Cambyses, enraged at this reception of the Ethiopians, set out without preparing any store of provisions, and without reflecting that it was the extremity of the world to which he was carrying his arms. Before he had marched a fifth part of the route from Thebes, the want of provisions was felt; yet he madly determined to proceed. The soldiers fed on grass as long as any could be found; at length, when they arrived in the deserts, they were obliged to cast lots, to eat one in ten; which finally induced Cambyses to return to Thebes with the remains of his army.—The defeat of this monarch is also mentioned by Diodorus.
If this account be at all correct, the country of the Macrobians must have been at some distance from Meroe, otherwise they could not have been ignorant of the use of necklaces and bracelets, since the figures on the walls of the sepulchres of that metropolis are represented with those ornaments. The fountain mentioned by the Ichthyophagi is almost as wonderful as the lake which Diodorus reports as seen by Semiramis; but, discarding what bears the stamp of fiction in this narrative, we can easily recognise, in this account of the Macrobians, a powerful nomad tribe, in possession of the gold country which was the great attraction to Cambyses. Their degree of strength and longevity, probably exaggerated, might be gained by the habits of frugality and temperance usual among the nomad tribes. Their food (meat and milk) is exactly that of the Bishareen and other tribes of the desert at the present day. Their not understanding the nature of the ointment, may have been from its being very superior to their own; all that is probable in the description of the fountain is, that it consisted of oil. The Arab tribes are now in the habit of anointing their bodies, conceiving this custom to be in the highest degree salubrious, and indeed necessary, to mitigate the parching effects of a vertical sun and the hot winds of the desert. I tried this custom, and found it very beneficial; and am persuaded I should have suffered less from the heat had I used it more frequently; but the smell of the ointment they now use is not like the violet, as the Ichthyophagi describe that of the Macrobians. It is not, therefore, surprising that a powerful tribe, doubtless less barbarous than at the present day, being in connection with states then more civilised, should have a bath of prepared oil, suited to the pressing wants of the country. A nomad tribe might, very probably, be ignorant how the purple colour was produced; for, with the exception of some shawls worn by the chiefs, none of the Arabs of the present day use any thing but white cotton and linen cloths. The Melek Nazr e’ Deen (see [Plate III.]), is almost the only exception I have met with. Sheakh Sayd, the chief of all the Ababdes, did not know how the indigo plant (which his country produces) was made into a dye, till he went with me through the manufactory at Berber. I suspect that the account of their contempt for gold, is an embellishment of the Greek historian, or an exaggeration of the ambassadors; for they must have learnt its value by exchanging it with their more civilised neighbours. It is not, however, impossible that they may have used it for chains, as they might not have possessed other metals, or if they did, might not have had skill to work them into chains so easily as they could gold; or, from their greater rarity, they might have been equally as valuable.[72]
Herodotus calls them Egyptian Macrobians, and afterwards Egyptians. I am almost inclined to believe that they may have been a nomad race, blended with the 240,000 soldiers, who, according to Herodotus, deserted from Psammitichus, and had a territory assigned to them, among a people about sixty days’ journey distant from Meroe. It is certain that the Egyptians would marry native wives. They might, as Herodotus says, have improved the manners of the people; but, being warriors, and not mechanics or artificers, and accustomed to a rigid distinction of castes, they might not have introduced a knowledge of the arts, and even what they taught might, in a century and a half, be forgotten by a tribe whose habits would give them little taste for such acquirements. I cannot agree with those who consider the country of the Macrobians to be on or near the Arabian Gulf, in the territory of the present Soumalies, or, as Professor Heeren[73] has placed them, beyond Cape Guardefui; for, mad as Cambyses is represented to have been, he surely could not have been so infatuated as to have attempted to penetrate to so vast a distance, across the immense deserts and inhospitable regions of the interior, the whole population of which would be hostile to his progress, particularly when a far shorter and easier way was open to him by the Arabian Gulf and the Straits of Babelmandel. It may be stated that the Persians were, perhaps, unskilled and averse to navigation; but even if not navigators themselves, they might easily have procured transports. I think the Macrobians should be placed more in the interior; probably on the Bahr el Abiad. Pausanias (lib. iv.) says, that Meroe and the Ethiopian plains are inhabited by the Macrobians, the most just people of the earth: but that they have not in the country any sea, nor any other river but the Nile. This statement, which merits attention, being from one so deeply versed in Egyptian subjects, proves what I have stated,—that the Macrobians did not occupy the territory of the present Soumalies, near the sea; but at the same time brings them nearer to Meroe than we can admit from their state of civilisation, or the testimony of Herodotus, who describes them as being on the southern side of Africa.
I have now to mention an historical fact, connected with some curious Ethiopian customs, which might have been rejected as a fable, but for the evidence of a lapidary inscription, which records the name of the king connected with it. This gives to it an authentic character, and affords another proof of the general accuracy of the Sicilian historian’s account of the Ethiopians.
“The Ethiopians,” says Diodorus[74], “have many laws differing from those of other nations, particularly as regards the choice of their kings. The priests choose the most respectable of their order, and form them into a circle; and he who by chance is taken hold of by the priest, who enters into the circle, walking and leaping like a satyr, is declared king upon the spot; and all the people worship him, as a man charged with the government by Divine Providence. The king lives after the manner prescribed to him by the law. In all things he follows the customs of the country, neither punishing nor recompensing but according to the laws established since the origin of the nation. It is not permitted to the king to cause any of his subjects to be executed, even when they shall have been judged worthy of death; but he sends to the guilty person an officer, who carries to him the signal of death; and immediately the criminal shuts himself in his house, and executes justice on himself. It is not permitted to him to fly into a neighbouring kingdom, and change the pain of death into banishment, as they do in Greece. They relate that a certain man, having received an order of death, which had been sent to him by the king, thought of flying out of Ethiopia. His mother, who suspected his design, passed her girdle around his neck, without his attempting to defend himself, and strangled him, lest, as she said, her son should bring increased disgrace upon his family by his flight.”
We perceive, by these passages, that the Ethiopians had regular laws, to which not only the people but the king submitted. The kings, it seems, were chosen from the priests, and therefore it is not extraordinary that they were so completely under their power as we shall shortly see; for probably, like the cardinals at Rome, they did not select always the most talented, but often the most manageable, as their chief. The satyr-like gambols of the priest, which were the cause of his being elected, remind me somewhat of the impositions, or, rather, workings of the spirit, which the Arab fakeers and sheakhs sometimes exhibit.[75]
“The death of the kings,” says Diodorus, “is still more extraordinary. The priests at Meroe have acquired great power. When they form the resolution, they send a courier to the king, with an order for him to die. They tell him that the gods (or oracles) had thus decreed, and that he would be guilty of a crime if he violated an order from them. They added many other reasons, which would easily influence a simple man, aware of the ancient custom, and who had not strength of mind sufficient to resist such an unjust command. The first kings submitted to this cruel sentence. Ergamenes, who reigned at the time of the second Ptolemy, and who was instructed in the philosophy of Greece, was the first who dared to throw off this ridiculous yoke. He went with his army to the place difficult to get to, or (εἰς τὸ ἄβατον) fortress, where was formerly the temple of gold of the Ethiopians, and caused all the priests to be massacred, and instituted himself a new religion.” Signor Rosellini found the name of this king on the door of the sanctuary of Dacker. ⲥⲟⲩⲧⲛ̀ (Ⲁⲙⲛⲧⲟⲧ ⲱⲛϩ, Ⲣⲏ-ⲱⲧⲡ) ⲥⲓⲣⲏ (Ⲉⲣⲕⲁⲙⲛ ⲱⲛϩ ϫⲧⲧ, Ⲓⲥⲏⲙⲁⲓ). “King Amentot (hand of Amun), the living, devoted to Phre (Son of the Sun), Erkamon, always living, beloved of Isis.”—Vol. ii. 321.
The discovery of the name is of the greatest importance; as the evidence of this lapidary inscription, that there was a king called Ergamenes, or, to give him his proper name, Erkamenes, is strongly corroborative of the whole narrative of Diodorus. He could not have been an Egyptian king, for there is no mention in any of the lists of a king of that name. We may, therefore, with certainty conclude, that it is the Ethiopian monarch Erkamenes. Philæ was generally considered the boundary of Egypt, but we have the indubitable testimony of a long train of splendid monuments, from that island to Solib, that the rulers of Egypt, from the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty until the time of the Cæsars, possessed at all events, at different intervals, that part of Ethiopia.
From there being there no Ethiopian edifices, but all Egyptian temples, from the first to the second cataract, it is probable that the Egyptians were generally in possession of that part of the valley of the Nile; but the name of this Ethiopian king having been found on this Ptolemaic edifice, can only be accounted for by his having been in possession of the country. The style of the architecture and sculpture of the temple of Dacker is certainly like that of the Ptolemies. I therefore do not conceive that the temple was built by Erkamenes, but perhaps that conqueror celebrated his victories by religious functions, a representation of which he had sculptured on the temple at the limit of his conquests.