Besides the Gallas whom I saw at Musculo’s, were several Zingero and Kuffah slaves, and as these are the principal representatives of the Gonga people, of whom I have frequently spoken, I shall take this opportunity of more particularly describing them. The Gongas are a mysterious people, of whom rumours alone had reached the civilized world in the remotest antiquity, and the same obscurity continues at the present time to hang over this interesting and secluded nation. With the evidence I collected during my travels in Abyssinia, it will not be presumption in me to call attention to a few facts that appear to me calculated to throw some little light upon this subject, and which may probably excite a greater desire to become better acquainted with the hidden secrets of man’s history contained in the heart of Africa.
The Gongas, in the era of the celebrated Egyptian king Psammeticus, occupied the whole table-land of Abyssinia. Neither Amhara, or Galla, had, as yet, appeared upon their naturally defended and very extensive fortress. In their social institutions the great principle of foreign policy, was the exclusion of strangers; and their isolated situation, easily enabled them to effect this. One character of civilization, the geography of the desert-surrounded table-lands of Africa, is eminently calculated to prosper and promote, that peculiar social condition, the consistency and continuance of which, requires little or no intercourse to be kept up with the rest of mankind; the isolated members of which, live contented among themselves, uninfluenced by wants which could only be gratified by the products of other lands. In such African communities, no inland seas, or navigable rivers, afford that facility of intercourse which is enjoyed (as it is presumed) by the inhabitants of more highly favoured countries. Protected also from foreign invasion by vast and almost impassable deserts, individual enterprize could scarcely be tempted to keep up a communication with a people so situated, provided that they adhered to the principles of contentment, and did not allow themselves to be seduced into a desire for foreign luxuries; an unwise indulgence in which, first leads to molestation from commercial intruders; who, breaking up the seclusion, open a path to military invasion, which usually ends in the loss of country and of personal freedom.
We hear of the Gongas in ancient history under various names, but they were principally characterized by the cautious manner in which they communicated with those merchants, with whom nature imperatively commanded them, at least, to have some intercourse to exchange the productions of their country, for what was an absolute necessary of life to them, and of which they had no supply but from abroad; I need scarcely mention, that this was salt. In return for this, it appears, that gold was principally given to the traders; and for ages, this commerce was carried on, with no more communication than was necessary, through the medium of the following practice. “This country of Sasu is very rich in gold mines. Every year the King of Axum sends some of his people to this place for gold. These are joined by many other merchants; so that, altogether, they form a caravan of about five hundred people. They carry with them oxen, salt, and iron. When they arrive upon the frontiers of that country they take up their quarters, and make a large barrier of thorns. In the meantime having slain and cut up their oxen, they lay the pieces of flesh, as well as the iron, and salt, upon the thorns. Then come the inhabitants, and place one or more parcels of gold upon the wares, and wait outside the enclosure. The owners of the flesh, and other goods, then examine whether this be equal to the price or not. If so, they take the gold, and the others take the wares; if not, the latter still add more gold, or take back what they had already put down. The trade is carried on in this manner, because the languages are different, and they have no interpreter; it takes about five days to dispose of the goods which they bring with them.”[14] Heeren, in his Historical Researches, connects the country where this system of barter was practised, with that of the Macrobians, or long-lived Ethiopians, mentioned by Herodotus. By an ingenious conclusion, he supposes that the altar or table of the Sun which characterized the latter people was the market-place, in which, at a later day, the trade with the strangers was transacted. My observations have also led me to the same conclusion, but I am able more distinctly to authenticate this, and to suggest additional and more direct evidence of its being the actual fact.
The worship of the Gongas, which has continued to the present time, is the adoration of the river that flows through their country, as being part of the sacred Nile. The Abi, or Nile of Bruce, is worshipped by the modern Adjows, whilst the Gibbee, or Abiah, is the object of a similar devotion among the Pagan Gongas of Zingero, and of Kuffah. We are enabled from our knowledge of the former river to presume, that its singular course determined in the first instance, a reverence, which, when the increasing encroachments of foreign foes had made this river a convenient defence to the pressed Gongas, was soon elevated to the character of a protecting deity. That its singular course should have thus attracted attention arises, I believe, from the circumstance of its encircling an extensive province, and going around it, as the sun was supposed to revolve around the earth. The zodiac, or track of the sun through the heavens, was typified by the form of a serpent, and this I have always understood to have been the source of that serpent-worship which characterized so many of the earlier and more civilized nations of the earth. In no country, was this idolatry more prevalent than upon the plateau of Abyssinia, and Arwè, the great serpent, it will be recollected figures considerably in the earlier history of the Amhara, who appear to have in some measure adopted the religion of the Gongas, when they took possession of the countries upon the left hand of their father, their king, their sun, by all of which names, it is usual, even at the present day, to designate the river Abi.
The great serpents of classic mythological history, the Hydra, the Python, and others unnamed, destroyed by Apollo and Hercules, all allude evidently to the worship of the serpent in Africa being superseded by that of the sun. The relation of these gods to that luminary is generally admitted, and Hiero Calla, fortunately for my derivation of the word Galla, the sun of the blacks, is the interpretative analysis of the name of Hercules. In the modern Dankalli language no other word is used for sun but Hiero, and it enters into the name of several names of places; Hyhilloo, the scene of the celebrated battle between the forces of Lohitu and the Muditu, is translated by the Dankalli to mean the hill of the sun.
The head of a sculptured Hercules is invariably portraited with the frizzly hair of the Dankalli, whilst antiquarian ethnologists will be interested to observe the persistance of national character preserved in the flowing locks and ample beard usually given to Jupiter, his European counterpart.
That which increased the celebrity of the northern portion of the table-land of Abyssinia, and established the superiority in dignity of its stream, was the circumstance of its flowing through the lake Tzana or Dembea. No little light breaks upon the subject when it is understood, that the literal interpretation of these two words in very different languages, is the same, both signifying the lake of the sun. Dembea, let me observe, is a word in use in Abyssinia that belongs to the same language as Abi, Assa, Galla, Nil, and others, that to avoid confusion, I have called Arian. That so many proper names, should all be derived from an Asiatic language in a country where no representatives of the modern people who speak it can now be found, is only to be accounted for, by supposing that the African original of the Arian family of man yet continues in some of the secluded oases of Intra-tropical Africa, to reward by their discovery future enterprize.
Bahr Dembea, or the Lake of the Sun, would give a very appropriate designation to the plateau upon which it is found. It was that, and the course of the Abi, which occasioned the country visited by the messengers of Cambyses to be called the Table of the Sun. It was also the presence of these singularly situated geographical features, and their supposed reference to the sun’s track in the zodiac, that determined the reputed sanctity of this portion of Ethiopia in the classic ages.
The connexion of the ancient Persian empire with its Ethiopic tributary kingdoms, did not extend so far as the country of Sasu, and the fate of Cambyses, in his attempted conquest of that country, would be, I have no doubt, an instructive lesson to his successors. The claims of these monarchs to supremacy in Ethiopia appears, in fact, to have been founded upon former family connexion with some father-land in Africa, not situated upon the plateau of Abyssinia, then inhabited by the Gongas, but in another desert-surrounded country, of the same character; probably, that which surrounds the sources of the Bahr ul Abiad.
The African origin of other ancient nations can also be most easily demonstrated, and the historical accounts of their descent from gods, which have come down to us, although they consist of exaggerated and distorted relations, in consequence of having been derived from the ignorant translation of hieroglyphical records, in which it would appear that the earlier history of Africa was preserved; still we are able to gather from these mythological enigmas everything that is necessary to connect their origin with a common centre of divergence, which I believe to have been the country around the sources of the Nile.