The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1: Chaldaea: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.Rawlinson, George
History
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1: Chaldaea: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.
The grounds, then, upon which the supposed Semitic character of the
ancient Chaldaeans has been based, fail, one and all; and it remains to
consider whether we have data sufficient to justify us in determinately
assigning them to any other stock.
Now a large amount of tradition--classical and other--brings Ethiopians
into these parts, and connects, more or less distinctly, the early
dwellers upon the Persian Gulf with the inhabitants of the Nile valley,
especially with those upon its upper course. Homer, speaking of the
Ethiopians, says that they were “divided,” and dwelt “at the ends of
earth, towards the setting and the rising sun.” This passage has been
variously apprehended. It has been supposed to mean the mere division of
the Ethiopians south of Egypt by the river Nile, whereby some inhabited
its eastern and some its western bank. Again it has been explained as
referring to the east and west coasts of Africa, both found by voyagers
to be in the possession of Ethiopians, who were “divided” by the vast
extent of continent that lay between them. But the most satisfactory
explanation is that which Strabo gives from Ephorus, that the Ethiopians
were considered as occupying all the south coast both of Asia and Africa,
and as “divided” by the Arabian Gulf (which separated the two continents)
into eastern and western-Asiatic and African. This was an “old opinion”
of the Greeks, we are told; and, though Strabo thinks it indicated their
ignorance, we may perhaps be excused for holding it that it might not
improbably have arisen from real, though imperfect, knowledge.
The traditions with respect to Memnon serve very closely to connect Egypt
and Ethiopia with the country at the head of the Persian Gulf. Memnon,
King of Ethiopia, according to Hesiod and Pindar, is regarded by
‘Eschylus as the son of a Cissian woman, and by Herodotus and others as
the founder of Susa. He leads an army of combined Susianians and
Ethiopians to the assistance of Priam, his father’s brother, and, after
greatly distinguishing himself, perishes in one of the battles before
Troy. At the same time he is claimed as one of their monarchs by the
Ethiopians upon the Nile, and identified by the Egyptians with their
king, Amunoph III., whose statue became known as “the vocal Memnon.”
Sometimes his expedition is supposed to have started from the African
Ethiopia, and to have proceeded by way of Egypt to its destination.
There were palaces, called “Memnonia,” and supposed to have been built
by him, both in Egypt and at Susa; and there was a tribe, called
Memnones, near Meroe. Memnon thus unites the Eastern and the Western
Ethiopians; and the less we regard him as an historical personage, the
more must we view him as personifying the ethnic identity of the two
races.
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