The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-05-30

peoples who dwelt on the upper Nile
tradition and vague early history
alike assign the origins of Egyptian,
and through Egypt, of Greek civili-
zation. The principles of architect
ure, commerce, and religious belief
descended the Nile as Heeren in his
great history of the ''Politics, Inter
course and Trade of the Carthagin-
ians and Egyptians" affirms. The
difficulty of penetrating into Ethiopia
and the impossibility of gathering
trustworthy information about "hun-
dred-gated Thebes" and Memphis
with her long line of shadowy kings,
and the lost science and mysteries of
Meroe, give almost as wide room to-
day to the play of the imagination as
in the time of Homer, who in the
dawn of history speaks of the Ethiop-
ians as
The rising and the setting sun surveys.
In the Iliad, also, Homer describes
the gods of Olympus as journeying
into that far land and gracing ''the
feasts of Ethiopia's blameless race"
That this early tradition possessed a
basis of fact Heeren in his "Hstori-
cal Researches" abundantly shows.
There is no subject connected with
the early history of Africa more inter-
esting or at the same time more diff
ficult than this, and only when this
ancient country is conquered and
held, if ever, by England or some
other advanced European nation, and
its traditions and history examined
with the leisure and freedom of those
of Egypt at present, can we expect
much addition to our present knowl-
edge of this interesting land. OF the
difficulties of such conquest Eng
land and Italy at least are fully
aware. A country whose arms and
physical difficulties checked the ad-
vance of the legions of Cambyses and
finally buried his army under the
sands, and which in the middle ages
was 80 rich and powerful as to give
rise to the fabulous stories about
Prester John, and whose rulers today
claim to be descended from King
Solomon, is certainly a country Of
unique interest. This country also
has an era and a religion of its own.
The Abyssinian chronology places
the creation in the year 5493 B. c.,
and its religion is an early form of
Christianity known as monosophite.
The Nubians and Abyssinians still
call themselves Itiopawian and their
country Utopia, rejecting the term
Habese (mixed people, of which the
word Abyssinian is corruption.
The term mixture might more prop
erly be applied to their language
which is Arabic in its general charac-
ter, but contains in the speech of the
common people a mixture of the He
brew words. Thus the chiefs of Don
gola, Sheygya, Berber, Shendy and
Halfaia bear, it is said, the same title
which is applied in the Jewish Script
ures to the petty sovereigns of Ca
naan. This antiquity shown in the
woof of the language is confirmed by
monuments and ruins. Two thous-
and years before the Augustan age
of Rome when learning art and lit
erature were at their zenith in the
capital of the world, the great palaces
and temples of Thebes and Memphis
had been fashioned in stone. And
older still than the vast temples of
Karnac and Luxor are the slowly per-
ishing ruins of still older civiliza-
ton higher up the Nile. Turin,
French writer, and also Diodorus
agree with Heeren that here, then,
we're powerful States connected by
the same language, the same writing,
and the same religion.
These conjectures and views ac-
cord also with the references to the
Ethiopeans in the Scriptures and their
fame which had penetrated to Greece
in the days of Homer, however at
variance they may seem to our no
tions of the Abyssinia and Nubia of
to-day. The diversity in language
and lineage of the various tribes of
Nubia and Abyssinia, their independ-
ence and courage, as we'll as the diff
ficulty of access and the mystery of
their origins alike conspire to add to
our curiosity concerning the only for
midable part of the natives of the
dark continent not yet brought into
subjection to modern civilized ma
tions. How these descendants of
ancient peoples look upon their in