Robert W. Woodruff
Library
Gift of
Randall K. Burkett
EMORY UNIVERSITY
Special Collections & Archives
THE CUSHITE
OR THE
DESCENDANTS OF HAM
AS FOUND IN THE SACRED SCRIPTURES AND
IN THE WRITINGS OF ANCIENT
HISTORIANS AND POETS
FROM
NOAH TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA.
BY
RUFUS L. PERRY, D.D., Ph.D.
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.:
WILLEY <5c CO,
1893.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1893,
By RUFUS L. PERRY,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
CONTENTS.
I. Introduction, by T. McCants Stewart, Esq. 3
II. Preface, - 7
III. Ethnographic Records, ... - 11
IY. Early Settlement of Cushites, 19
V. Location of Ethiopia, - - - - 26
VI. Aboriginal Egyptians, ----- 33
VII. Egyptians and Ethiopians, one and the same
Race, - - - - - - -41
VIII. Color of the Egyptians, - 47
IX Kings of Egypt, 69
X. Early Civilization of Cushites, - 80
XI. Nimrod, 87
XII. Capitals of Ethiopia and Egypt, - - 90
XIII. Ruins of Ethiopia and Egypt, 93
XIV. Cushites the Founders of Heathen Worship, 97
XV. Ethiopian Cushites in the Age of Moses, - 104
XVI. The Ethiopian Wives of Moses, - - 107
XVII. Social Relations of the Cushite and Jew, - 112
XVIII. Sesostris and Memnon, - 117, 119
CONTENTS.
XIX. The Queen of Sheba, - 122
XX. Shishak, Zerah, So, Tirhakah, Ebed-Melech,
128, 131, 133, 134, 139
XXI. Mention op African Nations, ... 143
XXII. Magnates of Libya, ----- 148
XXIII. Prejudice Against the Negro Modern, - - 154
XXIV. The Modern Cushite, - - - 162
Index, - -- -- -- - 173
INTRODUCTION
The great historian Rawlinson says: " For the last three
thousand years the world has been mainly indebted for its
advancement to the Semitic and Indo-European races)
but it was otherwise in the first ages. Egypt and
Babylon, Mizraim and Nimrod—both descendants of Ham
—led the way, and acted as the pioneers of mankind in
the various untrodden fields of art, literature and science.
Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chronology,
architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture,
textile industry, seem all to have had their origin in one
or other of these two countries," Five Great Monarchies,
vol. i. p. 75.
An able writer in the Princeton Beview (July, 1878),
gives this testimony : u The Ethiopian race, from whom
the modern Negro or African stock are undoubtedly
descended, can claim as early a history * * * as any
living people on the face of the earth. History as
well as the monumental discoveries, gives them a place
in ancient history as far back as Egypt herself j if not
further."
Other authorities could be cited to show that the Negro's
ancient ancestry led the way, and acted as the pioneers of
3
iy
INTRODUCTION.
mankind in the various untrodden fields of civilization ;
but we have fixed a reasonable limit for these words of
introduction.
We find no difference of opinion among scholars as to
the leadership in civilization of the ancient Ethiopians
and Egyptians 5 but it is not unanimously conceded that
they were u Negroes of the Negro type "—that they
were ethnologically of the same stock from which the
modern aborigines of the Nile, the Soudan, the Niger,
and the Congo have descended. There are many Africo-
Americans even who do not believe that the ancient
inhabitants of the Nilotic and Nigritian regions of Africa
were the direct ancestors of the slaves who for centuries
were exported from the West Coast of Africa. Millions
of Caucasians throughout the world hold the same opinion,
and loudly proclaim and vigorously defend it in private
conversation, in public speech, and in published writing.
But, it seems to me, that these people read history,
philology, and ethnology with their prejudices.
It is indisputable, that some of the descendants of
Noah were known as black people, even in the earliest
ages. Biblical scholars tell us, that the etymological
signification of the word Ham is, swarthy; and that
Ethiopian, the name applied to a descendant of the
swarthy Ham by the Greeks, means black, burnt. So
much for the color of the ancient ancestry of the modern
Negro. This question has been ably argued by Dr.
Delaney, Origin of Races and Color.
The hair of the African Negro is different from that of
INTRODUCTION.
V
the other races. It is usually described as " woolly."
He has inherited his hair. It has descended to him from
the ancient people whom Herodotus, " the father of
history," saw and described three thousand years ago as
a people with u hair more curly than that of any other
people—they are black in complexion and ivoolly haired."
The hair and the color distinguish the different
species of mankind. Now, in hair and color, the ancient
inhabitants of the Nile and the Niger, who gave civili¬
zation to both Greece and Rome, were exact types of the
modern Ethiopian; the ancients differ only in this, that
they represented a great civilization. Their descendants,
though not universally, yet largely, represent to-day
barbarism and heathenism. And, because of this fact, it
is difficult for men to believe in the nobility of his ancestry.
They forget that pushing down into Southern Africa, and
undergoing an entirely different change of environment—
air, climate, food, etc., the Ethiopian necessarily altered
his habits of thought and life. Those who see no con¬
nection between the degraded modern African and the
noble ancient Cushite or Ethiopian, forget that for
centuries the Negro has suffered from the cupidity of the
other races, from the 11 league with death and the covenant
with hell'' into which his white brother entered against
him. It does seem to be clear that the present condition
of Negro Africa is the direct result of climate, and more
especially of slavery and the slave trade.
The Negro's present racial condition is not exceptional
in the history of the world. Other races have been slaves
vi
introduction.
and have Deen degraded. White slaves were common in
Greece and Rome; and Cicero sajs of the ancestors of the
British, and the white Americans, that a certain Roman
military expedition found no plunder in Britain but slaves
who were too dull to learn.*
History repeats itself. Here we have a contemptuous
reference to an unfortunate and degraded people some¬
what similar to sentiments which are held and expressed
towards Africans and Africo-Americans to-day. Remem¬
bering this fact, and seeing how wonderfully the people of
Britain have risen from the deepest depths to the highest
heights, let Negroes with the audacity of faith look forward
to the advancement of the colored people, who are a
permanent part of the American population, and to the
day when regenerated Africa shall again take her place
among the foremost continents and people.
Now, il The Cushite," so ably and learnedly presented
in the following pages by a Negro scholar, who has given
years to the study of the subject, will prove invaluable to
those who desire to know, u what is truth ? " And more;
it will aid in the development of a nobler manhood,
because of the information which it imparts, and because
of the enthusiasm which it will arouse.
T. McCants Stewart,
President of the Brooklyn Literary Union.
* "Neque ullam epera prsedse nisi ex mancipii, ex quibus nullos
puto te litteris aut musicis eruditos exspectare."—Cicero to Atticm,
Lib. iv. 16.
PREFACE.
" There is no country in the world,1' says Dr. Michael
Russell, in the preface of his Nubia and Abyssinia, u more
interesting to the antiquary and scholar than that which
was known to the ancients as 'Ethiopia above Egypt,' the
Nubia and Abyssinia of the present day. It was univer¬
sally regarded by the poets and philosophers of Greece
as the cradle of those arts which at a later period covered
the kingdom of the Pharaohs with so many wonderful
monuments, as also of those religious rights which, after
being slightly modified by the priests of Thebes, were
adopted by the ancestors of Homer and Virgil as the
basis of their mythology. * * * The more learned among
professional artists are now nearlyunanimous in the opinion
that the principles of architecture, as well as of religious
belief, have descended from Ethiopia to Egypt; receiving
improvement in their progress downward, till at length
their triumph was completed at Diospolis, in the palace of
Osymandias and the temple of Jupiter Ammon." Osy-
mandias is said to be the same with Memnon, the Ethi¬
opian general in the Trojan war 5 by others, to be the
great Sesostris.
Now, I have undertaken to show in the following pages
vii
via
PREFACE.
that those ancient Ethiopians and Egyptians were Cushites,
or Negroes descended from the race of Ham. I have briefly
traced the Cushite branch of the human family from the
days of Noah to the Christian epoch; taking some notice
of its status in the first ages of the Christian era, and
the condition of the race at the present time. It is a field
to which no writer hitherto, that I am aware of, has so
exclusively devoted himself and as thoroughly explored.
It is only in this respect that I can claim originality.
I have searched the scriptures in the original text for light
on the subject, and have freely quoted the opinions of
learned authors wherever they seemed to me to be
reasonable deductions from admitted facts. This neces¬
sitated repetition in words and more frequently in thought.
In the Appendix of P. DeLanoye's Rameses the Great,
(Scribner & Co. 1870) Nitocris, the Ethiopian Queen of
Egypt, is given as the last ruler of the sixth Memphite
Dynasty, with this remark: u We should not speak of
Queen Nitocris, if Herodotus had not mentioned her as
coming from Babylon, which would indicate an intrusion
of Asiatics into Egypt about that period." Now, as a
matter of fact, Herodotus mentions nothing of the kind.
What he says is: r# 8s Xvvaixi ovvojxa r^v tfri? kfia.6i\Ev6e
roitep T^j fiafivXaaviy, NiTaoKpi?} and the name of this woman
who reigned was the same as that of the Babylonian Queen,
Nitocris.
The fruitful imagination of the modern Egyptologist
who can see nothing great in the black man, but finds
unlimited wisdom in the white man, delights to robe all
preface.
ancient Egypt in white. The old monarchs are made to
conform in figure to the Grecian and Roman mould, and
in color to the Shemitic race of Asia, and to the Anglo-
Saxon. The black mummy is aroused from his ancient
sleep and transformed by the art of Pythagorean
metemspychosis into a white mummy with a look of dis¬
dain upon its former self. The Negro is not in it. If at
all shown in the presence of Egyptian monarchs, in
modern illustrations, he is there as a captive, a suppliant,
or a slave. The term " Cushite n so conspicuous in
history, is put to the credit of the nomadic Arabian.
The terms 11 Shichor" of the Hebrews, " Ethiopian"
of the Greeks, and u Niger" of the Romans, are all
made to mean this, that, or anything except a Negro.
" Kinky hair" is made to signify curling ringlets, or
something like the present popular "frizz" of Caucasian
belles.
If, during the period of American slavery, any Anglo-
Saxon raised his voice or moved his pen in the interest
of the stolen and oppressed African, that man was marked,
reviled, and ostracised by the offensively arrogant pro-
slavery oligarchy, as if he were infected with the leprosy.
No historian could write a true record of the sons of Ham
in the hope of finding a market for his book. The press,
the pulpit, the writer and publisher were all against the
Negro and suppressed the facts of his ancient greatness.
In those days the white man wrote for white men; and
now the black man must write for black men, and give
them proper or merited rank among the historic peoples
X
PREFACE.
of the earth. But let his pen be guided by truth and
graced with charity.
If it be here shown, beyond reasonable doubt, as I
think it is, that the ancient Egyptians, Ethiopians, and
Libyans so frequently and favorably mentioned by both
sacred and profane historians of the days of Moses and the
prophets, were the ancestors of the present race of Ham,
then the Negro of the nineteenth century may point to
them with pride; and, with all who would find in him a
man and brother, cherish the hope of a return of racial
celebrity, when in the light of a Christian civilization,
Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God.
jBrooklyn, 2V. YJune, 1893. R. L. P.
THE CUSHITE.
'' The eartli is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; the world, and
they that dwell therein; for he hath founded it upon the seas and
established it upon the floods/' and "hath made of one blood all
nations of men."—Psa. xxiv. 1, 2. Acts xvii. 2, 6.
This is a theological doctrine whose truth we must not
dispute. Yet, like Joseph's coat, the peoples of the earth
are of many colors, and various ethnological types, Nat¬
uralists and ethnographers have divided men into certain
classes improperly called " races." u Cuvier," says
Webster, gives ''three races; Pritchard, seven; Agassiz,
eight; Pickering, eleven; and Blumenbach, five," as given
in our school books.
This scientific speculation is made the basis of claims
directly antagonistic to the benevolent Christian doctrine
of the oneness and brotherhood of the human family, and
opposed to every truth in natural history or in the science
of anthropology that points to man as a generic unit.
Forgetting the transient nature of the life, and the
checkered history of nations, who, while ruling, are over-
11
12
the cusiiite.
ruled and made to reap just what they sow, the most
favored race of men preach about their own superiority
till it becomes a kind of second nature. Then they
piously incorporate it in their religion, and put it in their
schoolbooks to be imbibed by their children ; and they tax
their highest artistic skill to make a pleasing pictorial
illustration of themselves, and an abominable caricature of
the people whom they would subordinate and rob. The
poor Indian and the Negro have been here and there
driven to the wall and tauntingly told that they are
naturally inferior and that subordination is their normal
condition. This provokes the thoughtful Negro to look
back to his remote progenitors and trace up his lineage in
the hope of finding something of ancestral greatness with
which to repel this goading taunt, and which may kindle
in his breast a decent flame of pride of race.
The primary divisions of men made by nature's color-
line are three,—the white, the black and the yellow,—
having for their respective ancestral heads, Japheth. Ham
and Shem, the three sons of ancient Noah.
Modern writers, as a rule, have done the Negro
injustice. They may not have been conscious of the ex¬
tent to which they erred in their ethnological writings;
but it is none the less a fact that they have egregiously
falsified the true history of the Cushites, or the Hamitic
branch of the human family, by erroneous statement on
the one hand, and partial truth on the other. Europe,
Asia and America, representing covetous Shem and pre¬
datory Japheth, seemingly joined hands to enrich them-
THE CUSHITE.
13
selves by assaulting, robbing, and enslaving Africa, the
representative of Ham.*
About sixteen hundred and fifty-six years after the
Creation recorded by Moses in the book of Genesis,
according to commonly received chronology, there was a
great flood, we are told, which destroyed everybody but
pious Noah and his family, consisting of himself and wife,
his three sons and their wives,—-just eight persons. By
these eight persons the world was repeopled as we see it
to-day in all its vastness and ethnological variety; different
types of men being scattered over it like the fishes of the
sea, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the forest.
In order to place before the reader all the progenitors
from whom the various peoples of the earth have de¬
scended, I here give the whole of the tenth chapter of
Genesis, which is the most ancient and reliable ethno¬
graphic table known to historians.
JAPHETH.
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah;
Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and unto them were sons born
after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog,
and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and
Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath,
and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and
* It is reported on the authority of Archbishop Felix, of Orleans,
France, in The Life of Major M. R. Delany, by Frank A. Rollin, page
315, that Spain, England, France, and Portugal, entered into a
wicked treaty in 1482, to enslave the African. The infamous con¬
spiracy "was condemned by Pius II. in 1482; by Paul III. in 1557; bx
Urba VIII. in 1539; by Benedict XIV. in 1741: and by Gregory XVI.
in 1839. [Dates here maybe wrong, but not the facts.]
13
14
THE CUSHITE.
Tarshish, Kittim, anu Doaanim. By these were the isles
of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his
tongue, after their families in their nations.
HAM.
And the sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut,
and Canaan. And the sons of Cush : Seba, and Havilah,
and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha; and the sons of
Raamah: Sheba, and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod:
he began to be a mighty one in the earth. lie was a
mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even
as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the
beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and
Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar. Out of that
land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh and the city
Rehoboth, and Calah, And Resen between Nineveh and
Calah: the same is a great city. And Mizraim begat
Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim. and Naphtuhim,
And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philis-
tim,) and Caphtorim. And Canaan begat Sidon his
first-born, and Heth. And the Jebusite, and the Amorite,
and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and
the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the
Hamathite: and afterwards were the families of the
Canaanites spread abroad. And the border of the
Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto
Gaza; as thou goest unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and
Admah, and Zeboim even unto Lasha. These are the sons
of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their
countries, and in their nations.
SHEM.
Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber,
the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were chil~
dren born. The children of Shem,- Elam, and Asshur, and
the cushite.
15
Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram. And the children of
Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash. And
Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber. And unto
Eber were born two sons: the name of one ivas Peleg; for
in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name
was Joktan. And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph,
and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah, and Hadoram, and Uzal,
and Diklah, and Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba, and
Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were the sons of
Joktan. And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou
goest unto Sephar, a mount of the east. These are the
sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in
their lands, after their nations. These are the families of
the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations :
and by these were the nations divided in the earth after
the flood.
This chapter has thirty-two verses, thirty of which are
taken up in genealogies. Japheth is disposed of in just
four verses, and Shem in eleven, while Ham, the great head
of the black or Cushite races, takes up fifteen verses, or
as many as Shem and Japheth put together. This is a
significant fact, and the Hamitic branches of the human
family are kept in conspicuous view throughout all the
subsequent periods of Bible history.
This tenth chapter of Genesis gives us a starting point
from which we may trace the primary divisions of men
made by nature's color-line, the white, the yellow, and
the black,—having for their respective ancestral heads,
Japheth, Shem and IIam; and for their countries, Europe,
Asia, and Africa.
u A Geography of the Bible, compiled for the American
2
16
THE CUSHITE,
Sunday School Union," by J. W. and J. A. Alexander of
Princeton and published in 1830, gives an ethnographic
table of the families of the sons of Noah, so just and clear
that I here reproduce it.
THE DESCENDANTS OF JAPHETH.
I. Gomer; whence the Cimmerians, on the northern
coastof the Black Sea.—From him descended, 1. Ashkenas;
whose settlement is unknown, but conjectured to be
between Armenia and the Black Sea. 2. Ilipliath/ the
inhabitants of the Riphean range of mountains. 3. Togar-
mah; the Armenians.
II. Magog; from whom the inhabitants of Caucasus,
and the neighboring countries : Scythians.
III. Madai• the Medes.
IV. Javan; the Ionians, Greeks.—From him, 1. Elisha;
the Greeks, in a limited sense. 2. Tarshish; Tartesus
in Spain. 3. Kittim; the Cyprians and other Islanders,
and the Macedonians. 4. Dodanin; the Dodanians in
Epirus.
V. Tubal; the Tibarenes of Pontus.
VI. Meshech; the Moschi of the Moschian mountains,
between Iberia, Armenia, and Pontus.
VII. Tiras; the Thracians, or people upon the Dniester.
THE DESCENDANTS OF HAM.
I. Cush; the Ethiopians and South Arabians.—From
Cush descended, 1. JSfimrod; the first king of Shinar, or
Babylonia and Mesopotamia, where he built the cities of
Erech, &c. 2. Seba; Meroe. (See Ethiopia.) 3. Havilah;
the Hauloteans of South Arabia. 4. Sabtah; Sabota in
South Arabia. 5. Raamah; Rhegma in South-eastern
Arabia.-—From Raamah come, (1.) Shebah; probably
in South Arabia. (2.) Dedan; Daden, an island in the
THE CUSHITE.
17
Persian Gulf. 6. Sabtecha; on the east coast of Ethiopia.
II. Mizraim; the Egyptians.—Prom Mizraim come,
1. Ludim and 2. Ananim, probably African nations.
Lehabim or Lubim; the Lybians. 4. Naphtuhim; between
Egypt and Asia. 5. Pathrusim; in Pathrures, a part of
Egypt. 6. Casluhim; the Colchians.—u Out of whom
came/' (1.) Philistim; the Philistines. (2.) Caplitorim;
the Cretans.
III. Phut; the Mauritanians, or Moors.
IY. Canaan; the original inhabitants of Palestine.—
From Canaan descended, 1. The Sidonians; or Phenicians.
2. The Hethites; about Hebron. 3. The Jebusites, in and
around Jerusalem. 4. The Amorites, east and west of the
Dead Sea. 5. The Girgasitcs. 6. The Hivites, at the
foot of Hermon. 7. The Arhites, at the foot of Lebanon.
8. The Sinites, in the region of Lebanon. 9. The
ArvaditeSj on the Phenician island Arabus, and the
opposite coast. 10. The Zemarites, of the Phenician city
Simyra. 11. The Hamathites; of Epiphania, on the
Orontes.
THE DESCENDANTS OF SHEM.
I. Elani; from whom came the inhabitants of Elymais
in Persia.
II. Asshur; the Assyrians.
III. Arphaxad ; in the northern part of Syria, (Arra-
pachites.)—From him came, Salah; whose descendant was,
Eber ; forefather of the Hebrews, and from him came,
1. Peleg ; and 2. Joktan ; ancestor of the following Arab
families: (1 ,)Almodad. (2.) Sheleph; Selapenes in South
Arabia. (3.) Hazarmaveth ; of Hadramaut. (4.) Jerah ;
near the last. (5.) Hadoram. (6.) Uzal; Sanaa in South
Arabia. (7.) DiJdah. (8.) Obal. (9.) Abimael. (10.)
Sheba; the Sabeans, in South Arabia. (u.) Ophir ;
probably in Oman, of Arabia. (12.) Havilah; of Haulan.
18
THE CUSHITE.
(13.) <Tobab; the Jobabites, between Hadramaut and
Oman.
IV. Lud ; probably origin of some Ethiopian people.
Y. Aram ; Syrians and Mesopotamians. From Aram
sprang, 1. TJz; north of Arabia Deserta. 2. Hul; perhaps
in Coelo-Syria, 3. Gether. 4. Mash ; the inhabitants of
Mount Masius, north of Nesibis.
It is observed that none of the descendants of either
Japheth or Shem are here assigned to Africa. Lud is
allowed to have been "probably the origin of some
Ethiopian people"; but that opinion cannot be sustained.
early settlements of cushites. 19
EARLY SETTLEMENTS OF CUSHITES.
i.
Ham. This was Noah's youngest son, (Gen. v. 32:
comp. ix. 24). In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis and
fifth verse, there is mention of a country in which the
Zuzims dwelt called " Ham;" but its geographical
situation cannot now be determined. It was somewhere
beyond the Jordan, and there Ham may have lived long
enough to give it his name. But he finally went to
Egypt, probably, and joined Mizraim his grandson; for
Egypt was called Chemia according to Plutach ; Chemi
by the Copts, and Eretz Cham, or u the land of Ham "
in the book of Psalms, (Ps. cv. 23 ; cv. 22.) Though
younger than Shem, Ham is placed before him in the
ethnic table of Gen. x., probably on account of his
historical precedence.
ii.
Cush. This was Ham's eldest son. He was the father
of Nimrod, Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and Sabtechaj
and the grandfather of Sheba and Dedan. His name is
given to different places, indicating the migratory courses
of himself and sons. It is probable that he dwelt in
Babalonia for a time with his son Nimrod who built or
laid the foundation of the great city of Babylon. He and
20
the cushite.
his children then went south and south-east till finally
they entered into and spread themselves over the north¬
east, northwest, southern and central Africa, giving the
name of Cush to a large portion of Africa, south of Egypt.
The geographical situation of but few countries men¬
tioned in the Bible, has caused more learned discussion
than that called Cush in the Hebrew, Aithiopia in the
Septuagint, Ethiopia, in the Vulgate, and Mohrendland,
(Negroland, or the Country of the Blacks), in the German
translation of Luther. Eminent authorities widely differ.
It seems, however, that with some writers (blinded by
prejudice and influenced by prevailing opinion), there was
a fixed purpose to locate places and explain difficulties in
a way to exclude the probability that the frequent men¬
tion of u Cush," u Cushites," u Ethiopia/' and u Ethio¬
pians," in the Holy Scriptures, has any reference to
Negroes. But I shall undertake further on to prove with
more satisfaction, that when the inspired writers of the
Bible spoke of Cush and Cushites, of Ethiopia and the Ethi¬
opians, they meant the land of Ham and the sons of
Ham.
in.
Mizraim, named as the second among the sons of Ham,
settled in Egypt. He was father of Ludim, Anamim,
Lehabim, Naptituhim, Pathrusim, and Casluhim, from
which last were descended the Philistines and Caphtorim.
The settlement of Mizraim in Egypt is made so clear by
the name it bears in the Scriptures, in ancient history
early settlements of cushites.
21
and tradition, that few writers of either ancient or modern
history find occasion to dispute it.
iy.
Phut, the third son of Ham, settled in northern Africa
west of Egypt, and was the progenitor of a great multitude
of people who, with the descendants of Ludim and Leha-
bim, spread themselves southward and westward to the
northern boundary of Ethiopia and to the Atlantic. In
several places in the Hebrew Scriptures where the name
of Phut occurs for a place or the people thereof, it is
translated " Libya" and "Libyans 5" although " Libya"
may be derived more immediately from Lubim, translated
" Libyans," in Daniel ii. 43, or from Lehabim, the
original orthography of "Lubim." But in Jeremiah
xlvi. 9, " Phut " in the Hebrew is translated u Libyans,"
and in Ezekiel xxx. 5, and xxxviii. 5, the same word is
translated u Libya." is defined by Roy, as u An
African people of Mauritania." This clearly locates the
original seat of the family of the third son of Ham.
Herodotus says (iv. 45) that " Libya is said by most of
the Greeks to take its name from a native woman of the
name of Libya." If derived from Lubim, it should be
spelled u Lybia."
v.
Canaan, the fourth son of Ham, with his descendants,
settled in the country west of the river Jordan and the
Dead Sea and spread abroad west to the Mediterranean,
south to Arabia Petraea, and north to Mount Libanus.
22
the cushite.
Thus it included Philistia and Phoenicia. It took the
name (1) of Canaan, but was subsequently called (2) u The
Land of Promise/7 because God had graciously promised
it to the seed of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob;
(3) "The Land of Israel," because Joshua had divided it
among the twelve tribes; (4) u The Land of Judea," after
the return of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity,
because those that returned were mostly of the tribe of
Judah; (5) uPalestine," a name given to it by the
Greeks and Romans who had commercial intercourse
with the Philistines, and (6) u The Holy Land," by
Christians on account of the precious name and wonderful
doings in this region of Jesus, the Christ. For the
Sons of Canaan and the bounds of their habitation, see
Genesis x. 15—19.
vi.
The children of Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan, or
the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Ham,
spread, as a rule, in the geographical directions taken by
their father.
1. Nimrod was son of Cush and belonged to the second
generation of Ham. He laid the foundation of Babylonia
and, possibly, Assyria, according to the reading of the
American Bible Union translation of the original; and
was the first of noted kings after the flood. There in
the land of Shinar was the beginning of empires and the
sons of Ham were the founders.
2. Seba. This was the eldest son of Cush, Gen. x.
7; 1. Chron. i. 9. This Seba was a fruitful vine. He
early settlements of cushites.
23
spread his name in southwestern Arabia along the
eastern shores of the Red Sea, and finally settled in
Africa; for it seems certain that his offspring are referred
to by Isaiah, 43. 3, and 45. 14. Seba gave his name to the
celebrated city and country in Africa afterwards known
as Meroe.
3. Sheba, son of Raamah and grandson of Cush, (Gen. x.
7), settled in southwestern Arabia and subsequently in
that part of Africa called Cush or Ethiopia.
There were two other Shebas belonging to the Semitic
branch, but they went eastward, as I will try to show
hereafter in pointing out the country of the queen that
visited Solomon.
4. Dedan. This was the son of Raamah and grand¬
son of Cush, (Gen. x. 7), but there was another, son of
Jokshan and grandson of Abraham by Keturah, (Gen.
xxv. 3). Hence there were different tribes known as
Dedanim. The Cushite Dedan followed the current of the
great Hamitic branch leaving his name behind him,
Ezekiel xxvii. 2, 22; xxxviii. 13.
5. Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecha, other
sons of Cush, followed the course of the Mizraimites to
the adjacent parts of Egypt, and spread along the eastern
coasts of the Red Sea, possibly to the extreme south.
6. Ludim was a son of Mizraim and grandson of Ham.
It was from him that the African 11 Lydiansand his
brother Lehabim, that the u Libyans" were descended.
Shem had a son named Lud, who was the ancestor of the
Asiatic Lydians on the western coast of Asia Minor; and
24
the cushite.
these two different nations of "Lydians" may cause
confusion and erroneous judgment to the careless student
of ancient history. The Ludim or Lydians of Africa are
referred to by Jeremiah (xlvi. 9) when he says: u Come
up ye horses; and rage, ye chariots; and let the mighty
men come forth : the Ethiopians and the Libyans, that
handle the shield; and the Lydians, that handle and bend
the bow."
For " Ethiopians/' li Libyans," and u Lydians/' the
Hebrew text has swa, DID and (Cush, Phut and
Ludim), names readily identified.
The African Lydians and the race of Lehabim or
Lubim, (Libyans), as stated in connection with the notice
of Phut, occupied northern and central Africa to the
west of Egypt. The other sons of Mizraim, Anamim,
Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim (out of whom came
Philistim) and Caphtorim, all had their first tribal settle¬
ment in or near Egypt, and in the land of Canaan.
In the second book of Chronicles (xxi. 16) we find the
Arabians who dwelt u near the Ethiopians." This sup¬
ports fhe opinion generally held by historians that
southern Arabia was originally settled by Cushites.
Indeed all around the borders of the Arabian Gulf,—in
Susiana, and as far east as the Indies, in Hindoostan and
even in Australasia, there have been found unmistakable
traces of the original Cushite, who in the course of time
became so mixed in blood with the Shemitic race that he
lost much of his ethnic character except in color. In re¬
mote times there was a regular commercial intercourse
EAELY SETTLEMENTS OF CUSHITES.
25
between the Arabians, the Cushites of India, and the
Egyptians and Libyans, Meroe being the great centre for
Ethiopia, and Thebes for upper Egypt. And it may be
reasonably supposed that the intercourse of those different
nations, barring the Arabians, so widely separated by
mountains, seas, and sandy deserts, was influenced as
well by a recognition of ancestral kindredness as by a
hope of financial gain.
Treating on the "dispersion of nations" in Kitto's
Cyclopcedia, J. Pye Smith, D.D., F.R.S., says:
u The Ethiopians, first on the Arabian side of the Red
Sea, then colonizing the African side, and subsequently
extending indefinitely to the west, so that Cushite (Jer.
xiii. 23) became the appellative of a Negro. To the
thorough scholar, the accurate historian, one not biased
by an unholy prejudice, this conclusion is inevitable.
None but the children of Ham are Cushites, and Ham is
acknowledged by everybody that has ever read and under¬
stood the tenth chapter of Genesis, to be the ancestral
head of the Negro.
26
the cushite.
LOCATION OF ETHIOPIA.
Proceeding from the alluvial plains of Shinar the
Ethiopian branches of the Noachan household followed
the courses of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers south¬
ward, and then diverging east and west spread themselves
from the western shores of the Persian Gulf, or possibly
from the Indus, in the east, to the Atlantic in the west.
They were uniformly called Cushites or Ethiopians to
indicate their color and racial relationship; but only the
land of the final and permanent settlement of the largest
body and more pronounced physical type ever acquired
the permanent name of Ethiopia, and that was in Africa,
south of Egypt. Ancient writers of sacred and of profane
history were not so geographically indefinite as to call
three or four different places u Gush v and u Aithiopia."
When they said Ethiopia they knew what they were
talking about and meant just what we mean when we
speak of Ethiopia; and when they spoke of an Ethiopian
they meant just what we mean when we use the same
term.
Prof. Christian Stock, in his Clavis Linguae Sanctae
Veteris Testamenti published at Jena in 1727, says, under
the head of u Cush : "
Chusch: primus filiorum Chami, Gen. 10. 6, qui
LOCATION OF ETHIOPIA.
27
JSHthiopibus nomen dedit, unde JEthiopia, Chusch dicta
fuitj 2. Reg. 19. 9." That "Cush was the first of the sons
of Ham, who gave name to the Ethiopians, whence
Ethiopia was called Cush." The passage referred to
by Dr. Stock (2. Kings xix. 9.) reads: u Tirhakah king
of Ethiopia/' where the original for Ethiopia is CJ*i3;
meaning the country south of Egypt, embracing Nubia
and Abyssinia, the country of the Blacks.
Several writers have urged with a pertinacity sug¬
gestive of strong prejudicial bias, that the land of Cush or
Ethiopia is to be found only in Arabia, while others with
more clearness and logical force like Gesenius maintain
that it is to be sought for only in Africa. Still others find
or create an Ethiopia both in Southern Arabia and in
Africa, so as to accommodate preconceived notions and
give plausibility to inferential conjecture, in the absence
of historical facts. When Moses tells us that his sister
Miriam and his brother Aaron took offence on account of
his marriage to a Cushitess or Ethiopian woman (Num.
xii. 1), it is instantly inferred that the woman was
Zippora and that Midian was in Cush or Ethiopia. Were
Miriam and Aaron idiots 1 Did it take them nearly a
half century to find out that their brother had married a
Negress ?
Over forty years had elapsed since Moses married
Zippora, who in all probability was dead. Besides, the
children of Abraham by Keturah, to which line it is
claimed, Zippora belonged, were Shemitic and never
called Cushites; nor was any country peopled by them
28
THE CUSHITE.
called Ethiopia. Zippora was a Sliemitic Midianite; but
the wife that caused Miriam and Aaron to speak against
Moses and incur therefor the displeasure of God, was a
Hamitic Ethiopian.
On this subject Dr. Charles Anthon, after laboring hard
to find a u Chusch v or an "Ethiopia" in Arabia and
not Hamitic, is forced by his regard for truth to say:
u On the whole, it may be considered as clearly established
that the Cush are the genuine Ethiopian race, and that
the country of the Cush is generally in Scripture that
part of Africa which lies above Egypt," Cass. Diet. Sub.
JEthiopia.
Mr. John D. Baldwin, A. M., in his u Pre-Historic
Nations" published in 1874 by the Harpers of New
York, ignores all the accepted chronology of Christendom
so as to have sufficient time to create a wonderful Cushite
civilization reaching from the Arabian shores of the
Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf to the eastern borders
of Africa, in ages pre-his oric. But he makes those
Cushites or Ethiopians white men, and locates Ethiopia
in Arabia. He says, (page 57:) "In the early tradition
and literary records of the Greeks, Arabia is described
as Ethiopia. * * * Careful students of antiquity now
point out that the people of Ethiopia seem to have been
of the Caucasian race, meaning white men, and that the
word was to the Greeks perhaps really a foreign word
corrupted. He regards the derivation of the word from
11 ai'Ooo and a>i{>" as a " fruitful source of misapprehension."
He quotes from Eustathius : u 'JEthiops is a title of Zeus i*
28
LOCATION OP ETHIOPIA.
29
AioS £7tiQsTov AiOio-ip • " then from Lycophron : u Aai/ucov
npo/uaQevs AiOioip, Prometheus iEthiops, the daemon or
tutelary deity." " The appellation/' he says, u had a
religious significance, but no reference whatever to com¬
plexion." Great Jupiter! What does the prophet
Jeremiah mean when he asks (xiii. 23) "can the
Ethiopian change his skin ?" Besides in both
citations from Eustathius and Lycophron, the word
JiBiotf) may be rendered as an adjective making the
first "an Ethiopian epithet of Jove/' and the other " the
Ethiopian daemon Prometheus/' wholly changing the sense
without outraging the Greek text. Prometheus was one
of the first civilizers of men, which accords with the his¬
tory of the Ethiopians; and while Olympus was the abode
of the gods, their nascent country was Ethiopia and
their favorites among men " the blameless Ethiopians.'"
In the original of Jeremiah, xlxi. 9, for Ethiopians
and Lybyans," we have £*i3 ; and in Ezekiel, xxx. 5,
and xxxviii. 5, for " Ethiopia and Libya," we have the
same in the original, u Cush and Phut. Here Jeremiah
and Ezekial clearly locate Ethiopia in Africa; and no
amount of dexterous literary quirks and quibbles can
change it.
The great celebrity which the Ethiopians had attained
before the whites acquired any distinction in the history
of nations, is a little too much for the modern white
historian, now in the front, to put to the credit of the
noble ancestors of the Negro without some challenge.
But truth is irrepressible. It is fosterc-d by Deity
30
THE CUSHITE.
whose providence, sooner or later, will certainly bring it
to view and enforce its acknowledgment.
Speaking of the Ethiopians referred to in the
Scriptures and by Herodotus (iii. 114; iii. 20) Rev. N.
Morren, A.M., says : il In common with the other Cushite
tribes of Africa the skin was black, to which there is an ob=
vious allusion in Jer. iii. 23."—Kitto's Cyclop., vol. i? p. 666.
Dr. Anthon says, (Class. Diet, sub ^Ethiopia), "As
regards the physical character of the ancient Ethiopians,
it may be remarked that the Greeks commonly used the
term Ethiopian, nearly as we use that of Negro: they
constantly spoke of the Ethiopians, as we speak of the
Negroes, as if they were the blackest of people known in
the world. 1 To wash the Ethiopian white,' was a
proverbial expression applied to a hopeless attempt."
Perhaps a certain part of Arabia bordering on the
eastern shores of the Red Sea was in the most ancient
times called Ethiopia, in that it was occupied for a long
while by the descendants of Ham; but the Ethiopia of the
Scriptures was in Africa south of Egypt. It is the country
referred to by the Psalmist when he says (xlvii. 31)
" Ethiopia shall soon stretchout her hands unto God;"
by Isaiah when he speaks of u Ethiopia and Seba,"
xliii. 3), of u the merchandise of Ethiopia and the Sabeans,
men of stature," (xlv. 14); by Jeremiah when he speaks
(xlvi. 9) of " Ethiopians and Libyans that handle the
shield, and the Lydians that handle and bend the bow;"
by Daniel when he speaks (xi. 43) of " the Libyans and
the Ethiopians;" by Nahum when he speaks (iii. 9) of
LOCATION OF ETHIOPIA.
31
"Ethiopia and Egypt;" by Zephaniah when he speaks
(iii. 10) of suppliants il beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;"
and "by Luke when he speaks (Acts v. iii. 27) of u a man
of Ethiopia;" and "Candace, queen of the Ethiopians."
These holy men do not refer to an " Ethiopia" in
Arabia, but to that of Africa. It is very true that the
term "Ethiopia" was sometimes used in a loose and wide
sense, implying an indefinitely extended country in the
extreme south, southeast and southwest; but it always
signified the geographical parallels or southern belt
inhabited by Hamitic Cushites. Herodotus says:
*A7toKXivofxevrjS 6s /n£daju/3pir}Z itaprfxiE itpd<Z dvvovra f/Xtov
tj AlQioTtirj x°3 ^<3X<xvrj tq5v oiKso/isvaov, iii. 114.
11 Where the meridian declines toward the setting sun,
is the Ethiopian country, the extreme limit of habitations."
This determines what country Herodotus meant by the
term "Ethiopia," so frequently used in his invaluable
history. He means Africa.
William Whiston, A. M., in his ,{Dissertation iii." on
the traditional account given by Tacitus of the origin of
the Jews and the founding of the city of Jerusalem, quotes
Tacitus: u Some say they were a people that were very
numerous in Egypt under the reign of Isis, and that
the Egyptians got free from that burden by sending
them into the adjoining countries, under their captains
Hierosolymus and Judas. The greatest part say, they
were those Ethiopians, whom fear and hatred obliged to
change their habitations in the reign of King Cepheus."
In commenting on this passage from Tacitus, Mr.
3
32
the cushite.
Whiston says: u One would wonder how Tacitus, or any
heathen, could suppose the African Ethiopians under
Cepheus, who are known to be blacks, could be the
parents of the Jews who are known to be whites." Here
Mr. Whiston incidentally gives direct testimony that
Ethiopia was in Africa as it is to-day, and that the
Ethiopians over whom king Cepheus reigned u are known
to be black." *
But higher authority still is that of the prophet Ezekiel,
(xxix. 10): u I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste
and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the
border of Ethiopia," Cusn. Here Ezekiel, inspired of
God, locates the land Ethiopia in Africa to the south of
Egypt. When we remember that Mizraim and Cush
were brothers, we can understand why the adjacent
countries of Egypt and Ethiopia are so frequently
mentioned and classed together by the prophets: for
Mizraim is the Hebrew for Egypt, and Cush for
Ethiopia.
* Josephus's Works, vol. 1. p. 47. Ithaca: 1848,
THE ABORIGINAL EGYPTIANS.
33
THE ABORIGINAL EGYPTIANS.
I shall use the term "aboriginal" rather than
" ancient" in speaking of the first settlers of Egypt,
because it is more precise, since the word u ancient" is
equally as applicable to the mixed race that occupied
Egypt in later years as to the first inhabitants.
It is generally conceded by historians that Mizraim,
the second son of Ham, and, possibly, Ham himself, settled
in Egypt, which in scripture is called D'nyp (Mizraim)
and DrrV"}K (eretz Cham), that is, " Mizraim " or Egypt
and u the land of Ham/' (Ps. cv. 23 ; cvi. 22.) Thus it
appears that the ordinary Biblical name for Egypt is
" Mizraim " indicating very clearly its first settlement by
the second son of Ilam. Yet the Rev. Dr. J. R. Beard
says: u These Ethiopians and Egyptians were not
negroes, but a branch of the great Caucasian family,"
Kittds Cyclopcedia, Yol. i. p. 600. Doctors differ. In
Vol. ii. p. 397 of this Cyclopaedia, Rev. J. Pye Smith,
D.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., speaking of Cush, says: " The
Ethiopians, first on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, then
colonizing the African side, and subsequently extending
indefinitely to the west, so that Cushite (Jer. xiii. 23)
became the appellative of a negro." But what constitutes
a Negro *? In this country and age it requires nothing
34
THE CUSHITE.
more than to be what is called " a black man," or so
physically marked by color as to be considered a descend¬
ant of Ham. The term is used in this same ethnical sense
when I affirm that the aboriginal Egyptians were
Negroes.
Doubtless much of the early traditional history of
Egypt is fabulous like that of China, Persia, Greece and
Rome, but its first settlement by the Hamitic race cannot
be questioned except by precipitate judgment and an im¬
pious reflection on the direct and inferential testimony of
the Bible. If Egypt was u the land of Ham," as it is
called in the scriptures, and u Mizraim" how can its
inhabitants be regarded as Caucasians without making
Ham the progenitor of the Caucasian race ? Let God be
true and every man a liar who contradicts his word.
Egypt was first peopled by Mizraim and his sons,—the
Ludim, the Lehabim, the Pathrusim, the Casluhim and
Caphtorim. What their color was at that time no one
can tell; but their ethnical indentity with the Hamitic
Cushite is as certain as any historic fact of that early
period can be made. The subsequent invasion of
Egypt by a people called 11 Hycsos," still later by the Per¬
sians, and the Phoenician and Grecian settlements on the
northern shores of Africa, no doubt modified the physical
type of the aborigines through intermarriage ; but that
intermarriage produced no more than is produced by the
sons of Japheth intermarrying with the daughters of
Ham in this country. There, it generated the " Copt " ;
here, it produces the u Mulatto.'' The Egyptians and
THE ABORIGINAL EGYPTIANS.
35
the Libyans belonged to the same race. They differed
in idiom and religions observances just as the various
Cushite nations of Africa do to this day ; but not in their
racial origin.
In a foot-note to the account given by M. Charles
Rollin of the disastrous attempt of Cambyses to invade
Ethiopia, subjugate the " Macrobian Ethiops," and
destroy the temple of Jupiter Ammon, it is said: u Osiris
was the principal deity of the Egyptians,—Ammon of the
Ethiopians; from whom it is probable it descended the
Nile, and spread west into Libya. There is not the
smallest doubt now remaining after the researches of
Legh, Belmore, Burchardt, and Waddington in Nubia,
that the ruined temples and pyramids on the banks of
the Nile, as high up as Shendy, are much more ancient
than in Egypt; and that the gods of that country, and
especially Jupiter Ammon, descended the Nile to Thebes,
Dendera and Memphis."—Ancient History.
Herodotus tells us (ii. 18, Cary.) that "the people
who inhabit the cities of Marea and Apis, in that part of
Egypt bordering on Libya, deeming themselves Libyans
and not Egyptians, and being discontented with the
institutions regarding victims, were desirous not to be
restricted from the use of cow's flesh, and therefore sent
to Ammon, saying i that they had no relations to the
Egyptians, because they lived out of Delta, and did not
speak the same language with them; and desired to be"
allowed to eat all manner of food.' The god, however, did
not permit them to do so, saying ' that all the country
36
THE CUSHITE.
which the Nile irrigated was Egypt, and that all those were
Egyptians who dwell below the city Elephantine, and
drink of that river.' "
Now if these Libyans and Egyptians were distinct races
and of different colors—white and black—why was there
any question as to whether those who claimed to be
Libyans were really such or Egyptians ? Their race and
color were the same and it was racial affinity that made
them neighbors.
We learn from Herodotus (ii. 30) that in the reign of
Psammitichus, two hundred and forty thousand of his
soldiers, the Egyptian war-tribe, revolted from him and
went to Ethiopia. Those u Automoli," as Herodotus
calls them, were Egyptians. Now it is not at all probable
that two hundred and forty thousand white men would
have voluntarily left their country, their homes, their
families, and their own race, and go to Ethiopia, the
country of the Blacks, to make it their future habitation.
Nor is it any less improbable that the Ethiopians would
have allowed so large a number of white men who were
trained soldiers, to settle within their dominions. Hence,
that the very sagacious king of Ethiopia welcomed the
automoli without any question as to their honest intentions,
is strong, if not conclusive, proof that they were Negroes
like himself. Racial affinity is fixedly implanted in
man's nature, and will always show itself when occasion
calls for its manifestation.
Again Herodotus says (iv. 197.) u The Libyans and
Ethiopians are aborigines, (avr6xQov£5)} the one inhabit-
THE ABORIGINAL EGYPTIANS.
37
ing the northern, the other the southern parts of Libya ;
but the Phoenicians and Greeks are foreigners." So there
were Phoenicians and Greeks, Arabians and Persians in
Egypt, but they were foreigners, the Cushites being the
only aborigines, or indigenous inhabitants. But to this
conclusion, modern Caucasian thought is not generally
inclined. The writer of the article on Egypt in the
" JEncyclopcedia Britannica" says: " In consequence of
a misconception of a passage in Herodotus (ii. 104) and
confused notions respecting the inhabitants of Africa, it
has been often supposed that the Egyptians were very
nearly allied to the negro race. A complete examination
of the most distinct data in our possession has, however,
produced a far different result; and it is now acknowledged
that they were more related to the Caucasian than the
negro type." The passage referred in Herodotus is
translated by Henry Cary, M. A., Worcester College,
Oxford, as follows :
a For the Colchians were evidently Egyptians, and I say
this having myself observed it before I heard it from
others; and as it was a matter of interest to me, I inquired
of both people, and the Colchians had more recollection
of the Egyptians than the Egyptians had of the Col¬
chians; yet the Egyptians said that they thought the Col¬
chians were descended from the army of Sesostris ; and I
formed my conjecture, not only because they are swarthy
and curly-headed, for this amounts to nothing, because
others are so likewise, but chiefly from the following
circumstances, because the Colchians, Egyptians, and
38
THE CUSHITE.
Ethiopians are the only nations of the world who,
from the first, have practiced circumcision j for the
Phoenicians, and the Syrians in Palestine, acknowledge
that they learned the custom from the Egyptians; and the
Syrians about Thermodon and the river Parthenius,
with their neighbors the macrones, confess that they very
lately learned the same custom from the Colchians. And
these are the only nations that are circumcised, and thus
appear evidently to act in the same manner as the
Egyptians. But of the Egyptians and Ethiopians, I am
unable to say which learned it from the other, for it is
evidently a very ancient custom."
This translation is made directly from the original
Greek. Now, what is there in it that tends to lead to
11 misconception " and " confused notions respecting the
inhabitants of Africal" It certainly does lead one having
a preconceived idea that the first Egyptians were white
men, or " more nearly related to the Caucasian than to
the Negro race," to a very decided disappointment. To
meet the modern white man's idea as to the Negro's color,
and yet be faithful to the Greek text, the word rendered
u swarthy" were more accurately rendered by the word
11 black". Now what historian, modern or ancient, is
better authority on Egyptology than Herodotus'? He is
more than twenty-two hundred years nearer in time to
the first Egyptians than modern writers, besides having
had personal observation among them and made careful
inquiry in regard to their physical type and remote
history. He was not dominated and biased by an
THE ABORIGINAL EGYPTIANS
39
ungovernable prejudice against the black man. His aim
was to make a true statement concerning the different
nations about whom he wrote, and flatter none, not even
his own.
" Ham, the son of Noah, first peopled Egypt and
Libya, after the flood ; and when idolatry began to gain
ground in the world some time after, he was the chief
deity of these two countries, in which his descendants
had continued. A temple was built to his honor in the
midst of these deserts, upon a spot of pretty good ground
about two leagues broad, which formed a kind of island
in a sea of sand. It is he whom the Greeks call Zsv?,
Jupiter, and the Egyptians Amnion. In process of time
these two names were joined, and he was called Jupiter
Amnion."—Mollin, An. Hist. Vol. 1. p. 555. Cincinnati,
Applegate & Co., 1856.
But higher still is the testimony of the Bible that
u Israel came into Egypt" (Mizraim) and God did
11 wonders in the land of Ham," (Ps. cv, 23, 27.) Surely
the Hebrews knew to what race the people belonged
whom they served so long in Africa. Throughout the
Old Testament Moses and the prophets call the country
after Mizraim, the second son of Ham; call a native a
Mizri, and the people generally Mizrim, the plural of
Mizri. Hence in Isaiah (xliii. 3), it is said, "I gave
Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee."
Here the Hebrew text is " 6CDi Bto Dnp " {Mizraim,
Cush and Seba) u evidently denoting," says Rev. Dr. J.
Pye Smith, u contiguity and affinity." Surely Isaiah
40
THE CUSHITE.
knew what he was talking about. Surely God knew
whether or not the racial relations here so conspicuously
set forth were true or false. Here then in the clearest
terms, Cush, his brother Mizraim and his son Seba are
given by the holy prophet, as he was moved by the God
of Abraham, as the origin of the Egyptians, the Ethi¬
opians and the African Sebseans.
Hence, the conclusion that the aboriginal Egyptians
were Hamitic Cushites is inevitable. If they were in
America to-day unchanged in type and color, they could
not escape being called Negroes.
EGYPTIANS AND ETHIOPIANS
41
EGYPTIANS AND ETHIOPIANS,
ONE AND THE SAME RACE.
All through the ancient classics, wherever the
Egyptians and the Ethiopians are referred to conjointly,
they are regarded as being of one and the same race.
Neither of them ever claimed to be of Shemitic or
Japhetic origin; nor did the descendants of either Shem
or Japlieth ever identify the lineages of either the
Egyptians or the Ethiopians with their own till within
the last few centuries, when the racial stock of the Negro
fell below par. Then it was that the wide-awake pro¬
geny of Japheth set about to rob the Cushite of liis
liberty, rob him of his country, and rob him of his
ancient name and fame. To this end the trend of ancient
history was changed, archaeology revolutionized, and the
sacred Scriptures made to bear false witness. Yet the
original letter of the Kodesh Lashon is faithful, and the
honest student of the Bible finds in it light and truth.
Speaking of the ancient Ethiopians, Dr. Anthon says:
a The ^Ethiopians were intimately connected with the
Egyptians in the early ages of their monarchy, and
^Ethiopian princes, and whole dynasties, occupied the
throne of the Pharaohs at various times, even to a late
42
THE CUSHITE.
period before the Persian conquest. The ^Ethiopians had
the same religion, the same sacerdotal order, the same
hieroglyphic writing, the same rites of sepulture and
ceremonies as the Egyptians. Religious pomps and pro¬
cessions were celebrated in common between the two
nations. * * * The ^Ethiopians, who were connected
with the Egyptians by affinity and intimate political
relations, are by the later Hebrew historians termed
Cush. Thus Tizhakah, the Cushite invader of Judah, is
evidently Tearchon, the ^Ethiopian leader mentioned by
Strabo, and the same who is termed Tarakos, and is set
down by Manetho, in the well-known tables of dynasties,
as an ^Ethiopian king of Egypt. In the earlier ages the
term Cush belonged apparently to the same nation or
race; though it would appear that the Cush or iEthio-
pians of those times occupied both sides of the Red Sea."
And in discussing the origin of Egyptian civilization this
author says: u Everything seems to countenance the
idea that civilization came gradually down the valley of
the Nile, from the borders of Ethiopia to the shores of
the Mediterranean. * * * Monuments, tradition, analogies
of every kind, are here in accordance with natural proba¬
bilities. There was a period when the names of Ethiopia
and Egypt were confounded together, when the two
nations were thought to form but a single people."—
Class. Diet.
Rev. Michael Russell, LL.D., says: u The learned
editor of Bruce's Travels founded, on the radical dis¬
tinction between the languages of Egypt and Arabia, an
EGYPTIANS AND ETHIOPIANS.
43
argument that the former country could not nave been
peopled from the latter and, by the same process of
reasoning, arrived at the conclusion that the Egyptians
and Ethiopians were of the same lineage, and probably
descended fron a Libyan tribe quite unconnected with the
oriental Cushite."* Dr. Charles Anthon says : "Every¬
thing seems to countenance the idea that civilization
came gradually down the valley of the Nile from the
borders of Ethiopia to the shores of the Mediterranean.
The old Egyptians as well as the Ethiopians, were
termed by the Greeks ovXorpiXEs" hinhy haired. Again:
"We may consider it as tolerably well proved that the
Egyptians and Ethiopians were nations of the same race."
Again: "It is nowhere asserted that the ^Ethiopians and
Egyptians used the same language, but it seems to be
implied, and is extremely probable. * % * As regards the
physical character of the ancient ^Ethiopians, it may be
remarked, that the Greeks commonly used the term
Ethiopian nearly as we use that of Negro: they constantly
spoke of the ^Ethiopians, as we speak of the Negroes, as
if they were the blackest of people known in the world".f
Speaking of the Copts in his Ancient and Modem
Egypt, (p. 276,) Dr. Russell says: "Although this people
are generally regarded as the descendants of the ancient
Egyptians, mingled with the Persians left by Cambyses,
and with the Greeks who followed the standard of Alexan¬
der, they are described by travelers as having a darker
complexion than the Arabs, flat foreheads, and hair
partaking of the woolly character. They have also large
* Nubia and Abyssinia, p. 81, note.
t Class. Diet., pp. 40, 72 and 73.
44
THE CUSHITE.
eyes, raised at the angles, high cheek-bones, short though
not flat noses, wide mouths and thick lips." On p. 274
he says: u Egypt has been so frequently invaded, overrun
and colonized, that there no longer exists a pure race
among its inhabitants. The Copts are usually regarded
as the descendants of the true Egyptians, the subjects of
Amenophis and Sesostris. Volney remarks, that 1 both
history and tradition attest their descent from the people
who were conquered by the Arabs, that is, from that
mixture of Egyptians, Persians, and, above all, of Greeks,
who, under the Ptolemies and Constantines were so long in
possession of Egypt.' 1 This/ he adds, ' will be rendered
still more probable, if we consider the distinguishing
features of this race of people: we shall find them all
characterized by a sort of yellowish, dusky complexion,
which is neither Grecian nor Arabian: they have all a
puffed visage, swollen eyes, flat noses, and thick lips;—
in short, the exact countenance of a mulatto. I was at
first tempted to attribute this to the climate; but when I
visited the Sphinx, I could not help thinking the figure
of that monster furnished the true solution of the enigma,
observing its features to be precisely those of a Negro.'"
There are some slight variations in the descriptions of the
Copts given by different travelers, but that tends rather
more to confirm than to weaken their general testimony,
which clearly points to the ancient Egyptians and
Ethiopians as being of one and the same race.
The Mizraimites and Cushites, Egyptians and
Ethiopians) are so joined together by God himself, that
no man can put them asunder without doing violence to
the testimony of the sacred Scriptures.* They were
* Isa. xx. 3-5; xlv. 14; Eze. xxx. 4, 5; Jer. xlvi. 8, 9; Nah. iii. 9;
Dan. xi. 43.
EGYPTIANS AND ETHIOPIANS.
45
different nations, but of the same Cushite or Negro race.
Some modern Egyptologists deny this; but such denial
is worth little more than the conclusion just as logically
reached by some modern naturalists and physiologists of
the race of Japheth, that the Negro is descended from that
distinguished African anthropoid called u orang-outang."
Unwilling to render to Ham the things that are Ham's,
they gratuitously award them to another, not even a
claimant, in hope of sharing the spoil. Heeren says,
{Ancient Nations of Africa, vol. i. p. 289.) " In pro¬
portion as we ascend into the primeval ages, the closer
seems the connection between Egypt and Ethiopia. The
Hebrew poets seldom mention the former without the lat¬
ter." Heeren speaks the truth; but the average writer of
the nineteenth century, can mention Egypt without even
thinking of Ethiopia. He is so dazzled by the ancient
lustre of Egypt that he cannot easily admit that the
Egyptians and Ethiopians were one and the same race.
It has been said that the statues and paintings of the
ancient Egyptians which have been found in great
abundance, exhibit a physiognomy wholly foreign to the
Negro; but such assertions are altogether gratuitous. I
have examined an admirable white marble bust of a
genuine Negro. It was made at Rome by a Cushite
sculptress. The artist is of excellent reputation, and the
subject a fine specimen of the Cushite race, excepting
only the unfortunate loss of his sight. The artist is Miss
Edmonia Lewis, and the bust may now be seen at the
residence of Prof. W. F. Johnson, Brooklyn, N. Y. It
46
THE CUSHITE.
is reaclily identified by any one well acquainted with tlie
living original; but one who knows nothing about him or
about the sculptress, and is the least prejudiced against
the Negro race, would vehemently assert that this bust is
a representation of some white man whose hair, like that
frequently observed among Caucasians, had a tendency to
curl. Such is the usual mistake of modern Egyptologists.
The calculations of the mere archseologist cannot stand in
the face of contradictory history. That is, the archaeolo¬
gist cannot sustain an opinion, drawn only from the study
of antiquities, that is contrary to the dictum of history and
philosophy. u That the land of the Pharaohs," says Dr.
Russell, "was indebted to Ethiopia for the rudiments,
and perhaps even for the finished patterns, of architectural
skill, is no longer questioned by any writer whose studies
have qualified him to form a judgment." Dr. Russell
quotes Gau as maintaining the same opinion in the pre¬
face of his Nubia, British Museum, p. 130 ; History of
Nubia and Abyssinia, p. 139.
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
47
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Since the Egyptians, the Ethiopians on the south of
them, and the Libyans on the west, were all descendants
of Ham, they were all of the same color, except that
those who resided furthest south were of the darkest hue.
If it be asked what made them black? I say at once
I do not know. They were born so. Several learned
men have attempted to solve this problem in learned
treatises, but none have yet earned a monument for
success. It is one of the many secrets in the phenomena
of nature that eludes the deepest research of human ken.
No chemical analysis can satisfactorily determine how
God compounds and exhibits the various tints and hues
of the material universe. It is no less difficult or
impossible to tell why the black man is black than it is to
tell why the white man is white ; nor is the one any more
pertinent than the other. Arraigning the black, and
demanding a reason for being black, is simply an arrogant
domination of an accidental ascendency. Herodotus
affirms (ii. 22) that u the inhabitants become black from
the excessive heat."
We know that certain chemical combinations produce
certain colors, intermediates between the seven primary
colors,—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and
48
THE CUSHITE.
violet; White and black are not reckoned among colors.
That is, since color is manifested by light, white bodies
are those which reflect all the rays, and black, those
which reflect none, but absorb all the rays of light. This
shows that the color of bodies is not in themselves, but
depends on the capacity of their particles to reflect or
absorb the different rays of light. It is on this principle
that we account for the various colors in the vegetable
kingdom. The red rose is so constituted that its particles
absorb all the rays of light but the red; that they reflect.
The green leaves absorb all but the green ; so while all
the rays are present, we can see none but the red and the
green ; the orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and the violet
being absorbed. Again, an infusion of nutgalls mixed
with copperas produces black; and if to this mixture a
small quantity of sulphuric acid be added, the black will
be transformed into white. All these things we know;
but still we do not know enough to tell how Grod com¬
pounds the partielcs of men eating the same kind of food
and enjoying the same sunlight, so as to produce the ex¬
tremes of white and black in their different complexions.
Human knowledge, like the great ocean, has its bound¬
aries. After learnedly discussing " the origin of species,"
" natural selection or survival of the fittest," and the
" laws of variation," Prof. Charles Darwin, in the very
beginning of his u summary," says: u Our ignorance
of the laws of variation is profound. Not in one case out
of a hundred can we pretend to assign any reason why
this or that part has varied."
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
49
It appears that from the time of Menes, 2188 B.C., to
the Christian era, the Hycsos, the Hebrews, the Persians,
the Greeks and the Romans, sons of Shem and Japheth,
spent about a thousand years (963) in Egypt. There was
a continuous coming and going of Arabians, near and
remote, for the purposes of traffic. Those and these, by
intermarriage with the Egyptian and Ethiopian Cushites,
generated a mixed people known as u Cophti" or
u Copts" in Egypt, and as "Moors" where they were
before called Libyans.
Egyptian archaeology and history have been trans¬
muted, completely revolutionized, within the past century
by authors who wrote in the interests of the Caucasian.
Though compelled to admit that the ancient Egyptian
was sufficiently dark to be called a Cushite or an Ethio¬
pian, yet they still denied that he was a Negro. This is
mendacious subterfuge ; for when forced to tell what they
mean by the term u Negro," they select the lowest and
blackest type of the lowest tribe on the west coast of
Africa, and ask you to behold the amazing difference
in physiognomy between him and the highly cultured
Egyptian of antiquity, whose color, hair, and features,
they say, were the same as that of the miscegenated
Copt.
As it has been always observed that the natives of
tropical regions are usually of a very dark complexion
while those of colder parts are not so ; and as experience
teaches that heat tends to make black, it has been in¬
ferred that the color of the Cushite races was caused by
50
THE CUSIIITE.
the extreme heat of the sun. This inference is indicated
by, and preserved in, the roots of the Hebrew and Greek
words used to designate the black race. From the verb
chamam (D^n) he was hot, we get the noun Cham (Dn)
or Iiam, the father of Cush, who gave his name to the
land of Cush and to the Cushites. The Greeks, having
the same idea, employed the verb aBmv (aithein, to burn)
and (ops, the face) which they compounded so as to
derive the noun AiBioip, (Aiihiops) a black man. Solo¬
mon's Egyptian princess is made to say in the Yulgate
version of the Bible : u Nigra sum ; * * decoloravii me
Sol,— " I am black ; the sun has discolored me.
No one denies that there were physiological distinctions
of a more or less decided type among the several nations
of African, Arabian, and Indian Cushites; but they all
descended from a common progenitor, whatever the real
cause of their dark complexion. The same or similar
physiological differences (in color, hair, eyes, and shape
and capacity of cranium) exist among American Negroes,
but nobody denies the Hamitic origin of any of them;
except, possibly, a few among themselves, who for selfish
ends, try to "play white." When the fact is established
that a certain nation or tribe is Hamitic in race, no
physical modification caused by favorable environment
can make it Japhetic or Shemitic. All it can do is to
become a mixed people by intermarriage, as was largely
the case in Egypt after the invasion of Cambyses, pro¬
ducing the Copt; in northwestern Libya, producing the
Moor, and in North, and South America, producing the
mulatto.
color of the egyptians.
51
Cush became the representative of the dark race and
the term u Ethiopian," the Greek equivalent, was used
to designate the same. So, whichever term is employed
by ancient writers, it means, or has reference to what is
ordinarily called a black man.
Led by this linguistic guide, and the testimony of men
who saw them, we shall find that the aboriginal Egyptians,
as well as the other nations south and west of them, were
Cushites, black men or Negroes; for to me each of these
terms has the same meaning. I now turn to an Egyptian
princess who proudly boasts of her black complexion.
It is Solomon's wife who was black and comely.
David died about 1015 B.C., and was succeeded by his
son Solomon, (1. Kings ii. 10-12.) Solomon, like a
clever politician, immediately u made affinity " with the
king of Egypt and married his daughter, (1. Kings, iii. 1.)
This alliance secured for Solomon the support of
Egypt against his hostile neighbors, as seen about twenty-
two years afterward, (B.C. 992) when Pharaoh had gone
up and taken Gezer and given it as a present to his
daughter, Solomon's wife. That this Pharaoh was an
Ethiopian, there is the very strongest inferential proof.
He was succeeded by Shishak, an acknowledged
Ethiopian, to whom Jeroboam fled for shelter when
Solomon sought to kill him, (1. Kings xi. 40;) and his
daughter whom Solomon married declares herself a
beautiful Negress, and must, therefore, have had Negro
parents, and was most likely a sister or a niece of
Shishak.
52
THE CUSHITE.
Whatever mystic or spiritual meaning the Song of
Songs may have, its literal and primary meaning is best
explained by regarding it as an epithalamium based on
Solomon's marriage with Pharaoh's daughter.
Modern commentators and preachers explain the first
four verses of the first chapter as referring to the
u Church's love unto Christ" and the fifth verse as 11 the
Church's confession of her deformity." Surely this
illegitimate idea was hatched in a brain diseased with
what Dr. Edward W. Blyden calls "melanophobia."
Solomon, a type of Christ, his African queen a type of
the Christian Church, and her color a " deformity " !
Great Jupiter ! The color of the Cushite, Ethiopian or
Negro, is not a u deformity," and it is an accusation
against the all-wise and impartial Creator a little less than
blasphemy to call it such. The Negro's color is natural,
but a deformity is unnatural. Let Solomon's Song of
Songs be regarded, as by Origin, Jerome and the Fathers
generally, as a dialogue between Solomon and his beautiful
queen when together, and a soliloquy when apart, and we
can understand it. Solomon had brought his Cushite wife
among the daughters of Jerusalem, to whom she proclaims
herself a Negress, and asserts her beauty. This is seen
more clearly in the original. Whatever else the fifth and
sixth verses of the first chapter of Canticles may signify,
they certainly affirm that Solomon's Egyptian wife was a
black woman, as may be seen from the Hebrew, Greek
and Latin versions. The Hebrew says rniUi "on rnin$ ; the
Greek, MsXmvd tint ivco nai KaXtj: the Latin, Nigra sum,
sed formosa.
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
53
Here it is seen that the Septuagint conforms to the
Hebrew text, but the Vulgate does not. Both the Hebrew
and the Greek say, u I am black and comely, while the
Vulgate changes the copulative u and " to the disjustive
" but." Why did the pious Jerome do this ? Those who
advocate a verbal inspiration of the Scriptures must throw
out that "but; " for it is not an inspired " but," except
the Inspiration of prejudice, which is inconsistent with
the title of Saint. There is no ground for this apologetic
u but." The Hebrew 1 and the Greek nal mean u and,'7
which Jerome should have rendered with u et" instead of
u sed." I have had the written opinions of several
eminent scholars on this subject, most of which agree
with my own. Edward W. Blyden, L L.D., writing from
Liberia, says:
u I have read with great interest, both your letter and
the pamphlet which accompanied it on " The GushiteP
You have done a good service to the race by writing that
paper * I wish it were possible for Negroes of your
intelligence, earnestness and patriotism to live, if only for
a short time, in this country and mingle with the great
men of Central Africa. You would, then, not only have
no doubt as to the intimate relationship of this people
with the great races who inhabited north-eastern Africa
in the days of Moses, Homer and Herodotus, but you
would lose the feeling that there is any necessity for
laboring to demonstrate that relationship. And, if you
advanced any distance in the interior, you would see all
around you the features and physiognomy of the men,
the ruling race, represented on the Egyptian monuments.
You would be surprised at the absence of the " thick-
* A paper read before the Brooklyn Literary Union.
54
THE CUSHITE.
lipped " and "very slender-legged" individuals mentioned
by Lucian and quoted in your pamphlet. You would find
that persons answering that description belong to the
servile classes, and that they have all through the ages
been kept distinct from the ruling classes, furnishing for
the most part, the slaves by which the American and
Asiatic continents have been supplied. In the joy and
pride of the new revelation you would forget that there
was any possibility of any one blest with the " color and
name " of the Negro being " ashamed " of the one or the
other. The cure for American colorphobia, or more
accurately, melanophobia is in the heart of Africa." * * *
You have asked my opinion on Canticles i. 5, rendered
in the authorized version " I am black but comely." I
wrote some years ago an article on u The Negro in
ancient history," published in the Methodist Quarterly
Review, January, 1869, in which referring to this verse
I said, u It is remarkable that the Chaldee, according to
Bush, has the following translation of Numbers xii. 1.
* And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of
the beautiful woman whom he had married; for he had
married a beautiful woman." Compare with this Solomon's
declaration ' I am black but comely,' or, more exactly,
(I am black and comely.' We see the wise man in
his spiritual epithalamium selecting a black woman as a
proper representative of the Church and of the highest
purity. The word "iriK* translated in our version blachy
is a correct rendering. So Luther, Schivarz. It cannot
mean brown, as rendered by Ostervald (brune) and
Diodati (bruna).
In Lev. (xiii. 31, 37,) it is applied to hair. The verb
from which the adjective comes is used (Job xxx. 30,) of
the countenence blackened by disease. In Solomon's
Song, (v. 11,) it is applied to the plumage of a raven.
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
55
A correspondent of the New York Tribune (Oct. 16, 1866)
residing in Syria, describing the appearance of a Negro
(the writer of this) whom he met there says : 1 He was
as black as a Mount Lebanon raven.' Had he been writ¬
ing in Hebrew, he would have employed the descriptive
word 1 In the days of Solomon, therefore, black, as
a physical attribute, was comely."
The Arabic Version (Beirut translation), perhaps the
most exact rendering of the Hebrew and Greek Scrip¬
tures in the world, has ' I am black and comely;' not
the disjunctive, but the copulative conjunction, as in the
Hebrew. The Arabic words are Anna asivad iva
jameelah. Aswad is the word used by the Arabs to
describe the Negro. From the same root is derived the
word Sudan,—country or region of the blacks. The late
Professor Palmer, Arabic professor at Cambridge, in his
translation of the charming poems of Beha-ed-din, ven¬
tures, with surprising taste, to translate the word aswad
by the American slang word "nigger." Fancy
Solomon's Queen saying u I am a 'nigger' and comely,"
and yet such would be the translation of the passage in
vulgar American parlance, or, according to the conception
of an accomplished Oxford professor.
That the references in Canticles are to a southern
princess may be gathered from the fact that Solomon, in
inviting her to his less genial clime, assures her that the
rigors of cold weather have passed away. He describes
the returning beauty of Spring, the fragrance of the
flowers, the variety of animal life, etc.
' Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For
lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; the
flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the
land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the
56
THE CUSHITE.
vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise,
my love, my fair one, and come away.' Again, the
singer describes the nose of his beloved as follows : 1 Thy
nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward
Damascus.'
Now it is quite certain that no European or Caucasian
belle would accept such a comparison as a compliment.
Some Christians have been much puzzled about the
Song of Solomon. They cannot understand why it should
have been admitted into the sacred canon. The name of
God does not occur in it. It does not seem to teach
any directly religious lesson. It is taken by others to
represent the high spiritual relation between the church
and her head; and the old commentators used to say that
in chapter i. verse 5, the church confesses her deformity.
'1 am black, but J etc. Black was of course, a ' defor¬
mity.' To me, the book has for a long time been a
source of delight and inspiration as containing a literal
and edifying description of pure and fervent affection
between ' Solomon in all his glory' and an African,—
the chief Queen who presided over the magnificence of
that most magnificent of Oriental palaces.
The bible, then, has one book devoted to the Negro,
and so has the Koran. The thirty-first Sura or chapter
of the Koran is entitled " Lokman," after the African
fabulist and sage, and in it God is represented as saying,
1 Of old we bestowed wisdom upon Lokman.' Dean
Stanley says that Lokman was not only comtemporary
with, but an associate of David and a frequenter of his
court. One singular character is added to this group
by Mussulman traditions, the half-fabulous sage Lokman,
the Ethiopian slave, renowed for his wise proveubs, who
whilst seated amongst the grandees of David's court,
when asked how he had attained such eminence replied,
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
57
'By always speaking the truth, by always keeping
my word, and by never meddling in matters that did not
concern me,' (Stanley's Jewish Church, vol ii. p. 85.)
The opinion most generally received is that Lokman
is the same person whom the Greeks, not knowing his
real name, have called iEsop i. e. iEthiops. The legends
current in the East concerning him accord exactly with
those of the Greek fabulist. The chapter called by his
name shows the high degree of respect entertained for
Lokman in Arabia at the time of Mohammed, who
doubtless aimed, to promote the interests of his new
religion by connecting the Koran with so celebrated a
name. (See Rodwell's translation of the Koran, in loco.)
As to the color of Solomon's Egyptian wife, I do nofc
entertain the slightest doubt; and Dr. Blyden is just as
firmly established in his opinion that she was a Negress,
as she claims to be in the Song of Songs. Hebrew lexi¬
cographers are uniform in rendering the original word
i( black " that describes her color. Then if she was black
her father was ; and if he was his Egyptian subjects
were. This black princess, possibly, bore some distant re¬
lationship to the queen of Shcba, and she was very pro¬
bably a sister or niece of Shishak, her father's successor
to the throne of Egypt.
Shishak, about five years after the death of Solomon,
(B. C., 971,) came up from Egypt against Jerusalem
with a formidable host of black soldiers. u The people
were without number that came with him out of Egypt;
the Lubim, the Sukkiim, and the Ethiopians," 2. Chr.
(xii. 3.)
Was this great Egyptian army of Negro soldiers sup-
58
THE CUSHITE.
ported in Egypt to enable Shishak to rule over native
white citizens? A black king and a black army undis¬
turbedly dominating a white nation of cosmopolitan celeb¬
rity ? What remarkable anomalism! No. That was
not so. These Egyptians, military and civilian, were all,
or generally, black people.
That the Egyptians were black and curly-haired, we
have the testimony of the " father of history.77 Speaking
of the Colchians, Herodotus supposes them to have been
descended from the Egyptians, first because they were
black and had short cm-ling hair (uai on nzXyayxpots
ei6i nal ovXorpixst-) * and secondly, because they, the
Egyptians and the Ethiopians, are the only people who
from time immemorial have practiced circumcision
(ii. 104).
Now if Herodotus tells us that he saw both the Col¬
chians and the Egyptians, and that both were black and
curly-haired and observed alike certain religious rites,
indicating that they were descended from a common
stock, who can deny it? Who will say that the " father
of history " tells a deliberate falsehood ?
Commenting on this passage in Herodotus, Volney
says that " the ancient Egyptians were the same species
with all the nations of Africa."
Speaking again of a priestess, as a black dove, said to
have been stolen from Thebes by Phoenicians and sold
* " fieA.dyxP00''" i8 frequently translated "swarthy," but in
Schrevel's Lexicon, (Grceeo-Latinum et Latino-Groecum) it is defined
as " qui nigri coloris est,"—that which is of a black color.
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
59
into Greece, Herodotus says that in 11 saying that the
dove was black, they show that the woman was an
Egyptian." *
Then JEschylus, treating on the flight of the Danaides
from Egypt to Argos, alludes to the crew of an Egyptian
bark, as seen from an elevation on shore, and says that
u the sailors may be seen conspicuous with their black
limbs protruding out of their white garments." f
The Ammonians, acknowledged blacks, are said by
Herodotus (ii. 42) to be u a colony of Egyptians and
Ethiopians."
When the Danaides reached Argus, Pelasgus de¬
manded that they declare their race and country. They
claimed that though fugitives from Egypt they were re¬
lated to the Argives; whereupon Pelasgus says: "You
relate incredible things. * * * You are more like to
Libyan women." He had conjectured that they were
u Amazons." They speak of themselves as a u blackened,
sunburnt race;" and Danaus, their father says, u the
appearance of our form is not the same with yours ; for
the Nile nourishes a race different from Inachus." He
meant that they were black while the Argives were not.
Charles Anthon, LL.D., treating on the u complexion
and physical structure of the Egyptians," quotes the
reference of Herodotus to the Colchians and says: " In his
account of the people of Colchis, he says, that they were a
jueXairav Se Xeyovrsi eivai rrjv itEXeidda, 6r}fxaivov6i oti
Aiyvrcrirj fj yvvy rjv. (ii. 57.)
t 7Cpiitov6i 8j avdpe? vi'j oi /.isXayxWotS yvioi6i Xevkcov hn
■7ce.TtXcoiua.roov iS elv .—Suppliees, 772. See translation of the Suppli¬
ants by Theodore Alois Buckley, London: 1863.
60
THE CUSHITE.
colony of Egyptians, and he supports his opinion by this
argument, that they were t-isXayxpoes uai ovXorpix£?, or,
1 black in complexion, and woolly-haired/ These are
exactly the words used in the description of undoubted
Negroes. The same Colchians, it may be observed, are
mentioned by Pindar, (Pyth. iv. 377) as being black, with
the epithet of KeXaivdoiteS) on which passage the scholiast
observes, that the Colchians were black, and that their
dusky hue was attributed to their descent from the
Egyptians, who were of the same complexion." The
Greek word here given as an epithet employed by Pindar,
in his reference to the Colchians, is equivalent in mean¬
ing to the word " Negroes."
Then Ammianus Marcellinus says, (xxii. 16, 23):
" Homines Egypti plurumque subfusculi sunt et atrati; "
—that the Egyptians are commonly brown and black.
Marcellinus would not have made this statement with¬
out ample proof on which to base it. Even in his time,
though there had been considerable infusion of foreign
blood, the Egyptians were still u commonly brown and
black."
Lucian, who lived in the second century of the Christian
era, and held an official position under his government
for awhile in Egypt, speaking of an Egyptian youth says,
that besides being u black," he is " also thick-lipped " and
u very slender-legged." * Kenrick, author of " Ancient
Egypt under the Pharaohs" quotes this passage from
¥r irpo? rc3 /.isXoiyxpovS sTvai -uai itpoxziXoZ l6zi uai AcjrroS
ayav zov dxeAoiv.—8,15, ed. Bipont.
COLOR OP THE EGYPTIANS.
61
Lucian, (vol. I. p. 82>) and says: " This is the nearest
approach to the negro peculiarities that we find in any
description." But what nearer approach is needed ? If
the curly hair be wanting, that had been added by
Herodotus and others centuries before the time that
Lucian resided in Egypt.
The great monuments of Egypt, the Sphinx, the
obelisks and pyramids, the labyrinth and lake Moeris,
did anciently stand as silent, yet strong witnesses to the
identity of the Cushite race that built them, as well as to
its early civilization, and wonderful skill and prowess.
But Egyptian archseology has been so transmuted by the
cunning of modern writers, that now the testimony of
these monuments is either rendered equivocal, or made
to claim for them Caucasian origin. I thank God, how¬
ever, that in all ages of the world, he has kept a few to
vindicate historic truth, who did not bend the knee to
the Caucasian Baal, and say that blade was " white.''
According to classic story, Egypt was so called by the
Greeks after iEgyptus, son of Belus and brother of
Danaus. Belus who ruled on both sides of the Red Sea,
gave JEgyptus a portion of Arabia, and gave Libya to
Danaus. iEgyptus, instead of crossing over to Arabia,
conquered the land of the 11 black-footed race" [uaXau7t6da3vf
melampodes) and called it " iEgyptus," or Egypt, (see
Anthonys Class. Diet sub. JEgyptus et DanausS) .
J. Lempriere, D.D., says: u The Egyptians reckoned
themselves the most ancient nation in the universe, but
some authors make them of ^Ethiopian origin." Now,
62
THE CUSHITE,
if they had the color and physiognomy of the Caucasian,
how could any author worthy of mention u make them of
Ethiopian origin ?"
Dr. Charles Anthon, on the name of Egypt, (Class.
Diet.), says: "In Hebrew, cham signifies " calidus'';
and cJiom, " fuscus," u niger." In Egyptian we find
several words which are nearly the same both in sound
and sense. Thus xmom, chmom, signifies " calor" and
chame, "niger." The Egyptians always called
their country Chamia or Chame, probably from the
burned and black appearance of the soil." He refers to
authorities, (Pint, de Is. et Os., p. 364; Calmefs Diet,
art. Ham, etc.) But why not conclude that the Egyptians
so called their country from their own black color
instead of that of the soil ? The ruling people of this
country are quick to call it u the white man's country."
Then is it improbable that the proud Egyptians, filled
with like Vanity, called Egypt " Chamia/' meaning " the
black man's country 1" Human nature is the same
whether the cuticle that envelopes it be white or black.
Indeed, as though he would make the student of Bible
history understand that all Egypt was originally Cushite,
Grod moved his prophets to use just such words as
would sufficiently indicate it. The country is called
" the land of Ham," and "the tabernacles of Ham,"—
that is, the land inhabited by the descendants of Ham.
Admitting that this designation of Egypt is poetical, still
there is no law of interpretation that can possibly make
it mean the land of Shem, or the land of Japheth, rather
than, or instead of, the land of Ham.
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
63
The great river of Egypt is called u Sihor"
which means blade, and refers poetically, perhaps, as
much to the inhabitants of Egypt as to its famous Nile.
a The seed of Sihor," (Isa. xxiii.3), " Sihor which is before
Egypt," (Josh. xiii. 3), u Shihor of Egypt," (1. Chr. xiii-
5), and "the waters of Sihor," (Jer. ii. 18), are passages
that seem to point to color, and too decidedly so to have
reference only to the color of the water; which, indeed,
is not black. Rev. Dr. J. Lempriere calls Nilus, a king
of Thebes, who gave his name to the river Nile, which
before was called JEgyphis, (Class. Did. Qth Edit., 1788).
This Theban king was a black man, and the Hebrew
name of the river, ShicJior, may well signify " the Nile
of the blacks." In some other passages of the Scriptures
(Isa. xxvii. 12; Josh. xv. 4; 2. Kings xxiv. 7), the Nile
is called "the river of Egypt" (DV]¥D ^05) I literally "the
Nile of the Mizraimites." Now to deny that the Egyp¬
tians were Cushites, involves the denial that Mizraim was
of the Cushite family; and that, in turn, denies that
Ham, the father of Mizraim, was a Cushite, leaving the
Negro without any ancestral connection with the Noachan
household. Thus, as usual, error may be traced to
absurdity.
Treating of Ham in his elaborate Key to the Bible,
Dr. Christian Stock says: " Pater fuit Mizraimi, Autoris
^Egyptiorum, Gen. x. 6; 1. Chron. i. 8. Unde ab istius
nomine Aegyptus dicitur nunc Cham, nunc terra Cham.
Hireronymus in Gen. testatur iEgyptum usque ad sua
tempora iEgyptiorum lingua dictam fuisse Cham.11
64
THE CUSHITE.
And unde-r the head of Cush he says: " Primus filiorura
Chami, Gen. x. 6. qui iEthiopibus nomen dedit, unde
^Ethiopia Chusch dicta fuit, 2 Reg. 19. 9."
That is, "the father of Mizraim, the founder of the
Egyptians, was Ham. Whence, from this name, Egypt
was called now Ham/ now the land of Ham. St. Jerome
(in Gen.) asserts that always, even down to his time,
Egypt had been called Ham in the tongue of the
Egyptians."
"Cush, the eldest son of Ham, gave his name to the
Ethiopians. Whence Ethiopia was called Cush." The
only inference to be drawn here is that the Egyptians
and Ethiopians were of the same race, and that they
were black.
M. Lame Fleury, a French historian, speaking of
the first Egyptians, their gods, shepherd kings, the
Ethiopian priests, and the monuments of Egypt under
so many distinct heads, says that the first inhabitants
were few and grossly ignorant; but a black people
(jpeuple noir) came down the Nile, founded the city of
Meroe, and soon spread all over Egypt. That they
taught the Egyptians hieroglyphic writing; that Menes,
a royal descendant of the priests of Ethiopia, was their
first king, and taught the worship of the Sun and moon
as God and goddess; under the names of Osiris and Isis.
That among the ruins of the Egyptian temples of
Thebes and Memphis there have been found the
shepherds (mummies) represented as being of a reddish
brown with blue eyes, and the Ethiopians with their
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS
65
black figure and curly hair, ("Les Ethiopiens avec leur
figure noire et leurs cheveux crepus—pp. 2, 4, 16, 22,
IlHistoire Ancienne, Paris: 1860
Rev. N. Moren, M.A., says that "The traditions of the
Egyptian priesthood also agree in this, that the Ethiopians
laid the foundation of the most ancient states of Egypt; and
that the primeval monuments in Ethiopia strongly confirm
the native traditions reported by Diodorus Siculus, that
the worship of Ammon and Osiris originated in Meroe, and
thus render highly probable the opinion that commerce
and civilization, science and art, descended into Egypt
from Nubia and the upper regions of the Nile." (See
Herod, ii. 15, and Turner's Notes in loco.)
Because Moses is called " an Egyptian" by the
daughters of Reuel, (Ex. ii. 19), it is rashly concluded
that he had the color and all the other ethnic marks of an
Egyptian. Such, however, does not necessarily follow.
When Pharaoh's daughter found Moses, she readily
observed by his hair and color that he was one " of the
children of the Hebrews." Flavius Josephus says in his
argument against Apion (Lib. ii. 4) u When he appears
to wonder how the Jews could be called Alexandrians,
this is another like instance of his ignorance; for all such
as are called out to be colonies, although they be ever
so far remote from one another in their original, receive
their names from those that bring them to their new
habitation." That is, then as now, men are called among
the refined classes not by their color, physique or
ethnic original, but are regarded and called according to
66
THE CUSHITE.
t'heir native country and speech. The speech and attire
of Moses were Egyptian, with which the family of
Reuel was acquainted. Hence the young ladies called
him " an Egyptian.'7 There are Negroes in this city as
hlack as any that can be found in Africa; but we call
them "Frenchmen/' u Englishmen/' u Portuguese " or
" Spanish," according to their speech and country, till
they become naturalized citizens and adopt our tongue
and customs. After that we speak of them as citizens of
the United States, and individualize them by using their
proper names. It is only in this sense that Moses or any
other white man of his day could have been called an
Egyptian.
Writing on the "influence of Meroe on Egyptian civil¬
ization/' Dr. Anthon says, (Class. Diet. pp. 831—32):
u From this body of evidence then, we come to the
conclusion that the same race which ruled in Ethiopia
and Meroe, spread themselves by colonies, in the first in¬
stance, to Upper Egypt; that these latter colonies, in con¬
sequence of their great prosperity, became in turn the
parents of others ; and as in all this they followed the
course of the river, there gradually became founded
a succession of colonies in the valley of the Nile."
"Everything," says this author, " seems to favor the
supposition that Meroe gave religion and the arts of civi¬
lized life to the valley of the Nile."
Now, if these Ethiopians who thus spread themselves
over Egypt were black men, as doubtless they were, they
certainly did not get white by colonizing Egypt. God
has so fixed it that u our brother in black " cannot capri¬
ciously change himself into a brother in ivhite; and to
COLOR OF THE EGYPTIANS.
67
this ethnic fixedness our very soul exclaims, 11 Amen ! "
Heeren says: "In proportion as we ascend into the
primeval ages, the closer seems the connection between
Egypt and Ethiopia. The Hebrew poets seldom mention
the former without the latter."—Ancient Nations of
Africa, Vol. i. p. 289.
There is no historic, traditional, or legendary account,
as far as I know, of any branch of the Caucasian family
ever migrating to Egypt and claiming to be an aboriginal
people, or to have priority in settlement. Nor do any of
that branch claim Ham or any of his descendants as their
progenitors. Then it is glaringly unreasonable for modern
historians and antiquarians to try to construe Egyptian
archaeology and interpret the sacred hieroglyphics of the
Ethiopians in a way to derive it all from the white race,
and transform the aboriginal Egyptians into Caucasians.
And yet, no white man can be found on the face of the
earth that claims Ham as his remote progenitor. Wher¬
ever the English language is spoken, whether in America,
Europe, Asia, or Africa, when a man is said to be "a
son of Ham," the understanding is that he is a black
man.
I might go on adducing further testimony showing
that the aboriginal Egyptians were Hamitic Cushites;
but in view of all the trustworthy evidence already
advanced, evidence that cannot be reasonably explained
away or made to change its trend, there ought not to be
any doubt left in the mind of the thoughtful reader, that
those Egyptians were black-faced and genuine Negroes,
68
THE CUSHITE.
bat of a type conformable to a state of freedom, wealth
and culture.
In view, therefore, of the fact that they were black and
of the race of Ham, we may justly claim for the Negro
race all of Egypt's pristine greatness.
The ideal, or symbol of beauty and purity with the
Ethiopians was black, from which we are left to infer,
from historic analogy, that they themselves were of that
colorj and since they and the aboriginal Egyptians were
identical in race, the Egyptians must have been black
also.
THE KINGS OF EGYPT.
69
THE KINGS OF EGYPT.
Herodotus says (ii. 100) that the priests of Egypt
(< enumerated to him from a book the names of three
hundred and thirty kings." That ''in so many genera¬
tions of men, there were eighteen Ethiopians and one
native queen," called Nitocris. He does not mean that
the other monarchs were not Cushites, but that they were
citizens of Egypt and not of Ethiopia. If the reigns of
these three hundred and thirty kings be regarded as suc¬
cessive it would carry the history of Egypt back into the
fabulous ages when gods and demi-godswere the sovereigns
of men; where the historian can do nothing but stand and
listen to the enchanting song of the poet, whose notes are
tuned to the lyre of mythic tradition. Mr. Turner says
in his notes : u These three hundred and thirty kings
* * * are undoubtedly the first seventeen dynasties of
Manetho."
Manetho, as quoted by Josephus,* closes the dynasty of
Menes with a king called Timaus. After this there came
a shepherd people called Hycsos, probably eastern
Cushites, who invaded Egypt, captured the lower country,
and held it for several generations. Manetho says that
they u kept possession of Egypt five hundred and eleven
years." M. Lame Fleury says: u depuis l'an 2310 jusqu*
* Against Apion, Cap. i. 14 et seq.
70
THE CUSHITE.
a l'an 2050 avant J. C." Finally they were driven out
by the native Cushites who re-established their authority
and maintained it till conquered by Cyrus of Persia, 535
B. C., and reduced to vassalage by Cambyses, 525 B.C.
There are different statements as to the order of suc¬
cession of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs; and some of
them had two or three names, which increases the
difficulties met with in an effort to discover a correct
chronological order. At this, however, I do not aim. I
purpose only to point to their existence, their renown, and
to their Cushite origin.
It is agreed by all reputable historians that Menes,
whom some regard as none other than Mizraim, was, as
affirmed by Herodotus (ii. 99), the first king of Egypt.
It seems that he began his reign about twenty-two hun¬
dred years before Christ; but as to the precise epoch,
there is no satisfactory agreement, or nice exactitude.
According to Rev. Dr. Michael Russell,* who follows Dr.
Hales, f Menes began to reign in the year 2412 B.C.
His, the first dynasty, lasted 253 years; that of the
Shepherds, (the 2nd), lasted 260 years; the third, begin¬
ning with Alisfragmuthosis and ending with Queen
Nitocris, lasted 251 years. It was during this third
dynasty that the Israelites were enslaved. The date
given for their exode by Dr. Russell is 1648 B.C., where¬
as the chronology of Archbishop Usher commonly adopted,
fixes the exodus of the Israelites in the year 1491 B.C., or
* Ancient and Modern Egypt, p. 52, Harper, 1842.
t New Analysis of Ancient Chronology, vol. iv. p. 418.
THE KINGS OF EGYPT.
71
one hundred and fifty-seven years later. Usher, follow¬
ing the modern Hebrew text, finds, from the Creation of
Genesis to the Christian era, 4004 years; Dr. Hales, fol¬
lowing the Septuagint and Josephus, finds 5411 years,
making a difference of 1407 years. Most writers, how¬
ever, adopt the chronology of Usher, and fix the begin¬
ning of the reign of Menes at 2188 B.C.
Rollin says, u the ancient history of Egypt compre¬
hends 2158 years, and is naturally divided into three
periods. The first begins with the establishment of the
Egyptian monarchy by Menes or Mizraim, the son of
Cham, (Ham), in the year of the world 1816 ; and ends
with the destruction of that monarchy by Cambyses,
king of Persia, in the year of the world 3479. This
first period contains 1663 years.* After this, the history
of Egypt for four hundred and ninety-five years, embrac¬
ing the second and third periods named by Mr. Rollin, is
intermixed with the history of the Persians and the
Grecians to whom the country was subject; and there
was also during these periods a general admixture of
blood, which changed the dark complexion of the abo¬
rigines to that of the mulatto in their descendants. It is,
therefore, only from Menes to Cambyses, from 2188 B.C.
to 525 B.C., that we can claim an exclusively Cushite
sovereignty in both Egypt and Ethiopia, excepting the
dynasty of the Hycsos who may or may not have been
Cushites.
Menes founded the Egyptian monarchy and instituted,
■X- Ancient Hist., sub. Kings of Egypt.
72
THE CUSHITE.
as Eollin says, 11 the worship of the gods and the cere¬
monies of the sacrifices." He was followed by a number
of Cushite monarchs who distinguished their reigns by
works of art, till the country was invaded by the Hycsos.
Of these Manetho names six as their first rulers. They
are Salatis, Beon, Apachnas, Apophis, Janias, and Assis.
Their combined reigns, as quoted by Josephus from
Manetho, were just two hundred and fifty-three years
and ten months. Then, says this author, " the kings of
Thebais and the other parts of Egypt made an insur¬
rection against the shepherds; " and under one of them
u whose name was Alisfragmuthosis, the shepherds were
subdued." His son and successor, Thummosis, entered
into a compromise with the shepherds, stipulating for
their voluntary and peaceful exodus; * but Thetmosis
" drove them out." Thetmosis according to Africanus
and Eusebius is the same as Amosis I., who heads the
eighteenth dynasty; and is said to be the u new king "
who arose up over Egypt and " knew not Joseph." Dr.
Conant, commenting on Exodus (1. 8.) quotes Canon
Cook:
u The expressions of this verse are peculiar and
emphatic. ' A new king' is a phrase not found else¬
where. It is understood by most commentators to imply
that he did not succeed his predecessor in natural order
of descent and inheritance. He 1 arose up over Egypt,'
occupying the land, as it would seem, on different terms
from the king whose place he took, either by usurpation
or conquest. The fact that he knew not Joseph implies
* Here the Shepherds are mistaken for the Jews.
THE KINGS OF EGYPT.
73
a complete separation from the traditions of lower Egypt.
* * * He was the descendant of the old Theban sover¬
eigns. * * * Amosis married an Ethiopian princess,
Nephertari; and, in the third year of his reign, captured
Avaris, or Zoan, the capital of the Hyksos, and com¬
pleted the expulsion of that race."
The statement of the fact that Amosis married an
Ethiopian princess does not imply that his wife was a
Cushite while he was not; but that he belonged to the
royal line of the Cushites of Thebaid, while his wife
belonged to the royal family of Ethiopia. In color, they
were the same.
From the reign of Alisfragmuthosis to that of
Thetmosis or Amosis, Dr. Bussell reckons, as before
stated, a dynasty of two hundred and fifty-one years, the
last ruler being Nitocris, the Ethiopian queen mentioned
by Herodotus, (ii. 100.)
Josephus, quoting from Manetho, names the following
kings of Egypt, with the length of their respective
reigns, after the expulsion of the shepherds. He says : *
" When this people or shepherds were gone out of Egypt
to Jerusalem, Thetmosis, the king of Egypt who drove
them out, reigned afterwards twenty-five years and four
months, and then died; after him his son Cheron took
the kingdom for thirteen years; after whom came
Amenophis, for twenty years and seven months; then
came his sister Amesses, for twenty-one years and nine
months ; after her came Mephres, for twelve years and
* Against Apion, lib. i. 15, "YVhiston's translation.
74
THE CUSHITE.
nine months ; after him was Mephramuthosis, for twenty-
five years and ten months; after him was Thmosis,
for nine years and eight months; after him came
Amenophis, for thirty years and ten months; after him
came Orus, for thirty-six years and five months ; then
came his daughter Acencheres, for twelve years and one
month; then was her brother Rathotis, for nine years ;
then was Acencheres, for twelve years and five months;
then came another Acencheres, for twelve years and
three months; after him Armais, for four years and one
month; after him was Harnesses, for one year and four
months; after him came Armesses Miammoun, for sixty
years and two months; after him Amenophis, for
nineteen years and six months; after him came Sethosis,
and Ramesses, who had an army of horse and a naval
force."
Here Manetho gives the reigns of eighteen monarchs,
among whom were two queens, Amesses the sister of
Amenophis I., and Acencheres, the daughter of Orus or
Horus. The Ramesses named with Sethosis, the eigh¬
teenth in the list, was soon slain, and Armais, another
brother, ruled in Egypt while Sethosis who had a navy
and cavalry, waged war against other nations both by
sea and by land. He was called Egyptus and his
brother Armais was called Danaus. Here we recognize
at once the great Sesostris of Herodotus and the Danaus
of iEschylus in his play of " The Suppliants." We now
approach an epoch of less chronological dubiousness, but
are yet without certainty.
THE KINGS OF EGYPT.
75
Having referred to Manetho's thirty Egyptian dynas¬
ties, Mr. Rollin says: u Besides, we find in Eratosthenes,
(Diod. 1. i. p. 41), who was invited to Alexandria by
Ptolemy Euergetes, a catalogue of thirty-eight kings of
Thebes, all different from those of Manetho." This sug¬
gests that there were different dynasties in lower, and
upper Egypt, existing at the same time. We can easily
conceive of such a spontaneous friendliness subsisting be¬
tween these contiguous governments as would accord with
a mutual recognition of ancestral kinship, and permit the
automaton and independency of each other} except in
action against a common foe.
Sesostris, to whom was given several pompous titles,
heads the list of monarchs of the nineteenth dynasty;
and under that line of Theban rulers, Egypt reached its
greatest dimensions by the addition of new provinces,
attained the acme of military fame, and rose to that
astonishing architectural splendor and exhibition of science
and art of which its gigantic ruins still bear testimony. It
is a matter of regret that the epoch of Sesostris cannot
be fixed with absolute accuracy. u The first date," says
Dr Anthon " which approximates to certainty, is the
capture of Jerusalem by Sesac or Sesonchosis" (Shishak);
u the first of the twenty-second dynasty, in the year 971,
or, at the earliest, 975 B.C, What, then, was the inter¬
vening time between this event and the accession of the
nineteenth dynasty ? " From Eusebius, in the Latin text
of Jerome, the nineteenth dynasty embraces a period of
194 years j the twentieth, 178 years; the twenty-first,
76
THE CUSHITE.
130 years, total, for the reigns of the three series, 502
years. Adding to this the date of'the capture of Jeru¬
salem by Shishak, 971, we have for the epoch of Sesos-
tris, 1473 B.C. By this process four other different
authorities give so many different results,—1481, 1467,
1446, and 1514, B.C.—wherein there is a difference of
only sixty-eight years between the earliest and the latest
date. Now, if to the latest date, 1446 B.C., we add half
the difference between the latest and earliest, 34, we
obtain 1480 B.C., for the epoch of Sesostris, the most po¬
tent of Egyptian monarchs and one of the greatest among
the noted conquerors of antiquity.
But it is maintained by some that Sesostris was not
the son of Moeris and the first of the nineteenth dynasty
Dr. Anthon says that Diodorus u gives seven generations
between Mceris and Sesostris." Hence he is assigned to
a later date. Indeed, the epoch of Sesostris is an
historical enigma more puzzling than the ideographic
and hieroglyphic tales of his prowess. Rev. Dr. Russell
assigns his reign to the begining of the thirteenth century
before Christ.
" Herodotus/' he says, " relates that Sesostris was suc¬
ceeded by Pheron and this last by Proteus, in whose time
Troy was taken; and, according to Manetho, Sesothis was
succeeded by Rampses, and Rampses by Ramesses, in
whose reign also Troy was taken. Therefore, Sesothis
and Sesostris were obviously the same person; and it is
equally clear that his accession could not have been much
earlier than 1283, or a century before the the destruction
of Troy, reckoning three reigns equivalent to three mean
THE KINGS OF EGYPT.
77
generations. This agrees sufficiently with the date which
we have selected. Again, in his fourth book, Herodotus
states that Targitaus founded the Scythian kingdom
about a thousand years at most before the invasion of
Darius Hystaspes, or, in other words, about 1508 before
the Christian era. But we learn from the historian
Justin that Timaus, the sixth king in succession from
Targitaus, encountered Sesostris, and checked or defeated
him at the river Phasis. Reckoning these six reigns
equivalent to mean generations, or 200 years, the acces¬
sion of Sesostris could not be earlier than 1308 B.C."
Thus Dr. Russell, as some other good authorities before
him, fixes the epoch of this great Cushite monarch at
1308 B.C. The reigns, of the kings of Egypt from the
beginning of the nineteenth dynasty to the overthrow of
the monarchy by Cambyses, are given in the tabula of
Dr. Russell as follows:
(1) Sesostris reigned 33 years, beginning
1308 B.C. (2) Rampses or Pheron, 61
years; (3) Cetes, Proteus, or Ramesses,
50 years ; Amenophis IV., 40 years ; (5)
Rampsinites, 42 years; (6) Cheops or
Chemmis, 50 years; (7) Cephrenes,
Cephres, or Sesah, 56 years; (8) Mycerinus
or Cherinus, 10 years; making for the
period ending 966 B.C.,
A chasm of 151 years; (1) Bocchoris
or Asychis, 44 years ; (2) Anysis, 2 years ;
3) Sabacon or So, 50 years; Anysis
again, 6 years; (4) Sebecon or Sethos,
40 years. For the period ending 673 B. C.,
(1) Twelve contemporary kings, 15
342 years.
293 years.
78
THE CUSHITE.
years ; (2) Psammeticus I., 39 years; (3)
Nekus, or Pharaoh Necho, 16 years; (4)
Psammis, 6 years) (5) Apries or Pharaoh
Hophra, 28 years ; (6) Amasis, 44 years ;
(here Cyrus invades Egypt 535 B.C.)
(7) Psammenitus (first revolt) 6 months.
For the period, ending 525 B.C. when
Cambyses took Egypt,
Here the regular Cushite succession of
Egyptian monarchs terminates. Cambyses,
availing himself of the religious superstition
of the Egyptians, taking advantage of their
veneration for cats, reduced the country to
Persian domination. The Egyptians were
under Persian rule from Cambyses to
Darius Ochus or Nothus, embracing a
period of
Then the Egyptians revolted, 413 B.C.,
and maintained, their freedom till again
subjected to Persia by Ochus or Artaxerxes
III., 350 B.C., a period of
Persia ruled this time only till 332 B.C.,
a period of
Then Alexander the Great conquered
the country and it remained under the
Grecian Ptolemies till the conquest of
Augustus Caesar, and the death of Cleopatra
31 B.C., a period of
To the Christian era, a period of
148 years.
112
63
18
301
31
years.
years,
years.
years,
years.
Total 1308 years.
Thus for 462 years between Cambyses and the Chris¬
tian era, Egypt had a white head and a black body j ex-
THE KINGS OP EGYPT.
79
cept so far as there was an influx of Persian and Gre¬
cian emigrants or colonists and an intermixture of native
and foreign blood. It was only from the conquest of
Cambyses that Egypt began in earnest to get white ; and
even to this day the task is unfinished.
6
80
THE CUSHITE.
EARLY CIVILIZATION OF THE CUSHITES.
Speaking of the Nile as " one of the wonders of the
globe/' the Rev. Dr. Michael Russell says : " This gift
has been the source of subsistence to several powerful
nations, who have established and overthrown mighty
kingdoms, and have originated the arts, the learning,
and the refinement of the greater part of the ancient
world. Those nations—instructors and pupils—have
perished; but the remains of their stupendous labors,
the pyramids and the temples of Egypt, Nubia, Dongola,
and Meroe, are more than sufficient to excite respect for
the people who founded them." *
Mr. Samuel B. Schieffelin says: u Neither Ham nor
his descendants became degraded slaves immediately.
In fact, his descendants for many years were more pow¬
erful than the children of the other sons of Noah, who
were to inherit the blessing. Although they were to be
the slaves of Shem, yet some of them, the Egyptians,
held the Israelites, the best of Shem's children, in the
most cruel slavery for generations.
The first great conqueror spoken of was a grandson of
Ham; the first cities built after the flood, the first king¬
dom established, the first immense buildings erected, and
the first great works, the remains of some of which are
* Nubia and Abyssinia, p. 38, Harper, N. Y., 1838.
EARLY CIVILIZATION OF THE CUSHITES.
81
among the wonders of the world to the present day, were
built by the children of Ham. Nations of giants were
descended from him : races of men of immense stature
and power. Like the descendants of Cain and the seed
of the serpent before the flood, his descendants were for
many years the mighty men of the world; while the
children of the promise were dwelling in tents and in
comparative obscurity. How they must have scoffed at
the prediction of the coming judgment upon them. How
natural that one of them, Goliath, defied the armies of
the living God ! How sad the fact, that because sentence
against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore
the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do
evil. But God's word and his purposes are sure : though
to men they may appear slow in their execution.''*
Herodotus tells us that the priests of Egypt read to
him from a book the names of 330 kings of Egypt,
and one queen; and that among them were eighteen
Ethiopians. The name of the queen was Nitocris.—
Herod, ii. 100.
By the term u Ethiopians '' in this passage, Herodotus
docs not mean that the other kings were not of the
Hamitic race, but simply Cushites of Ethiopia in
contradistinction to Cushites of Egypt; for though this
Nitocris is called a native (ywtj litixoapirj^ she was of
the blood royal of Ethiopia, and was a queen noways
inferior to Victoria except in Christian character
By a careful study of ancient literature and archae¬
ology, the logical conclusion reached is that the ancient
Cushites were the world's magnates and the world's
* Foundations of History, a Series of First Things, pp. 113, 114.
82
THE CUSHITE.
school-masters. Those of Ethiopia taught art, science,
and theology to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians taught
the eastern nations and the Greeks and the Romans.
Even Moses, in writing the Pentateuch, employed the
knowledge of sacred things and human rights which he
had gained among the Cushites of Africa, and perhaps
from Tharbis, his Ethiopian wife. Inspiration did not
educate Moses, any more than it educates God's ministers
of to-day ; it merely illuminated and sanctified what he
had learned in the land of Ham ; for he was " learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians,''* under an Ethiopian
dynasty.
The intellectual sun of the Ethiopians had nearly
reached its zenith, before that of Greece and Rome had
risen above the horizon. This is witnessed by Heeren
who says that the Ethiopians were " one of the most
celebrated and mysterious of nations ; " that " when the
Greeks scarcely knew Italy and Sicily by name, the
Ethiopians were celebrated in the verses of their poets,"
as u the remotest nation, the most just of men," to whom
the lofty u inhabitants of Olympus journey * * and par¬
take of their feasts." Pliny says {Hist. Nat., vi. 35) that
Ethiopia "was powerful and illustrious as far back as the
Trojan war, when Memnon reigned." Yes, and Pliny
might have gone far back behind the Trojan war, which
was in the days of Jephthah, the ninth Judge of Israel,
about 1188 years before Christ, and about 436 years
before the building of Rome.
-x- The wisdom of the Egyptians was proverbial, 1. K. iv. 30;
Herod, ii. 160; Joseph, viii. 2; Ats, vii. 22.
EARLr CIVILIZATION OF THE CUSHITES. 83
Heeren says: a In proportion as we ascend into the
primeval ages, the closer seems the connection between
Egypt and Ethiopia. The Hebrew poets seldom mention
the former without the latter: the inhabitants of both are
drawn as commercial nations. When Isaiah celebrates
the victories of Cyras, their submission is spoken of as
his most magnificent reward (Isa. xlv. 14). When
Jeremiah extols the great victory of Nebuchadnezzar over
Pharaoh-nechoh, near Carchemish, the Ethiopians are
allied to the Egyptians (Jer. xlvi. 9). When Ezekiel
threatens the downfall of Egypt, he unites it with the
distant Ethiopia (Ezek. xxx. 4). Every page, indeed,
of Egyptian history exhibits proof of the close intimacy
in which they stood. The primitive states of Egypt
derived their origin from these remote regions. Thebes
and Meroe founded in common a colony in Libya; Ethio¬
pian conquerors more than once invaded Egypt; Egyptian
kings in return forced their way into Ethiopia; the same
worship, the same manners and customs, the same mode
of writing, are found in both countries; and, under Psam-
metichus, the noble and numerous party of malecontents*
retired into Ethiopia. Egypt, also, as far as history
reaches back, abounded in all the commodities of the
southern region. Whence did she obtain the spices and
drugs with which she embalmed her dead ? Whence the
incense that burned on her altars t Whence that
immense quantity of cotton in which her inhabitants
were clad, and which her own soil so sparingly produced?
Whence came into Egypt that early rumour of the
Ethiopian gold countries, which Cambyses set out to dis¬
cover, and lost half his army in the attempt ? Whence
that profusion of ivory and ebony which the ancient artists
of Greece and Palestine embellished % Whence that
* Automoli, Egyptian Cuslntes of the military caste.—Herod, ii. 30.
84
THE CUSHITE.
general and early spread of the name of Ethiopia, which
glimmers in the traditional history of so many nations,
and which is celebrated as well by the Jewish poets as
by the earliest Grecian bards ? Whence but from the
international commerce of which Ethiopia was the seat
and centre ? Its principal route is still pointed out by a
chain of ruins, extending from the shores of the Indian
sea to the Mediterranean. Adule, Azab, and Axum, are
links of this chain between Arabia Felix and Meroe;
Thebes and Ammonium between Meroe, Egypt, and
Carthage."—{Quoted in Kind's Cyclopcedia, Vol. i. p. 668.)
The descendants of Shem spread themselves over Asia,
those of Ham over Africa, and of Japheth over Europe.
From these fountain heads we may trace three great
and distinctly marked streams of people, reaching to this
time through a period of 4240 years; and presenting us,
from the earliest ages of written history, a white Europe,
a black Africa, and a yellow Asia.
In the race of life, the Cushite led the van for sixteen
centuries; and the great theatres in which he played the
best, the regions of his noblest deeds and highest grandeur,
were Egypt and Ethiopia. Some have maintained that
the distinguished Ethiopians and Egyptians of such fre¬
quent and favorable mention in both sacred and pro¬
fane history, were not black men. They ingeniously
explain the black man away and cunningly substitute
some other race. They seemingly forget that ancient
language is a constructive tale-bearer j that its roots are
etymological indices twinkling like the fixed stars to light
up the pathway of the scholar engaged in historic
research.
EARLY CIVILIZATION OF THE CUSHITES. 85
Dr. Kussell says! u In surveying the wonders which
crowd the banks of the Nile from Meroe to Memphis, we
are struck with the reflection that the wealth, power, and
genius, whence they derived their origin, have entirely
passed away. In some portions of that extensive tract, a
race little superior to savages pass a rude and precarious
life, ignorant of the arts, and insensible equally to the
beauty and the magnificence of the ruins which they tread
under foot. They have ceased even to claim connection
with the people who raised the splendid monuments of
Ebsamboul, Karnac, and Dendera; and, accordingly,
they ascribe the anxiety which our countrymen display,
in regard to those remains of antiquity, to the desire of
visiting the tombs of a European nation, who are sup¬
posed by them to have built the temples and sculptured
the obelisks.
The Nubians, especially, have relapsed into that low
condition where even curiosity has become dormant, and
in which the eye can be every day fixed on the noblest
works of human ingenuity without suggesting any specu¬
lation as to their authors, their epoch, or their design.
Throughout the whole world, m short, there is no greater
contrast to be witnessed than between what now is, and
what must once have been, in Ethiopia and Egypt. There
is even great difficulty in passing, by an effort of thought,
from the one condition to the other, through the various
scenes of conquest and desolation which seem necessary
to have produced the effects we contemplate. We might
question history, but we should receive no answer, as
to the events and characters which the lapse of three
thousand years has thrown into an impenetrable obscurity.
Surrounded with darkness we grope our way amid superb
structures, dedicated to gods and heroes whose names
make but a faint impression on our ears, and we satisfy
86
THE CUSHITE.
ourselves with the conclusion, that a great people had
existed there before the era of recorded time, whose
literature and philosophy have been outlived by their
architectural monuments," Hist. Nub. and Abyss, pp.
194, 195.
NIMROD,
87
NIMROD.
This name etymologically considered, is an abstract
noun implying impious rebellion. It was applied to
Nimrod probably on account of his early traditional
history among the descendants of Asshur (the Assyrians)
whose land he invaded and added to his own dominion.
It finally became concrete, taking the place of Nimrod's
real proper name.
In that Nimrod was the son of Cush, there can be no
question as to his being a veritable Cushite, Just how
black he was and how kinked his hair, we are not told.
But he was a Cushite. He was the first king of Baby¬
lonia and Assyria. We learn from the book of Genesis
(x. 8-12) that "he began to be a mighty one in the
earth ; " was 11 a mighty hunter before Jehovah that
u the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech,
and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar(Baby¬
lonia) and that u from that land he went forth to Assyria,
and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and
Resen between Nineveh and Calah," Am. Bib. Un. Ver¬
sion, 1868.
The Common Version says (x. 11.) "out of that land
went forth Asshur and builded Nineveh, and the city
Rehoboth, and Calah." But the former, I think, is the
88
THE CUSHITE.
proper translation. First, it is demanded by the claims
of congruity and clearness. An account is being given
of the descendants of Ham, and nothing appears in the
natural train of thought or in the context to induce the
writer to mystify his narrative by a sudden lapse from
the genealogy of Ham, to introduce Asshur, a son of
Shem, the beginning of whose family record does not oc¬
cur till the twenty-second verse is reached. Moses is
telling briefly of the heroic deeds of Nimrod who " began
to be a mighty one in the earth." And states that after
he had founded Babel and the other named cities, in the
land of Shinar, he went forth from there to Assyria where
Asshur had already settled and given the country his
name, and there deposing Asshur and usurping author¬
ity, he builded Nineveh, Rehoboth and Resen. Sec¬
ondly, in Micah (v. 6) where the overthrow of Assyria
by the Medes and Babylonians is predicted, the apposi-
tional coupling of u the land of Asshur '' and u the land
of Nimrod," confirms the construction which makes Nim-
rod rather than Asshur the nominative of the verb " went"
in Gen. x. 11.
The objection urged against this construction is that
there is neither a preposition before nor the usual
n local appended. But this is not absolutely required in
order to construe Asshur (Assyria) in the accusative;
for there are some good authorities for construing verbs
signifying u to go to a place" with the noun in the
accusative without the particle riN (See Deutsch's Heb.
Gram. p. 169. and Comp. the Heb. text of 2. Sara. x. 2.
NIMROD.
89
with 1. Chr. xiii. 13, and xix. 2). Certainly Nimrod
deserves the benefit of any doubt arising here merely
from a less frequent grammatical usage of more than
three thousand years ago.
Those who defend the reading of the Common Version,
assume that Nimrod drove Asshur from Shinar and that
therefore Asshur is fitly introduced in the eleventh verse.
But the text does not say that Nimrod did any such
thing; nor does it warrant any such inference. Asshur
was older than Nimrod. He was Noah's grandson, while
Nimrod was his great-grandson ; and had probably set¬
tled on the eastern borders of the Tigris with others of
his kindred (Shemites) while Nimrod dwelt about the
Euphrates in Shinar, and, as Josephus says, " tyrannized
at Babylon."
The statement that Nimrod " was a mighty hunter
before Jehovah" is to be taken rather in a favorable
sense. Having distinguished himself under the blessing
of God as " the hero of the chase," he turned his atten¬
tion to prowess among men and the laying of the foun¬
dation of a great empire. He captured all Babylonia,
and then advanced into Assyria, subdued the Asshurites,
and founded Nineveh, Rehoboth, Calah, and Resen.
90
the cushite.
CAPITALS OF ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT.
The ancient Cushites of Ethiopia and Egypt could
count their towns and cities by tens, by hundreds and by
thousands, many of which were noted as religious, com¬
mercial and military centres; but we mention here only
a few of the leading capital cities of Ethiopia and Egypt.
In Ezekiel (xxx. 13-16) we find reference to " Noph,"
il Pathros," (founded by Pathrusim, the fifth son of
Mizraim), 11 Zoan," or Tanis, an old city in lower Egypt,
where there have been observed two black statues and a
granite sphinx; 11 No," the Thebes of upper Egypt, and
" Sin," " the strength of Egypt," possibly Pelusium, the
fortified door-way to Egypt on the northeast.
Meroe in Ethiopia, called " the cradle of the political
and religious institutions of Egypt,"—meaning that there
arose the arts and sciences, the beginning of hieroglyphic
writing and the building of temples and pyramids, before
they were known in Egypt,—was the capital city of
Ethiopia. Rev. N. Morren, M. A., says: "the splendid
ruins of temples, Pyramids, and other edifices found here
and throughout the district have been described by
Cailliaud, Gau, Rtippell, Belzoni, Waddington, Hoskins,
and other travelers, and attest the high degree of
civilization and art among the ancient Ethiopians."
capitals of ethiopia and egypt.
91
According to Josephus, (Antiq. ii. 10, 2.) this royal city
of the Ethiopians was called Saba before the time of
Cambyses, and it was here that Moses, while commander
of the Egyptian army sent against the Ethiopians, con¬
tracted marriage with Tharbis, the Ethiopian princess.
It was a city without a rival among the Ethiopians, that
is, the Cushites of Ethiopia. It was there that
"The sire of gods and all th' ethereal train,
On tlie warm limits of the farthest main,"
Mixed with mortals, nor disdained " to grace
The feasts of Ethiopia's blameless race."
The statues of the men noticed by Mr. Bruce at Meroe
il were mostly of black stone," indicating, possibly, the
color of the sculptors.
Thebes, or Diospolis, the hundred-gated city, was the
abode of Jupiter-Ammon, in Upper Egypt, and the
metropolis of Thebais. It became at one time the
capital of all Egypt. It is the city referred to, it seems,
by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Nahum.*
Nahum calls it ,l populous No," and says of it " Ethiopia
and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put
and Lubim were thy helpers." This city is here shown
to be thoroughly Cushite; for in the names Cush, Mizraim
Phut and Lubim in the original Hebrew text, we readily
recognize three sons and a grandson of Ham. It is said
that the city of Thebes was at one time about fifty miles
in circumference having Luxor, Karnac, and Medinet
Abou within its radius, and possessed immense wealth.
* Jer. xlvi. 25; Ezek. xxx. 14j Nahum. iii. 8, 9.
92
the cushite.
Homer, tlie father of poetry as Herodotus is of history,
speaks of it as
" The world's great empress on the Egyptian plain,
That spreads her conquests o'er a thousand states
And pours her heroes through a hundred gates;
Two hundred horsemen and two hundred cars
From each wide portal issued to the wars."—Pope.
It is here at Thebes that travelers have found, as at
Meroe, ruins of architecture and sculpture of unrivalled
grandeur, both in respect to their number and their
colossal proportions; ruins that rank as first among the
wonders of the ancient world. Yet, the proposition that
tho builders and carvers of those wonderful temples,
pyramids, obelisks, and sphinxes were Cushites, the
progenitors of the modern Negro, no mortal can dis¬
prove.
Memphis, or Noph, about fifteen miles south of the
2ipex of the Delta, was the capital of Lower Egypt as
Thebes was of Upper Egypt. It was here that the ancient
pharaohs resided in the earlier days.
It was here that Apis the sacred bull was paid
distinguished honors to win the favor of Osiris. It was
here that the ancient Cushites, as in Ethiopia, and as in
Upper Egypt, erected monuments that still attest their
superior genius.
RUINS OP ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT.
93
RUINS OF ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT.
The ruins of Ethiopia and Egypt are incontrovertible
proofs of the high degree attained by the ancient Cush-
ites in a knowledge of the arts and sciences. But here
again the doubting Thomas may ask: " Were they Ne¬
groes?" u The only way of avoiding the inference that
the ^Ethiopians were Negroes/' says Dr. Anthon, {Class.
Diet, sub JEthiop.) " must be by the supposition that the
ancients * * * were not acquainted with any people ex¬
actly resembling the people of Guinea, and therefore ap¬
plied the terms woolly-haired, flat-nosed, etc., to nations
who had these characters in a much less degree'than those
people whom we now term Negroes.'7 Speaking of the
pyramids, he says, 11 Heeren appears to be nearest the
truth, when he makes the pyramids of Cheops and
Chephren to have been the work of Ethiopian con¬
querors."
Excepting the land of Shinar, in the age of Nimrod, it
was in Ethiopia, the land of Cush, that the sons of Ham
began their career in art, literature, and science, in
which the ruins of Ethiopia and Egypt prove that they
became distinguished above all other peoples of the
Earth. Dr. Russell says : " In surveying the wonders
which crowd the banks of the Nile from Meroe to Mem-
94
THE CUSHITE.
phis7 we are struck with the reflection that the wealth,
power, and genius, whence they derived their origin, have
entirely passed away." Again "M. Heeren is of the
opinion that pyramid architecture was native in Ethiopia
from the earliest ages."
Speaking of the architectural monuments of Ethiopia
in his History of Nubia and Abyssinia, Dr. Russell says:
"the whole strip of land from Shendy to Gerri teems
with thein, and must therefore be regarded as a portion
of the classic ground of Ethiopia. So far as our infor¬
mation extends at present, (1833), those ruins may be
included in three principal groups, and associated with
the names of Assour, Naga, and Messoura, or Mecaoura
as it is written by Cailliaud. The first of these lies to
the north of Shendy, about two miles from the river; the
others are at a distance of several leagues from the Nile
in a southerly direction, proceeding from the same point.
The monuments found here consist both of temples and
pyramids. * * * Eastward of Assour is what has been
called the great churchyard of pyramids, the existence
of which likewise tends to prove that there was at one
period a considerable city in the neighborhood. It is
impossible to behold these monuments ■without astonish¬
ment. * * * There is no greater contrast to be witnessed
than between what now is and what must once have been,
in Ethiopia and Egypt. There is even great difficulty
in passing, by an effort of thought, from the one condi¬
tion to the other, through the various scenes of con¬
quest and desolation which seem necessary to have
produced the effects we contemplate. We might ques¬
tion history, but we should receive no answer, as to
events and characters which the lapse of three thou¬
sand years has thrown into impenetrable obscurity.
RUINS OF ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT.
95
Surrounded with darkness we grope our way amid su¬
perb structures, dedicated to gods and heroes whose
names make but a faint impression on our ears; and
we satisfy ourselves with the conclusion, that a great
people had existed there before the era of recorded time,
whose literature and philosophy have been outlived by
their architectural monuments."
But grander still are the monuments found in Upper
and Middle Egypt. Dr. Anthon says: " Diodorus,
who speaks of Thebes as of a city already in ruins, takes
particular notice of four principal temples. He mentions
sphinxes, colossal figures decorating the entrances, por¬
ticoes, pyramidal gateways, and stones of astonishing
magnitude which sntered into their structure. In the
descriptions given by modern travelers, these monu¬
ments are still recognized. Brown tells us that1 there
remain four immense temples, yet not so magnificent nor
in so good a state of preservation as those of Denderah.'
Norden remarks, 'it is surprising how well the gilding, the
ultra-marine, and various other colours still preserve their
brilliancy.' He speaks also of a colonnade, of which thir¬
ty-two columns are still standing; of platforms, pre¬
served galleries, and other remains of antiquity, whidh
he has represented in his plates, and which he thinks the
more worthy of attention as they appear to be the same
that are mentioned by Philostratus in his account of the
temple of Memnon. No description can give an ade¬
quate idea of these wonders of antiquity, both in regard to
their incredible number and their gigantic size. Their
form, proportions, and construction are almost as aston¬
ishing as their magnitude. The mind is lost in a mass
of colossal objects, every one of which is more than suffi¬
cient to absorb its whole attention. On the western side
of the river stood the famed Memnoniurn j here also are
7
96
THE CUSHITE.
numberless tombs in the form of subterraneous excavations
and containing many human bodies in the state of mum¬
mies, sometimes accompanied with pieces of papyrus and
other ancient curiosities. These have been the subject
of ardent research."
The Greeks and Romans, says Rollin, have celebrated
the magnificence and grandeur of Thebes, " though they
saw it only in ruins." "In the Thebaid " he says, " now
called Said, have been discovered temples and palaces,
which are still almost entire, adorned with innumerable
columns and statues. One palace especially is admired,
the remains whereof seem to have existed purely to
eclipse the glory of the most pompous edifices. Four
walks extending farther than the eye can see, and
bounded on each side with sphinxes, composed of materials
as rare and extraordinary as their size is remarkable,
serve as avenues, to four porticoes, whose height is
amazing to behold. * * * A hall, which in all appearance
stood in the middle of this stately palace, was supported
by a hundred and twenty pillars six fathoms round, of
a proportionable height, and intermixed with obelisks,
which so many ages have not been able to demolish/'
Ancient Hist. Middle and Lower Egypt give similar
testimony in their remains of ancient grandeur. Surely
the sons of Ham were great and glorious in the land of
Ham. As Herodotus tells it, their pyramids were beyond
description ; the labyrinth surpassed the pyramids | yet
Lake Mceris was a greater wonder.
THE FOUNDERS OF HEATHEN WORSHIP.
97
CUSHITES THE FOUNDERS OF HEATHEN
WORSHIP.
The Cushites were the first to originate the gods of
ancient mythology; the first to build shrines and temples;
the first to establish an order of priesthood, and
formulate religious creeds and idolatrous ceremonies;
thus originating material for the legendary traditions of
the heathen nations of Asia and Europe, and for the great
poets of Greece and Rome. Their more celebrated kings
were often deified after death, and sometimes meta¬
morphosed into stars and constellations to be perpetually
gazed upon and adored.
Dr. Thomas Conant, commenting on the tenth chapter
of Genesis and ninth verse, says that Nimrod is identical
with Orion of Greek mythology, the mighty hunter (and
also king) commemorated by the constellation of that
name."
Mr. Samuel B. Schieffelin says: "The descendants of
Ham early took the lead in arms, in architecture, and in
the priesthood of the nations that forsook God. They
not only established their religious system in Assyria,
India, and Africa, but extended it into Greece, and
introduced the religion and the priesthood of the Druids
which once prevailed over the north of Europe and in
98 THE CUSHITE.
the British Isles. As priests and warriors, the children
of Ham thus became the early nobility or highest caste
in all those regions."—Foundations of History, p. 138.
Herodotus says (ii. 50) that "the names of almost all
the gods came from Egypt into Greece; for that they came
from barbarians * I "find on inquiry to be the case ; and
I think they chiefly proceeded from Egypt." "Nep¬
tune," he says, "they learned from the Libyans, for no
people except the Libyans originally possessed the name
of Neptune, and they have always worshiped him."
Osiris was first a king from the priest caste of Ethio¬
pia. He spread the religion of Ethiopia from Egypt to
Arabia, India, Central Asia and Europe. He, Isis, and
Ammon were national deities. Now this Osiris was a
king, a mortal, a Cushite ; but he was made a god. So
Cepheus and other kings of the Ethiopians went through
the regular order of mythological changes till finally they
became stars or constellations in the heavens.
In the early legends and theogonies of the East; in
the Buddha and Brahman of India ; in the Zeus of the
Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans, are found the
ancient pagan thought of the Cushites of Africa modified
and expressed in the various tongues of these different
nations. All can be traced back to Egypt or Ethiopia.
This suggests the thought of Pope's universal prayer :
" Father of all, in every age,
In every clime adored
By saint, by savage and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."
* Any one not a Greek was called a " barbarian."
THE FOUNDERS OF HEATHEN WORSHIP.
99
Perseus and Hercules were both of African origin as
is clearly shown by mythic genealogy; and Sappho, the
colored poetess of Mitylene, isle of Lesbos, who lived
six hundred years before the Christian era, links herself
with Perseus, indicating that she was of the same race:
"To me what nature lias in charms denied
Is well by wit's more lasting cliarms supplied,
Though short my stature, yet my name extends
To heaven itself, and earth's remotest ends,
Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame
Inspired young Perseus with a generous flame.
Turtles and doves of differing hues unite,
And glossy jet is pair'd with shining white."
Ovid?a " Sappho to PhaonPope.
Hercules was the son of Jupiter, Jupiter of Saturn,
Saturn of Coelus or Uranus and Terra; that is, sprung
from celestial paternity and terrestrial maternity, or
born of heaven and earth.
Perseus was born of Jupiter and Danae, Danae of
Acrisius, king of Argos, Acrisius of Abas, Abas of Lynceus,
Lynceus of Aphareus, Aphareus of Perieres, Perieres of
iEolus or Cynortas, Cynortas of Amyclas, Amyclas of
Lacedsemon, Laced semon of Jupiter and Taygeta, daugh¬
ter of Atlas and Pleione. Atlas was king of Mauritania or
the northwestern part of Libya. There were born to him
and Pleione twelve daughters. Seven were metamor¬
phosed into the constellation called the Pleiades, and the
other five into stars. Pleione was a sea nymph, one of
the oceanides, and Oceanus was born of Coslus and
Terra.
100
THE CUSHITE.
Thus the Grecian gods derived from Coelus and Terra,
may be traced to the Cushite gods Osiris, Isis, Horus,
and Ammon, whom Coelus and Terra represented. Isis
was the sister and spouse of Osiris. She reigned in
common with Osiris over the world below. She directed
the fecundity of the earth and was regarded as the pri¬
mary source of maternity, like the goddess Terra. Osiris,
like Coelus, represented all that was celestial or heaven-
born. He was the sun; Isis was the moon whose influence
contributed to the earth's fruitfulness. They were the
African parents of all the other gods presiding over
special departments in the economy of life, whether they
appeared under different names and modified characters
in Europe or Asia. The mythic ideas of their priests
and priestesses were copied in the legends of all other
nations that had a priesthood. Nor did the gods of the
Greeks forget their Cushite fatherland ; for they often quit
their sacred Olympus to visit the u blameless"and favor¬
ite race, to whom they were not ashamed to trace their
origin. This we are told by Homer who is indebted to
the same race for much of the material of his matchless
Iliad:
"The sire of Gods and all th' ethereal train,
On the warm, limits of the furthest maiii
Now mix with mortals, nor disdain to grace
The feasts of Ethiopia's blameless race ;
Twelve days the powers indulge the genial right,
Returning with the twelfth revolving light."—Pope.*
* Fide, also, II. xxiii. 256; Odys.v. 370.
THE FOUNDERS OF HEATHEN WORSHIP. 101
Rev. Dr. Michael Russell, respecting a sacred boat
sculptured on the walls that remain among the ruins of
Egypt, says, u Sesostris is said to have dedicated one of
cedar to Ammon, the god of Thebes: it was 420 feet
long, gilded all over on the outside and covered with
silver within." 1 Once a year,' as we are informed by
Diodorus Siculus, 'the sanctuary or shrine of Zeus is
taken across the river to the Libyan side, and after a
few days it is brought back, as if the deity were return¬
ing from Ethiopia.* This procession, too, is represented
in one of the reliefs on the temple of Karnac; the sacred
ship of Ammon being on the Nile with its whole equip¬
ment, and towed along by another boat. This must,
therefore, says Heeren, have been one of the most cel¬
ebrated festivals, since, according to the interpretation
of antiquity, Homer alludes to it. * * * Aided by this
principle " (of visiting the original seat of worship) u we
can more easily trace the lineage of the divinities ac¬
knowledged by G/eece and Rome. The Jupiter of Olym¬
pus was only a cadet, so to speak, of that ancient family
of gods, who, through the medium of the branches estab¬
lished in Egypt, extended their authority and worship
from the shores of the Indian Ocean to those of the Bal-
* Kar1 kviavrov yap itapa toiS AlyvitnoiZ tov yecdv tov
/lids rt£paiov6Sa.i tov itazanov hi tt/v Avfivr/vy nai fieW
tfjuEpai rivaS 7t<x\iv litidzpr]<p£ivs caS AlQioitiai tov Seov
7taporToZ.—Diod. Sic. lib. i. c. 97.
Vide also Rollin, An. Hist. vol. i. pp. 555, who says, " Ham was
a deity, whom the Greeks called Zcvi, and the Egyptians Amnion/
and, in process of time, Jupiter-Ammon."
102
THE CUSHITE.
tic. The homage, therefore, which was paid by the jun¬
ior deities to the parent gods at the ancient seat of their
power, was not only a mark of respect to antiquity but
an acknowledgment of inferiority and dependence in the
more recent people/' History of Nubia and Abyssinia, pp.
192, 193.
" It appears," says Dr. Anthon, (Class Diet. p. 944)
"not improbable, that the worship of Osiris was intro¬
duced into Egypt, in common Avith the arts and sciences,
from the Ethiopian Meroe. We learn from Herodotus
(ii. 29) that Ammon and Osiris were the national deities
of Meroe, and we are told by Diodorus (in. 3) that Osiris
led a colony from Ethiopia into Egypt."
According to the accounts of Diodorus and Plutarch,
Osiris, after civilizing Egypt, concluded, from philan-
throphic motives it seems, to visit other nations. He
placed Isis, his sister and spouse, over the government,
appointed Hermes (Mercury) to assist her, and put Her¬
cules in command of the troops. Then, with a large
force, he visited Ethiopia, Arabia, and India, thence
proceeded through central Asia into Europe, sowing the
seeds of civilization and teaching the worship of the gods
wherever he went.
This, though mythological in character, indicates the
course of ancient civilization with the Cushite as its
source. The Egyptians derived their mythological ideas
from the Ethiopians j and the gods of other nations of
Asia and of Europe were imported from Egypt, as their
genealogy plainly shows. No unprejudiced historian, or
THE FOUNDERS OF HEATHEN WORSHIP. 103
thoughtful and fair minded reader, can fail to reach the
conclusion that everything connected with the most an¬
cient mythology, points to Africa and the Africans for
its origin.
The Roman Jupiter, is identical with the Grecian
Zeus, and Zeus with the Ethiopian Ammon, or Iiam-
mon, worshiped at Meroe, Thebes, Egypt, and by the
Ammonians occupying an oasis in the desert region of
Libya.
104
THE CUSHITE.
ETHIOPIAN CUSHITES IN THE AGE OF
MOSES.
Josephus says, ("Whiston's translation): u The Ethio¬
pians, who are next neighbors to the Egyptians, made an
inroad into their country, which they seized upon, and
carried off the effects of the Egyptians, who, in their
rage fought against them, and avenged the affronts they
had received from them; but being overcome in battle,
some of them were slain, and the rest ran away in a
shameful manner and by that means saved themselves;
whereupon the Ethiopians followed after them in the
pursuit, and thinking that it would be a mark of
cowardice if they did not subdue all Egypt, they went
on to subdue the rest writh greater vehemence; and
when they had tasted the sweets of the country, they
never left off the prosecution of the war: and as the
nearest parts had not courage enough at first to fight
with them, they proceeded as far as Memphis, and the
sea itself, while not one of the cities was able to oppose
them. The Egyptians, under this sad oppression, betook
themselves to their oracles and prophecies; and when
God had given them this counsel, to make use of Moses
the Hebrew, and take his assistance, the king commanded
his daughter to produce him, that he might be the
general of their army. Upon which, when she had made
him swear he would do him 110 harm, she delivered him
to the king, and supposed his assistance would be of
ETHIOPIAN CUSHITES IN THE AGE OF MOSES. 105
great advantage to them. She withal reproached the
priest, who, when they had before admonished the
Egyptians to kill him, was not ashamed now to own their
want of his help.
So Moses, at the persuasion both of Thermuthis, and
the king himself, cheerfully undertook the business ; and
the sacred scribes of both nations were glad j those of the
Egyptians, that they should at once overcome their ene¬
mies by his valour, and that by the same piece of manage¬
ment Moses would be slain ; but those of the Hebrews,
that they should escape from the Egyptians, because
Moses was to be their general." * * * " He came upon
the Ethiopians before they expected him ; and joining
battle with them, he beat them, and deprived them of
the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and
went on in overturning their cities, and indeed made a
great slaughter of these Ethiopians. Now when the
Egyptian army had once tasted of this prosperous suc¬
cess, by the means of Moses, they did not slacken their
diligence insomuch that the Ethiopians were in danger
of being reduced to slavery, and all sorts of destruction.
And at length they retired to Saba, which was a royal
city of Ethiopia, which Cambyses afterwards named
Meroe, after the name of his own sister. The place was
to be besieged with very great difficulty, since it was both
encompassed by the Nile quite round, and the other rivers,
Astapus and Astaborus made it a very difficult thing for
such as attempted to pass over to them ; for the city was
situate in a retired place, and was inhabited after the
manner of an island, being encompassed with a strong
wall, and having the rivers to guard them from their en¬
emies, and having great ramparts between the wall and
the rivers, insomuch, that when the waters came with
the greatest violence, it can never be drowned; which
ramparts make it next to impossible for even such as are
106
THE CUSHITE.
gotten over the rivers to take the city. However, while
Moses was uneasy at the army's lying idle, (for the ene¬
mies durst not come to a battle), this accident happened.
Tharbis was the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians;
she happened to see Moses, as he led the army near the
walls, and fought with great courage, and admiring the
subtlety of his undertakings, and believing him to be the
author of the Egyptian success, when they had before
despaired of recovering their liberty, and to be the occa¬
sion of the great danger the Ethiopians were in, when
they had before boasted of their great achievements, she
fell deeply in love with him; and upon the prevalency of
that passion, sent to him the most faithful of all her serv¬
ants to discourse with him upon their marriage. He
thereupon accepted the offer on condition she would pro¬
cure the delivering up of the city ; and gave her the assur¬
ance of an oath to take her to his wife, and that when he
had once taken possession of the city he would not break his
oath to her. No sooner was the agreement made, than it
took effect immediately; and when Moses had cut off the
Ethiopians, he gave thanks to God, and consummated his
marriage, and led the Egyptians back to their own land."
In a foot note, Mr. Whiston says: "this history of
Moses as general of the Egyptians against the Ethio¬
pians," is wholly omitted in our Bibles;'' but it is cited by
Irenseus. "Nor perhaps," he says, "did St. Stephen
refer to anything else, when he said of Moses, before he
was sent by God to the Israelites, that he was not only
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but was also
mighty in words and in deeds. (Acts. vii. 22.")
* Antic[. lib.ii. x.
THE ETHIOPIAN WIVES OF MOSES.
107
THE ETHIOPIAN WIVES OF MOSES.
CUSHITE WIFE NO. 1.
We learn from Josephus (Antiq. ii. v.) that Moses,
while generalissimo of the Egyptian army, married a
princess of the Ethiopians against whom he was waging
war. By this alliance he was enabled to take their capi¬
tal without any loss of life. This event is not mentioned
in Bible history, but it is well supported by early tradi¬
tion. The name of this black princess was Tharbis, and
her high rank must have placed her at once in the high¬
est circles of Egyptian society.
CUSHITE WIFE NO. 2.
In the book of Numbers (xii. 1.) we are told that
u Moses had married an Ethiopian woman," on account
of which Miriam and Aaron upbraided him and incurred
the displeasure and chastisement of the Lord ; for in
those days of Theocracy, the Lord allowed no negro-
phobia in his church.
This wife is generally supposed to be the daughter of
Jethro, a descendant of Midian, the fourth son of Abra¬
ham by Keturah (Gen. xxv. 2.) and, therefore, not a
Hamite; but that is all gratuitous conjecture.
108
THE CUSHITE.
We find in the Scriptures two different branches of
Midianites occupying different locations. The one dwelt
on the east of the Dead Sea, next to the Moabites whom
they joined in warring against the Israelites. They were
hostile to the Hebrews, (Num. 22. 4; Judg. vii. 7.)
The other branch of Midianites, who were called
Cushites, dwelt on the north-east of the Red Sea, in the
neighborhood of Sinai and Horeb (Ex. iii. 1. xviii. 5.),
and were friendly to the Israelites. They were called
Cushites, probably (a) because the land was originally oc¬
cupied by the descendants of Cush : and, (b) because a
large number of Cushites still dwelt there in the time of
Moses. And they were called Midianites, possibly, because
they were descended from some offspring of Cush
named Midian. It cannot be satisfactorily determined
when or where Moses got this second Ethiopian wife ; but
if the Scriptures be true, she was a Cushite, an Ethiopian
woman. There were certainly Ethiopians in this region;
for in Second Chronicles (xxi. 16.) we are told that " the
Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philis¬
tines, and of the Arabians, that were near the Ethio¬
pians." This can refer to no other than black Hamites,
and the location indicated may include the region from
which Moses got his second Cushite wife. The reign of
Jehoram over Judah was about 889 B.C.
Rev. N. Morren, M. A., author of "Biblioal Theology"
and translator of " Rosenmiiller's Biblical Geography,"
in his article on a Cush," contributed to Kitto's u Cyclo¬
paedia of Biblical Literature" says, concerning this
THE ETHIOPIAN WIVES OF MOSES.
109
" Ethiopian womanu But to say nothing of Zipporah's
high rank, or of the services of her family to Israel, there
would have been something so incongruous and absurd,
in Moses' brother and sister complaining for the first time
of his selection of a wife, after the marriage had sub¬
sisted for more than forty years, that it is evident Zippo-
rah was now dead, and his second wife, though doubtless
a proselyte to Judaism, was (whether born in Asia or
Africa) a descendant of Cush, and therefore a Hamite,
and not one of the Midianites, who were of Shemitic ori¬
gin, being the children of Abraham by Keturah."
Mr. Morren is right. That is, whether the wife in
question was born in Asia or Africa, if we are to accept a
plain and emphatic statement of the Holy Scriptures, she
was a Hamitic Cushite and therefore belonged to the race
whom the Caucasian is pleased to call " the Negro
Race except when dazzled and driven to the wall by
the historic grandeur of the ancient Cushite, he is forced
to limit the term " Negro to the type of the most de¬
graded aborigines of the west coast of Africa.
THE PHILISTIAN CUSHITES.
God, according to his own secret purposes, directed
the movements of nations in the early days. The
Pathrusim, Casluhim, and Caphtorim (Gen. x. 14.) were
the founders of the Philistine nation. The Hebrew word
for Philistia, or Palestine, means a land of strangers, indi¬
cating that the Philistines emigrated there from some
other parts; for the word "Philistine " means an emigrant.
110
THE CUSHITE.
Here these sons of Misraira became a great people.
Their overthrow is threatened by Jeremiah, (xlvii. 4.):
" for the Lord will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the
country of Caphtor." This racial identity is pointed out
by Amos, (ix. 7'): u are ye not as the children of the
Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel ? saith the
Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of Egypt and
the Philistines from Caphtor ?" Moses calls these Philis¬
tines "the Caphtorim which came forth out of Caphtor,"
(Deut. ii. 23.)
This Cushite emigration from Egypt was certainly
significant since Amos (ix* 7.) compares it with that of
the Hebrews. But where was Caphtor 1 Much discus¬
sion and widely different opinions have been given on this
question. The original word in Jeremiah (xlvii. 4.) used
for Caphtor is construed as signifying an island , but
this claim may be satisfied by the Egyptian Delta, with¬
out going either to Crete or to Cyprus. Some authors
make Caphtor mean Cappadocia, as though they would
remove the place as far as possible from the acknowl¬
edged Cushite region so as to deprive the race of its
Philistian history.
The Philistines were a prosperous people in the days
of Abraham, who " planted a grove in Beer-Sheba " and
sojourned in the Philistines' land many days," (Gren. xxi.
32-34 j xxvi. 1.) These sons of Misraim became a great
people. They had populous and potent cities such as
Gaza, Ashdod, Askelon, Grath, and Ekron, (Josh. xiii. 3.)
They had extensive trade with other nations, near and
THE PHILISTIAN CUSHITES.
1H
remote, like their kindred of Phoenicia, and could muster
an army whose reputation for prowess caused them to be
feared. When the Hebrews left Egypt u God led them
not through the way of the land of the Philistines, al¬
though that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure
the people repent when they see war, and, they return
to Egypt," (Gen. xiii. 17.) Without this fear of the Phil¬
istines, the Israelites might have passed through their
country and reached their destination in a few weeks
instead of spending forty years in the wilderness.
But in time this people perished. Not perceiving that
u righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to
any people," the Cushite Philistia passed away accord¬
ing to the decree of Jehovah that the Shemitic son of
Jesse should slay the Hamitic Goliath of the Philistines,
who had sprung from the giant sons of Anak.
David, however, subsequently accepted a regiment
(600) of these Philistines as a part of his army. They
were led by Ittai. When his services were offered
David said: " Thou art a stranger and also an exile,"
and " earnest but yesterday." " Return thou, and take
back thy brethren ; mercy and truth be with thee."
Ittai replied : u as the Lord liveth, and as my lord the
king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king
shall be, whether in life or in death, even there also will
thy servant be," (II. Sam. xv. 18-21.) Then David in
distress, like " Uncle Sam," received a "black contin¬
gent."
8
112
TIIE CUSHITE.
SOCIAL RELATIONS OF THE CUSHITE AND
THE JEW.
Cushan-rishathaim, Cush the JBenjaminite, Cushi the
Courier a/Joab, Cushi the father of Shelemiah, and Cushi
the father of Zephaniah.
The long residence of the Jews in Egypt and their
subordinate status there, caused them to regard the Cush-
ite without prejudice against his color. Hence, in after
years, we see that individual Cusliites of respectability
found no objection to their color in forming alliances
with Jewish families, and obtaining recognition in their
social, political and religious institutions. There were
probably a number of distinguished Ethiopians living in
the land of Canaan and in Mesopotamia. Some, perhaps,
were exiles or fugitives of royal blood, while others had
a voluntary residence in these countries just as the Jew,
the Arabian, and the Grecian had in Egypt, Libya and
Ethiopia. These Ethiopians, doubtless, intermarried
with, and took on the national character of, the people
among whom they lived.
CUSHAN-RISHATHAIM.
In the book of Judges (iii. 8.) we read that " the anger
of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into
the hand of Cushan-rishathaim King of Mesopotamia:
SOCIAL RELATIONS.
113
and the children of Israel served Cushan-risnathaim
eight years."
The epithet " Cushan-rishathaim" is Arameanized
Hebrew. It is not translated in either the Septuagint or
the Vulgate versions of the Bible ; it is transferred,
leaving its signification to be derived from its etymol¬
ogy ; as is the case with the Englishized Greek word
baptize.- Wm. L. Roy, the Hebrew lexicographer and
professor of Oriental Languages, translates DTiyBh~JE*i3
(Cushan-rishathaim) "the ungodly Ethiopian." The
Hebrew words for Mesopotamia mean 11 the country ly¬
ing between the two rivers of Aram that is between
the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the verse then may
be rendered as follows:
"The anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he
sold them into the hand of the ungodly Ethiopian king
of that part of Aram lying between the Tigris and
the Euphrates rivers; and the children of Israel served
the ungodly Ethiopian eight years."
CUSH THE BENJAMINITE.
The seventh Psalm, the " Shiggaion of David, which
he sang unto the Lord concerning the words of Cush the
Benjaminite," presents a man whose racial identity is in¬
dicated by his name. This Cush was a man whose posi¬
tion and rank enabled him to stain the reputation of
David and endanger his life by false accusation. We take
no stock in his false tongue; but in his lineage. Then
who was he ? The inference most agreeable to the let-
114
THE CUSHITE.
ter is that lie was a black man belonging to the tribe of
Benjamin.
There was a time under the judges when the other
eleven tribes had almost annihilated Benjamin in civil
war, for shielding the wicked men who had committed a
fiendish outrage on the wife of a Levite at Gibeah. with¬
in the borders of Benjamin. The eleven tribes, "knit
together as one man," took a solemn oath never to give
any of their daughters in marriage to the remnant of
Benjamin whose tribe they had resolved to extirpate,
(Judg. xxi. 1.) Under this embarrassment, a Cushite
damsel was at a high premium. Indeed, the preserva¬
tion of the tribe of Benjamin was so hopeless under the
circumstances, that the eleven tribes, after sober reflec¬
tion, relented, and evaded their oath inciting the wifeless
men of Benjamin to ambush and seize upon the maidens
of Shiloh when at a public festival they came out to
dance. It was to this tribe that Saul belonged, (1 Sam.
ix. 1, 2.)
Doubtless there were a number of honorable Cushite
families with whom the Benjaminites and the other tribes
could easily communicate and associate. It was only to
prevent degeneracy into idolatry that the Israelites
were forbidden (Ex. xxxiv. 16.) to intermarry with the
original inhabitants of Canaan ; so then the letter of the
prohibition could have been departed from, and no doubt
was to a limited extent, without a violation of its spirit.
Hence we find Cush the Benjaminite, Cushi the courier
sent by Joab to report the death of Absalom to his fa-
social relations.
115
ther David, (2. Sam. xviii. 21), Cushi the father of
Shelamiah, (Jer. xxxvi. 14), and Cushi the father of
the prophet Zephaniah, (Zeph. i. 1).
Cushi.
Cushi, "•bto, is a patronymic term predicated in the
Hebrew scriptures of an Ethiopian, Cush, the son of
Ham being regarded as his remote ancestor. These
Ethiopians partook of the Jewish faith and were not gen¬
tiles in the strict sense of the Hebrew word goim; but
still there was an ethnic difference which was indicated
by the patronymic term Cushi. They had adopted the
Jewish religion and partaken of Jewish blood by inter¬
marriage ; but they had not changed their skin so as not
to be identified as Ethiopians. In the twenty-third,
thirty-first and thirty-second verses of the eighteenth
chapter of 2. Samuel, the word Cushi has the article,
ha Cushi, which clearly signifies, u the Ethiopian."
Hagar and Ishmael.
As Hagar was an Egyptian, it is reasonable to sup¬
pose that she was a Cushite. It then follows that
Ishmael was half Shemitic and half Cushite ;—that is, he
was a mulatto. Father Abraham had no objection to the
color of Hagar, nor did she object to the color of Abra¬
ham. The color line had not yet been drawn. Hagar,
however, preferred her own race, on the principle of
u natural selection," and from it took a wife for her son
Ishmael. Indeed, the sons of Shem seemed to have a
liking for Hamitic Hagars ; for Hagarites (Ishmaelites
116
THE CUSHITE.
or mulattoes) abounded in Canaan, Western Arabia and in
Egypt. Moses, a man learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, the great lawgiver of Israel, and Solomon,
the wisest of the wise among the Jews, saw no impropri¬
ety in forming social relations with the Cushites. What¬
ever prejudice there were, if any, was on the j)art of the
Egyptian Cushite against the Jew; but it was religious,
not on account of color, (Gren. xliii. 32).
Dr. Conant says, commenting on the first chapter of
Exodus: "After the exodus the relations between
Egypt and the Israelites were usually of a friendly char¬
acter. Shishak, (1. K. xiv. 25; 2. Chron. xii. 2, 9);
Pharaoh-Necho, (2. K. xxiii. 29, 35; Jer. xlvi. 2), and
Zerah (2. Chron. xii. 2, 9), if indeed the last was an Egyp¬
tian, which is doubtful, were the only kings hostile to the
chosen people. J. P. Thompson : ' one Pharaoh gave
his daughter in marriage to Solomon, (1. K. iii. 3. vii. 8);
another appears to have been the ally of Jehoram, King of
Israel, (2. K. vii. 6); So made a treaty with Hoshea, (2.
K. xvii. 4); Tirhakah aided Hesekiah, (2. K. xix. 9);
Pharaoh-Necho fought Josiah agains this will, (2. K. xxiii.
29), and did not treat Judah with the severity of the
Oriental kings, (2. K. xxiii. 33, 35); and his second suc¬
cessor, Pharaoh Hophra, maintained the alliance, not¬
withstanding this break, as firmly as before, (Jer. chs. 37,
44), and although he failed in his endeavor to save Jer¬
usalem from the Caldeans, he received the fugitives of
Judah who, like the fugitives of Israel at the capture of
Samaria, took refuge in Egypt. The Israelites were also
forbidden to cherish malevolent feelings toward the
Egyptians, who were placed, indeed, in the list of the
most favored nations, (Deut. xxiii. 7, 8), while a very
different spirit was manifested towards certain other
people (Deut. xxiii. 3, 6)."
SESOSTRIS.
117
SESOSTRIS.
Sesostris, called Ramses or Ramesses on the monu¬
ments, said by some to have reigned over Egypt thirty-
three years, and by others forty-four, was unexcelled by
any ancient monarch in celebrity. But no one can tell
just the time of his reign. Various epochs have been
given, differing in their extremes to the extent of six
hundred years. When Ramses Sesostris succeeded his
father on the throne of Egypt, he began at once to add to
his dominions by military conquests. According to Her¬
odotus (ii. 102, 110), who got his information from the
Cushite priests of Egypt, Sesostris fitted out a navy, col¬
lected an immense army and set out for the conquest of
the world. Having subdued Libya, Ethiopia, and Ara¬
bia, the great warrior marched through Asia, going even
further East than Darius went, and subduing every
nation found in his pathway. Then crossing from Asia
into Europe, he subdued the Scythians and the Thracians.
Every-where he left behind him monumental pillars to
commemorate his conquests; some of which Herodotus
says he had seen in Syria Palestine. He left images of
himself in Ionia, and one on the way from Ephesia to
Phocsea and another on the road leading from Sardis to
Smyrna. At both places a man was carved four cubits
118
the cushite.
and a half high, holding a spear in his right hand and a
bow in his left. The rest cf his equipment was partly
Egyptian and partly Ethiopian 5 and across the breast,
from shoulder to shoulder the following was carved in
the Egyptian sacred characters: 111 acquired this
region by my own shoulders," {strength). At other
places Sesostris gave his name on the monuments left
behind him, the inscriptions usually reading: u Sesostris,
the king of Icings, has subdued this country by his arms."
After his return from his victorious expedition, he
began the work of internal improvement, encouraging the
fine arts and erecting temples to the gods in thankfulness
for his foreign conquests. He was ever regarded by the
Cushite priests of Egypt as a monarch of matchless prow¬
ess. Herodotus relates (ii. 110) that when Darius or¬
dered that his statue take the place of that of Sesostris
before the temple of Yulcan, the Cushite priests pro¬
tested, saying that Sesostris was the superior monarch,
in that he had conquered no fewer nations than Darius
the Persian, and had subdued the Scythians besides;
which Darius was unable to do.
MEMNON.
119
MEMNON.
The distinguished Cushite whom Homer calls Memnon
came and went like a meteor in the galaxy of illustrious
Ethiopian monarchs. But the poet in classic song and
the historian in legendary tradition, have preserved
enough of his brightness to indicate his rank and power
among the contemporary potentates of the earth. He
was king of the Ethiopians, {Herod. Theog. 986, quoted
in Anthon's. Class. Diet.) He fought against the Greeks
in the Trojan war; and after he had slain Antilochus,
son of Nestor, was killed by Achilles. Rev. Dr. J. Lem-
priere says u the aged father challenged the --Ethiopian
monarch, but Memnon refused on account of the venera¬
ble age of Nestor, and accepted that of Achilles." He
adds that according to Anticlides, a writer mentioned by
Pliny, u Memnon was the inventor of the Alphabet," but
that would deny his presence at Troy.
Dr. Anthon says that: " he is represented by most
Greek writers as king of the Ethiopians, but he is also
said to have been connected with Persia ; and quotes
Diodorus as saying 1 the Ethiopians claimed Memnon as
a native of their country,' and Pausianius as represent¬
ing L Memnon as king of the Ethiopians.' but that 1 he
came to Troy from Susa, and not from Ethiopia, subdu-
120
THE CUSHITE.
ing all the nations in his way.' " Dr. Anthon goes on to say
that u the great majority of Greek writers agree in trac¬
ing the origin of Memnon to Egypt or Ethiopia ; and it
is not improbable that the name of Memnon was not
known in Susa till after the Persian conquest of Egypt,
and that the buildings there called Memnonian by the
Greeks were, in name, at least, the representative of
those in Egypt. The partial deciphering of the Egyp¬
tian proper names affords us sufficient reason for believ¬
ing with Pausanias (1, 42, 2) that the Memnon of the
Greeks may be identified with the Egyptian *Phamenoph,
Pharmenoth, Amenopbis, or Amenothph, of which name
the Greek one is probably only a corruption. Phamen-
oph is said to mean ' the guardian of the city of Ammon,'
or 1 devoted to Ammon/ 1 belonging to Ammon.'—Mem¬
non, then, must be regarded as one of the early heroes or
kings of Egypt, whose fame reached Greece in very
early times."—Class. Diet. sub. Memnon.
The traditional fame of Memnon is indicated by the
references of the poets. Hear Homer sing his praise :
(i Thy cheeks, Pisistratus, the tears bedew,
While pictur'd oil thy mind appear'd in view
Thy martial brother ; on the Phrygian plain
Extended pale, by swarthy Memnon slain."
Again:
" Time would fail should I in order tell
What foes were vanquish'd, and what numbers fell:
How, lost thro' love, Eurypylus was slain,
And lound him bled his bold Cetsean train.
To Troy no hero came of nobler line,
Or if nobler, Memnon, it was thine."-)f
•K Od. iv. 253 et xi. 633.—Pope, London ; New ed. 1801.
MEMNON.
121
Now hear Virgil (2En. i. 488 :)
" Se quoque principibus permixtiim ngnovit Acliivis,
Eoasque acies,* et nigri Memnonis arma."
"Himself he saw amidst the Grecian train,
Mix'd in tlie bloody battle on the plain :
And swarthy Memnon in his arms he knew,
His pompous ensigns, and his Indian crew."
Again (JEn. i. 749:)
Nec non et vario noctem sermone trahebat
Infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem ;
Mnlta super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa ;
Nunc, quibus Aurorae venisset filius arm is.'' f
"Th' unhappy queen with talk prolonged the night,
And drank large draughts of love with vast delight ;
Of Priam much inquired, of Hector more ;
Then ask'd what arms swarthy Memnon wore,
What troopa he landed on the Trojan shore.''—Dryden.
Though slain by Achilles, Memnon is so embalmed in
verse and prose by Homer, Hesiod, Virgil and others,
that his name will last as long as the writings of these
imperishable authors.
* " Eoasque acies " means Ethiopians, sometimes called Indians;
"usque coloratis amnis (the Nile) devexusab India,'' Geog. iv. 293.
t Aurora filius, son of Aurora. Memnon was said to be the
son of Aurora and Tithonus, which, of course, is poetic fable.
122
THE CUSHITE.
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.
Of what country and nationality was this queen ? (1.
Kings x. and 2. dir. x.)
She was either Shemitic or Hamitic; and her country
was either southwestern Arabia or that part of Africa
known as Ethiopia.
There were three different persons that bore tne name
of Sheba. One descended from Ham, and two from
Shem.
1. Sheba, the son of Kaamah, and grandson of Cush.
{Gen. x. 7.)
2. Sheba, the son of Joktan, ana grandson of Eber,
(Ge x. 28.)
3. Sheba, the son of Jokshan, and grandson of Abra¬
ham by Keturah, (Gen. xxv. 3.)
(1) Now, the dwelling of the sons of Joktan " was
from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar. a mount of the
east," (Gen. x. 30.)
Josephus, (Antiq. lib. 1, cap. 6, see. 4), testifies that,
u Shem, the third son of Noah, had five sons, who inhab¬
ited the land that began at the Euphrates, and reached
the Indian Ocean. He names the sons of Joktan, son
of Eber, and adds : " these inhabited from Cophcn, an
Indian river, and in that part of Aria adjoining to it."
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.
Thus Moses and Josephus point to a region very unlike
in direction from Jerusalem, to the country of the queen
that visited Solomon.
(2.) Like Raamah, the Cushite, Jokshan had a
" Dedan," as well as a "Sheba," {Gen. xxv. 3), names
given to his sons as if he intended to honor the memory
of the grandsons of Cush, whose names had already at¬
tained celebrity in southern Arabia and in Ethiopia. The
Sheba of Jokshan was the grandson of Abraham by Ket-
urah, and was at least two and a half centuries younger
than the Cushite Sheba. The children of Abraham by
his concubines went "eastward, unto the east country."
{Gen. xxv. 5, 6). Josephus, however, says that Abraham
contrived to settle his sons and grandsons by Keturah
in colonies ; that u they took possession of Troglodytes,
and the country of Arabia the Happy, as far as it reaches
unto the Red Sea.'' That it is related of Ophren, son of
Madian," that he made war against Libya, and took it,
and that his grandchildren, when they inhabited it, called
it from his name, Africa," (Antiq. lib. 1, cap. 15). This
puts Sheba of Jokshan in the path of the Cushite Sheba
marked out generations before, but he does not go so far
as the "uttermost parts of the earth." {Matt. xii. 42).
(3.) The first Sheba, son of Raamah and grandson of
Cush, followed the path of his ancestors, settling first in
southern Arabia, on the eastern borders of the Red Sea,
and then in Africa, establishing his name through his
immediate v offspring on both sides of the Red Sea.
When the descendants of the Shebas of Joktan and Jok-
124
THE CUSHITE.
shan began tlieir career as nations, the Cushite Sheba and
Seba had already become nations attracting the atten¬
tion of the world. Again, the Sabaeans, who slew the
servants of Job, stole his cattle and bought captives for
the slave market, {Job i. 15 ; Joel iii. 8), were descend¬
ants of the Shemitic Sheba. They were prowling men
of the desert, over whom there could have been no such
ruler as a queen.
Josephus, who was of Solomon's nationality and thor¬
oughly acquainted with the history and traditions of his
nation, speaks at length of the queen of Sheba, and af¬
firms that she was " queen of Egypt and Ethiopia,"
(Antiq. lib. 8, cap. 6, sec. 2, 5, 6). No writer of the
nineteenth century is better qualified to fix the location
of this distinguished queen than was Josephus, who lived
in the first century and could avail himself of authorities
that have not reached this age. And the language of
the Scriptures referring to this queen seems to be based
on the presumption that every intelligent Jew would
readily understand the place of her residence.
Josephus calls this queen " Nicaule," the same as the
Nitocris of Herodotus, reported to him by the priests of
Egypt as an Ethiopian queen that ruled over Egypt after
her brother whom the Egyptians had put to death. The
strongest objection to this identity is the wicked strategy
and suicide reported of Nitocris. It shows, however,
that at this period the Ethiopians held sway in Egypt,
and possibly on both the western and eastern shores
of the Red Sea, and hence over Sheba, whether it was
in Africa or southwestern Arabia.
THE QUEEN OP SHEBA.
125
Rev. J. Pye Smith, D.D., derives this queen from the
Cushite Sheba, but, like a number of other learned men,
locates her country on the east side of the Red Sea. On
the contrary, Rev. G. R. Gleig, in his u History of the
Bible" published in 1831, by J. and J. Harper, refers to
this queen, and in a foot-note says: u Who the queen of
Sheba was, and where her country lay, commentators are
far from being agreed among themselves ; the most prob¬
able hypothesis, however, is that stated by Ludolph in
his history of Ethiopia, and confirmed by Bruce, the
celebrated traveler, that she was an Abyssinian, and
that from a child borne by her, after her return from
Solomon, the present royal family of that nation is lineally
descended. Such at least is the tradition among the
Abyssinians themselves; and the singular mixture of
Judaism with Christianity which characterizes their
religion gives to the notion a strong degree of plausi¬
bility," (vol. 2, p. 22).
Referring to the country of Sheba, in his Hebrew
Lexicon, Dr. Roy calls it, " a remote place in Africa,
from whence the queen of Sheba came."
Dr. Christian Stock, in his Clavis Linguce, Sanctce
Veteris Testamenti, takes the same view, assigning this
Sheba to Ethiopia. And our Lord says : " The Queen
of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this
generation and shall condemn it, for she came from the
uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of
Solomon ; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here,"
{Matt. xii. 42; Luke xi. 31). The expression yXSev kn
126
THE CUSHITE.
t<5v xepcltcov trjs yrjs in the original, viewed from the
location of the speaker and taken in connection with the
directive word, vovov, is decidedly opposed to any
reasonable supposition that this queen came from any
part of Arabia to which either the son of Joktan or the
son of Jokshan had given the name of Sheba. The
language requires that this country be sought for in
Africa. Indeed, it is an exact equivalent of the language
used by Herodotus in giving the location of Ethiopia:
rj AlQioitir} tc3v oiuEojiiivcov.— (Lib. iii. 114).
(i The Ethiopian country is the extremity of the habit¬
able world." The Arabian country called Sheba, on the
east side of the Red Sea, opposite the African Cush or
Abyssinia, was of Cushite origin; and, if the queen of
Sheba was from that place, which is possible, then the
descendants of the Cushite Sheba still held it in the days
of Solomon. But whether she was from the eastern or
the western side of the Red Sea, she was most certainly
descended from the Cushite Sheba, and ruled over Cushite
subjects. " The extreme parts of the world, according
to the Jews, were Sabae and Ethiopia." {Comm. on Matt.
xii. 42).
In the reign of Rehoboam, the son and successor of
Solomon, or about twenty years after this queen's visit,
We find Shishak, an acknowledged Ethiopian, king of
Egypt; showing that, at this period, both Egypt and
Ethiopia were ruled by the sovereigns of Ethiopian origin,
and that the queen of Sheba may have been one of them
as affirmed by Josephus. Indeed, in the times of Sesostris,
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.
127
Memnon, and Shishak, all south of the latitude of Egypt
from the Atlantic to the Arabian Gulf was under Cushite
domination, and the queen of Sheba might have ruled
over the land on both sides of the Red Sea.
(4.) Admitting that the Sheba of Joktan settled in
Arabia Felix, there is still a serious objection to the
derivation of the queen of Sheba from that line. Those
Arabians did not have queens. There was room for a
queen consort in some parts where polygamy was not
popular, but not for a queen regnant. In those days it
was only among the Ethiopians that a queen regnant was
appreciated. So we must conclude that the Queen of
Sheba, like Solomon's Egyptian queen consort, was a
Negress.
9
128
THE CUSHITE.
SHISHAK.
In tlio latter part of the reign of Solomon, and contem¬
porary with Rehoboam, we meet with Shishak, the first
king of Egypt whose proper name is given in the Bible,
all before him being designated by the general title of
u pharaoh." He was the successor of the Cushite king
who gave his daughter in marriage to Solomon.
Shishak stands at the head of Manetho's 22nd dynasty
and is the Sesonchis of profane history, which may indi¬
cate that he was not the son of the pharaoh whose
daughter Solomon married. Dr. Thomas Scott says , "If
(as some learned men suppose) Shishak was the Sesostris
of pagan historians, he was a most powerful and formid¬
able conqueror."—(1. K. xiv. 25, comm. in bco). Kitto
says, (Cyclopced. sub. Shishak): u He is said to have been
of Ethiopian origin, and it is supposed that, with the sup¬
port of the military caste, he dethroned the Pharaoh who
gave his daughter to Solomon." If Dr. Kitto has refer¬
ence to color by the term u Ethiopian," he might have
spoken with more positiveness ; for it is as impossible to
prove that Shishak was a white man, as it is to prove
that the earth stands still and the sun revolves around it
every twenty-four hours. It is more reasonable to suppose
that he was the son of the Cushite king whom he sue-
shishak.
129
ceeded; and the brother of Solomon's Egyptian wife, who
was " black and comely."
Shishak gave shelter to Jeroboam when he fled to
Egypt from Solomon, having possibly, some ill feeling
toward Solomon on account of his sister, (1. K. xi. 40).
After the death of Solomon, he marched against Reho-
boam, Solomon's son and successor, with a huge army seek¬
ing spoils and the advancement of the political interests of
Jeroboam ; who had divided the kingdom taking ten of
the twelve tribes to himself, while two only, Judah and
Benjamin, remained loyal to Rehoboam. The Bible ac¬
count is as follows :
"And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king
Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jeru¬
salem, because they had transgressed against the Lord,
with twelve hundred chariots, and three-score thou¬
sand horsemen : and the people were without number that
came with him out of Egypt; the Lubim, the Sukkiim,
and the Ethiopians. And he took the fenced cities
which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
Then came Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam, and
to the princes of Judah, that were gathered together to
Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said unto them, Thus
saith the Lord, Ye have forsaken me, and therefore
have I also left you in the hand of Shishak. Whereupon
the princes of Israel and the king humbled them¬
selves ; and they said, The Lord is righteous.
And when the Lord saw that they humbled them¬
selves, the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, saying,
They have humbled themselves; therefore I will not
destroy them, but I will grant them some deliverance j
130
the cushite.
and my wrath shall not be poured out upon Jerusalem
by the hand of Shishak. Nevertheless they shall be
his servants ; that they may know my service, and
the service of the kingdoms of the countries.
So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusa¬
lem, and took away the treasures of the house of the
Lord, and the treasures of the king's house ; he took
all: he carried away also the shields of gold which Solo¬
mon had made." (2. Chr. xii. 2,-9 ; 1. K. xiv. 25, 27).
Speaking of Rehoboam and his subjects, Josephus
says (Antiq. lib. viii. caput 10. sec. 2): il God sent
Shishak, King of Egypt, to punish them for their unjust
behaviour toward him; concerning whom Herodotus was
mistaken, and applied his action to Sesostris." Shishak's
army consisted, he says, of " one thousand two hun¬
dred chariots, three-score thousand horsemen, and four
hundred thousand footmen: these he brought with him,
and they were the greatest part Lybians and Ethio¬
pians."
Now if Shishak was not a black man, how cam'e he to
be the king in the land of Ham and general of so great an
army of black soldiers? The Scriptures say u the people
were without number that came with him out of Egypt,
the Lubim, the Sukkiim and the Ethiopians." These
Lubim, Sukkiim and Ethiopians, were representatives of
three different Cushite states of Africa, indicated by their
patronymic titles. With these Shishak augmented his
Egyptian army and was able at that time to meet and van¬
quish any other military power on the face of the earth.
Mr. Wood, in his " dictionary of the Bible," under the head
zerah.
131
of " Phut" says: " We suppose Shishak conquered all
Mauritania, as far as the Straights of Gibralter, and gave
his brother Atlas the government thereof. It is certain
that the Phuteans were in league with or subject to, the
Egyptians, about the time of Hezekiah;" (Nahum iii. 9).
zerah.
Rohoboam died and was succeeded by his son Abijah.
Abijah died and was succeeded by his son Asa, who, in
the tenth year of his reign, raised an army among Judah
and Benjamin of five hundred and eighty thousand
u mighty men of valour.'' And there came out against
them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand
thousand, and three hundred chariots." The Bible
record is as follows:
11 And Asa had an army of men that bare targets and
spears, out of Judah three hundred thousand: and out of
Benjamin, that bare shields and drew bows, two hundred
and fourscore thousand: all these were mighty men of
valour. And there came out against them Zerah the
Ethiopian with a host of a thousand thousand, and three
hundred chariots; and came unto Mareshah. Then Asa
went out against him, and they set the battle in array in
the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah. And Asa cried
unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord it is nothing with
thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have
no power: help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on thee,
and in thy name wc go against this multitude. 0 Lord,
thou art our God; let not man prevail against thee. So
the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa, and before
Judah; and the Ethiopians fled."—(1 Chr. xiv. 8-12).
132
THE CUSHITE.
Asa had the favor of the Lord his , God who u smote
the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah; and the
Ethiopians fled." The defeat of Zerah by an army
which his own outnumbered two to one, is no discredit
to his generalship or to the bravery of his soldiers; for we
are distinctly told that God did it, against whom nothing
in the universe can prevail. This was about 941, B. C.
From this huge host of Ethiopians we can readily
infer the greatness of the nation that gave them support.
Some writers pretend that Zerah was an Arabian; that
he and his immense army of Libyans and Ethiopians
belonged to that part of southern Arabia originally
settled by Hamitic Cushites and was therefore called
Cush or Ethiopia. But the only support of such pretence
seems to be an unbridled prejudice against the Negro, in
deference to which the word of God is impiously subordi¬
nated and erroneously construed.
Mr. Charles Rollin says, (An. Hist. sub. Kings of Egypt,)
that Zerah was " king of Ethiopia, and doubtless of
Egypt at the same time." This is the most reasonable
opinion that can be satisfactorily entertained in view of
all the known facts. " History/' says Kitto, " affords no
indication that Arabia at that epoch, or from its system
of government, could well have any king so powerful as
Zerah.''
As Asa was son and successor of Abijah, son of
Rehoboam, so it is probable that Zerah was son and
successor of Shishak, who had invaded Judah twenty-five
years before against Asa's grandfather. Otherwise Zerah
KING SO.
133
could not have well made his military exploits with so
large a force of Cushites without a conflict with Egypt.
He is named as king of Ethiopia instead of Egypt possibly
because at that time Ethiopia was in the ascendancy.
Besides, the composition of Zerah's army is so like that
of Shishak's as to suggest without any mental effort or
hesitancy, that they were natives of the same country.
History points to no country but Africa which could at
that time furnish and support so large an army of
Cushites. Therefore I conclude that king Zerah and his
million of soldiers, were certainly black men of Africa.
KING SO.
Hoshea who was the last king of Israel, was tributary
to the king of Assyria by whom he had been subjected
to vassalage. Wishing to throw off the Assyrian yoke,
he sought alliance with So, king of Egypt. Shalmaneser,
king of Assyria, hearing of Hoshea's action, marched
against him, (2. K. xvii. 2-4); and, after a siege of three
years, captured the country and carried off the people
(the ten tribes) to regions beyond the Euphrates. He
then colonized Samaria with men from Babylon, Cuthah,
Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, (2. K. xvii. 24). Thus
the kingdom of Israel was terminated (B. C. 721) after
an existence of two hundred and fifty four years.
It does not appear that king So aided Hoshea to any
significant extent; but Hoshea's confidence in his ability
to do so, implies that he was a potent monarch. He is
reasonably supposed to be the same king whom Herod-
134
THE CUSHITE.
otus and other pagan writers call Sabacon; and was king
of Ethiopia, but invaded Egypt with a large force and,
seizing the reins of government, re-established an Ethio¬
pian dynasty, {Herod, ii. 137). We find Egypt and
Ethiopia at this time sustaining the same political rela¬
tions they bore to each other in the time of king Zerah
or two hundred and twenty years earlier, (B. C. 941).
In spite of the insidious political rivalry of these two
nations, their racial affinity would assert itself as a
panacea in all their respective vicissitudes of triumph and
defeat in battle. When king So, or any other reigning
potentate of Ethiopia, made himself king of Egypt by
force of arms, the Egyptians did not feel that keen sense
of degrading vassalage inseparable from the unfortunate
subjugation of one distinct race by another. The strife
of brethren, and a war of races, are far removed from
each other in likeness, by an acrimony and deadly deter¬
mination engendered by the latter.
TIRHAKAH.
Tirhakah was king of Ethiopia about 713 B. C., and
probably of Upper Egypt, while Sethon ruled in Lower
Egypt, {Herod, ii. 141). Sennacherib, king of Assyria,
was threatening war against Hezekiah, the thirteenth
king of Judah. Hezekiah like Hoshea, had formed an
alliance with the king of Egypt, hoping by such
confederacy to free himself from vassalage to Assyria.
This led Sennacherib to march against Egypt as well as
Judah. To encourage Hezekiah, God had caused his
tirhakah.
135
prophet to foretell the result of Sennacherib's expedi¬
tion. It was foretold that God would u send a blast
upon him;" that he should u hear a rumor and return to
his own land and fall by the sword in his own land,"
(2. K. xix. 7; Isa. xxxvii. 7). Sennacherib went forth,
u heard the rumour," caught li the blast" and returned
to Nineveh and was finally assassinated,—all according
to prediction.
Tirhakah, like Zerah, was a powerful king and general
of the Ethiopians. In this case the sacred record is so
clear and definite in respect to the location of Ethiopia,
ie Cush,'' that the most pronounced disbeliever in the
ancient renown of the blacks of Africa, is compelled
to admit that Tirhakah was king of the Ethiopians
south of Egypt, and that he ruled over Upper Egypt,
probably, at the same time. In Isaiah (xviii, xix, xx.)
Egypt and Ethiopia, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians,
are so linked together in prophetic allusions, that there
can be no reasonable doubt as to what Ethiopia is
meant.
The object of Tirhakah in marching against Sen¬
nacherib, was to protect Lower Egypt and relieve
Hezekiah. The traditional account of his success told to
Herodotus by the Ethiopian priests, has a high legendary
coloring; but it was founded on facts readily inferred
from a reasonable interpretation of the Scripture alluding
thereto. Josephus says of Sennacherib, (Antiq. x. 1, 3),
that "he spent a long time in the siege of Pelusium; and
when the banks that he raised over against the walls
136
the cushite.
were o* a great height, and when ne was ready to
make an immediate assault upon them, but heard that
Tirhakah, king of the Ethiopians, was coming and
bringing great forces to aid the Egyptians, and was
resolved to march through the desert, and so fall directly
upon the Assyrians, this king Sennacherib was disturbed
at the news; and, as I said before, left Pelusium and
returned back without success." Dr. J. R. Beard says
(Kitto sub. Sennacherib) u Tirhakah had heard of the
approach of Sennacherib, and at once came down the
country, entered Palestine, and defeated the Assyrian
monarch, thus delivering the territory of Sethos as well
as that of Hezekiah."
According to Strabo, Tirhakah marched victoriously
as far as the pillars of Hercules. The writer just quoted
(Rev. J. R. Beard, D. D.)says: " that Tirhakah was a very
potent monarch, is evident from his defeat of Sen¬
nacherib, as well as from the monuments he has left in
Egypt and Ethiopia, and his maintenance of the Egyptian
possessions in Asia; and although Strabo may have exag¬
gerated his power when he affirms that he extended • his
conquests like Sesostris into Europe, yet his authority is
of use, as it leads to the conclusion that Tirhakah ruled
in Lower as well as Upper Egypt," (Kitto sub. Tirhakah).
But Mr. Rollin, the historian, and some other learned
men claim that Tirhakah was defeated by Sennacherib.
Rollin says that the united forces of Sethon and Tirhakah,
Egyptians and Ethiopians, " were met and vanquished by
the Assyrians in a pitched battle;" and that Sennacherib
TIKHAKAH.
137
" pursued them into Egypt and entirely laid waste to the
country." Mr. Rollin is usually clear headed and correct in
statements and inferences, but here, I think, he is quite
mistaken. Indeed he seems not to agree with himself:
for on the same page he says: " After the death of Sethon,
who had sitten fourteen years on the throne, Tharaca
ascended it and reigned eighteen years." He places
Tirhakah on the throne of Sethon in the year 705 B. C.,
or about seven years after his battle with Sennacherib.
Now, if the Egyptians and Ethiopians under Sethos and
Tirhakah had been 11 met and vanquished by the
Assyrians," who " pursued them into Egypt and entirely
laid waste to the country," how could there be left an
Egyptian throne for Tirhakah to ascend ? If the ambi¬
tious, arrogant and blasphemous king of Assyria had been
as triumphant as Mr. Rollin makes him, he would have
chased Tirhakah into the most remote fastness of Ethi¬
opia, denied Sethos the mercy of a natural death, and in
fact have u entirely laid waste to the country." He
would have ruled Egypt and Ethiopia with a rod of
iron.
u The Pulpit Commentary," edited by Rev. H. D. M.
Spence and Rev. Joseph S. Exell, commenting on Isa.
xx. says : u In Sennacherib's annals for the year B.C.
701, twelve years after this prophecy was given, we find
the following : ' The kings of Egypt and the archers,
and chariots and horsemen of the King of Meroe, a
forGe without number, gathered and came to the aid of
Ekron. In the neighborhood of Eltekeh their ranks
138
THE CUSHITE.
were arrayed before me, and they urged on their sol¬
diers. In the service of Assur, my lord, I fought with
them, and I accomplished their overthrow.' "
These " annals " of Sennacherib claim to report what
he did before the year 701 B.C., and they contain the
name of u Meroe." What history ! The great Ethiopian
capital where Moses found his first Cushite wife, the
city mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 29) and formerly called
Saba (Josepkus ii. 10, 2), did not receive the name of
" Meroe'' till it was so called by Cambyses, fully a
hundred and seventy-six years after the date given in
the so-called " annals " of Sennacherib.
God's promise to Hezekiah concerning Sennacherib,
11 behold, I will send a blast upon him and he shall hear
a rumour," is to be regarded as a prediction of Sennac¬
herib's defeat. Biblical commentators who hold the
opinion set forth by Mr. Rollin usually regard, as he does,
u Sargon," mentioned by Isaiah, (xx. 1, 4), in foretelling
the conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia, as but another name
for Sennacherib. Sargon more probably succeeded Shal-
maneser, as held by Gesenius {Comm. onlsa. in loco) and
ruled but two or three years. Then came Sennacherib,
who was followed by his son Esar-haddon,(2. K. xix. 37).
There are chronological uncertainties that prevent satis¬
factory conclusions in regard to the exact time of the
reigns of these monarchs, but they do not create any
doubt as to the certainty of the prowess of Tirhakah,
who was a black Napoleon in arms, and a George Wash¬
ington in patriotism and statesmanship. Referring to
EBED—MELECH.
139
Sennacherib, Dr. Anthon says Tarhaco 11 deterred him,
in the year 714 B.C., from the invasion of Egypt merely
by the rumour of his advancing against him." {Class.
Diet). This i«s a fair inference from the language of
the prophet, (2. K. xix. 7; Isa. xxxvii. 7).
Commenting on Sennacherib's defeat as given by
Herodotus, (ii. 141), Dawson W. Turner, M.A., says:
" that ' the king of Assyria was warring against Libnah' is
the last thing we hear of him, before beginning his re¬
treat ; hence it was before Libnah that his army perished,
and we may conclude with L." (Larcher) "that Pelusium
was so called; especially as Joseph us says that Sen¬
nacherib was before Pelusium, and was about to take the
place, when he heard that Tirhakah, king of ./Ethiopia,
was coming to the assistance of the Egyptians. If this
solution be correct, be careful not to confound this with
the Libnah of the tribe of Judah, mentioned in Josh,
xxi. 13."
EBED—MELECH.
This was a distinguished Cushite, living 588 B. C. He
was a servant or officer of king Zedekiah, and a sincere
friend of the prophet Jeremiah. But as he was a Negro,
Mr. James Wood, in his u Dictionary of the Bible," pub¬
lished in 1813, for the Methodist Connection in the United
States, calls him " an Ethiopian slave of king Zedekiah."
Jeremiah says:
aThen took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the
dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelcch, that ivas in
the court of the prison : and they let down Jeremiah
140
the cushite.
with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, hut
mire : so Jeremiah sunk in the mire. Now, when Ebed-
melech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs which was in
the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in
the dungeon; the king then sitting in the gate of Ben¬
jamin ; Ebed-melech went forth out of the king's house,
and spake to the king, saying, My lord the king, these
men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah
the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon; and
he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is ; for
there is no more bread in the city. Then the king com¬
manded Ebed—melech the Ethiopian, saying, Take from
hence thirty men with thee, and take up Jeremiah the
prophet out of the dungeon before he die. So Ebed-
melech took the men with him, and went into the house of
the king under the treasury, and took thence old cast
clouts and old rotten rags, and let them down by cords
into the dungeon to Jeremiah. And Ebed-melech the
Ethiopian said unto Jeremiah, Put now these old cast clouts
and rotten rags under thine armholes under the cords.
And Jeremiah did so. So they drew up Jeremiah with
cords and took him up out of the dungeon : and Jeremiah
remained jn the court of the prison." (Jer. xxxviii.
6, 13).
This kind hearted Ethiopian, for his manifestation of
regard for God's prophet and for justice, received a spe¬
cial message from God assuring him of divine favor and
protection:
" Now the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah,
while he was shut up in the court of the prison, saying, Go
and speak to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, Thus
saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will
ebed—melech. 141
bring my words upon this city for evil, and not for good;
and they shall be aecotnplished in that day before thee.
But I will deliver thee in that day, saith the Lord ; and
thou shalt not be given into the hand of the men of whom
thou art afraid. For I will surely deliver thee, and thou
shalt not fall by the sword, but thy life shall be for a
prey unto thee; because thou hast put thy trust in me,
saith the Lord." (Jer. xxxix. 15, 18).
This man, Ebed-melech, whom unfriendly writers set
forth as " a slave of the king," was more probably one
of the king's most reliable officers. Zedekiah was the
twentieth and last king of Judah. Ebed-melech was one
and possibly the chief of the officers that attended him
in the royal palace. The term "Dy in this connection
cannot mean anything like the modern notion of a slave.
This servant (ebed) could communicate freely with the
king and charge the royal enemies of Jeremiah with
il doing evil," which a man in the condition of a slave
would not have dared to do. A large number of Cushites
descended from royal families who had been dethroned,
remained in Canaan, Syria, Mesopotamia, and north¬
western Arabia; and were more or less favored and
utilized by succeeding rulers. It is not improbable,
therefore, that this Ebed-melech was of that class. All
the circumstances, reasonably regarded suggest that he
was a man of rank and influence, like the Ethiopian
eunuch under Queen Candace.
The Rev. Dr. George B. Cheever published a work in
1860 titled u The Guilt of Slavery and the Crime of
Slave-holding, demonstrated from the Ilebreiv and Greek
142
THE CUSHITE.
Scriptures" in which he shows that the term iny (ebccT)
is frequently u applied to persons of noble station in life.''
In connection with kings and the Lord, as "the servant
of the king," or u the servant of the Lord," it has a
similar meaning to the Greek word 8ovXo$ in the New
Testament, which the inspired writers so frequently
predicate of themselves and others in Christian service.
Both words and SovAos, thus connected, have reference
always to voluntary service. In all cases of involuntary
service, the context must show it. Then the term
" eunuch," D'hd, saris, in this connection with Ebed-
melech signifies official station without reference to any
physical fact. It is used to show the relation that
Potiphar who purchased Joseph, sustained to Pharaoh
where it is translated u officer," (Gen. xxxvii. 36; xxxix.
1). It is so rendered in 1. Kings xx. 9; 2. Kings viii.
6; 1. Sam. viii. and elsewhere. It may be rendered
u officer " or u chamberlain."
So we conclude that Ebed-melech was not " a slave,"
but an Ethiopian of integrity, rank and influence. He
was possibly a prince.
MENTION OP AFRICAN NATIONS.
143
MENTION OF AFRICAN NATIONS.
In the time of Herodotus Africa, called Libya, was as
full of aboriginal Africans as Egypt was of frogs and
locusts in the time of the Hebrew exodus. And those
African blacks had no more fear of the Asiatic and
European whites than the Egyptian frogs and locusts
had of the Pharaoh whom they were summoned to plague.
Nor were those Africans anywhere, or in any way,
discounted on account of the dark color and crispy hair
it pleased God to give them. u There are many and
various nations of Libyans,'' says Herodotus. He then
names a number of aboriginal nations (iv. 168—193.)
among which were the Adrymachidse, the Giligammse,
the Asbystse, the Auschisse, the Cabales, the Nasamones,
the Psylli, the Garamantes, the Macse, the Gindanes, the
Lotophagi, the Maclilyes, the Auses, the Ammonians,
the Augilse, the Troglodytes, the Atarantes, the Atlantes,
the Maxyes, the Zaveces, and the Gyrantes.
Besides these there were the Automoli, the Mac—
robian Ethiopians, and many other Cushites of Africa
not here mentioned.
Herodotus got his information regarding the customs
of the nomadic Libyans from the Carthagenians who
were not very particular at times about telling the truth j
10
144
THE CUSHITE.
hence some things are said of them not very much to
their credit. But some were powerful nations using
four horse chariots. 11 Four distinct races, " says Her¬
odotus, inhabit Libya, u and no more, as far as we know:
two of these races are indigenous, and two not. The
Libyans and Ethiopians are indigenous, the one inhabiting
the northern, the other the southern parts of Libya; but
the Phoenicians and Greeks are foreigners," (iv. 197).
He mentions the Ethiopians in the expedition of
Xerxes against Greece, saying (vii. 69, 70): <( The
Ethiopians were clothed in panther's and lion's skins and
carried long bows not less than four cubits in length,
made from branches of the palm tree." u The Ethio¬
pians from the sunrise," he says, " (for two kinds served
in the expedition) were marshalled with the Indians,
and did not differ from the others in appearance'' (the
Ethiopians who dwelt above Egypt), u but only in their
language and their hairj for the eastern Ethiopians are
straight-haired, but those of Libya have their hair more
curly than that of any other people."
These different African nations had their kings and
queens some of whose names and deeds are still
preserved in history to encourage in their descendants of
to-day a spirit of aspiration.
According to Herodotus, a the nations of Libya were
many and various (navroia). Few of them had ever
submitted to Darius, and most of them held him in
contempt." This implies that those Libyans were intelli¬
gent and held an independent disposition that could not
MENTION OF AFRICAN NATIONS. 145
have existed without adequate material resources to
foster it. They were men of full stature.
Their ability as warriors is indicated by their defeat
of Arcesilaus, king of Cyrene, at Leucon, where seven
thousand Cyreneans, Grecian braves, fell on the field of
battle, {Herod, iv. 160). The Ethiopians above Egypt
whom Cambyses subdued and who were attached to the
army of Xerxes, were inhabitants of that part of Africa
now known as Nubia.
From the Libyans who lived near lake Tritonis, says
Herodotus (iv. 189) the Greeks " borrowed the attire
andsegis with which they adorned the shrine of Minerva;"
that " the very name proves that the garb of the Paladia
comes from Libya." That u from the Libyans the
Grecians also learned the custom of harnessing four
horses to a carriage."
When the Grecians first went to Cyrene as colonists
they trespassed on the rights of the neighboring Libyans;
and Adicran, their king, sent an embassy to Egypt and
formed an alliance with Apries, King of Egypt, in order
to resist the aggressions of the Grecians. This ready
alliance suggests racial, rather more than political affinity.
Then, in 484 B. C., when Xerxes suppressed the revolt
in Egypt, he left his brother Achemenes, son of Darius,
to govern Egypt; but Inarus, son of Psammitichus, a
Libyan monarch, slew the Persian governor of Egypt in
the hope ofjreeing his brethren of Egypt from the
Persian yoke. See Herodotus, iii. 12; vii. 7
146
THE CUSHITE.
THE CUSHITE'S SENSE OF EIGHT.
The moral character of the thoughtful Cushite and his
keen sense of right, seem to be peculiarly fundamental.
He prefers right, even when wrong holds out a strong
inducement of temporary gain. In this ethical trait ho
is admittedly ahead of his predatory white brother. I
mean, of course, the genuine stock of Cushites, whom
Jeremiah calls "the mighty men;'' Isaiah, " men of
stature," and Herodotus, u men the largest, the most
handsome, and the longest lived,"—avSpas fieyi6rovs nai
fiaXXitirovi xai juaxpo/haararovS.
This deep sense of right is exemplified in the
sympathetic nature and benevolent interposition of Ebed-
melech in behalf of the prophet Jeremiah; and still more
clearly in the conduct and expression of the Ethiopian
king to whom, as reported by Herodotus (iii. 21),
Cambyses sent messengers with presents, that they
might spy out the country which he intended to invade.
The spies having come before the king, addressed him,
saying: u Cambyses king of the Persians, wishing to
become to you a friend and ally, has sent us bidding us
confer with you; and he gives to you these presents,
such as with which he himself is most delighted."
Aware of their true character and the nature of their
mission, the king of the Ethiopians replied: u Neither
did the king of the Persians send you to me with these
presents because he valued my alliance, nor do you tell
the truth; for you are come as spies of my dominion.
THE CUSHITE'S SENSE OF RIGHT.
147
Nor is lie a just man: for if he were just, he would not
crave another country than his own; nor would he
reduce to servitude men from whom he has received no
injustice. However, giving him this bow, speak these
words: (the king of the Ethiopians advises the king of the
Persians, when the Persians can thus easily bend bows
as large as this,' (drawing as he spoke a bow of enormous
size as if about to shoot, he continued)7 1 then, with a
larger force, to wage war against the Macrobian
Ethiopians; but until that time, to thank the gods who
have not inspired the sons of the Ethiopians with a
desire to add to their own another land.'
Here we see the manliness and uprightness of this
Ethiopian monarch, and must infer that his kingdom was
independent and significantly potent. No other political
power on the face of the earth at that time, could thus
defy the king of Persia. Enraged by the lofty message
of the king of Ethiopia, and goaded by the inability of
himself, or any of his staff officers or soldiers to bend the
bow sent to him as a present from the Ethiopian king,
Cambyses collected his forces and set out for Ethiopia;
but he never reached his destination. His expedition
was a miserable failure, and he returned with only a
remnant of his great army, a wiser, if not a better man.
148
THE CUSHITE.
MAGNATES OF LIBYA.
In the early days of Carthage the northwestern
territory of Africa, embracing Carthage and generally
known as Libya, was full of distinguished Negroes or
aboriginal Cushites who freely mingled with the Tyrian
colonists. In connection with Virgil's story of the royal
entertainment which Dido, the founder of Carthage, gave
to iEneas,* mention is made of African lords in general,
and of Iarbas and Iopas in particular; both of whom were
African kings and suitors of Dido. Iarbas was king of
the u extremi v mentioned in Virgil's Ecloga (viii. 44),
the " Garamantes " then supposed to be the most southern
nation in Africa. Dido did not return the love of Iarbas
as she had vowed never again to marry; but she irresist¬
ibly fell in love with ./Eneas, and asked her sister Anna
what she should do about it. She receives this reply
(2En. iv. 36):
4< Esto; segram milli quondam flexere marili;
Non Libyse, 11011 ante Tiro; despectus Iarbas,
Ductoresque alii, quos Africa terra triumpliis
Dives, alit: placitone etiam pugnabis amori? "
* tineas was not contemporary with Dido. They were three
centuries apart; but that does not weaken Virgil's testimony to the
reality of " Libyan lords of mighty name.''
MAGNATES OF LIBYA.
149
" I grant that while your sorrows yet were green,
It well became a woman and a queen
The vows of Tyrian princes to neglect,
To scorn Iarbas, and liis love reject,
With all the Libyan lords of mighty name:
But will you fight against, a pleasing flame V'—Dryden.
At the feast given by Dido in honor of iEneas and his
comrades, Iopas appeared with his golden harp and
showed not only his knowledge of vocal and instrumental
music, but also his great knowledge of astronomy and of
natural science in general. Hear Virgil again (2En. i.
740):
The gohlet goes around; Iapas brought,
His golden lyre, and sung what ancient Atlas taught—
The various labors of the wand'ring moon,
And whence proceed th' eclipses of the sun;
Tli' original of men and beasts; and whence
The rains arise, and fires their warmth dispense,
And fix'd and erring stars dispose their influence;
What shakes the solid earth; what cause delays
The summer nights, and shortens winter days.
With peals of shonts the Tyiians praise the song:
Those peals are echo'd by the Trojan throng." — Dryden.
Those Libyans had organized governments which
were respected by foreign nations. They are referred
to by Jeremiah (xlvi. 9) as a people of military renown:
Come up, ye horses, and rage, ye chariots: and let the
mighty men come forth; the Ethiopians and the Libyans,
that handle the shield; and the Lydians, that handle and
bend the bow.
A MAN OF ETHIOPIA.
On several occasions the prophets had foretold that the
Cushite branch of the human family would have the
favor of God and be numbered with the spiritual seed of
150
THE CUSHITE.
Abraham. It was foretold in the book of Psalms (lxviii.
31); where it is said that u Princes shall come out of
Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto
God." Again, (Psa. lxxxvii. 4) " I will make mention
of Rahab (Egypt) and Babylon to them that know mc;
behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was
born there." This last is, I think, both a prediction of a
calling to Christ and a comparison between the most
distinguished men of the nations named and the most
eminent men,—" this and that man,"—born in Zion. In
both instances, it is a compliment from Heaven to the
Cushite. In Isaiah (xliii. 3) we read: u I gave Egypt
for thy ranson, Ethiopia (Cush) and Seba for thee."
Again, (xlv. 14), "thus saith the Lord, the labor of
Egypt (Mizraim) and merchandise of Ethiopia {Cush)
and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto
thee, and they shall be thine." In Zephaniah (iii. 10)
it is said: "From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my
suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall
bring mine offering."
The fulfillment of all this prophecy had its beginning
in the conversion and baptism of the high treasurer of
Queen Candace. This Ethiopian was " an eunuch of great
authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians," and
u had charge of all her treasury," (Acts viii. 26-38). Dr.
Thomas Scott says, [Comm. in loco) Probably this man
was a negro." Pray what else could he "probably"
have been ? Is it because this man was u an eunuch of
great authority" that Dr. Scott injects the word u proba-
A MAN OF ETHIOPIA.
151
hly" to raise a doubt in deference to prejudice against
the race? O tempora ! O mores! It is decidedly improb¬
able that a black queen ruling over black subjects, a men
of stature," would have a white man, a foreigner, as her
state treasurer. The words dvrfp AiOiotp will not admit
of any rendering or exposition that can make them imply
a man that was u probably" white. They mean a Negro,
simple and pure. But he was a big Negro; an Ethio¬
pian grandee. It was through him that God was pleased
to introduce the Gospel, and establish Christianity in
Ethiopia; and hence made the matter a special revelation
to Philip. Doubtless some form of Judaism had found its
way into Ethiopia, (possibly through the Queen of Sheba),
for this distinguished Ethiopian eunuch had been u to
Jerusalem for to worship."
This fact suggests his general intelligence and that of
his nation; and shows that no such thing as foolish preju¬
dice against an Ethiopian's color, was entertained to his
detriment and annoyance by the sensible white people of
that age. His reading which Philip explained so as to
convict and convert him, shows his knowledge of letters,
and suggests that such knowledge was general in his
country; and his official station shows his high rank.
CANDACE, QUEEN OP THE ETHIOPIANS.
This queen, mentioned by Luke in the book of Acts,
(viii. 27), ruled over the country in Africa which the
Greeks called Meroe; the country from which Moses got
Tharbis, his first Cushite wife, and, most probably, his
152
THE CUSHITE.
first wife. Candace, it seems, was the general official
title borne by the queens of Ethiopia as u Pharaoh" was
by the monarchs of Egypt. In the reign of Augustus,
(20 B. C.), Petronius, who was prefect of Egypt, waged
war against the queen of Ethiopia who was called
Candace. Though blind of one eye, she was clearheaded,
sagacious and warlike. But as fifty years at least had
elapsed, we can hardly suppose that she was the same
person whose treasurer was baptized by Deacon Philip.
It is said by Pliny, {Hist. Nat. vi. 29), that Nero sent men
to Ethiopia to explore the country who, on their return
reported, u regnare in Meroe feminam Candacen, quod
nomen multis jam annis ad regenas transiit"—that a
female called Candace reigned in Meroe which title had
been borne by their queens for many years. Eusebius
who lived in the fourth century of our era gives similar
testimony saying, {Hist. Eccl. ii. 1), u nata r6 itarpiov
£0oS vjto yvvaiHoS rov eQvovS eitferi vvv (5a.6i\tvon£vov.'>1
—According to hereditary custom this nation even to the
present time is ruled by a woman (a queen).
Dion Casius, also, speaks of Candace, queen of the
Ethiopians above Egypt.* Thus it seems that this
Cushite nation believed in women's rights. They knew
how to obey as well as to command ; how to be ruled as
well as to rule, when it related to their own dominion.
Their queens were no ways embarrassed by their sex in
the administration of the affairs of government, and their
* " AtBio7te$ vitep Alyvicvov oinovvre?,"—Liv. 5. Kavdanrji
ttjS' ,/3a6iAitidr/S AiQiuitoov.—AcU. viii. 27.
CANDACE, QUEEN OF THE ETHIOPIANS. 153
ambassadors, black and comely, never failed to meet
with due respect in the execution of their missions to for¬
eign courts; for the Candace whose reign was contempo¬
rary with that of Csesar Augustus, entered into treaty
relations with him, establishing friendly intercourse be¬
tween the great Roman Empire, then in its glory, and
the kingdom of Ethiopia, then on its decline.
Under this Candacean government, though his sover¬
eign had no gospel light, the good citizen found better pro¬
tection to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, than
his Cushite descendants find in Christian America.
And, if that is the best government whose citizens enjoy
the best protection in the administration of its laws ;
then that Ethiopian government was decidedly better
than this,—the United States—whose white and more
favored citizens, boast of racial superiority.
154
THE CUSIIITE.
PREJUDICE AGAINST THE NEGRO MODERN.
That prejudice which arrays itself against the Negro,
subjecting good citizens of this race to insult, mean
injustice, and the most cruel forms of outrage, is ' of
modern date and American nativity. It is not innate,
else it would have always existed, and similarly operated
among all other peoples. It is not a cause, but rather an
effect whose cause is the Negro's condition and modern
history. His color serves only as an immediate and
constant expose of his ethnical identity. Otherwise the
blame, if any, were with the Creator, and that prejudice
were absolute and not blameworthy.
Between racial affinity and racial prejudice, there is a
wide distinction. The one is born of God; the other is
born of the devil. The works of the one are benevolent;
the works of the other, malevolent. This affinity may
prefer what is more homogeneous to what is more foreign
without injustice to the unpreferred ; and this it always
does except in cases of anomalous exception. On the
other hand, racial prejudice, when unbridled or unre¬
sisted, irrationally rejects, arrogantly dominates, and mer¬
cilessly abuses those against whom it is directed. It is
wholly a creature of circumstance. It may be gener¬
ated and fostered by religion, as in the case of the
PREJUDICE AGAINST THE NEGRO MODERN. 155
Jews ; by condition, as in the case of the Negro and
the Indian; or by national custom, as in the case of
the Chinese. But it is an anthropological malady that
may be cured, else the Christian doctrine of redemption
is a farce. There are two panaceas or remedies. One
is the possession of a pure Christianity; the other is a
removal of the cause by a favorable change of con¬
dition.
The Ethiopian has regarded white as a symbol of
impurity and unrighteousness. The white man, on the
other hand, has so regarded black. The Ethiopian says:
"as white as the devil." The white man says: "as
black as the devil." The Ethiopian, three hundred
years ago, painted Christ and the Virgin Mary black;
but wicked men and devils, he painted white. Christ in
his Passion he painted black; but Judas, Annas, Caia-
phas, Pilate, Herod, and the Jews, he painted white. He
painted Michael black j but the devil, white. (See Dr.
Russell's History of Nubia and Abyssinia, p. 275). This
shows that color, as a symbol of purity and justice, is
arbitrary and unphilosophical,—and merely accommoda¬
tive in its racial application.
When the Cushite, as a race, shall again excel or
equal the white man in learning and material acquisition,
then, as in the days of his ancient celebrity, he will find
no trouble on account of his color. Or, when the white
man shall have become Christianized according to the
letter and spirit of the New Testament, then he will see
the meaning and feel the force of fatherhood in God and
156
THE CUSHITE.
brotherhood in man, whether the man be European,
Asiatic or African; whether he be white, yellow, or
black.
The student of history can explore the whole field of
ancient literature without finding anything more dispar¬
aging to the Negro than to others. In an inaugural
address delivered January 5th, 1881, by Edward Wilmot
Blyden, LL.D., president of Liberia College, he says:
u I have noticed a few lines from Virgil, describing a
Negress of the lower class, which are made to do duty
on all occasions when the modern traducers of the Negro
would draw countenance for their theories from the
classical writers; but similar descriptions of the lower
European races abound in their own literature. The
lines are the following, used by Nott and Gliddon, and
recently quoted by Dr. Winchell:—
' Interdum clamat Cybalen; erat unica custos;
Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura;
Torta coniam, labroque tumens, et fusca colorem,
Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo,
Cruribus exilis, spaHosa prodiga planta ;
Continuis rimis calcanea ecissa ngebant.'
[Meanwhile he calls Cybale. She was his only (house)
keeper. African by race, her whole figure attesting her
fatherland ; with crisped hair, swelling lip, and dark
complexion ; broad in chest, with pendant dugs and very
contracted abdomen; with spindle shanks and broad
enormous feet J her lacerated heels were rigid with con¬
tinuous cracks.]
But hear how Homer, Virgil's superior and model,
sings the praises of the Negro Euryabates, who signalized
himself at the siege of Troy:—
PREJUDICE AGAINST THE NEGRO MODERN. 157
* A reverend herald in liis train I knew,
Of visage solemn, sad, but sable hue-
Short woolly curls o'er-fleeced his bending head,
O'er which a promontory shoulder spread.
Euryabates, in whose large soul alone,
Ulysses viewed an image of his own.' "
Dr. Blyden was urging the study of the Greek and
Latin languages and literature as preferable instruments
of culture j saying that " in those languages there is
not, as far as I know, a sentence, a word, or a syllable
disparaging to the Negro. He may get nourishment
from them without taking in any race poison. They
will perform no sinister work upon consciousness, and
give no unholy bias to his inclinations." The ancient
Assyrians and Persians, the Greeks and Romans all
had a proper respect for the ethnological peculiarities of
the Cushite.
When Darius of Persia feasted the magnates of his
hundred and twenty-seven provinces,—the rulers of the
Medes, the princes of Persia, and the generals of the
Armies,—he did not slight the distinguished men of
India and Ethiopia. They too sat at his table and eat
and drank to their satiety, {Joseph. Antiq. xi. 3, 2). On
the day of Pentecost, there were at Jerusalem, among
the many strangers, Egyptians and Libyans from the
neighborhood of Gyrene. They were not Jews of the
line of Shem, whose tongue was Hebrew, else they
would not have been numbered with those foreigners
who heard the Apostles speak in their own tongues,
wherein they were born, u the wonderful works of God."
It is more probable that they were African Cushites,
158
THE CUSHITE.
against whose physical nature no man of that age was
stupid and impious enough to take exception.
RETROSPECTION.
From what has been shown, there is sufficient warrant
for the conclusion:
1. That the ancient Cushite, the progenitor of the
modern Negro, led the world for centuries in all that re¬
lated to civilization and human progress. To this fact
the holy scriptures bear testimony in saying (Acts vii.
22) that " Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds." This
Egyptian learning came into Egypt from Ethiopia and
went from Egypt into other parts of the world.
2. That the art of war, that prowess in man hunting
inaugurated by Nimrod in the land of Shinar, soon re¬
appeared in Ethiopia and, descending the Nile into Low¬
er Egypt, there, as in Ethiopia, formed itself into a kind
of military academy for the world, and subsequently sent
out a Sesostris terrible in war, and a Shishak as skilled
and brave as any general of the ancient Asiatic or Euro¬
pean nations; or as any of the nineteenth century, not
excepting Napoleon in Europe or Washington in
America.
3. That the art of writing, originating first in pictori¬
al symbols and then developing into phonetic characters,
was imported by the Cushite priests of Ethiopia into
Egypt; and from there they found their way to Phce-
RETROSPECTION.
159
nicia, Mesopotamia, Greece and other countries, finally
returning to Egypt an alphabet of finer finish.
4. That religious thought, civil law, mechanical art
and the science of medicine were all of like origin.
The art of embalming the dead was a special depart¬
ment of medical science in which the Cushite physicians
of Egypt excelled. Their embalming was so skillfully
done that even now, after a lapse of more than three
thousand years, it remains a witness to their scientific
knowledge.
5. That, looking back over the centuries from the
Christian era to Noah, and noting the rise and fall of
great men and great nations, we see none more conspicu¬
ous than the children of Ham.
Greece had her Athens, and could boast of Homer,
Herodotus, Plato, Solon, Socrates, and Demosthenes,
and a host of other poets, historians, philosophers and ora¬
tors, and of her great Alexander. Persia had her Cy¬
rus the Great, her Cambyses, her Darius and her relig¬
ious Zoroaster j China had her great cities walled in so
that nothing could come in or go out but the theosophic
philosophy of her deified Confucius; Rome had her noted
patricians, and, like Greece, her poets, orators, historians
and generals, and begat for herself a great name; but
before all these is the land of Ham, of Cush and the
Cushite; the land chosen of God in which to train his
peculiar people, and as a city of refuge for His own Son
when Herod sought to slay him.
Africa had her Cushite Meroe, her Thebes, her Mcm-
11
160
THE CUSHITE.
phis, her sciences and her wonderful works of art; she
had a great commercial traffic with the nations of the
East, borne from country to country by numerous cara¬
vans. She had her high priests, whose sacred hiero¬
glyphics bespoke their reverence for their gods. She
had a thousand thousand soldiers, infantry and cavalry,
with generals of unequalled prowess ; she had her astron¬
omers, physicians, and wise men,—men of deeds rather
than of words, of actions rather than of theory. She had
her Sesostris, her Memnon, her Shishak, her Zerah,
her Nitocris, her Queen of Sheba, her Candaces, and
her long line of great Pharaohs mentioned in the
sacred Scriptures. She had her Hannibal and her
Terence, the one distinguished for being the greatest
general with whom the Romans ever measured swords,
and the other for giving polish to the Roman tongue,
and for giving expression to a philanthropic sentiment,
than which even the Christian age produces nothing
grander:
u Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto,"—I am a
man, and I consider nothing foreign to me that relates to
man. This brief expression, just eight words, contains
all the law and the prophets, and it is as precious as the
u golden rule" of sacred writ.
Now what the Cushite was, certainly has some bear¬
ing on an intelligent judgment of what he is, and is to
be. It should inspire him with an ambition to emulate
his forefathers ; for if to the memory of the distinguished
Negroes of modern times we add the historic facts reach-
RETROSPECTION.
161
ing from Menes to the Christian era attesting the great¬
ness of the ancient Cushites, of whom we are lineal
descendants, it were pusillanimous in us, and dishonoring
to our ancestors, to be ashamed of either our color or our
name.
162
THE CUSHITE.
THE MODERN CUSHITE.
The Cushite of the Christian era has not, as a race,
been able to cope with his brother in white ; but there
have been, and are still, individuals of the race distin¬
guished for excellence in every department of human
knowledge, " learned in all the wisdom of the " Anglo-
Saxons. Between the ancient and the modern Cushite,
the only striking difference is condition, the offspring of
accident or circumstances. In this they are as widely
separated as are the different epochs of their respective
activities: for, while the physical character is much
the same, the social and political status, the wealth,
culture, wisdom and prowess of the former are incom¬
parable with that of the latter. But for this the modern
Cushite is not entirely responsible. A large share of the
blame rests with the modern sons of Japheth and of Shem,
who unrighteously conspired against him.
In the year 1516 A.D., Charles Y. of Spain authorized
the importation of captured Africans into his American
colonies. About a century after this (1620), a cargo of
slaves was landed in Virginia. The iniquitous traffic,
this u sum of all villainies," was found to be so lucrative
that both Church and State recognized it—the one holding
it up as u a divine institution," and the other as a right-
THE MODERN CUSHITE.
163
eous " domestic institution " to be fostered by the laws of
the commonwealth. From 1680 to 1786, over 2,000,000
captured Africans were brought into this country and
the West Indies as slaves ; and the wicked traffic in the
bodies and souls of this defenceless race was continued
to 1863, when it so threatened the very life of the
nation, that Abraham Lincoln, the president, was forced
to proclaim its abolition. The Southern States had
withdrawn from the Union and resolved themselves into
a " Southern Confederacy," having negro slavery for its
corner-stone : for, in a speech of Alexander H. Stephens,
delivered March 21, 1863, he said: u Slavery is the
natural and moral condition of the Negro. This, our new
government, is the first in the history of the world based
upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.''
{Tract. No. 22, Loyal Pub. Soc., Neiv York.) What a
stain on the name of Christianity ! How changed the
negro's condition! The first direct reference to traffic
in slaves is where Joseph was sold by his brethren to
Ishmaelites and by them to Potiphar in Egypt; where the
slave holder was a Negro, the slave a Shemite, and the
slave traders Midianites or Ishmaelites. Slave holding
among the ancients was not based on color or ethnological
grounds All the slave holder thought of was gain.
When the white Christians of modern times conspired
to make Africa their hunting ground and convert its sable
inhabitants into goods and chattels, they hypocritically
claimed that it was doing good, promoting Christianity.
That God often turns the doings of wicked men to a good
164
THE CUSHITE.
end, is not a thing for which the wicked may claim
credit. Selling Joseph into Egypt proved a great
blessing to the household of his father Jacob, but that
did not lessen the sin of those who deprived him of his
liberty. The crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, is the
foundation of the Christian church, but we never think
of giving credit for the blessings of Christianity to Judas
Iscariot and to Pontius Pilate. Wicked men must reap
what they sow; but God often brings good out of their
evil, and harmonizes his eternal purposes which neither
men nor devils can thwart.
The Cushite slaves of modern times were of the more
ignorant and degraded class of Africans, made so by
time and unfavorable environment. Prof. E. W. Blyden,
LL.D., himself an unadulterated Negro gentleman and a
scholar of the first order, in an article contributed to the
African Repository, says: " I have carefully studied the
African character and can speak advisedly, of its worth.
I have seen him under Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian
and Semitic rule. I have lived in the United States, in
the West Indies, and in Venezuela. I have travelled in
Syria, Egypt, and in the interior of Africa, and I testify
that the manhood of the race is in the interior. When
in the interior of Africa, I met men, both pagan and
Mahommedan, to whom, as well for their physical as
their mental characteristics, one voluntarily and instinct¬
ively feels like doing reverence." These things being
so, no good man,—no man of good sense,—will suffer
himself to be made hostile to the Negro by his irrational
THE MODERN CUSHITE.
165
prejudice. God is no respecter of persons, (Acts, x. 34;
Mom. ii. 11.), and "if ye have respect to persons, ye
commit sin, and are convinced of the law, as trans¬
gressors."—(James, ii. 9).
Addressing the American Colonization at its 69th
anniversary, (1886), Rev. B. Sunderland, D. D., said:
" It is illusive in the light of history, to talk of 1 inferior
races/ while the fact is, that on a broad scale there are
no inferior races; that is, no races incapable of becoming
dominant in the world through the development of intrin¬
sic qualities. We must remember that an African civil¬
ization is one of the oldest of which we know, standing
in the very dawn of history." That is so ; and traces of
an African civilization are found to this day in the early
history of the Christian Church.
SIMEON CALLED NIGER.
In the book of Acts, (xiii. 1), we have an account of
certain prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch,
among whom was one Simon, or Simeon called "Niger;"
that is, the black man. The Greek text of Griesbach has
2vfj.£Gov 6 xaXovfzevos Niyep : the Vulgate, " Simon, Qui
vocabarter Niger." Commenting on which, Dr. Thomas
Scott says: "The surname of Niger, or Black, by which
Simeon was known, seems to have been given on account
of his complexion ; perhaps he was a Negro." The term
Niger was not used as an opprobrious epithet, else it could
not have found so honorable a place in the New Testa¬
ment. There were several Simons or Simeons, and this
166
the cushite.
one, merely for defmiteness, was designated by the em¬
ployment of the unequivocal ethnic mark or attribute of
" Niger." Niger, when it refers to a person, is equiv¬
alent to the verb nigreo, which means niger sum, or,
I am black. In Leviticus, (xxiv. 10), we find mention
of " the son of an Israelitish woman whose father was an
Egyptian,'' Though most probably he was a Cushite,
there was no special need of mentioning his complexion ;
and hence we are given only his patronymic or racial
title from which all other ethnical peculiarities are to be
inferred. The international social ethics of then and
now, —then, when the sons of Ham were abreast with
the times and sharing leadership in the march of human
progress ; and now, when they are generally in the rear,
following in the wake of the sons of Japheth and of
Shem against stubborn opposition and bitter reproach,
—are very unlike in public sentiment.
Victor, an African, was the fourteenth Bishop or Pope
of Rome. {See Antiqiiitates Apostoliccc by llev. Wm. Cave,
D.D.j vol. i. p. 369/ vol. ii. pp. 321, 537). Victor suc¬
ceeded Pope Eleutherius, A.D. 192, and soon distinguished
himself for zeal in an effort to effect ecclesiastical uniform¬
ity in the matter of the celebration of Easter. He even
went so far as to threaten the excommunication of the
churches of Asia Minor ; and was appealed to for moder¬
ation by Irenseus and others. While the unwisdom of
his zeal was reproved, no man thought of reflecting on his
nationality. He was succeeded, after occupying the
pontifical chair nine years and two months, by Pope Zephy-
THE MODERN CUSHITE.
167
rinus. During this epoch, northern Africa contained
a number of distinguished church officials, who were
trained at Carthage and at Alexandria to serve and
defend the Christian church, Cyprian and Tertullian be¬
ing the great African leaders at Carthage. Cyprian
could summon a council of as many as sixty bishops,
which suggests a large and intelligent following.
In the first part of the fourth century schismatic trou¬
bles disturbed northern Africa from Cyrene to the pillars
of Hercules. The Donatists, generally native Africans,
took exception to what they regarded as the irregular
and therefore void ordination of Csecilian (A.D. 311) as
Bishop of Carthage and primate of Africa. They were
decided against in two or three different councils held
under the direction of Constantine the Great, and finally
by the Emperor himself; but they would not yield.
They charged corruption against all the tribunals before
which their cause was brought. u They asserted with
confidence," says Gibbon, (Milman's, vol. ii. p. 298, 299),
" and almost with exultation, that the Apostolical succes¬
sion was interrupted; that all the bishops of Europe and
Asia were infected with the contagion of guilt and
schism ; and that the prerogatives of the Catholic church
were confined to the chosen portion of the African believ¬
ers, who alone had preserved inviolate the integrity of
their faith and discipline." The Donatists were more
numerous than elsewhere in Numidia. One of their
councils, held A.D. 330, consisted of no less than 270 Afri¬
can bishops, (Mosheim, vol. i. p. 285, Murdoch). Indeed,
168
THE CUSHITE.
Africa, rather than Rome or Asia Minor, was for a great
while, the light of the Christian world, that is, the Chris¬
tian fathers of Africa shaped the doctrine and polity of
the holy Catholic Church. u Against all the heretics,''
says Mosheim, " something was attempted by Voconius,
an African," (Vol. i. p. 345).
The thirty-second pope of Rome was Miltiades, or
Melchiades, an African, (Cave's Lives vol. 1. p. 371).
This distinguished African was honored by the emperor
Constantine (A. D. 313) and constituted president of an
ecclesiastical court held at Rome to hear and judge the
complaints of the Numidian Donatists, a party having
in the year 330, two hundred and seventy bishops.
(Mosheim, vol. 1. 285, New York, Harper, 1839). This
party was founded by Donatus, a Numidian bishop in
opposition to the irregular ordination of a Carthaginian
bishop with the sanction of Rome. The Numidians,
generally native Africans, Cushites, believed in " home
rule," and were so determined and formidable in defending
and propagating their cherished schism, that the emperor
of Rome found it wise to recognize their ecclesiastical
authority.
But, Prof. S. Angustus Mitchell, in his u Ancient
Geography, Classical and Sacred," " designed for the use of
schools and colleges," says, (p. 137), " the Gsetulians
and the Libyans constitute the two great races who
originally inhabited the north-western regions of Africa.
# # # There was no correspondence of physical charac¬
teristics between the Gsetulians and the Negro race."
the modern" cushite.
169
It makes one tired to feel called upon so frequently to
meet and notice such current objections to the Negro's
just claims in history.
The Gsetulians formed part of the dominion of King
Masinassa, south of Numidia. Masinassa was son of
Gala, king of Numidia, and at first aided the Carthagin¬
ians in warring against the Romans. If not Negroes,
what or who were they ? Herodotus, who is much
better authority on the ethnographic history of ancient
Libya says, (ii. 32; iv. 197), that the only people who
inhabited that region, excepting the Phoenicians and
Grecian colonists, were indigenous Libyans and Ethiopians,
—Cushites. Those Gsetulians then were black men, Mr.
Mitchell to the contrary notwithstanding.
In the early part of the sixth century (A. D. 533),
Fulgentius Ferkandus, an African, became so distin¬
guished as an ecclesiastic in the North-African Church,
which, then, says Mr. Guericke, the German church his¬
torian, was " in a highly flourishing condition," that his
opinion on the 11 Monophysite controversies n was asked for
by Yigilius, then bishop of Rome. The emperor Justinian
sought the opinion of Vigilius and then Yigilius first asked
the opinion of Fulgentius Ferrandus, the African, {Trans¬
lation by Prof. Shedd p. 137. This is a clear indication of
the high esteem in which Africa and the pious and
intelligent Africans were held at this period by the
Christian world. Mosheim says, {vol. 1. p. 401, note,
Harperj 1830) that u Fulgentius Ferrandus was a pupil
of Fulgentius Ruspensis, and a deacon at Carthage,"
170
THE CUSIIITE.
that he wrote a " digest of ecclesiastical law," and u wrote
also the life of Fulgentius of Ruspe, and seven doctrinal
Epistles."
And, then, proofs abound that all through the middle
ages, "the dark ages" of European history, interior Africa
was tranquil and comparatively prosperous. Great na¬
tions and potent rulers unknown to the outside world, en¬
joyed the sunshine of internal peace and healthful vitali¬
ty, while some of the European nations were groping in
darkness. Had the more advanced nations of interior
Africa been conversant with the condition of the Britons
and other Caucasians in their more degraded state, they
might have seriously debated the question of a the natu¬
ral inferiority of the white man," and but for their intui¬
tive sense of justice, have sought to u enslave him in or¬
der to improve him and thus attest their a Christian
civilization."
If the great political powers of Europe would cease
grabbing the territory of Africans by the law of might,
regardless of the sacredness of right; if the Negro
republics of Liberia and Hayti be encouraged as they
ought to be in racial development and progress under the
influence of Christian civilization; if, in short, the
redemption of Africa, rather than its acquisition, be the
desire of all, and reasonable effort be put forth by all that
claim to be fair-minded and just to accomplish it, u the
Dark Continent " would soon stretch out her hands unto
God, and robe herself in a garb more conformed to the
Christianity of the New Testament than has hitherto
THE MODERN CUSHITE.
171
clothed the character of any nation of Europe/ Asia, or
America.
What has been in racial history, may be again. That
is, there is no reason why the Negro race should not
again rise to an acknowledged rank among the other
peoples of the earth. The rapid progress of the Cushite
in this country under the most humiliating and goading
conditions fully attests his natural capacity to become in
development what others are. By industry and frugality
we have acquired a significant amount of wealth. We
have an abundance of all kinds of mechanics; we have
professional artists of proficiency and skill; we have
writers of history, biography, poetry, and fiction; pub¬
lishers of books and papers; and we have doctors of
medicine, doctors of law, doctors of philosophy, and
doctors of divinity. Then what lack we, aside from the
favor of God, but the right to live and move and have
our being without a hinderance based on racial prejudice ?
The American Cushite, though far removed in time,
place, and condition from his ancient ancestors, is yet
worthy of a higher consideration and better treatment
than his brother in white is willing to accord him. Amer¬
ica owes him much, both as a laborer and as a soldier.
The inherited wealth of the nation came largely through
his unrequited toil. Crispus Attucks, a black man, was
the first to die (March 5, 1770) for the independence of
our nation ; and throughout that revolutionary conflict,
black men were often noted for deeds of valor. The
same kind of loyalty was shown in the war of 1812; and
172
THE CUSHITE.
in the civil war that resulted in the abolition of slavery,
the black man was as loyal and fought as bravely to save
the life of the nation as any of its more favored citizens.
With " death in the front and destruction in the rear," the
colored troops went forth at the nation's call, stimulated
only by a hope based on faith in God and the strength of
their arms, showing their valor at Port Hudson, many
dying for freedom at Olustee, and others transmitting to
unborn millions their intrepid prowess at Fort Wagner.
As many as 169,624 colored men risked their lives for the
life and freedom of the Union; and of this number,
thousands left their homes and their weeping families
never again to see them in the flesh. Surely they have
well earned for the race all that is implied by the term,
u American citizenshipand it ought to be a pleasure
to the ruling class to grant it, instead of permitting deeds
of cruel injustice toward the loyal and always faithful
Cushite.
FINIS.
GENERAL INDEX.
Aboriginal Ethiopians, 33.
Acencheres, 74.
Acrisius, 99.
Adicran, 145.
JEgyptus, 61, 63.
Mollis, or Cynortas, 99.
JEsop, 57.
African Nations, 143.
Alisfragmuthosis, 70, 72, 73.
Amasis, 78.
Amenophis, 44, 73, 74.
Amesses, 73.
Amnion, 7, 35, 39, 98, 100, 101,
103.
Amosis, 72, 73.
Aniyclas, 99.
Apachnas, 72.
Aphareus, 99.
Apis, 92.
Anysis, 77.
Apoplies, 72.
Apries, or Pharaoh Hophra, 78,
145.
Arphaxed, 17.
Aram, 18.
Armais, 72.
Armesses Miammoun, 74.
Asshur, 17, 87, 88.
Assis, 72.
Atlas, 99.
Automoli, The, 36, 83. Note,
143.
Avails, 73.
Beon, 72.
Blyden, Dr. E. W., on Canticles
i. 5, and the word 53.
Bust of W. F. Johnson, 45.
Bocclioris, or Asychis, 77.
Canaan, 17, 21.
Candace, Queen, 151.
Candace, Treasurer of, 149.
Canticles i. 5, 6, Comment on,
54 to 57.
Caphtor, 110.
Capitals of Ethiopia and Egypt,
90.
Cephrenes, Cephres, or Sesah, 77.
Cepheus, 31, 32, 98.
Cetes, Profcius, or Eamesses, 77.
Cheron, 73.
Cheops, or Chemis, 76.
Ccelus, or Uranus, 99.
Colchians, The, 37, 58, 60.
Color of the Egyptians, 47.
Copts, 37, 43, 44, 49, 50.
Cush, 19, 26.
Cush, the Benjaminite, 113.
Cuslian-JRishathaim, 112.
Cushi, 115.
Cushites, the Founders of Hea¬
then Worship, 97.
Cybale, 156.
Cyprian, 167.
Danaides, 59.
Danans, 61, 74.
Dedan, 23.
Donatists, 167, 168.
Early Civilization of Cushites, 80.
Early Settlement of Cushites 19.
E bed-Mel ech, 139.
Egyptians and Ethiopians, one
and the same race, 41.
Erastosthenes, 75.
173
174
INDEX.
Ethiopian Cusliites in the Age of
Moses, 104.
Ethiopian Wives of Moses, 107.
Ethiopia, Location of, 26.
Ethiopia, a Man of, 149.
Ethnographic Tables, 11.
Euryabates, 156.
Fulgentius Ferrandus, 169.
Geetulians, the, 168.
Garamantes, 148.
Gomer, 16.
Ham, 19, 39.
Ham, Descendants of, 14, 16, 19,
39.
Havilab, 12.
Hermes 102.
Hycsos, the, 39, 49, 71, 72, 73.
Iarbas, 148.
Inarus, 145.
Iopas. 148.
Isis, 31, 64, 98, 100, 102.
Janias, 72.
Japheth, sons of, 13, 16.
Javan, 16.
Kings of Egypt, 69.
Lake Mceris. 61, 96.
Lehabim, or Lubim, 17, 20, 21,
34, 129, 130.
Libya, origin of the name, 21.
Location of Ethiopia, 26.
Lokman of the Koran, 56, 57.
Ludim, 14, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 34.
Lyncens, 99.
Macrobian Ethiopians, 35, 147.
Madai, 16.
Magnates of Libya, 148.
Manritanians, or Moors, 17, 21,,99.
Memnon, 7, 82, 119.
Memphis, City of, 64, 85, 92.
Menes, 69, 70, 71.
Meplires, 73.
Mephramuthosis, 74.
Meroe, City of, 23, 25, 90, 105.
Meroe, Rums of, 85, 90, 92.
Mceris, 76,
Miltiades or Melchiades, 168.
Mizraim, 17, 20, 39.
Moses, Ethiopian Wives of, 107.
Modern Cushite, The, 162.
Nephertari, 73.
Neptune, 98.
Nimrod, 19, 22, 87, 97.
Nilus, 63.
Nitocris, 8, 69, 70, 73, 81,124, 160.
Ocean us, 99.
Orion, 97.
Orus, or Horus, 74.
Osiris, 35, 64, 65, 92, 98, 100, 102.
Osymandias, 7, 81.
Perieres, 99.
Perseus, 99.
Pheron, 76.
Philistines, Cusliites, 109.
Phut, 17, 21, 24.
Pieione and the Pleiades, 99.
Prejudice against the Negro,
Modern, 154.
Prometheus, 29.
Proteus, 76.
Psammeticus I, 78.
Psammitichus, 36, 83, 145.
Pyramids of Cheops and Ceph-
ren, 93.
Races, 11, 12, 15.
R am esses, 74.
Rathoiis, 74.
Right, the Cushite's sense of, 146.
Ruins of Ethiopia and Egypt, 93.
Retrospection, 158.
Saba, 91, 105.
Salatis, 72.
Sappho, 99.
Seba, 22, 39, 124.
Sethosis, 74.
Sesac or Sesonchosis, 75.
Sesostris 75, 76, 117.
Sheba, 23, 124.
Sheba, Queen of, 122.
Sliem, Descendants of, 14,17.
Sliishalt, 128.
Slavery, 5, 13, (note) 54, 80, 141,
162, 163.
Simeon called Niger, 165.
So, King of Egypt, 133.
INDEX.
175
Social Relations of Cushite and
Jew, 112.
Solomon's Egyptian Wife, 50, 51.
Sphinx, 44, 61, 90, 96-
Terra, 99.
Terence, 160.
Tertullian, 167.
Tharbis, 82, 91, 107, 151.
Thebes, City of, 84, 91.
Thebes, Ruins of, 95.
Thermuthis, 105.
Tlietmosis, 72, 73.
Thmosis, 74.
Thummosis, 72.
Tiras, 16.
Tirhakah, 27, 42, 134.
Timaus (Cushite), 69.
Timaus (Scythians), 77.
Uranus, 99.
Victor, 166.
Yoconius, 168.
Zerah, 131.
Zippora, 28.
Zeus, 28, 98, 101, 103.
12