Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/629

Rh more distant mountainous country of Abyssinia; and if the Ethiopia, where Candace reigned, was the same as Abyssinia, the story of the queen of Saba must be given up as a falsehood; for, in that case, there would be a woman sitting upon the throne of that country 500 years after she was excluded by a solemn deliberate fundamental law of the land.

it is known, from credible writers, engaged in no controversy, that this Candace reigned upon the Nile in Atbara, much nearer Egypt. Her capital also was taken in the time of Augustus, a few years before the Conversion, by Philip; and we shall have occasion often to mention her successors and her kingdom, as existing in the reign of the Abyssinian kings, long after the Mahometan conquest; they existed when I passed through Atbara, and do undoubtedly exist there to this day. What puts an end to all this argument is a matter of fact, which is, that the Abyssinians continued Jews and Pagans, and were found to be so above 300 years after the time of the Apostles. Instead, therefore, of taking the first of this list (Bazen) for the prince under whom Abyssinia was converted from Judaism, as authors have advanced, in conformity to the Abyssinian annals, we shall fix upon the 13th (Abreha and Atzbeha, whom we believe to be but one prince) and, before we enter into the narrative of that remarkable event, we shall observe, that, from Bazen to Abreha, being 341 years inclusive, the eighth of Bazen being the first of Christ, by this account of the conversion, which happened under Abreha and Atzbeha, it must have been about 333 years after Christ, or 341 after Bazen.

we certainly know, that the first bishop, ordained for the conversion of Abyssinia, was sent from Alexandria by

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