Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/66

 2. Berber Country.—This word means more than the "land of the barbarians," and seems, like our modern "Barbary States," to refer to the Berber race, as representing the ancient Hamitic stock of North Africa.

The name itself seems to be foreign to the people, and is probably related to the Arabic bar, a desert; and its application to North Africa recalls that ancient race-opposition about the Gulf of Aden, when the Red Men, or ruddy people, overcame the "children of the desert"; who spread over all North Africa and carried the name with them, submitting time after time to similar Semitic conquests, Phoenician, Carthaginian or Saracen.

The occurrence of the name throughout North Africa is remarkable. We have the modern Somali port of Berbera, the Nile town and district of Berber (and its inhabitants, the Barbara, Barberins or Barbarins, who appear in the ancient Theban inscriptions as Beraberata); the Barbary States, the modern Berbers or Kabyles; and at the western extremity, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, still another tribe calling themselves Berabra.

The ancient Egyptians extended the word to include the meanings of savage and outlander, or public enemies in general; and from them the Greeks took the word into their own language, with like meanings.

The Berbers of the Periplus probably included the ancestors of the Bejas between the Nile and the Red Sea, the Danakils between the Upper Nile, Abyssinia and the Gulf of Aden, and the Somals and Gallas.

2. Cave-Dwelling Fish-Eaters, Wild-Flesh-Eaters, Calf-Eaters.—The original names, Ichthyophagi (Troglodytae), Agriophagi, Moschophagi, add nothing to our ethnic knowledge, being merely appellations given by the Greeks; and they are therefore translated. These tribes are represented by the modern Bisharins. "Calf-eaters" seems to mean eaters after the style of calves, i.e. of green things, rather than eaters of calves. Some commentators would replace Agriophagi by Acridophagi, locust-eaters.

2. Meroe was the final capital of the Kingdom of Nubia. It became the royal seat about 560 B. C. and continued as such until a few years after this Periplus, when the kingdom, worn out by continued attacks by the tribes of the desert and the negroes of the Sudan, fell to pieces. It was located on the Nile, below the 6th cataract, but just within the fertile region that begins above the confluence of the Atbara; and is identified with the modern Begerawiyeh, about 16° 55′ N.