lili 91 ill
¡His
I »
‘tlie frontier.’ ” ,;We have already \supra, pp. 256-9] furnished abundant extracts
from Mr. Birch’s more recent definitions of KSA’s localities above Egypt.
But, in addition to the perplexing difficulties of archaic Egyptian and Hebrew names,
and the anachronisms of modern philologers, there is a third element of medley, on
which it behooves us to say a few words: viz., Ethiopia, and Ethiopians. Indeed, it is
the prevalence of misconceptions upon the latter which lies at the bottom of mistakes
concerning the former.
Already in a . d. 1657, the scholarship of Walton protested against “ Ethiopian” delusions,
with a citation from Waser — “ Græci Æthiopiam deducunt ab ai&u cremo, tiro,
et 8\1, àxôs, facies, aspectus, quia a solis vicinitate ita uruntur et torrentur, ut atro sint
colore.” Hence it is immediately perceived that Ethiopian, meaning simply a ‘ sun-
burned-facepossessed at one time a generic application to the color of the human
skin, and not an attribution to one specific geographical locality. During Homeric ages,
by Al9i6\l, the fair-skinned Hellenes merely meant a foreigner darker than themselves;
and, by Aldiôma (the existence even of true Negro races being then utterly unknown to
the Greeks) early Grecian geographers understood (not our modern “ Ethiopia” above
Egypt) the countries of all swarthy Asiatic and Barbaresque nations — Persians, Assyrians,
Syrians, Arabs, Phoenicians, Canaanites, Jews, Egyptians, Carthaginians, and
Libyans—v especially those situate along the coast of the Mediterranean from the
Orontes to Joppa.
This fact has been established beyond' all controversy by the vast erudition of a
Letronne, a Baoul-Rochette, and a Lenormant.593 Its etymological truth can be verified
in any Greek lexicon ; while it is adopted, although not with sufficient archaeological
rigor, in the popular cyclopaedias of Anthon and Kitto.
Want of space alone compels us to suppress many pages of extracts from the three
first-named savans; through which it would become demonstrated that Aidiôneç, in all
writers down to the fifth century b . c . , meant nothing more than “ visages brûlés” ;
that is, “ sun-burnt-faces.5’ By way of esample, take Memnon, who by Hesiod is termed
aI$i6ttu>v ftaaikfja, and by Homer, the most beautiful of men. Pausanias, Strabo, Diodorus,
Æschylus, and Herodotus, affirm that he was an Asiatic demigod, probably
from Shusan, or Clvuzistan, on the confines of Persia. Now, Hesiod never meant that
modern interpreters should understand that Memnon was “ king of the Ethiopians”'—
of our Ethiopia above Egypt! The poet wrote that Memnon was “ king of the burnt-
f a c e s that is, his followers were a dark-skinned people, such as the Cushite-Arabians
are on Persian confines to this day. It is the same in Homer’s “ Eastern and Western
¿Ethiopians ” — again the same in Herodotus’s Ethiopians, enrolled in the Persian army
of Xerxes ; some of whom were Asiatics,' and others Africans — and, not to enumerate
instances by the dozen, it is the same in Ælian’s Indians (Hindoos), whom he terms
Æthiopians also. In all these cases, the writers meant “ sun-burned-faces” of the so-
called “ Caucasian” type ; and it is but the inanity of modern littérateurs which ascribes
any of the above Æthiopians,to countries south of Egypt.
However, the time came, (after the Persian conquest, b . c . 525, and hardly before
Ptolemaic days,) that Greek geographers, having discovered that there was a race
“ nigro nigrior” whose habitat lay south of Egypt, began to restrict Æthiopia and
Æthiopians to the mahogany-colored Nubians and to the jet-black Negroes; and it is
in this, the later specific, not in the older generic, sense, that scientific geographers
understand a name which, without such reservation, is as vague as Indians (East and
West Indies, and American aborigines!) ; as Scythian (from the Himalaya to the Baltic!)
; or, as that wretched term “ Caucasian.”
Now, it was during the prevalence of sueh geographical misconceptions—when Africa
meant little more than Carthaginian and Cyrenaic territories along the face of Barbary ;
when Asia signified Asia Minor ip in the interval between Eratosthenes the first scientific
geographer, and Strabo the second — whilst Hindostan was termed Ethiopia, or
vice-versa — pending the notions that the Nile and the Indus were one and the same
stream- and that a circumambient ooean surrounded what little of a fiat and stationary
earth was known to Alexandrian science K during Such, and hundreds ot
similar cosmographical views since proved to he false, it was, we repeat, that the Jews
of Alexandria, (having forgotten not only their parental Hebrew, but even the Chaldee
dialect subsequently acquired through the Captivity,) caused the books of the Old
Testament to be translated into Greek ; in the form preserved to us under the mystic
No. LXX, anji by us consecrated as the Septuagint : translations fluctuating in date
b e tw e e n b . o. 260, and b . c. 130.
Books of different origins, translated at different epochàs, and by different persons,
necessarily teem with imperfections; nor can uniformity be expected from literary
labors under those circumstances, and in Buch uncritical times. Geographical criticism
was certainly not a paramount object with any of these “ uninspired” translators.
They never foresaw archaeological discussions that occur now, 2000 years after their
day, in a language not formed for 1500 years later, by a distinct people, (whose infantine'
traditions attain not their Alexandrine lifetimes,) and on a Continent (6000 miles
from Alexandria) whose existence was still undreamed of, even sixteen centuries after
the original Septuagint MSS. were completed. In consequence, some of the Hellenizing
Jews, or Judaizing Hellenes, when they met with the Hebrew word KUSA, simply
transcribed it into Greek characters as Kotfs, KÛC, or KS12 : others translated KUSA by
kibioma — a word at that time equally applicable, etymologically in the sense of
< sun-burned faces,’ no less, than geographically, to India, Persia, Arabia, and the Nubias,
indifferently to its Asiatic or African association. And this explains why, after
2000 years, the imaginary sanctity of Hebrew and Greek words, accidentally preserved
in recent MSS., or through Latin and other re-translations, and despite innumerable
recensions, enables us yet to admire in King James’s version the English transcript of
Cush only five times, and its Alexandrian substitute, Ethiopia, some, thirty-four [ubi
supra] ; at the same time that, in the far elder and original Hebrew Text (copies of
which, 'only about 800 years old, have come down to us), Providence permits our
counting' the triliteral KUSA in about forty different placés.
Under these circumstances (notoriously accessible to anybody who can read English),
to quote the Septuagint authoritatively on doubtful relations of “ Ethiopia,” as if
it had applied to Africa exclusively at the time when this Greek literary work was m
progress, may be exceedingly praiseworthy on the part of professional hagiographers,
but archseologieally, is “ vox, et præterea nihil,” leaving the radical issue untouched.
But there is yet one more rock of confusion to be indicated, upon which the adopters
of Wilford’s Puranic delusions, Faber’s fantastic reconciliations, and Delafield’s American
extravaganzas, have always split. It occurs when, through disregard of philology
and palaeography, they prefix an S, or other sibilant, to the Hebrew KUSA;
and, reading SKUCH, Srnthi, 2*u8m, &c., make this patriarch the father of Scythians,
Sacat Saxons, Scotchmen, and even of American Indians! One blushes to treat such
absurdities seriously in a . n. 1853. Nevertheless, the disease is inveterate with many
writers “ à qui il ne manque rien que la critique and it behooves us to note our
“ caveat/’ because, as Bishop Taylor says, “ it is impossible to make people understand
their ignorance ; for it requires knowledge to perceive it, and therefore he that
can perceive it hath it not.” .
A dry recapitulation of the results of Btudies, that could not be presented m full
under half this volume, together with references through which the reader may verify
exactness, is all that the authors can now offer on the hieroglyphical KSh, the Hebrew
KUS, and Greek Aldiôiria. ^
1st. That the KeSA were African aborigines — probably similar to the Baràbera of
the present day ; but were not NAHSI* Nzgroes.
2d. That their habitat, from the XVIIth dynasty downwards, was closer to Egypt
than that of any other Africans — probably Lower Nubia, because the KeSA are the
first people encountered in Egyptian expeditions above Philæ.