[1] During the Second Empire unsuccessful efforts were made by France
to obtain a Red Sea port and a foothold in northern Abyssinia. (See
SOMALILAND: _French_.)
ERIVAN, a government of Russia, Transcaucasia, having the province of
Kars on the W., the government of Tiflis on the N., that of Elisavetpol
on the N. and E., and Persia and Turkish Armenia on the S. It occupies
the top of an immense plateau (6000-8000 ft.). Continuous chains of
mountains are met with only on its borders, and in the E., but the whole
surface is thickly set with short ridges and isolated mountains of
volcanic origin, of which Alagoz (14,440 ft.) and Ararat (16,925 ft.)
are the most conspicuous and the most important. Both must have been
active in Tertiary times. Lake Gok-cha (540 sq. m.) is encircled by such
volcanoes, and the neighbourhood of Alexandropol is a "volcanic
amphitheatre," being entirely buried under volcanic deposits. The same
is true of the slopes leading down to the river Aras; and the valley of
the upper Aras is a stony desert, watered only by irrigation, which is
carried on with great difficulty owing to the character of the soil. The
government is drained by the Aras, which forms the boundary with Persia
and flows with great velocity down its stony bed, the fall being 17-22
ft. per mile in its upper course, and 9 ft. at Ordubad, where it quits
the government, while lower down it again increases to 23 ft. Many of
the small lakes, filling volcanic craters, are of great depth. Timber is
very scarce. A variety of useful minerals exists, but only rock-salt is
obtained, at Nakhichevan and Kulp. The climate is extremely varied, the
following being the average temperatures and mean annual rainfall at
Alexandropol (alt. 5078 ft.) and Aralykh (2755 ft.) respectively: year
42 deg., January 12 deg., July 65 deg., mean rainfall 16.2 in.; and year
53 deg., January 20.5 deg., July 79 deg., rainfall 6.3 in. The
population numbered 829,578 in 1897 (only 375,086 women), of whom 82,278
lived in the towns. An estimate in 1906 gave a total of 909,100. They
consist chiefly of Armenians (441,000), Tatars (40%), Kurds (49,389),
with Russians, Greeks and Tates. Most of the Armenians belong to the
Gregorian (Christian) Church, and only 4020 to the Armenian Catholic
Church. The Tatars are mostly Shiite Mussulmans, only 27,596 being
Sunnites; 7772 belong to the peculiar faith of the Yezids. While barley
only can be grown on the high parts of the plateau, cotton, mulberry,
vines and all sorts of fruit are cultivated in the valley of the Aras.
Cattle-breeding is extensively carried on; camels also are bred, and
leeches are collected out of the swamps and exported to Persia. Industry
is in its infancy, but cottons, carpets, and felt goods are made in the
villages. A considerable trade is carried on with Persia, but trade with
Asia Minor is declining. The government is divided into seven
districts--Erivan, Alexandropol, Echmiadzin (chief town, Vagarshapat),
Nakhichevan, Novobayazet, Surmali (chief town, Igdyr), and
Sharur-daralagoz (chief town, Norashen). The principal towns are Erivan
(see below), Alexandropol (32,018 inhabitants in 1897), Novobayazet
(8507), Nakhichevan (8845), and Vagarshapat (3400).
ERIVAN, or IRWAN, in Persian, _Rewan_, a town of Russia, capital of the
government of the same name, situated in 40 deg. 14' N., 44 deg. 38' E.,
234 m. by rail S.S.W. of Tiflis, on the Zanga river, from which a great
number of irrigation canals are drawn. Altitude, 3170 ft. Pop. (1873)
11,938; (1897) 29,033. The old Persian portion of the town consists
mainly of narrow crooked lanes enclosed by mud walls, which effectually
conceal the houses, and the modern Russian portion is laid out in long
ill-paved streets. On a steep rock, rising about 600 ft. above the
river, stand the ruins of the 16th-century Turkish fortress, containing
part of the palace of the former Persian governors, a handsome but
greatly dilapidated mosque, a modern Greek church and a cannon foundry.
One chamber, called the Hall of the Sardar, bears witness to former
splendour in its decorations. The finest building in the city is the
mosque of Hussein Ali Khan, familiarly known as the Blue Mosque from the
colour of the enamelled tiles with which it is richly encased. At the
mosque of Zal Khan a passion play is performed yearly illustrative of
the assassination of Hussein, the son of Ali. Erivan is an Armenian
episcopal see, and has a theological seminary. The only manufactures are
a little cotton cloth, leather, earthenware and blacksmiths' work. The
fruits of the district are noted for their excellence--especially the
grapes, apples, apricots and melons. Armenians, Persians and Tatars are
the principal elements in the population, besides some Russians and
Greeks. The town fell into the power of the Turks in 1582, was taken by
the Persians under Shah Abbas in 1604, besieged by the Turks for four
months in 1615, and reconquered by the Persians under Nadir Shah in the
18th century. In 1780 it was successfully defended against Heraclius,
prince of Georgia; and in 1804 it resisted the Russians. At length in
1827 Paskevich took the fortress by storm, and in the following year the
town and government were ceded to Russia by the peace of Turkman-chai. A
Tatar poem in celebration of the event has been preserved by the
Austrian poet, Bodenstedt, in his _Tausend und ein Tage im Orient_
(1850).
ERLANGEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on a fertile
plain, at the confluence of the Schwabach and the Regnitz, 11 m. N.W. of
Nuremberg, on the railway from Munich to Bamberg. Pop. (1905) 23,720. It
is divided into an old and a new town, the latter consisting of wide,
straight and well-built streets. The market place is a fine square. Upon
it stand the town-hall and the former palace of the margraves of
Bayreuth, now the main building of the university. The latter was
founded by the margrave Frederick (d. 1763), who, in 1742, established a
university at Bayreuth, but in 1743 removed it to Erlangen. A statue of
the founder, erected in 1843 by King Louis I. of Bavaria, stands in the
centre of the square and faces the university buildings. The university
has faculties of philosophy, law, medicine and Protestant theology.
Connected with it are a library of over 200,000 volumes, geological,
anatomical and mineralogical institutions, a hospital, several clinical
establishments, laboratories and a botanical garden. Among the churches
of the town (six Protestant and one Roman Catholic), only the new town
church, with a spire 220 ft. high, is remarkable. The chief industries
of Erlangen are spinning and weaving, and the manufacture of glass,
paper, brushes and gloves. The brewing industry is also important, the
beer of Erlangen being famous throughout Germany and large quantities
being exported.
Erlangen owes the foundation of its prosperity chiefly to the French
Protestant refugees who settled here on the revocation of the edict of
Nantes and introduced various manufactures. In 1017 the place was
transferred from the bishopric of Wurzburg to that of Bamberg; in 1361
it was sold to the king of Bohemia. It became a town in 1398 and passed
into the hands of the Hohenzollerns, burgraves of Nuremberg, in 1416.
There for nearly three centuries it was the property of the margraves of
Bayreuth, being ceded with the rest of Bayreuth to Prussia in 1791. In
1810 it came into the possession of Bavaria. Erlangen was for many years
the residence of the poet Friedrich Ruckert, and of the philosophers
Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm von Schnelling.
See Stein and Muller, _Die Geschichte von Erlangen_ (1898).
ERLE, SIR WILLIAM (1793-1880), English lawyer and judge, was born at
Fifehead-Magdalen, Dorset, on the 1st of October 1793, and was educated
at Winchester and at New College, Oxford. Having been called to the bar
at the Middle Temple in 1819 he went the western circuit, became counsel
to the Bank of England, sat in parliament from 1837 to 1841 for the city
of Oxford, and, although of opposite politics to Lord Lyndhurst, was
made by him a judge of the common pleas in 1845. He was transferred to
the queen's bench in the following year, and in 1859 came back to the
common pleas as chief justice upon the promotion of Sir Alexander
Cockburn. He retired in 1866, receiving the highest eulogiums for the
ability and impartiality with which he had discharged the judicial
office. He died at his estate at Bramshott, Hampshire, on the 28th of
January 1880, and a monument without his name but in his memory
(sometimes erroneously supposed to mark the place where an old gibbet
was) stands on the top of Hindhead.
See E. Manson, _Builders of our Law_ (1904).
ERLKONIG, or ERL-KING, a mythical character in modern German literature,
represented as a gigantic bearded man with a golden crown and trailing
garments, who carries children away to that undiscovered country where
he himself abides. There is no such personage in ancient German
mythology, and the name is linguistically nothing more than the
perpetuation of a blunder. It first appeared in Herder's _Stimmen der
Volker_ (1778), where it is used in the translation of the Danish song
of the _Elf-King's Daughter_ as equivalent to the Danish _ellerkonge_,
or _ellekonge_, that is, _elverkonge_, the king of the elves; and the
true German word would have been _Elbkonig_ or _Elbenkonig_, afterwards
used under the modified form of _Elfenkonig_ by Wieland in his _Oberon_
(1780). Herder was probably misled by the fact that the Danish word
_elle_ signifies not only elf, but also alder tree (Ger. _Erle_). His
mistake at any rate has been perpetuated by both English and French
translators, who speak of a "king of the alders," "un roi des aunes,"
and find an explanation of the myth in the tree-worship of early times,
or in the vapoury emanations that hang like weird phantoms round the
alder trees at night. The legend was adopted by Goethe as the subject of
one of his finest ballads, rendered familiar to English readers by the
translations of Lewis and Sir Walter Scott; and since then it has been
treated as a musical theme by Reichardt and Schubert.
ERMAN, PAUL (1764-1851), German physicist, was born in Berlin on the
29th of February 1764. He was the son of the historian Jean Pierre Erman
(1735-1814), author of _Histoire des refugies_. He became teacher of
science successively at the French gymnasium in Berlin, and at the
military academy, and on the foundation of the university of Berlin in
1810 he was chosen professor of physics. He died at Berlin on the 11th
of October 1851. His work was mainly concerned with electricity and
magnetism, though he also made some contributions to optics and
physiology. His son, GEORG ADOLF ERMAN (1806-1877), was born in Berlin
on the 12th of May 1806, and after studying natural science at Berlin
and Konigsberg, spent from 1828 to 1830 in a journey round the world, an
account of which he published in _Reise um die Erde durch Nordasien und
die beiden Ozeane_ (1833-1848). The magnetic observations he made during
his travels were utilized by C.F. Gauss in his theory of terrestrial
magnetism. He was appointed professor of physics at Berlin in 1839, and
died there on the 12th of July 1877. From 1841 to 1865 he edited the
_Archiv fur wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland_, and in 1874 he
published, with H.J.R. Petersen, _Die Grundlagen der Gauss'schen Theorie
und die Erscheinungen des Erdmagnetismus im Jahre 1829_.
His son JOHANN PETER ADOLF ERMAN (1854- ), a famous Egyptologist, was
born in Berlin on the 31st of October 1854. Educated at Leipzig and
Berlin, he became extraordinary professor in 1883 and ordinary professor
in 1892 of Egyptology in the university of Berlin, and in 1885 he was
appointed director of the Egyptian department of the royal museum. For
an account of the Egyptological work of Erman and his school, see EGYPT:
_Language_.
ERMANARIC (fl. 350-376), king of the East Goths, belonged to the Amali
family, and was the son of Achiulf. His name occurs as Ermanaricus
(Jordanes), Airmanareiks (Gothic), _Eormenric_ (A. Sax.), Jormunrek
(Norse), Ermenrich (M.H. German). Ermanaric built up for himself a vast
kingdom, which eventually extended from the Danube to the Baltic and
from the Don to the Theiss. He drove the Vandals out of Dacia, compelled
the allegiance of the neighbouring tribes of West Goths, procured the
submission of the Herules, of many Slav and Finnish tribes, and even of
the Esthonians on the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. In his later days
the west Goths threw off his yoke, and, on the invasion of the Huns,
rather than witness the downfall of his kingdom he is said by Ammianus
Marcellinus to have committed suicide. His fate early became the centre
of popular tradition, which found its way into the narrative of
Jordanes or Jornandes (_De rebus geticis_, chap. 24), who compared him
to Alexander the Great and certainly exaggerated the extent of his
kingdom. He is there said to have caused a certain Sunilda or Sanielh to
be torn asunder by wild horses on account of her husband's traitorous
conduct. Her brothers Sarus and Ammius sought to avenge her. They
succeeded in wounding, not in killing the Gothic king, whose death
supervened in his one hundred and tenth year from the joint effects of
his wound and fear of the Hunnish invasion. This is evidently a
paraphrase of popular story which sought to supply plausible reasons for
Ermanaric's end. In German legend Ermanaric became the typical cruel
tyrant, and references to his crimes abound in German epic and in
Anglo-Saxon poetry. He is made to replace Odoacer as the enemy of
Dietrich of Bern, his nephew, and his history is related in the Norse
_Vilkina_ or _Thidrekssaga_, which chiefly embodies German tradition.
His evil genius, Sifka, Sibicho or Bicci, brings about the death of his
three sons. The Harlungs, Imbrecke and Fritile,[1] are his nephews, whom
he has strangled for the sake of their treasure, the Brisingo meni.
Sonhild or Svanhild becomes the wife of Ermanaric, and the motive for
her murder is replaced by an accusation of adultery between Svanhild and
her stepson. The story was already connected with the Nibelungen when it
found its way to the Scandinavian north by way of Germany. In the
_Volsunga Saga_ Svanhild is the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun. She is
given in marriage to the Gothic king Jormunrek (Ermanaric), who sends
his son Randver as proxy wooer in company of Bicci, the evil counsellor.
Randver is persuaded by Bicci to take his father's bride for himself.
Randver is hanged and Svanhild trampled to death by horses in the gate
of the castle. Gudrun eggs on Sorli and Hamdir or Hamtheow, her two sons
by her third husband, Jonakr the Hun, to avenge their sister. On the way
they slay their half-brother Erp, whom they suspect of lukewarmness in
the cause; arrived in the hall of Ermanaric they make a great slaughter
of the Goths, and hew off the hands and feet of Ermanaric, but they
themselves are slain with stones. The tale is told with variations by
Saxo Grammaticus (_Historia Danica_, ed. Muller, p. 408, &c.), and in
the Icelandic poems, the _Lay of Hamtheow_, _Gudrun's Chain of Woe_, and
in the prose _Edda_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--W. Grimm, in _Die deutsche Heldensage_ (2nd ed.,
Berlin, 1867), quotes the account given by Jordanes, references in
Beowulf, in the _Wanderer's Song_, _Exeter Book_, in _Parcival_, in
_Dietrichs Flucht_, the account given in the _Quedlinburg Chronicle_,
by Ekkehard in the _Chronicon Urspergense_, by Saxo Grammaticus, &c.
See also Vigfusson and Powell, _Corpus poeticum boreale_, vol. i.
(Oxford, 1883), and H. Symons, "Die deutsche Heldensage" in Paul's
_Grundriss d. german. Phil._ vol. iii. (Strassburg, 1900).