Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/62

 ABYLA ABYSSINIA Bass-Belief at Abydos, Egypt (From a Photograph.) of that luckless lover. II. An ancient city (originally This, now Ardbat el-Matfoori) of tipper Egypt, on the canal called the Balir Yusuf, 6 m. W. of the Nile and about 60 m. below Thebes. It was anciently the second city of the Thebaid, the birthplace of Menes, and the reputed burial place of Osiris, and hence a great necropolis. There are numerous very ancient tombs cut in the adjacent hills, but its most remarkable remains are the palace of Memnon and the temple of Osiris. In the latter was discovered in 1818 the celebrated "tablet of Abydos," or Ramses table, at pres- ent in the British museum, upon which is in- scribed in hieroglyphics a genealogy of the 18th dynasty of the Pharaohs. DOmichen, in his explorations (1864-'5) of the interior of the temple of Osiris, found a new Egyptian table, which Lepsius calls the Sethos table. It is more complete than that of Ramses, contains 65 shields and an uninterrupted record of the kings of the first three dynasties, beginning with Menes, corresponding with the account of Manetho, and is regarded as more perfect than the table of Sakkarah. This discovery is believed to be important in respect to the re- searches into the most remote eras of Egypt. ABYLA, one of the pillars of Hercules, at the N. "W. extremity of Africa, opposite Calpe (now Gibraltar) in Spain, the other pillar. It was believed by the ancients to have been for- merly joined with Calpe, but separated by Hercules, giving entrance to the Mediterranean. ABYSSINIA (Arab. Habezh, signifying a mix- ture of peoples), a country of eastern Africa, lying S. W. of the Red sea. Its boundaries are not very accurately defined, especially as the name is frequently applied to a much greater extent of territory than that included in Abyssinia proper, which was formerly said to comprise the three important states of Tigr, Amhara, and Shoa, but from which Shoa has been excluded by some modern geographers. According to Keith Johnston, however, it ex- tends from lat. 8 80' to 16 30' N., and from Ion. 34 20' to 48 20' E. On the N. and N. W. it is bordered by Nubia and Sennaar, while southward and eastward lie the Galla and So- mali countries and Adal. The Samhara land separates Abyssinia proper from the Red sea, which is nowhere less than 90 m. distant from the frontier. According to M. d'Abbadie, the country is called Ethiopia by the natives, who properly employ the word Abyssinia to denote that portion of the population, for the most part professedly Christian, who have lost all idea of tribal differences. Its maximum length is upward of 600 m. and maximum breadth nearly as much ; but these estimates are prob- ably approximate, and as the area of the coun- try depends upon them, it cannot be accurately stated. The population is believed to be from 8,000,000 to 5,000,000. Considered with ref- erence to its physical geography, Abyssinia is an extensive, elevated, and irregular table land, consisting of a series of plateaux of various altitudes, which rise into isolated groups and ranges of flat-topped mountains. This table land runs nearly due N. and S., and slopes from its highest ridge toward the Red sea on one side and the interior of the continent on the other, so as to form an eastern and a western watershed. Toward the swamps and plains of Sennaar and Nubia the descent from this high region is gradual, but it is very abrupt on the east, the seaward slope being about twelve times greater than the opposite slope toward the Nile. The average elevation of the pla- teaux, which rise terrace-like and with grad- ually increasing elevation from N. to S., is