Now, both texts concentrate “ Sheba and Dedan” in Arabia. Nevertheless, the unostentatious
care evidently bestowed upon his chorography by the practical compiler
of Xth Genesis, favors his superior accuracy, and therefore we take his “ Sheba and
Dedan” to be the true colonial settlements of KBSA.
This is corroborated by Ezekiel (xxvii.,22) — “ The merchants of Sheba and R a am a h ,
they were thy merchants : they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices : not
merely referring to the rich productions of incense, myrrh, gums, and aromatics,
raised in and exported from this part of Arabia then as now, but' also to spiceries of
India and its islands passing in transit through Sabcean hands: which, in Joseph’s
lime (Gen. xxxvii. 25), were conveyed by inland caravan-portage to Gilead, whence
Jshmaelites “ with their Camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh,” carried them to
Egypt; and which “ maritime merchandisers,’! under the name of Tarshish, had consigned
to the Royal Firm of “ Solomon, Hyram, & Co.” by “ coasters” up the Red
Sea ; and dispatched via Petra through this house’s factors at Etsion-gaber : (cost of
transhipments, freights, camel-hire, insurances, interests, brokerages, commissions, and
grattages, no less than amount of shares or profits, to us unknown).
Forster skilfully compares the Plinean account of ¿Elius Gallus’s expedition, “ in
the words of Gallus himself; the passage being, to all appearance, an extract from the
report of that general to his master Augustus —“ Saboeos, ditissimos sylvarum ferti-
litate odorifera, auri metallis, agrorum riguis, mellis ceroque proventu and moreover
relates how, “ On his arrival before Marsuabæ, the capital of the Rhamanitæ,
Ælius Gallus, the Roman geographer informs us, learned from his prisoners that he
was within two days’ march of the spice country.:" the very productions for which
the Prophet of the Captivity had given celebrity to .“ Sheba and R a a m a h . ”
Hence, the geographer of Arabia succeeds in identifying the Saba of R a a m a h among
the “ Sabcei, with their capital' Mar-Suaba or Sabe ; whose locality is preserved and
determined, in its modern topography, by the town of Sabbia, in the district of Sabiê;”
mapped by him towards the southwestern extremity of the “ Isle, of the Arabs.”
“ A highly valuable confirmation of the identity of the modern province'of Sabiê,
and of its ancient inhabitants, the Rhamanite Sabæans, with the Cushite Raamah and
Sheba, arises on our first reference to the » Description de l’Arabie ’ [Carsten Niebuhr’s]
; where we find, in the Djebal, another Sabbia, a large town or village, seated
in a district retaining, to this day, the patriarchal name of Beni Khûé, or the sons of
Cush. Another district, of the same name, Beni Keis, is noticed by our author in the
Tehama. In the former district ' occurs a village named Beit el Khfisi [house of the
KBSAiie.] A third small district connects the name of Cfish with that of his son
Raamah ; namely, that of Beni Khfisi, in the province or department of Rama. The
city of Kusma, south of Rama, M. Niebuhr rightly conjectures to have derived its
name and origin from Cush: a conjecture which receives 'strong light and confirmation
from a remote quarter, in the corresponding dénomination of Dooat el Kusma, a
harbor of the -ancient Havilah, near the head of the Persian Gulf ; the acknowledged
site of the earliest Cushite settlements ”•‘-1. e., of thé true KBS Mm of all Israelltish
chroniclers ; affiliated from the personification KBSA, by which name the compiler of
Xth Genesis figured those swarthy races that dwelt ab initio exactly where they do
now, viz : in Southern Arabia.
More conclusive determinations, in primordial ethnology,-than in this case of Sheba
(B.), it would be hard to discover.605
25. p t — DDN — ‘ D edan.’-.
Leaving aside nice discriminations between the duplex Shebas and Dedans, the one
Hamitie and the other Semitic, we remark th»t, being a junior colony to Sheba, in Rhamanite
affiliations, this Dedan, through analogy, might be fixed in Arabia, as we have
seen in the preceding name, even without the precise words of Isaiah (xxi. 13) :— “In
the woodlands of Arabia shall ye lodge, 0 ye travelling companies of DDNIM,” Deda-
nians : which obviates the necessity for seeking out of the Peninsula.
But the precise location of the geographical son of Raamah, and brother of the preceding
Sheba, is fixed at the city and district of Dadena, just outside Cape Mussendom,
on the Indian Ocean ; and taking its natural station among KBSHife tribes of Southern
Arabia does not necessitate.further research.606
With the exception of Nimrod (to be discussed as the next name), who, none will
dissent, belonging to Assyrian history, can have no possible relation to African theories,
here closes the genesiacal catalogue of KUSAfic affiliations.
The educated reader who has followed us through Hebraical, Greek, Roman, Coptic
and hieroglyphical sources, has now beheld every “ Ethiopian” postulate on KBSA
fall, one by one, beneath the knife of historical criticism. As one of the present authors
indicated, ten years ago, and as both partially confirmed at a subsequent date by their
several researches, the KBSAita of Xth Genesis could have been then, as they are
now, once for all, glued permanently to Arabia : whence to detach them again will be
a vain effort, should the reader be pleased to wield in their defence the weapons herein
tendered him. That the present tiresome undertaking was needed, the reader can
satisfy himself by opening any English Commentary on Scripture ; and almost every
English writer but Forster ; who, following Bochart, has consistently vindicated the
Arabian claims of Kush, to the exclusion of African fables : whilst henceforward the
Ethnographer may calmly pursue his inquiries without necessarily exclaiming, when he
stumbles upon the mistranslation “ .¿Ethiopia” in King James’ version,
« Hic niger e s t; h u n e tu , Romane, caveto.”
[To my learned predecessors in ETJSA&e inquiries, who have uttered opinions with-
out first employing archaeological processes similar to those herein submitted respects
fully to their consideration, I beg leave to quote Letronne : ÿ “ One regrets to see
erudite and ingenious men, of zeal and perseverance most laudable, thus waste their
time in pursuit of such vain chimaeras, in allowing themselves to be led astray by
assimilations the most whimsical and the most arbitrary. One might say, in truth,
that, for them, Winckelmann and Visconti had never appeared on earth, so much do
they deviate from the reserved and prudent method of these heroes of archaeology ;
who, not pretending to know in antiquity but that which it is possible to explain
through the aid of authentic monuments andof certain testimonies, knew how to stop,
the moment they felt the ground fall beneath their tread. It is thereby that they
arrived at so many positive results, and not at simple ‘jeux d’ esprit ’ or of erudition,
that cannot sustain an instant’s serious examination. Our new archaeologists proceed
quite otherwise : they take a monument perfectly obscure [like .¿ E th io p ia ] ; they compare
it with a second, with a third,- and again with others that are not less so ; and,
when they have placed side by side all these obscurities, they pleasantly figure to themselves
that they have created light. Bpon a first conjecture, they place a Becond, a
third, and a fourth. Then, upon this conjecture, at the fourth generation, they erect
an edifice, sometimes of appearance sufficiently goodly, because it is the work of architects
who possess talent and imagination. This edifice may even endure, so lopg as
nobody thinks of poking it with the tip of a finger; but the moment that criticism
condescends to notice it, she has but to whiff thereon, and down it tumbles like a
castle of cards.’’
To “ nos adversaires,” as the Abbé Glaire facetiously h a s .it—viz: the biblical
dunces in the Bnited States, whose zeal in opposing the long-pondered, long-published
views of Morton, Agassiz, Nott, Van Amringe, myself and others, has been more remarkable
than literary courtesy, I now turn round for my own part, (after shattering
their anti-Scriptural KBSAiie illusions in regard to Africa and Nigritian families, for
ever), and beg each individuality to accept the following citation ; the more pertinent as