.
* ↑ Ut sup. § xiv.
* ↑ Ch. ii. Sect. xi. p. 23.
* ↑ Jos. vers. Apion, C. i. § xiv. B. i.
* ↑ Maurice, Hind. Ant. Vol. II. pp. 374—376.
* ↑ Maurice, Hist. Vol. II. p. 146.
* ↑ Antiquities of Hindostan, Vol. I. Sect. viii.
* ↑ Diss. III. on Hind., by Sir W. Jones, p. 111.
* ↑ Jones’s Eighth An. Diss. Asiatic Res.
* ↑ Diss. VII. of Sir W. Jones on the Chinese, p. 220.
* ↑ Sir W. Jones’s Eighth An. Diss.
* ↑ Maurice, Hist. Hind. Vol. II. p. 249.