When the various circumstances and testimonies which have been detailed are taken into consideration, there can be scarcely any doubt left on the mind of the reader, that, by the word Ethiopia, two different countries have been meant. This seems to be perfectly clear. And it is probable that by an Ethiopian, a negro, correctly speaking, may have been meant, not merely a black person; and it seems probable that the following may have been the real fact, viz. that a race either of Negroes or Blacks, but probably of the former, came from India to the West, occupying or conquering and forming a kingdom on the two banks of the Euphrates, the eastern Ethiopia alluded to in Numbers, chap. xii.; that they advanced forwards occupying Syria, Phœnicia, Arabia, and Egypt; that they, or some tribe of them, were the shepherd kings of Egypt; that after a time the natives of Egypt rose against them and expelled part of them into Abyssinia or Ethiopia, another part of them into Idumea or Syria, or Arabia, and another part into the African desert of Lybia, where they were called Lubim.
The time at which these people came to the West was certainly long previous to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt; but how long previous to that event must remain doubtful. No system of chronology can be admitted as evidence; every known system is attended with too many difficulties. Perhaps chronology may be allowed to instruct us, in relation to facts, as to which preceded or followed, but certainly nothing more. No chronological date can be depended on previous to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus: whether we can depend upon it quite so far back seems to admit of doubt.
Part of the ancient monuments of Egypt may have been executed by these people. The memnoniums found in Persia and in Egypt leave little room to doubt this. In favour of this hypothesis all ancient sacred and profane historical accounts agree; and poetical works of imagination cannot be admitted to compete as evidence with the works of serious historians like Herodotus. This hypothesis likewise reconciles all the accounts which at first appear discordant, but which no other will do. It is also confirmed by a considerable quantity of circumstantial evidence. It is, therefore, presumed by the writer, he may safely assume in his forthcoming discussions, that there were two Ethiopias, one to the East of the Red Sea, the other to the West of it; and that a very great nation of blacks from India, did rule over almost all Asia in a very remote æra, in fact beyond the reach of history or any of our records.
This and what has been observed respecting judicial astrology will be retained in recollection by my reader; they will both be found of great importance in our future inquiries. In my Essay on The Celtic Druids, I have shewn, that a great nation called Celtæ, of whom the Druids were the priests, spread themselves almost over the whole earth, and are to be traced in their rude gigantic monuments from India to the extremity of Britain. Who these can have been but the early individuals of the black nation of whom we have been treating I know not, and in this opinion I am not singular. The learned Maurice says, “Cuthites, i. e. Celts, built the great temples in India and Britain, and excavated the caves of the former.”[1] And the learned Mathematician, Reuben Burrow, has no hesitation in pronouncing Stonehenge to be a temple of the black, curly-headed Buddha.
I shall leave the further consideration of this black nation for the present. I shall not detain my reader with any of the numerous systems of the Hindoos, the Persians, the Chaldeans, Egyptians, or other nations, except in those particular instances which immediately relate to the object of this work,—in the course of which I shall often have occasion to recur to what I have here said, and shall also have opportunities of supporting it by additional evidence.
- ↑ Maurice, Hist. Hind. Vol. II. p. 249.
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