CHAPTER III

ABYSSINIANS AND JEWS

The race of the Greek kings who ruled over Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great and until 30 B.C., and later, again, the Byzantine Emperors of Eastern Rome did much to implant Hellenic civilisation and the use of the Greek language in Egypt, and their influence extended over Abyssinia, where the kings of Ethiopian race (Gala dashed with Arab and Jew) admired and imitated them in much the same manner as the second Emperor of the French was admired and imitated by the lesser potentates of Germany. The history of Abyssinia--if it is to be written with regard to truth--is still obscure. This country of lofty mountains and temperate climate is bordered on the east by the land of Afar, an inhospitable desert inhabited by fierce Hamites (Danākil). On the south its mountains are connected by plateaux and ridges with the highlands of East Africa, but are separated by much arid and parched country from the regions of the modern Uganda protectorate. On the west the mountains of Abyssinia descend in terraces to the plains of the central Nile. Here the torrid climate is that of the Sudan, but the country is better watered by the rivers which rise in Abyssinia, and by a fairly regular rainfall. On the extreme north the Abyssinian mountains almost overhang the coast of the Red Sea, and are no doubt visible in clear weather from the opposite Arabian shore. The mountains of Yaman are remarkably similar in many points to those of Abyssinia, and the people of Yaman when they were seized with a desire to emigrate in search of fresh homes were no doubt drawn to this distant land of mountains just visible in the west. Originally no doubt Abyssinia was peopled by the same dwarf Bushman race as that which formed the lowest stratum of all the African populations. Then a portion of the country came into the possession of the big black Negroes who still inhabit its western flanks. These again are superseded and partially absorbed by the superior race of the Hamites, the ancestors of the Gala, Somali, and Ancient Egyptian. This Hamite race of Caucasian stock with some Negroid intermixture forms the basis of the Abyssinian population at the present day. But in the early days of Sabæan enterprise--say four thousand to three thousand years ago--Abyssinia was conquered by Sabæan Arabs from Yaman. At many subsequent periods Abyssinia and Yaman (the Red Sea acting as no barrier) were governed by the same dynasty, and when Yaman came under Persian influence that influence also penetrated Abyssinia. In this manner Abyssinia early developed a trade with India, and even served as an emporium for the introduction of Indian wares into Egypt on the one hand and the remote parts of eastern equatorial Africa on the other. The Queen of Saba (Sheba) is no doubt in many respects a legendary personage, but if she had any real historical existence she is another instance of an Arab ruler who governed both Abyssinia and Yaman. She may or may not have visited Solomon, but there is no doubt that in the time of that Jewish king some intercourse was kept up between the kingdom of Israel in its brief flicker of power and prosperity, and the coasts of the Red Sea and southern Arabia. After the smashing up of the Hebrew state by the Assyrians there are good reasons for assuming that a number of the dispersed Israelites migrated to Abyssinia, as no doubt they did to other parts of the Sabæan Empire. Jewish monotheism always had a certain fascination (in the days before Christianity and Islam) for the peoples of Arabia and of Mauritania. This influence was most felt after the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the subsequent dispersal of the Jews in all directions. Several princes in southwestern Arabia adopted the Jewish faith, more or less, and the Jewish settlers in Abyssinia also appear to have acted as missionaries in converting the savage, nominally Semitic, partly Gala rulers of Abyssinia to the principles of the Jewish faith, into which they wove Jewish legends, such as the glory and power of Solomon. A similar influence impressed on the Arab mind the Solomon of the legends. The real son of David was no doubt an unimportant Semitic prince who borrowed a little civilisation from his Phœnician, Egyptian, and Sabæan neighbours. But the Greek influence emanating from Egypt displaced for a time the Persian and Jewish culture in Abyssinia. In the northern parts of that (then) collection of Arab and Gala kingdoms, Greek began to be used as a second language, the speech of the Court itself being a foreign tongue (Ge’ez), derived from the Himyaritic or some early south Semitic language.

Auxuma--the modern Auxum--in the kingdom or province of Tigre (northeastern Abyssinia) and near the more modern town of Adua, became an important trade centre, frequented by many Greek merchants, some of whom seem to have occasionally returned to their homes in Egypt by way of the Atbara and the Nile. Others forestalled the Portuguese by entering into trade relations or actually undertaking journeys which revealed to them the existence of Lake Tsana and the upper waters of the Blue Nile.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Byzantine Greek, who traded with India in the early part of the sixth century of our era, called at the port of Adulis (near Masawa) in 520 A.D. He discovered at this place a monument which contained two separate inscriptions. The monument was apparently one erected at the orders of Ptolemy III. (Philadelphus), who reigned in Egypt from 285 to 247 B.C. This Ptolemy led and sent expeditions which made a partial conquest of the coast regions of northern Abyssinia, and added to the Egyptian Empire of that day a good deal of what now constitutes the modern Italian colony of Eritrea.[9]

On the same monument some four hundred and seventy years later, in about 127 A.D., a Semitic Abyssinian king (possibly Ela-Auda) recorded in turn his own victories and extensions of rule. These conquests seem to have done much to carry the Abyssinian (Semitic as distinct from Hamitic) arms as far south as the ninth degree of north latitude. Other indications would show that from this time onwards to about the tenth century A.D. Abyssinian influence and conquests extended southward intermittently to the vicinity of Lake Rudolf (the northern end of that lake). Owing to these conquests, Christianity was carried as far south as the modern province of Kaffa, and northwestwards along the course of the Blue Nile to the site of the modern Khartum; for at one time Abyssinian suzerainty or rule extended almost to the verge of Kordofan on the west.[10]

The introduction of Islam among the Somalis, among some of the Gala tribes, and all round the north and west of Abyssinia in the centuries that followed the eleventh, checked any further spread of Christianity, and limited--even curtailed--the political aspirations of Abyssinia. In the sixteenth century a Muhammadan ruler--Muhammad Granye--arose in the Danākil country (Tajurra Bay), and practically smashed the Ethiopian Christian power in Abyssinia, which did not recover from the ravages of these Muhammadan (Arab and Somali) armies for a century or more. Soon after the wars of Muhammad Granye the heathen Galas[11] from the south and southwest entered Abyssinia in force, and it was a long time before the Semitic rulers of that country could bring them under control. The arrival of the Portuguese (to be described in the next chapter) gave a fillip to the power of the Christian Semites of Abyssinia, mainly through the introduction of guns and gunpowder. It is possible, indeed, that at different times after the commencement of the Christian era Abyssinian raiders may have ridden south on their slave, ivory, and cattle-hunting expeditions as far as the vicinity of Mount Elgon. At the present day their raiders come almost to the frontiers of Busoga, for there is no tsetse fly in all the district between Abyssinia and the Victoria Nyanza; therefore, as the Abyssinians have possessed horses for several thousand years, there has been little to stop their making rapid expeditions into the Land of the Blacks. In this way they may have raided and traded as far south as the Victoria Nyanza and as far west as the White Nile, bringing back with them for the edification of the Greeks stories of the Great Lakes and Snow-mountains, and assisting, perhaps, to distribute over the lands now comprised within the Uganda Protectorate those remarkable blue Egyptian beads of unknown antiquity which have been referred to by the present writer in his book, “The Uganda Protectorate,” as being some slight indication of ancient trading relations between the countries of the Great Lakes and those under the dominion of Egypt.