In Abyssinia it is considered as a fundamental law of the land, that none of the royal family, who has any deformity or bodily defect, shall be allowed to succeed to the crown; and, for this purpose, any of the princes, who may have escaped from the mountain of Wechnè, and who are afterwards taken, are mutilated in some of their members, that thus they may be disqualified from ever succeeding. In Persia the same was observed. Procopius[39] tells us, that Zames, the son of Cabades, was excluded from the throne because he was blind of one eye, the law of Persia prohibiting any person that had a bodily defect to be elected king.
The kings of Abyssinia were seldom seen by their subjects. Justin[40] says, the Persians hid the person of their king to increase their reverence for his majesty. And it was a law of Deioces[41], king of the Medes, that nobody should be permitted to see the king; which regulation was as ancient as the time of Semiramis, whose son, Ninyas, is said to have grown old in the palace, without ever having been known by being seen out of it.
This absurd usage gave rise to many abuses. In Persia[42] it produced two officers, who were called the king’s eyes, and the king’s ear, and who had the dangerous employment, I mean dangerous for the subject, of seeing and hearing for their sovereign. In Abyssinia, as I have just said, it created an officer called the king’s mouth, or voice, for, being seen by nobody, he spoke of course in the third person, “Hear what the king says to you”, which is the usual form of all regal mandates in Abyssinia; and what follows has the force of law. In the same stile, Josephus thus begins an edict of Cyrus king of Persia, “Cyrus the king says[43],”—And speaking of Cambyses’s rescript, “Cambyses the king says thus,”—And Esdras also, “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia[44],”—And Nebuchadnezzar says to Holofernes, “Thus saith the Great King, Lord of the whole earth[45];”—and this was probably the origin of edicts, when writing was little used by sovereigns, and little understood by the subject.
Solemn hunting-matches were always in use both with the kings of Abyssinia and those of Persia[46]. In both kingdoms it was a crime for a subject to strike the game till such time as the king had thrown his lance at it. This absurd custom was repealed by Artaxerxes Longimanus in one kingdom[47], and by Yasous the Great in the other, so late as the beginning of the last century.
The kings of Abyssinia are above all laws. They are supreme in all causes ecclesiastical and civil; the land and persons of their subjects are equally their property, and every inhabitant of their kingdom is born their slave; if he bears a higher rank it is by the king’s gift; for his nearest relations are accounted nothing better. The same obtained in Persia. Aristotle calls the Persian generals and nobles, slaves of the great king[48]. Xerxes, reproving Pytheus the Lydian when seeking to excuse one of his sons from going to war, says, “You that are my slave, and bound to follow me with your wife and all your family[49].”—And Gobryas[50] says to Cyrus, “I deliver myself to you, at once your companion and your slave.”
There are several kinds of bread in Abyssinia, some of different sorts of teff, and some of tocusso, which also vary in quality. The king of Abyssinia eats of wheat bread, though not of every wheat, but of that only that grows in the province of Dembea, therefore called the king’s food. It was so with the kings of Persia, who ate wheat bread, Herodotus says, but only of a particular kind, as we learn from Strabo[51].
I have shewn, in the course of the foregoing history, that it always has been, and still is the custom of the kings of Abyssinia, to marry what number of wives they choose; that these were not, therefore, all queens; but that among them there was one who was considered particularly as queen, and upon her head was placed the crown, and she was called Iteghè.
Thus, in Persia, we read that Ahasuerus loved Esther[52], who had found grace in his sight more than the other virgins, and he had placed a golden crown upon her head. And Josephus[53] informs us, that, when Esther[54] was brought before the king, he was exceedingly delighted with her, and made her his lawful wife, and when she came into the palace he put a crown upon her head: whether placing the crown upon the queen’s head had any civil effect as to regency in Persia as it had in Abyssinia, is what history does not inform us.
I have already observed, that there is an officer called Serach Massery, who watches before the king’s gate all night, and at the dawn of day cracks a whip to chace the wild beasts out of the town. This, too, is the signal for the king to rise, and sit down in his judgment-seat. The same custom was observed in Persia. Early in the morning an officer entered the king’s chamber, and said to him “Arise, O king! and take charge of those matters which Oromasdes has appointed you to the care of.”
The king of Abyssinia never is seen to walk, nor to set his foot upon the ground, out of his palace; and when he would dismount from the horse or mule on which he rides, he has a servant with a stool, who places it properly for him for that purpose. He rides into the anti-chamber to the foot of his throne, or to the stool placed in the alcove of his tent. We are told by Athenaeus[55], such was the practice in Persia, whose king never set his foot upon the ground out of his palace.