Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/601

Rh heir male, however distant, in exclusion of all heirs female whatever, however near; and that these two articles should be considered as the fundamental laws of the kingdom, never to be altered or abolished. And, lastly, That the heirs male of the royal house, should always be sent prisoners to a high mountain, where they were to continue till their death, or till the succession should open to them.

was the reason of this last regulation is not known, it being peculiar to Abyssinia, but the custom of having women for sovereigns, which was a very old one, prevailed among the neighbouring shepherds in the last century, as we shall see in the course of this history, and, for what we know, prevails to this day. It obtained in Nubia till Augustus's time, when Petreius, his lieutenant in Egypt, subdued her country, and took the queen Candace prisoner. It endured also after Tiberius, as we learn from St Philip's baptising the eunuch * servant of queen Candace, who must have been successor to the former; for she, when taken prisoner by Petreius, is represented as an infirm woman, having but one eye †. Candace indeed was the name of all the sovereigns, in the same manner Cæsar was of the Roman emperors. As for the last severe part, the punishment of the princes, it was probably intended to prevent some disorders among the princes of her house, that she had observed frequently to happen in the house of David ‡ at Jerusalem.

The

† This shews the falsehood of the remark Strabo makes, that it was a custom in Meroë, if their sovereign was any way mutilated, for the subjects to imitate the imperfection. In this case, Candace's subjects would have all lost an eye. Strabo, lib. 17. p. 777, 778.
 * Acts, chap. viii. ver. 27 and 38.

‡ 2 Sam. chap. xvi, ver. 22. 1 Kings, chap. ii. ver. 13.