Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/634

Rh 612 ETHIOPIA extended the Egyptian dominion towards the south, and the supremacy of Tuthmosis III. seems to have been widely acknowledged throughout the Ethiopian region. WhenAmenhotepII., as we are informed by an inscription in the Nubian temple of Amadas, brought back from his conquests the dead bodies of the kings he had slain, one of them was sent to adorn the walls of Napata, the Ethiopian city now identified with Jebel Barkal. Amenhotep III., Horemhebi, and the more warlike Rameses or Ramessu I. are all mentioned as in possession of the Ethiopian supremacy, but as engaged from time to time in wars within the region. Amenhotep II I. founded at Napata a great fortress-temple for the god Amon-ra of Thebes. A general revolt took place against Ramses II. and the importance of the wars that followed is shown by the extensive sculptures and paintings in regard to them still preserved at Tpsambul ( Abu-simbel) and Beit Walli. During the XXII. Egyptian Dynasty the independence and power of the principal Ethiopian potentate had increased so much that Azerch- Amen, of Napata, the Zerah of the Biblical narrative, conquered all the valley of the Nile, and advanced against Syria and Judah ; the defeat, however, inflicted on him at Z ephathah by King Asa was so complete that he withdrew again within his original frontiers. Piankhi Meriamen, the priest-king of Napata, whose family had an Egyptian origin, took advantage of the confusion into which Egypt had fallen during the XXI II. Dynasty, and succeeded in establishing his authority ; and for several generations Ethiopian influence was predominant in Egypt. T irhakah especially was a monarch of great power, as is attested by his monuments at Napata and elsewhere. The great Egyptian Psametik was enabled by foreign assistance to restore a native dynasty ; but the excessive favour which he showed to those who had helped him to his throne so displeased the Egyptian military caste that they emigrated to Ethiopia to the number, according to Herodotus, of 240,000. At Ipsambul (Abu simbel) there is a Greek inscription on one of the great colossi of Ramses pur porting to have been engraved by the Greek mercenaries who accompanied the expedition of Psametik against his runaway subjects. The Persian invader Cambyses, who brought the Egyptian independence to a close, failed in his attack on the Ethiopian kingdom ; but the change in the condition of Egypt helped to open up Ethiopia to Greek enterprise and influence. Under the Ptolemies various Greek colonies Dire-Berenices, Adulis, Arsinoe were established on the Ethiopian coast of the Red Sea, and Greek learning was introduced into the Ethiopian court. Ptolemy Philadelphia invaded the country, but came to terms with the king, Ergamenes or Arkamen, who is reported to have relieved the royal power from the ecclesiastical bondage under which it had long suffered, by putting the priests to death and plundering their temples. Arkamen s name occurs on the monuments at Debod or Tabet. In the reign of Augustus, C. Petronius had to defend the Egyptian frontiers against an invasion under Queen Candace : in the second campaign he ex torted the submission of the country, whioh continued nominally Roman till the reign of Diocletian. A garrison was established at Primis or Ibrim, and a troop of German horse had its head-quarters at Pselchis. There is still a very perfect Roman camp at Mehendi, to the south of Hierasykaminos. About the 1st century of the Christian era a new kingdom seems to have grown up at Axume. The king Zoskales is mentioned by the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, who also tells us that he was acquainted with Greek ; he may be identified with the Za Hagale or Hekla of the Ethiopian list of kings. In the sixth century the Christians of Yemen, being oppressed by the dynasty of Jewish proselytes who at that time held the throne of the Himyarites, asked and obtained tho assistance of the Axumita monarch ; but the Ethiopian sovereignty thus established only lasted for about seventy years. Compare EGYPT, vol. vii. pp. 730-748 ; ABYSSINIA, vol. i., and the wotks of Salt, &c., there referred to ; and in addition Lenormant, Manuel de I histoire orientale ; Records of the Past, vol. iv. ; &quot;Vivien de Saint Martin, &quot;fclairc. geogr. et hist, surl inscriptiond Adulis, in Journa.lAsiaf.ique, 1863, published separately in 1864, and his Le Nord de I Afrique dans I antiguild grecque et romaine, 1863. ETHIOPIAN, or Geez, is the name given in modern philology to a language of the Semitic family, which is still used in Abyssinia for literary and ecclesiastical purposes. It shows the closest affinity in grammatical structure with Arabic. The verb has ten conjugations, of which two aro peculiar, and the remaining eight analogous to as many of the ten Arabic conjugations. The noun presents a greater similarity to the Hebrew noun, though at the same time it has decidedly Arabic characteristics. There is no dual form either in noun or verb. About a third of the vocables of the language have been traced to Arabic roots, while others find their counterparts and kindred in Aramaic and Hebrew. A considerable number of words have been imported from foreign tongues some as mere exotics by translators and scholars, but many others through direct popular intercourse with foreign nations. Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek have been chiefly laid under contri bution, the last especially for words technical to Christianity. Of course it is often difficult to decide in the case of Aramaic and Arabic vocables whether they are real borrow ings since the differentiation of the languages, or are part of the original common stock of the Semitic. There are at least two modern languages which have sprung from tho ancient Geez, distinguished in modern philology by the con ventional names of Tigrina and Tigre&quot;, both derived from the native Tigraj, which is applied to either indifferently. The Tigre&quot;, spoken by the half-nomadic races on the fron tiers of Nubia and Sennaaris, at least among one tribe, the Habab, extremely like the parent speech ; the Tigrina, on the other hand, is corrupt both in its sounds, its inflexions, and its vocabulary, and bears evidence more especially of Amharic influence. Tigre&quot; has been very partially inves tigated : Merx published, in 1868, a vocabulary and gram matical sketch ; Munziger s vocabulary is printed in Dillmann s Lexicon ; and a Tigre&quot; translation of the gospel of Luke by Kugler and Isenberg exists in manuscript. The Tigrina, or rather the Adoan dialect of the Tigrina, was treated pretty fully by Dr Praetorius in his Grammatik der Tigrina Sprache, 1872, and he has since published, in the Ztschrft. d. Dent. Morg. Gen., 1874, a paper on the two dialects of Hamasen and Tanben, which differ considerably in vocabulary as well as in pronunciation, but are mutually intelligible. Another dialect mainly of Ethiopic character is spoken by the people of Harrar, who form a small Semitic enclave in the Hamitic population to the east of southern Abyssinia. Its peculiarities have been investi gated by Burton, First Footsteps in -East Africa, 1856, and by Pra?torius in Ztschr. d. Deut. Morg. Ges., 1869. The affinity of the Geez alphabet has given rise to no small discussion : Ludolf brought it into comparison with the Samaritan, De Lacy with the Greek and Coptic, and Lepsius with the Devanagari, but in the opinion of most Semitic investigators, its Semitic origin has been pioved by the discovery of the cognate Himyaritic alphabet or musnad (cf. Renan, Hist, des Langnrs Semitiques, p. 308). The literature of the Ethiopian language, like that of Armenian, is almost exclusively Christian, and, indeed, with comparatively slight exceptions, theological or ecclesiastical. Only a few inscriptions have been preserved of the pre- Christian period, the most notable being those of Axum