Sebichus, the So or Sera of the Scriptures, was the son and successor of Sabaco. He was an ally of Hoshea, king of Israel; but he was unable, or too tardy in his movements, to prevent the capture of Samaria by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, in B.C. 722. One result of the captivity of Israel was an influx of Hebrew exiles into Egypt and Aethiopia, and eventually the dissemination of the Mosaic religion in the country north of Elephantine. Before this catastrophe, the Psalmist and the Prophets (Psalm, lxxxvii. 4; Isaiah, xx. 5; Nahum, iii. 9; Ezk. xxx. 4) had celebrated the military power of the Aethiopians, and the historical writings of the Jews record their invasions of Palestine. Isaiah (xix. 18) predicts the return of Israel from the land of Cush; and the story of Queen Candace's treasurer, in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. viii.), shows that the Hebrew Scriptures were current in the more civilised parts of that region. Sebichus was succeeded by Tirhakah — the Tarcus or Taracus of Manetho. The commentators on the Book of Kings (iii. 19) usually describe this monarch as an Arabian chieftain; but his name is recorded on the propylon of a temple at Medinet-Aboo, and at Gebel-el-Birbel or Barkal, in Nubia. He was, therefore, of Aethiopian lineage. Strabo (i. p. 61, xv. p. 687) says, that Tirhakah rivalled Sesortasen, or Ramses III., in his conquests, which extended to the Pillars of Hercules, meaning, probably, the Phoenician settlements on the northern coast of Africa. From Hebrew records (2 Kings, xviii, xix.; Isaiah, xxxvi, xxxrii.), we know that Tirhakah was on his march to relieve Judaea from the invasion of Sennacherib (B.C. 5S8); but his advance was rendered unnecessary by the pestilence which swept off the Assyrian army near Pelusium (Herod, ii. 141; Herapol. Hierogl. i. 50). Tirhakah, however, was sovereign only in the Thebaid: one, if not two, native Egyptian kings, reigned contemporaneously with him at Memphis and Sais. According to the inscription at Gebel-el-Birkel, Tirhakah reigned at least twenty years in Upper Egypt. Herodotus, indeed, regards the 25th or Aethiopian dynasty in Egypt as comprised in the reign and person of Sabaco alone, to whom he assigns a period of fifty years. But there were certainly three monarchs of this line, and a fourth, Ammeris, is mentioned in the list of Eusebius. The historian (ii. 139) ascribes the retirement of the last Aethiopian monarch as a dream, which may perhaps be interpreted as a mandate from the hierarchy at Napata to forego his conquests below Philae. In the reign of Psammetichus (B.C. 630), the entire war-caste of Egypt migrated into Aethiopia. Heradotus (ii. 30) says that the deserters (Automoli) settled in a district as remote from the Aethiopian metropolis (Napata) as that city was from Elephantine. But this statement would carry them below lat. 16°, the extreme limit of Aethiopian civilisation. Diodorus (i. 67) describes the Automoli as settled in the most fertile region of Aethiopia. North-west of Meroë, however, a tribe had established themselves, whom the geographers call Eaonymitae, the Asmach of Herodotus (iL 30; Stiah. xviL p. 786; Plin. vi 30), and there is |
The Persian dynasty was scarcely established in Egypt, when Cambyses undertook an expedition into Aethiopia. He prepared for it by sending certain Icthyophagi from Elephantine as envoys, or rather as spies, to the king of the Macrobians. (Herod, iii. 17 — 25.) But the invasion was so ill-planned, or encountered such physical obstacles in the desert, that the Persian army returned to Memphis, enfeebled and disheartened. Of this inroad the magazines of Cambyses (ταμιεία Καμβύσου, Ptol. iv. 7. § 15), probably the town of Cambysis (Plin. H. N. vi. 29), on the left bank of the Nile, near its great curve to the west, was the only permanent record. The Persian occupation of the Nile-valley opened the country above Philae to Greek travellers. The philosopher Democritus, a little younger than Herodotus, wrote an account of the hieroglyphics of Meroë (Diog. Laert ix. 49), and from this era we may probably date the establishment of Greek emporia upon the shore of the Red Sea. Under the Ptolemies, the arts, as well as the enterprise of the Greeks, entered Aethiopia, and led to the destruction of the sacerdotal government, and to the foundation or extension of the Hellenic colonies Dire-Berenices, Arsinoë, Adule, Ptolemais-Therôn, on the coast, where, until the era of the Saracen invasion in the 7th century A.D., an active trade was carried on between Libya, Arabia, and Western India or Ceylon (Ophir? Taprobane). In the reign of Augustus, the Aethiopians, under their Queen Candace, advanced as far as the Roman garrisons at Parembole and Elephantine. They were repulsed by C. Petronius, the legatus of the prefect cf Egypt, Aelius Gallns, who placed a Roman garrison in Premnis (Ibrim} and pursued the retreating army to the neighbourhood of Napata. (Dion Cass. liv. 5.) In a second campaign Petronius compelled Candace to send overture of peace and submission to Augustus (B.C. 22 — 23). But the Roman tenure of Aethiopia above Egypt was always precarious; and in Diocletian's reign (A.D. 284 — 805), the country south of Philae was ceded generally by that emperor to the Nubae. Under the Romans, indeed, if not earlier, the population of Aethiopia had become almost Arabian, and continued so after the establishment of Christian churches and sees, until the followers of Mahomet overran the entire region from the sources of the Astaboras to Alexandria, and confirmed the predominance of their race. Such were the general divisions, tribes, and history of Aethiopia in the wider import of the term. In the interior, and again beginning from the south near the sources of the Astaboras we find the following districts. Near the headland Elephas were the Mosyli (Μόσυλοι), the Molibae (Μολίβαι), and Soboridae (Σοβορίδαι) (Ptol. iv. 7. § 28). Next, the Regio Axiomitarum [Axume], immediately to the north of which was a province called Tenesis (Τηνεσίς) occupied by the Sembritae of Strabo (p. 770), or Semberritae of Pliny (H. N. vi. 30. § 35). North of Tenesis was the Lake Coloe, and between the Adulitae and Mount Taurus on the coast were the Colobi, who according to Agatharcides (ap. Diod. iii. 32) practised the rite of circumcision, and dwelt in |
