There is another ceremony with which I shall close, and this regards the women also, and I shall call it incision. This is an usage frequent, and still retained among the Jews, though positively prohibited by the law: “Thou shalt not cut thy face for the sake of, or on account of the dead[110].” As soon as a near relation dies in Abyssinia, a brother or parent, cousin-german or lover, every woman in that relation, with the nail of her little finger, which she leaves long on purpose, cuts the skin of both her temples, about the size of a sixpence; and therefore you see either a wound or a scar in every fair face in Abyssinia; and in the dry season, when the camp is out, from the loss of friends they seldom have liberty to heal till peace and the army return with the rains.
The Abyssinians, like the ancient Egyptians, their first colony, in computing their time, have continued the use of the solar year. Diodorus Siculus says, “They do not reckon their time by the moon, but according to the sun; that thirty days constitute their month, to which they add five days and the fourth part of a day, and this completes their year.”
These five days were, by the Egyptians, called Nici, and, by the Greeks, Epagomeni, which signifies, days added, or superinduced, to complete a sum. The Abyssinians add five days, which they call Quagomi, a corruption from the Greek Epagomeni, to the month of August, which is their Nahaassé. Every fourth year they add a sixth day. They begin the year, like all the eastern nations, with the 29th or 30th day of August, that is the kalends of September, the 29th of August being the first of their month Mascaram.
It is uncertain whence they derived the names of their months; they have no signification in any of the languages of Abyssinia. The name of the first month among the old Egyptians has continued to this day. It is Tot, probably so called from the first division of time among the Egyptians, from observation of the helaical rising of the dog-star. The names of the months retained in Abyssinia are possibly in antiquity prior to this; they are probably those given them by the Cushite, before the Kalendars at Thebes and Meroë, their colony, were formed.
The common epoch which the Abyssinians make use of is from the creation of the world; but in the quantity of this period they do not agree with the Greeks, nor with other eastern nations, who reckon 5508 years from the creation to the birth of Christ. The Abyssinians adopt the even number of 5500 years, casting away the odd eight years; but whether this was first done for ease of calculation, or some better reason, there is neither book nor tradition that now can teach us. They have, besides this, many other epochs, such as from the council of Nice and Ephesus. There is likewise to be met with in their books a portion of time, which is certainly a cycle; the Ethiopic word is kamar, which, literally interpreted, is an arch, or circle. It is not now in use in civil life among the Abyssinians, and therefore was mentioned as containing various quantities from 100 years to 19; and there are places in their history where neither of these will apply, nor any even number whatever.
They make use of the golden number and epact constantly in all their ecclesiastic computations: the first they call Matqué, the other Abacté. Scaliger, who has taken great pains upon this confused subject, the computation of time in the church of Abyssinia, without having succeeded in making it much clearer, tells us, that the first use or invention of epacts was not earlier than the time of Dioclesian; but this is contrary to the positive evidence of Abyssinian history, which says expressly, that the epact was invented by Demetrius[111], patriarch of Alexandria. “Unless, says the poet in their liturgy, Demetrius had made this revelation by the immediate influence of the Holy Ghost, how, I pray you, was it possible that the computation of time, called Epacts, could ever have been known?” And, again, “When you meet, says he, you shall learn the computation by epacts, which was taught by the Holy Ghost to father Demetrius, and by him revealed to you.” Now Demetrius was the twelfth patriarch of Alexandria, who was elected about the 190th year of Christ, or in the reign of the emperor Severus, consequently long before the time of Dioclesian.
It seems the reputation the Egyptians had from very old time for their skill in computation and the division of time, remained with them late in the days of Christianity. Pope Leo the Great, writing to the emperor Marcian, confesses that the fixing the time of the moveable feasts was always an exclusive privilege of the church of Alexandria; and therefore, says he, in his letter about reforming the kalendar, the holy fathers endeavoured to take away the occasion of this error, by delegating the whole care of this to the bishop of Alexandria, because the Egyptians, from old times, seem to have had this gift of computation given them; and when these had signified to the apostolic See the days upon which the moveable feasts were to happen, the church of Rome then notified this by writing to churches at a greater distance.
We are not to doubt that this privilege, which the church of Alexandria had been so long in possession of, contributed much to inflame the minds of the Abyssinians against the Roman Catholic priests, for altering the time of keeping Easter, by appointing days of their own; for we see violent commotions to have arisen every year upon the celebration of this festival.
The Abyssinians have another way of describing time peculiar to themselves; they read the whole of the four evangelists every year in their churches. They begin with Matthew, then proceed to Mark, Luke, and John, in order; and, when they speak of an event, they write and say it happened in the days of Matthew, that is, in the first quarter of the year, while the gospel of St Matthew was yet reading in the churches.
They compute the time of the day in a very arbitrary, irregular manner. The twilight, as I have before observed, is very short, almost imperceptible, and was still more so when the court was removed farther to the southward in Shoa. As soon as the sun falls below the horizon, night comes on, and all the stars appear. This term, then, the twilight, they choose for the beginning of their day, and call it Naggé, which is the very time the twilight of the morning lasts. The same is observed at night, and Meset is meant to signify the instant of beginning the twilight, between the sun’s falling below the horizon and the stars appearing. Mid-day is by them called Kater, a very old word, which signifies culmination, or a thing’s being arrived or placed at the middle or highest part of an arch. All the rest of times, in conversation, they describe by pointing at the place in the heavens where the sun then was, when what they are describing happened.