A number of half-savage tribes, Maditi and Bohrehsa, were settled to the right and to the left of the territory watered by the Nile, between Darfur, the mountains of Abyssinia, and the Red Sea; and the warlike disposition of the Ethiopian kings found in these tribes an inexhaustible field for obtaining easy victories and abundant spoil. Many of these sovereigns—Piônkhi, Alaru, Harsiatef, Nastosenen—whose respective positions in the royal line are still undetermined, specially distinguished themselves in these struggles, but the few monuments they have left, though bearing witness to their military enterprise and ability, betray their utter decadence in everything connected with art, language, and religion. The ancient Egyptian syllabary, adapted to the needs of a barbarous tongue, had ended by losing its elegance; architecture was degenerating, and sculpture slowly growing more and more clumsy in appearance. Some of the work, however, is not wanting in a certain rude nobility—as, for instance, the god and goddess carved side by side in a block of grey granite. Ethiopian worship had become permeated with strange superstitions, and its creed was degraded, in spite of the strictness with which the priests supervised its application and kept watch against every attempt to introduce innovations. Towards the end of the seventh century some of the families attached to the temple of Am on at Napata had endeavoured to bring about a kind of religious reform; among other innovations they adopted the practice of substituting for the ordinary sacrifice, new rites, the chief feature of which was the offering of the flesh of the victim raw, instead of roasted with fire. This custom, which was doubtless borrowed from the negroes of the Upper Nile, was looked upon as a shameful heresy by the orthodox. The king repaired in state to the temple of Anion, seized the priests who professed these seditious beliefs, and burnt them alive.
The use of raw meat, nevertheless, was not discontinued, and it gained such ground in the course of ages that even Christianity was unable to suppress it; up to the present time, the brindê, or piece of beef cut from the living animal and eaten raw, is considered a delicacy by the Abyssinians.
The isolation of the Ethiopians had rather increased than lowered their reputation among other nations. Their transitory appearance on the battle-fields of Asia had left a deep impression on the memories of their opponents. The tenacity they had displayed during their conflict with Assyria had effaced the remembrance of their defeat. Popular fancy delighted to extol the wisdom of Sabaco,* and exalted Taharqa to the first rank among the conquerors of the old world; now that Kush once more came within the range of vision, it was invested with a share of all these virtues, and the inquiries Cambyses made concerning it were calculated to make him believe that he was about to enter on a struggle with a nation of demigods rather than of men. He was informed that they were taller, more beautiful, and more vigorous than all other mortals, that their age was prolonged to one hundred and twenty years and more, and that they possessed a marvellous fountain whose waters imparted perpetual youth to then-bodies. There existed near their capital a meadow, perpetually furnishing an inexhaustible supply of food and drink; whoever would might partake of this “Table of the Sun,” and eat to his fill.**
* The eulogy bestowed on him by Herodotus shows the esteem
in which he was held even in the Saite period; later on he
seems to have become two persons, and so to have given birth
to the good Ethiopian king Aktisanes.
** Pausanias treats it as a traveller’s tale. Heeren thought
that he saw in Herodotus’ account a reference to intercourse
by signs, so frequent in Africa. The “Table of the Sun”
would thus have been a kind of market, whither the natives
would come for their provisions, using exchange to procure
them. I am inclined rather to believe the story to be a
recollection, partly of the actual custom of placing meats,
which the first comer might take, on the tombs in the
necropolis, partly of the mythical “Meadow of Offerings”
mentioned in the funerary texts, to which the souls of the
dead and the gods alike had access. This divine region would
have transferred to our earth by some folk-tale, like the
judgment of the dead, the entrance into the solar bark, and
other similar beliefs.
Gold was so abundant that it was used for common purposes, even for the chains of their prisoners; but, on the other hand, copper was rare and much prized. Canibyses despatched some spies chosen from among the Ichthyophagi of the Bed Sea to explore this region, and acting on the report they brought back, he left Memphis at the head of an army and a fleet.* The expedition was partly a success and partly a failure. It followed the Nile valley as far as Korosko, and then struck across the desert in the direction of Napata;** but provisions ran short before a quarter of the march had been achieved, and famine obliged the invaders to retrace their steps after having endured terrible sufferings.***
* Herodotus’ text speaks of an army only, but the accounts
of the wars between Ethiopia and Egypt show that the army
was always accompanied by the necessary fleet.
** It is usually thought that the expedition marched by the
side of the Nile as far as Napata; to support this theory
the name of a place mentioned in Pliny is quoted, Cambusis
at the third cataract, which is supposed to contain the name
of the conqueror. This town, which is sometimes mentioned by
the classical geographers, is called Kambiusit in the
Ethiopie texts, and the form of the name makes its
connection with the history of Cambyses easy. I think it
follows, from the text of Herodotus, that the Persians left
the grassy land, the river-valley, at a given moment, to
enter the sand, i.e. the desert. Now this is done to-day at
two points—near Korosko to rejoin the Nile at Abu-Hammed,
and near Wady-Halfah to avoid the part of the Nile called
the “Stony belly,” Batn el-Hagar. The Korosko route, being
the only one suitable for the transit of a body of troops,
and also the only route known to Herodotus, seems, I think,
likely to be the one which was followed in the present
instance; at all events, it fits in best with the fact that
Cambyses was obliged to retrace his steps hurriedly, when he
had accomplished hardly a fifth of the journey.
*** Many modern historians are inclined to assume that
Cambyses’ expedition was completely successful, and that its
result was the overthrow of the ancient kingdom of Nepata
and the foundation of that of Meroê. Cambyses would have
given the new town which he built there the name of his
sister Meroê. The traditions concerning Cambusis and Meroê
belong to the Alexandrine era, and rest only on chance
similarities of sound. With regard to the Ethiopian province
of the Persian empire and to the Ethiopian neighbours of
Egypt whom Cambyses subdued, the latter are not necessarily
Ethiopians of Napata. Herodotus himself says that the
Ethiopians dwelt in the country above Elephantine, and that
half of what he calls the island of Takhompsô was inhabited
by Ethiopians: the subjugated Ethiopians and their country
plainly correspond with the Dodekaschênos of the Græco-Roman
era.
Cambyses had to rest content with the acquisition of those portions of Nubia adjoining the first cataract—the same, in fact, that had been annexed to Egypt by Psammetichus I. and II. (523). The failure of this expedition to the south, following so closely on the disaster which befell that of the west, had a deplorable effect on the mind of Cambyses. He had been subject, from childhood, to attacks of epilepsy, during which he became a maniac and had no control over his actions. These reverses of fortune aggravated the disease, and increased the frequency and length of the attacks.*
* Recent historians admit neither the reality of the illness
of Cambyses nor the madness resulting from it, but consider
them Egyptian fables, invented out of spite towards the king
who had conquered and persecuted them.