A German Historian thus sums up all that is known of Ethiopian
history――that is, of the part which the great Negro race, inhabiting
all Africa with the exception of the north-eastern coasts, performed
in the general affairs of mankind in the early ages of the world:――‘On
the history of this division of the species two remarks may be made:
the one, that a now entirely extinct knowledge of the extension and
power of this branch of the human family must have been forced upon
even the Greeks by their early poets and historians; the other, that
the Ethiopian history is interwoven throughout with that of Egypt. As
regards the first remark, it is clear that in the earliest ages this
branch of the race must have played an important part, since Meroe (in
the present Nubia) is mentioned both by Herodotus (B. C. 408) and
Strabo (A. D. 20); by the one as a still-existing, by the other as a
formerly-existing seat of royalty, and centre of the Ethiopian
religion and civilization.[1] To this Strabo adds, that the race
spread from the boundaries of Egypt over the mountains of Atlas, as
far as the Gaditanian Straits. Ephorus, too (B. C. 405), seems to have
had a very great impression of the Ethiopians, since he names in the
east the Indians, in the south the Ethiopians, in the west the Celts,
in the north the Scythians, as the most mighty and numerous peoples of
the known earth. Already in Strabo’s time, however, their ancient
power had been gone for an indefinite period, and the Negro states
found themselves, after Meroe had ceased to be a religious capital,
almost in the same situation as that in which they still continue. The
second remark on the Negro branch of the human race and its history,
can only be fully elucidated when the interpretation of the
inscriptions on Egyptian monuments shall have been farther advanced.
The latest travels into Abyssinia show this much――that at one time the
Egyptian religion and civilization extended over the principal seat of
the northern Negroes. Single mummies and monumental figures
corroborate what Herodotus expressly says, that a great portion of the
Egyptians of his time had black skins and woolly hair; hence we infer
that the Negro race had combined itself intimately with the Caucasian
part of the population. Not these notices only, but the express
testimonies also of the Hebrew annals, show Egypt to have contained an
abundance of Negroes, and mention a conquering king invading it at the
head of a Negro host, and governing it for a considerable time. The
nature of the accounts on which we must found does not permit us to
give an accurate statement; we remark, however, that the Indians, the
Egyptians, and the Babylonians, are not the only peoples which aimed
at becoming world-conquerors before the historic age, but that also to
the Ethiopian stock warlike kings were not wanting in the early times.
The Mongols alone seem to have enjoyed a happy repose within their own
seats in the primitive historic times, and those antecedent to them;
they appear first very late as conquerors and destroyers in the
history of the west. If, indeed, the hero-king of the Ethiopians,
Tearcho, were one and the same with the Tirhakah of the book of Kings
(2 Kings, xix. 9), then the wonder of those stories would disappear
which were handed down by tradition to the Greeks; but even Bochart
has combatted this belief, and we cannot reconcile it with the
circumstances which are related of both. It remains for us only to
observe, by way of summary, that in an age antecedent to the historic,
the Ethiopian peoples may have been associated together in a more
regular manner than in our own or Grecian and Roman times; and that
their distant expeditions may have been so formidable, both to the
Europeans as far as the Ægean Sea in the east, and to the dwellers on
the Gaditanian Straits (Gibraltar) on the west, that the dim knowledge
of the fact was not lost even in late times. In more recent ages we
observe here and there an Ethiopian influence, and especially in the
Egyptian history; but as concerns the general progress of the human
species, the Negro race never acquired any vital importance.
The foregoing observations may be summed up in this proposition:――That
in the most remote antiquity, Africa was overspread by the Negro
variety of the human species; that in those parts of the continent to
which the knowledge of the ancient geographers did not extend――namely,
all south of Egypt and the Great Desert――the Negro race degenerated,
or at least dispersed into tribes, kingdoms, etc., constituting a
great savage system within its own torrid abode, similar to that which
even now, in the adult age of the world, we are vainly attempting to
penetrate; but that on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red
Sea, the race either preserved its original faculty and intelligence
longer, or was so improved by contact and intermixture with its
Caucasian neighbors, as to constitute, under the name of the
Ethiopians, one of the great ante-historic dynasties of the world; and
that this dynasty ebbed and flowed against the Caucasian populations
of western Asia and eastern Europe, thus giving rise to mixture of
races along the African coasts of the north and east, until at length,
leaving these mixed races to act their part awhile, the pure Ethiopian
himself retired from historic view into Central Africa, where he lay
concealed, till again in modern times he was dragged forth to become
the slave of the Caucasian. Thus Negro history hitherto has exhibited
a retrogression from a point once occupied, rather than a progress in
civilization. Even this fact, however, must somehow be subordinate to
a great law of general progress; and it is gratifying to know that, on
the coast of Africa, a settlement has recently been formed called
Liberia, peopled by liberated negro slaves from North America; and
who, bringing with them the Anglo-American civilization, give promise
of founding a cultured and prosperous community.