Dr. Wells states, that the Ethiopians of Africa alone are commonly called Ludim, both by ancient and modern writers.[1]
But the country east of the Euphrates was called Cush, as well as the country west of it; thus giving the capital of Persia, Susan or Susiana, which was said to be built by Memnon, to the Cushites or Ethiopians, as well as Arabia.
Mr. Frey, in his vocabulary, gives the word כוש, cus, as a word whose meaning is unknown; but the Septuagint tells us it meant black. Mr. Hyde shews, that it was a common thing for the Chaldeans to substitute the Tau for the Shin, thus כות cut, for כוש cus. Thus, in their dialect, the Cuthites were the same as the Cushites.
If my reader will examine all the remaining passages of the Old Testament, not cited by me, where the words Ethiopia and Ethiopians are used, he will see that many of them can by no possibility relate to the African Ethiopia.
6. Eusebius[2] states the Ethiopians to have come and settled in Egypt, in the time of Amenophis. According to this account, as well as to the account given by Philostratus,[3] there was no such country as Ethiopia beyond Egypt until this invasion. According to Eusebius these people came from the river Indus, and planted themselves to the south of Egypt, in the country called from them Ethiopia. The circumstance named by Eusebius that they came from the Indus, at all events, implies that they came from the East, and not from the South, and would induce a person to suspect them of having crossed the Red Sea from Arabia: they must either have done this, or have come round the northern end of the Red Sea by the Isthmus of Suez; but they certainly could not have come from the present Ethiopia.
But there are several passages in ancient writers which prove that Eusebius is right in saying, not only that they came from the East, but from a very distant or very eastern part.
Herodotus[4] says, that there were two Ethiopian nations, one in India, the other in Egypt. He derived his information from the Egyptian priests, a race of people who must have known the truth; and there seems no reason either for them or Herodotus to have mis-stated the fact.
Philostratus[5] says, that the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia, who settled near the sources of the Nile, descended from the Bramins of India, having been driven thence for the murder of their king.[6] This, Philostratus says, he learnt from an ancient Brahmin, called Jarchas.
Another ancient writer, Eustathius, also states, that the Ethiopians came from India. These concurring accounts can scarcely be doubted; and here may be discovered the mode and time also when great numbers of ancient rites and ceremonies might be imported from India into Egypt: for, that there was a most intimate relation between them in very ancient times cannot be doubted; indeed, it is not doubted. The only question has been, whether Egypt borrowed from India, or India from Egypt. All probability is clearly, for a thousand reasons, in favour of the superior antiquity of India, as Bailly and many other learned men have shewn—a probability which seems to be reduced to a certainty by Herodotus, the Egyptians themselves, and the other authors just now quoted. There is not a particle of proof, from any historical records known to the author, that any colony ever passed from Egypt to India, but there is, we see, direct, positive historical evidence, of the Indians having come to Africa. No attention can be paid to the idle stories of the conquest of India by Bacchus, who was merely an imaginary personage, in short, the God Sol.
Dr. Shuckford gives an opinion that Homer and Herodotus are both right, and that there were two Ethiopias, and that the Africans came from India.[7]
