PART II. AFRICAN NATIONS. GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE OF AFRICA. 114. The continent of Africa differs in many important respects from that of Asia. The latter, extending into three zones, has its greatest extent in the most favored of all, the North Temperate. Africa is almost wholly within the tropics, only a small portion of its northern and southern extremities entering the two temperate zones, where their climate is most nearly torrid. Asia has the loftiest mountains on the globe, from which flow great rivers spreading fertility and affording every means of navigation. Africa has but two great rivers, the Nile and the Niger, and but few mountains of remarkable elevation. 115. Africa is thus the hottest, driest, and least accessible of the continents. One-fifth of its surface is covered by the great sea of sand which stretches from the Atlantic nearly to the Red Sea. Much of the interior consists of marshes and impenetrable forests, haunted only by wild beasts and unfit for human habitation. With the exception of a very few favored portions, Africa is therefore unsuited to the growth of great states; and it is only through two of these, Egypt and Carthage, that it claims an important part in ancient history. 116. NORTHERN AFRICA alone was known to the ancients, and its features were well marked and peculiar. Close along the Mediterranean lay a narrow strip of fertile land, watered by short streams which descended from the Atlas range. These mountains formed a rocky and scantily inhabited region to the southward, though producing in certain portions abundance of dates. Next came the Great Desert, varied only by a few small and scattered oases, where springs of water nourished a rich vegetation. South of the Sahara was a fertile inland country, near whose large rivers and lakes were cities and a numerous population; but these central African states were only visited by an occasional caravan which crossed the desert from the north, and had no political connection with the rest of the world. 117. In the western portion of Northern Africa, the mountains rise more gradually by a series of natural terraces from the sea, and the fertile country here attains a width of two hundred miles. This well watered, fruitful, and comparatively healthful region, is one of the most favored on the globe. In ancient times it was one vast corn-field from the Atlas to the Mediterranean. Here the native kingdom of Mauritania flourished; GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE OF AFRICA. 49 and after it was subdued by the Romans, the same fertile fields afforded bread to the rest of the civilized world. 118. Eastward from Mauritania the plain becomes narrower, the rivers fewer, and the soil less fertile, so that no great state, even if it had originated there, could have long maintained itself. The north-eastern corner of the continent, however, is the richest and most valuable of all the lands it contains. This is owing to the great river which, rising in the highlands of Abyssin'ia, and fed by the perpetual rains of Equatorial Africa, rolls its vast body of waters from south to north, through a valley three thousand miles in length. Every year in June it begins to rise; from August to December it overflows the country, and deposits a soil so rich that the farmer has only to cast his grain upon the retiring waters, and abundant harvests spring up without further tillage. 119. The soil of Egypt was called by its inhabitants the "Gift of the Nile." In a climate almost without rain, this country without its river would, indeed, have been only a ravine in the rocky and sandy desert; as barren as Sahara itself. The prosperity of the year was, from the earliest times, accurately measured by the Nilometers at Memphis and Elephan'tine. If the water rose less than eighteen feet, famine ensued; a rise of from eighteen to twenty-four feet betokened moderate harvests; twentyseven feet were considered “a good Nile;” a flood of thirty feet was ruinous, for, in such a case, houses were undermined, cattle swept away, the land rendered too spongy for the following seed-time, the labor of the farmer was delayed, and often fevers were bred by the stagnant and lingering waters. Usually, however, the Nile was the great benefactor of the Egyptians, and was considered a fit emblem of the creating and preserving Osiris. Its waters were carefully distributed by canals and regulated by dykes. During the inundation, the country appeared like a great inland lake girdled by mountains. Lower Egypt, or the Delta, was compared by Herodotus to the Grecian Archipelago, dotted with villages which appeared like white islands above the expanse of waters. 120. Lower Egypt is a vast plain; Upper Egypt a narrowing valley. The fertile portion of the latter occupies only a part of the space between the Lib'yan Desert and the sea. In its widest part it is less than eleven, in its narrowest only five miles in width; and in some places the granite or limestone cliff springs directly from the river. Being so well fitted to support a numerous people, the whole valley of the Nile, through Nubia and Abyssinia as well as Egypt, was very early colonized from the opposite shores of Asia. The hair, features, and form of the skull represented in the human figures on the monuments, prove the dominant race in these countries to have been of the same great family with the people on the neighboring peninsula of Arabia. 121. Before the conquests of the Persians, Northern Africa was divided A. H.-4. between five nations: the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, Libyans, and Greeks. 122. The ETHIOPIANS occupied the Nile Valley above Egypt, including what is now known as Abyssinia. The great plateau between the headwaters of the Nile and the Red Sea is rendered fertile by frequent and abundant rains; and the many streams which descend from it to the Nile cause in part the yearly overflow which fertilizes Egypt. Mer'oë was the chief city of the Ethiopians. Some learned men have supposed its monuments of architecture and sculpture to be even older than those of Egypt. 123. Arabian traditions say that the inhabitants of the northern coasts of Africa were descendants of the Canaanites whom the Children of Israel drove out of Palestine. As late as the fourth century after Christ, two pillars of white marble near Tangier still bore the inscription in Phoenician characters: "We are they that fled from before the face of the robber Joshua, the son of Nun." Whether or not this legend expressed a historical fact, it expressed the wide-spread belief of the people; and it is well known by other evidence that the African coasts of the Mediterranean were very early dotted with PHŒNICIAN settlements, such as the two Hip'pos, Utica, Tu ́nes, Hadrume'tum, Lep'tis, and greatest of all, though among the latest, Carthage. 124. The LIBYANS occupied a greater portion of Northern Africa than any other nation, extending from the borders of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Great Desert, with the exception of the foreign settlements on the coast, to the Mediterranean Sea. They had, however, comparatively little power, consisting chiefly as they did of wandering tribes, destitute of settled government or fixed habitations. In the western and more fertile portion, certain tribes of Libyans cultivated the soil and became more nearly civilized; but these were soon subjected to the growing power of the Phoenician colonies. 125. The GREEKS possessed a colony on that point of Northern Africa which approached most nearly to their own peninsula. They founded Cyre'ne about B. C. 630, and Barca about seventy years later. They had also a colony at Naucra'tis in Egypt, and probably upon the greater oasis. The history of these Grecian settlements will be found in Book III. HISTORY OF EGYPT. PERIODS. I. The Old Empire, from earliest times to II. Middle Empire, or that of the Shepherd Kings, III. The New Empire, B. C. 1900. " 1900-1525. 66 1525-525. 126. From the island of Elephantine to the sea, a distance of 526 miles. the Nile Valley was occupied by EGYPT, a monarchy the most ancient, with a history among the most wonderful in the world. While other nations may be watched in their progress from ignorance and rudeness to whatever art they have possessed, Egypt appears in the earliest morning light of history "already skillful, erudite, and strong." Some of her buildings are older than the Migration of Abraham, but the oldest of them show a skill in the quarrying, transporting, carving, and joining of stone which modern architects admire but can not surpass. 127. FIRST PERIOD. The early Egyptians believed that there had been a time when their ancestors were savages and cannibals, dwelling in caves in those ridges of sandstone which border the Nile Valley on the east; and that their greatest benefactors were Osiris and Isis, who elevated them into a devout and civilized nation, eating bread, drinking wine and beer, and planting the olive. The worship of Osiris and Isis, therefore, became prevalent throughout Egypt, while the several cities and provinces had each its own local divinities. According to Manetho, a native historian of later times,* gods, spirits, demigods, and manes, or the souls of men, were the first rulers of Egypt. This is merely an ancient way of saying that the earliest history of Egypt, as of most other countries, is shrouded in ignorance and fabulous conjecture. 128. Instead of commencing its existence as a united kingdom, Egypt consisted at first of a number of scattered nomes, or petty states, each having for its nucleus a temple and a numerous establishment of priests. Fifty-three of these nomes are mentioned by one historian, thirty-six by another. As one became more powerful, it sometimes swallowed up its neighbors, and grew into a kingdom which embraced a large portion or even the whole of the country. 129. The first mortal king of Mis'raim, the "double land," was Menes, of This. His inheritance was in Upper Egypt, but by his talents and exploits he made himself master of the Lower, and selected there a site for his new capital. For this purpose he drained a marshy tract which at certain seasons had been overflowed by the Nile, made a dyke to confine the river within its regular channel, and on the reclaimed ground built the city of Memphis. Menes may therefore be considered as the founder of the empire. 130. Athothes (Thoth), his son and successor, was skilled in medicine and wrote works on anatomy. Of the six following kings in regular descent who form this dynasty little is known, and it is even possible that they belong rather to tradition than to ascertained history. After the two Thoths came Mnevis, or Uenephes, who bore the name of the Sacred Calf of Heliopolis. He is said, nevertheless, to have been a high-minded, in * He lived in the reign of Ptolemy I, B. C. 323-283. telligent man, and the most affable prince on record. He built the pyramid of Koko'me, whose site can not now be identified. During his reign there was famine in Egypt. 131. The Third Dynasty reigned at Memphis; its founder was Sesorcheres the Giant. The third king, Sesonchosis, was a wise and peaceful monarch, who advanced the three arts of writing, medicine, and architecture, and was celebrated by a grateful people in hymns and ballads as among their greatest benefactors. He introduced the fashion of building with hewn stones, previous structures having been made either of rough, irregular stones or of brick. He was known to the Greeks as the "peaceful Sesostris," while the two later monarchs who bore this name were great warriors and conquerors. 132. His son, Sasychis (Mares-sesorcheres), was a celebrated law-giver. He is said to have organized the worship of the gods, and to have invented geometry and astronomy. He also made that singular law by which a debtor might give his father's mummy as security for a debt. If the money was not paid, neither the debtor nor his father could ever rest in the family sepulcher, and this was considered the greatest possible disgrace. B. C. 2440. 133. The monumental and more certain history begins with the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Dynasties of Manetho, which reigned simultaneously in Lower, Middle, and Upper Egypt. Of these the Fourth Dynasty, reigning at Memphis, was most powerful, the others being in some degree dependent. Proofs of its greatness are found in the vast structures of stone which overspread Middle Egypt between the Libyan Mountains and the Nile; for the Fourth Dynasty may be remembered as that of the pyramid-builders. 134. The name of Soris, the first of the family, has been found upon the northern pyramid of Abousîr. Suphis I, or Shufu, was the Cheops of Herodotus, and is regarded as the builder of the Great Pyramid. His brother, Suphis II, or Nou-shufu, had part in this work. He reigned jointly with Suphis I, and alone, after his death, for three years. These two kings were oppressors of the people and despisers of the gods. They crushed the former by the severe toils involved in their public works, and ordered the temples of the latter to be closed and their worship to cease. 135. Mencheres the Holy, son of Suphis I, had, like his father, a reign of sixty-three years, but differed from him in being a good and humane sovereign. He re-opened the temples which his father had closed, restored religious ceremonies of sacrifice and praise, and put an end to the oppressive labors. He was therefore much venerated by the people, and was the subject of many ballads and hymns. The four remaining kings of the Fourth Dynasty are known to us only by names and dates. The |