So that Ptolemy placed the junction of the two rivers 31° too far south, and 13° too far east.

Even were we to make the corrections in Ptolemy's latitudes and longitudes due to his having taken a degree of a great circle of the earth at 500 instead of 600 stadia,* we should still fail to reconcile many of his positions with truth, or relieve them of the errors springing, as Dean Vincent observes, from his vague method of calculating distances, by the estimate of travellers and merchants, and the number of days employed in their journeys by land or voyages by sea. In some instances of places which may be supposed to have been more familiarly known than others to Ptolemy, a retrenchment, in the proportion of 600 to 500, will eliminate much of the error of longitude; as in the case of Alexandria, where a deduction of one-sixth from Ptolemy's longitude of 60° would leave 50°, which is only about 23° too far to the E. of Ferro. But his latitudes are in many cases more irreconcilable than his longitudes. Alexandria and Syene are placed by Ptolemy in 31° N. and 23° 50' N., only a few miles to the S. of their true positions of 31° 11' N. and 24° 8′ N., which shows that the latitudes of those two places were probably determined from observed altitudes of the pole, without reliance upon the estimated distance between them. Below Syene, however, towards the interior, where estimated distance must have been resorted to, the errors gradually increase, until the Coloë Palus (Dembea Lake) is made to be 24°, instead of 12°, to the S. of that place; and proceeding in the same way, why may not Ptolemy have placed the Lunæ Montes 16° or 17° too far S.? That quantity, applied as a correction to his latitude, would make it very well agree with the position of the Gamaro mountains about the sources of the Gojeb and Gibe; since if, to M. d'Abbadie's longitude of 369 2′ 39′′ E. for the source of the latter river, we add 18° 9′ 45′′, the longitude of the island of Ferro W. of Greenwich, we have 54° 12 nearly, which falls sufficiently between 47° and 56° 50', the longitudes of the western and eastern limits of the Lunæ Montes (after deducting one-sixth from 57° and 67°, the number of degrees assigned by Ptolemy to their limits, as stated above) to warrant us, when taken in conjunction with the correction which may be applied to his latitude, in deciding, so far as Ptolemy's position affords an indication rather in favour of the identity of the Lunæ Montes with the mountains of Inarya, than with any which may exist in the country of Mono Moezi.

To return to the derivation of Gebel el Qamar: it has been upon another occasion observed by Dr. Beke, that if M. d'Abbadie's derivation were correct, how could Ptolemy have derived the

*M. de la Rochette on the first Meridian of Ptolemy, in Dean Vincent's 'Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients,' vol, i. p. 567; also vol. ii. p. 612.

Gebel el Qamar derived from the Arabs.

55

sense of "mountains of the moon from the word Gamaro? This objection must imply that the Arabian geographers translated their appellation of Gebel el Qamar from the Greek; otherwise it would be a sufficient answer to allege, that there is nothing to raise even a suggestion that Ptolemy derived his sense of Moon in the name of these mountains from the word "Moezi." It cannot be categorically proved that the Arabians did not, in this as in other instances, translate from the Greeks; but various considerations may be adduced which seem to render more probable that the Greeks were indebted to the early Arabs for their geographical nomenclature of the north-eastern part of Africa, than that the nomenclature of that region transmitted to us by the Greeks was first discovered and made known to the rest of mankind by themselves.

These considerations are founded upon the fact of the Arabs having been the earliest navigators of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean-upon the extent of the intercourse which history suggests as having existed in early times between Arabia and Ethiopiathe application consequent to that intercourse of the language of the Arabs in Abessinia-the circumstances under which, upon the accession of the Ptolemies to Egypt, the immediate trade between that country and the Red Sea was acquired from the Arabs by the Greeks, and afterwards continued by them under the Roman domination of Egypt-and lastly, the channels incidental to that commerce, through which the Alexandrian geographers may be supposed to have derived their knowledge of north-eastern Africa. As these topics are of sufficient interest to bear an examination a little in detail, I shall endeavour to set out in order the observations in respect of them that have occurred to me, and thence to deduce what was the course of information to Ptolemy of the geography of that part of Africa which includes the mountains where the Nile was reputed to rise, of those mountains themselves, and of their name.

That the Arabs, Dean Vincent has observed (Periplus, vol. ii. p. 2), were the first navigators of the Indian Ocean, and the first carriers of Indian produce, is evident from all history, as far as history goes back; and, antecedent to history, from analogy, from necessity, and from local situation: and we may conclude that then, as now, the same circumstances threw likewise into their hands the principal trade of the Red Sea and of the coast of Africa beyond it.

Of the intercourse of the early Arabs with the interior of Abessinia, history affords but few and scanty notices; nevertheless these notices point to circumstances of a sufficiently large operation to raise the inference that that intercourse brought them acquainted with all parts of Abessinia long anterior to the era of the Greeks in Egypt.

It has been maintained by Ludolf, upon the authority of Procopius of Gaza, Stephanus, and an Arabic writer cited by him. under the name of Uranius, and by Scaliger (in Dean Vincent, Periplus, vol. ii. p. 110), that the Abessinians are of Arabian origin. Ludolph says (History of Æthiopia, lib. i. c. 1) that they were formerly reckoned into the number of the Sabæans and Hamyarites, and adduces as arguments in proof of this origin the similarity of their customs and physical conformation, and the near affinity of the Æthiopic and Arabic languages, a harmony of which he has appended to his Æthiopic Lexicon (2nd edit. 1699). Dean Vincent, on the other hand (vol. ii. p. 107, et seq.), finds ground, in the account given by Herodotus (lib. 2, c. 30) of the defection of the 240,000 Egyptians, who quitted the government of Psammeticus and migrated into a country 57 days' march beyond Meroë, for supposing the Abessinians to be of Egyptian origin. But this conclusion of Dean Vincent is somewhat overborne by the subsequent testimony of Herodotus himself, in the 104th chapter of the same book, where he alludes to both the Egyptians and Ethiopians as having existed from time immemorial. Dean Vincent considers the mixture of Arabic in the language of the Abessinians to be accounted for from their constant communication with Arabia in the earliest ages; and still more, from the common origin of language in Egypt and the adjoining countries.

Without venturing to determine whether or not the Abessinians were descended from Sabæan tribes, who in early times migrated into Abessinia, there is reason to conclude that successful irruptions of the Sabæans into that country at some remote period took place. Pococke (Specimen Historia Arabum, edit. 1806, p. 60) cites, on the authority of Abu-l-Feda, El Jannabi, and Ahmedibn-Yusuf, the eighteenth king of Yemen after Kahtan (Joctan of the Scriptures), by name Afrikús, as having given his name to Africa; and the twenty-third king, by name Nashero-l-Ne'am, and the successor to Balkis, alleged to have been the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon, and who is in like manner mentioned by M. Marcel, on the authority of the Arabian geographer, Nouryel-Baqúi, as having made considerable conquests westward in Africa. El Baqúi is also stated by M. Marcel to add, that the Sabæan dominion embraced Egypt and the adjacent countries, and that the people of Nubia had in his time, which was about the year 1400 A.D., resident at Dongolah, a king said by them to be descended from the ancient Hamyarites; and Bruce, whose account is confirmed by MM. d'Arnaud and Thibout (Bulletin de la Société Geogr., Nov. 1842, p. 381, and Feb. 1843, p. 93), Mémoire sur les inscriptions, &c. dans la description de l'Egypte,' vol. xv. p. 14. Edit. 8vo.

*

Early Sabaan Conquest of Ethiopia.

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observed traces of the Sabæan worship of the moon among the Shillooks and Dinkas, on the banks of the White Nile, not far above its junction with the Abessinian Nile, so late as the last century. Čoncurrent with the testimony of the Arabian historians we have that of Herodotus, who states (lib. ii. c. 100 et 140) that Egypt was twice ruled by Æthiopian kings; firstly, by eighteen, in the period of the three hundred and thirty generations which prevailed between Menes and Moris; and secondly, in which he is more particularly confirmed by Diodorus Siculus (lib. i. c. 65), by an Ethopian king of the name of Sabakos, who governed the country for fifty years and then retired again into Ethiopia. Sabakos, however, according to the collation of Berosus in Josephus (lib. xl. c. 1), was only the first of three Æthiopian kings who ruled over Egypt during forty years of the period assigned by Herodotus and Diodorus to Sabakos alone. Of this last Æthiopian rule we have the further particular from Herodotus of its having been the second in order before that of Sethon, with whom Herodotus states (1. ii. c. 141) Sennacherib made war, which would make Sethon the same with Tirhakah the Æthiopian, mentioned in the 2nd Book of Kings (c. 19), and by Isaiah (c. 37), and the æra of Sennacherib, which was from 713 to 712 B.C., coincident with part of the reign of Sethon. Sethon was preceded by Anysis, who had been previously dispossessed of the kingdom by the Æthiopians, and could not, upon his restoration, therefore, after the long interval of the Æthiopian dominion, have reigned more than a few years: consequently either Anysis or Sabakos, or the last of the two successors of Sabakos, if there were three Æthiopian kings, must have been the same with the King of Egypt mentioned in the 2nd Book of Kings (c. 17) as So, who conspired with Hosea, king of Israel, against Shalmaneser, the predecessor of Sennacherib in Assyria, about the year 722 B.C.; and the second Æthiopian reign in Egypt would date from about the 770 or 760 B.c. to the year 720 B.C. This date, then, is too much posterior to that of the kings of Yemen, stated to have invaded Ethiopia, to admit of any supposition of identity between them and the Ethiopians of the second Æthiopian dynasty in Egypt; and as there is no mention of later conquests by the Sabæans in Æthiopia, we must recur to earlier events in Egypt, on which, faint as the light of history falls, it yet affords some gleams by which we may venture to discern the presence, in Æthiopia, Nubia, and Egypt, of a king of Yemen.

year

It has been stated that Nashero-1-Ne'am, the twenty-third king of Yemen, succeeded the Queen Balkis, alleged to have reigned over Yemen in the time of Solomon, who ruled over Israel and Judah from the year 1015 B.C. to the year 976 B.C. This date, if we allow for the duration of the reigns of Queen

Balkis and of Nashero-1-Ne'am sixty years, which may be done without violence to probability, would place the termination of the reign of Nashero-l-Ne'am in the year 916 B.C., which would very well reconcile his conquest of Æthiopia and Egypt with the era of Zerah the Ethiopian, mentioned in the 2nd Book of Chronicles (c. xiv.) as having gone up against Asa, King of Judah, by whom he was vanquished and pursued to Gerar, in the direct road from Judæa to Egypt, about the year 922 B.C.

It must be acknowledged that the above coincidence does not harmonize with the subsequent series of rulers of Egypt given by Herodotus, but it is not on that account the less a coincidence as between the records of Scripture and those of Arabian history; and it receives additional support from the fact of the early invasions of Egypt referred to having been from the side of Æthiopia; for, in the absence of all historic notice of invasions of Egypt from any other quarter by early Arab tribes, it would necessarily follow, if the Sabæans extended their irruptions as far as Egypt, that they must have come through Ethiopia, which, again, they could only have accomplished by first securing for themselves a passage through Abessinia. There is, therefore (however little we may be able to define particular events), some concurrent historical evidence in favour of the general conclusion to be drawn from the Arabian writers, that the Sabæans did at one time invade and conquer Abessinia and the adjoining countries.

Ludolf's arguments, from the affinity of the language and customs of the Arabians and Æthiopians, for a common origin of the two people, may admit of qualification to the extent of supposing that affinity to be due to the dominion only of the Arabs over the whole or greater part of Abessinia in an early age. But beyond that, historical experience, from the very ground which he takes, does not warrant a rejection of his hypothesis. It is not merely the oral but literary, form of the Ethiopic which corresponds so closely with the ancient Arabic; the characters, even, in which the Æthiopic is written being, as observed by Mr. Bird in his description of some Hamyaric inscriptions found at Aden and Sana (Journal, Bombay Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1844), almost similar to those of the Hamyaric writing.

If we were to recur to Dean Vincent's suggestion of the common origin of language in Egypt and the adjacent countries for an explanation of the close affinity subsisting between the Arabic and Æthiopic, we might suppose that a still closer affinity would be discoverable between the Ethiopic and the languages spoken by the descendants of Cush, who peopled, besides Africa, Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Judæa; but whatever may have been the characteristics of the language originally spoken in Ethiopia, Ludolf expressly states (lib. i. c. 15) that the affinity between