Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/314

 248 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. The numerous inscriptions collected at Meroe have resulted in the di8cx)very of the names of thirty sovereigns who were at once kings and high-priests, and the very name of the city has been identified as Meru, or Merua. At the period when these pyramids were built, hieroglyphics had become an obsolete form of writing, the exact sense o£ which was no longer understood, and which was reproduced by imitation ; hence many errors crept into the copy, so that their decipherment has been rendered very difficult and uncertain. Most of these inscriptions are in the Demotic Ethiopian character, derived from that of the Pigyptians, but possessing only thirty letters. In these inscriptions, not yet completely deciphered, savants have attempted to trace the ancient language of the Blemmyes, the ancestors of the Bejas. • Opposite Meroe, on the western bank of the Nile, was apparently situated the public cemetery of the great city ; considerable spaces are here covered with small pyramids, imitations in miniature of those of the great personages buried on the right bank of the river. Metammeh — Kamara — GalA bat. In the basin of the Atbara, which bounds on the east the peninsula called by the ancients the " Island of Meroe," there are at present very few towns, in spite of the general fertility of the valleys and the healthy climate enjoyed by so large a portion of this territory. Most of them are mere market-places, swarming with people during the fairs, the next day abandoned. Amongst these "towns" inserted on the maps of the Sudan, some are mere clearings in the forest or breaches on the banks of the rivers ; the largest are Gorgur and Dongur, situated to the west of the Abyssinian plateau, in the country of the Dabaina Arabs and the " Shangalla " Negroes. Metammeh, capital of the territory of Galabat, and often called by the name of its province, is during the dry season the most active centre of the exchanges between the plains of the Bejas and the Abyssinian plateaux. To the south stand the abrupt escarpments of Ras-el-Fil, or the " Elephant's Head." As an emporium Metammeh has succeeded to Kamara, a village situated in the vicinity. Compared with the surrounding groups of huts, it is almost a large town ; with the "tokuls" scattered in the suburbs in the midst of tobacco, cotton, and durra plantations, it covers a space of about 40 square miles. Although plundered by the hordes of Theodore, it soon regained all its importance ; the hills skirting the Meshareh, an affluent of the Atbara, were again covered with huts in which the merchants warehoused- their goods. The Arabs, Funj, and Bejas, have returned to the market, and brick houses, whose ground floors are filled with merchandise, now surround the market-place. Some five or six thousand traders, mostly Arabs, assemble at Metammeh, and over a thousand Abyssinians, porters, wood-cutters, and retailers of mead descend from their mountains to collect the crumbs of the feast. Many crocodiles sport in the waters of the Meshareh, and betray no fear Of the vast