In The Pall Mall Gazette of August 19, 1904, an interesting account of an interview with M. Hugues Leroux was published. M. Leroux had just returned from a “diplomatic and scientific mission” to Abyssinia. He had been the bearer of an autograph letter from M. Loubet to the Emperor Menelek. M. Leroux brought back much interesting information which concerns only the present circumstances of the country—e.g. that the Emperor “is striving to follow out what he himself calls a policy of good-humour. He wants to be on good terms with all the world, but he does not want to be devoured. He is anxious to open up Abyssinia, but to commerce, not to conquest.” And again, “he has at last granted permission for the railway from Djibouti, which hitherto went only as far as Harrar, to be carried up to Addis Abiba. He will probably refuse the British and Italian requests to build branch lines connecting this railway with Zeila and Massouah, the towns on the coast to the north and the south of Djibouti which belong respectively to Great Britain and Italy, his comment upon this scheme being, ‘I would like one ladder up to my front door, but not three.’”
M. Leroux had been entrusted with an autograph reply from the Emperor Menelek to the President of the French Republic. But he bore away from Ethiopia a much more interesting document, which—if it is genuine and is rightly described by the traveller and the interviewer—is invaluable for the clue that it gives to the origin of the Abyssinian nation. It is said to be “a most extraordinary Abyssinian manuscript, which is certain to make a great sensation when the translation of it is published, for it throws a flood of light upon the early history of the Jews. The Abyssinian monarchs have always considered this manuscript to be among their most sacred possessions. It was appropriated by the English at the capture of Magdala, but on Emperor John succeeding to the throne, he opened diplomatic negotiations and recovered it from the British Museum, where it had been deposited. It is written in the Geez language, which is of Hebraic origin, of great antiquity, and known only to the priests. It relates that after the plagues of Egypt some hundreds of thousands of Jews did not follow Moses across the Red Sea, but went west, down the Blue Nile, to found a kingdom of their own, which they called Saba—‘Saba’ merely meaning west. These were the original Abyssinians.”
We are told that “the original of this manuscript had remained seventeen hundred years in an island of Lake Zouai, whose inhabitants are still of the purest Jewish type, but they were Christianized at a very early date, and their religion has now degenerated into fetishism. They knew nothing as to the contents of the manuscript, which they nevertheless regarded as a very precious object.” Whatever may be the real antiquity of this document its existence and the importance attributed to it seem to give evidence of a tradition of great age, and this tradition offers a credible explanation of the fact that such a people as the Abyssinian is found in the mountains of East Africa. No doubt the Habashes are now, almost universally, a race of mixed blood, but they possess a national character which is quite distant from that of the neighbouring tribes. The Semitic invasion may have taken place immediately after the captivity of the Jews in Egypt or at an earlier or later date, but it was powerful enough to affect the whole polity and population of Ethiopia.
Generally, writers upon Abyssinia ascribe the incursion to the reign of King Solomon, and this is in accordance with a legend that is believed throughout the country. The Queen of Sheba was, of course, the Queen of Ethiopia; her visit to the wise and much-married king provided her with an heir; “her son Menelek was in due time transmitted to his august sire. The young prince was duly instructed in all the mysteries of Jewish law and science, and being anointed king under the name of David, he was returned to his native land, escorted by a large suite of the nobles of Israel, and a band of her most learned elders under the direction of Ascarias, the son of Zadok, the High Priest.
“The gates of the temple of Jerusalem were left unguarded, and the doors miraculously opened in order that the holy ark of Zion and the tables of the law might, without difficulty, be stolen and carried away. The journey was prosperously performed, and the Queen-Mother, on resigning the reins of authority to her son at her death, about nine hundred and seventy years before the birth of Christ, caused a solemn obligation to be sworn by all that henceforth no female should hold sway in the land; and that those princes of the blood royal upon whom the crown did not devolve should, until the succession opened to them or during the natural term of existence, be kept close prisoners on a lofty mountain; a cruel and despotic enactment which, through a long succession of ages, was jealously observed.”[123]
“The impetuous zeal of the emigrants,” wrote Mr. Stern, “found ample scope for its loftiest inspiration in the new world to which they were transplanted, and in the course of a few years the worship of the God of Israel extensively supplanted the idolatries of Ethiopia.
“From these vague traditions,” the same writer prudently added, “in which truth and fiction are inextricably jumbled together, the inquirer does not gain much trustworthy information on the history of Ethiopia and the settlement of the Jews in that country.”[124]
Mr. Augustus Wylde visited a charming and sequestered spot where, according to one legend, the stolen ark was deposited. “We halted for lunch just vis-à-vis to the first sources of the Taccazze. . . . Just before reaching the sources, on a hill on the north side of the valley, is the church of Chevenan Gorgis, in a splendid grove of juniper trees; immediately above the sources on the hill is another church, also surrounded by juniper trees, dedicated to Debbessa Jesu; tradition has it that when Menelek, the son of the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon, came from Jerusalem with the ark, it was placed on the ground at this spot, where he camped, and these springs gushed forth, and he immediately ordered a temple to be built on the spot.
“On leaving this camp Menelek commenced his march towards the east, and on the bearers of the ark putting it down, after about an hour’s march, they found that they could not move it, as it firmly adhered to the ground. This spot is supposed by some of the Abyssinians to be the true resting-place of the ark that was brought from Jerusalem; there is a church built over the spot called Eyela Kudus Michael. . . . It is nearly impossible for a stranger to obtain admittance to this church, and the place in the Holy of Holies where the ark is supposed to rest is shown to no one. This ark cannot be in two places; the people of the north declare it is in the sacred grove of Axum in the church of Selata Musser (place of Moses), and the priests of the Eyela district declare it is in their church, so they always quarrel and wrangle over this vexed question, the same as European priests do over their sacred relics.”[125]
Perhaps the soundest opinion which can be formed under present conditions as to the origin of the Abyssinian people has been expressed by Mr. Wylde:—“The race, as the name Habash or Abyssinian denotes, is a mixture, undoubtedly of very long standing, but most likely of Jew with the inhabitants of Southern Arabia and the non-negro races of Eastern Africa.”[126]