The Kingdom of Prester John

To the ancient Greeks Ethiopia was the country of " burnt faces." The furthermost of mankind lived there, on the edge of the River Oceanus. Homer called them a " blameless " people, and Herodotus declared that they were taller, hand- somer, and longer-lived than any other men. The early classical writers seemed to have grouped as Ethiopians all the dark-skinned races of Asia and Africa.

By the time of Strabo, Diodorus, and Pliny the region was limited to the upper part of the Nile and much was already known of it. The world was being connected by trade and conquest ; the victories of Alexander brought peoples, customs, and religions into communication ; what was known in Egypt or Arabia was becoming the common knowledge of Greece and Rome. There had, for example, been a colony of Syrian or Palestinian Jews in Abyssinia for centuries before Christ, and it appears that they had kept up their intercourse with Jerusalem. Gold and ivory had come down from the interior of Africa to Egypt. The Roman Empire fell heir to this intercourse and increased it.

There was still mystery enough, however. Diodorus had a strange catalogue of tribes inhabiting the interior, classified by diet or habitat, cave-dwellers or tree-dwellers, ostrich- eaters, elephant-eaters, whale-eaters, and tortoise-eaters. He tells us, moreover, of men who nibbled the tops of trees, and if they became short-sighted, starved to death. Even to Pliny much of Ethiopia was still fabulous.

The Abyssinians have taken the title of Ethiopians to themselves, misliking the name Abyssinia because it was derived from Arabic settlers. It is mainly the history of Abyssinia which Sir E. A. Wallis Budge gives in these two volumes ; for the sake of completeness, however, he adds also the history of Nubia.

Nubia has no such strange and romantic record as Abyssinia. Its history is bound up with Egypt and Rome. It was comparatively easy of access ; its own art and culture were mainly derivative ; and the very monuments of the country are chiefly monuments of alien races. It is hard to speak of a true native history in Nubia. Its greatest moments were during the Nubian conquest of Egypt, when its warrior kings proceeded with energy and military skill to reduce the whole country. Even then, however, they took on the religion and customs of the Egyptians and their reign gave no new impetus to civilization.

It is vastly different with Abyssinia ; for Abyssinia has a tale of its own, a history as full and as human as a European nation's. Its inhabitants are a Warlike and proud people. With a long Christian tradition, they have always considered themselves as equal to Europeans, or have even despised Europeans as traders and heretics. During the time of the European expansion they kept themselves independent and repulsed all the attacks made upon them. It was a great blow to their pride when the English expedition of 1868 defeated King Theodore. " For the first time in their history," says Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, " the Abyssinians had been conquered, and conquered by white men whom they despised in their hearts and regarded as dross."

They are a race of good physique, intelligent and self- sufficient ; better soldiers than business men ; loving disputes

and deeply attached to their national customs. They have, like the other nations of Christendom, traditions of great exploits in warfare and high examples of saintliness and renunciation. It would not be too much to say that they were the last great nation of our own Middle Ages. Centuries before the Christian era, the religion of Judaism had penetrated into their country. By their own account they were converted to Christianity in the Apostolic Age.

We know that the Christian missionaries were at work there in the fourth century, and their kings adopted Christianity

as the national religion in the middle of the fifth century. Since then the Abyssinians have kept their own national church on the model of the Eastern Confession.

The two romantic legends of Abyssinia of most interest to Europeans are those of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, and the reign, celebrated through Europe in the Middle Ages, of Prester John. All the Abyssinian monarchs claim to be descended from Solomon through Menyelek, the son of the Queen of Sheba ; and the story of her journey is gracefully and beautifully told in the native histories. There is no reason to think that the episode is entirely unhistoric ; at the very least it bears witness to the religious incourse from Palestine to Abyssinia. The native story goes on to tell how Menyelek, visiting his father Solomon, was recognized by him and took back with him to his own country the Ark of the Covenant.

It is difficult to identify Prester John, the great legendary champion of Christianity in the East. Sir Wallis Budge makes several suggestions. Perhaps the most likely is that Prester John is a corruption of Prester Djan, " priest-king," and the reference is more general than specific. The Church in Abyssinia has always had great control in the government of the country and could make and unmake kings by excom- munication, or by appeals to the religion of the common people. We may even trace some relic of Egyptian tradition in the relation of King to Church.

Whatever may be the truth behind the legends of Prester John, it is certain that. Abyssinia may bear with France and the Slavonic nations of the Balkans the honour of standing firm against the advances of Islam and preserving Christendom from extinction. And Abyssinia had here, perhaps, a harder task than other nations ; for it was sur- rounded on all sides by Mohammedanism and met its attacks at their fiercest. Though they had no group of Christian nations to guard and could not therefore act as frontiersmen of Christendom, none the less the Abyssinians always have been a difficulty in the way of Islamic Empire, and had their country fallen the story of Europe itself might have been different.

Abyssinia was never completely isolated from the rest of Christendom, and some of the most heroic work there was done by Jesuit or Franciscan missionaries. When these were tactful, and self-sacrificing, knew how to respect the religious customs of the people and did not, press too hard for a change to Roman Catholicism, they had a great deal of civilizing influence. The Jesuit Father Paez, for example, won the sympathies and affection of all the Abyssinians by his wisdom, his generosity, and his true Christian life ; but his successor, Mendez, by his excessive severity and desire for domination, spoiled much of what Paez had done, and finally consolidated the Abyssinians against Roman Catholicism.

The style in which Sir E. A. Wallis Budge writes is a little difficult ; .for all his learning he never seems to have mastered the gift of arranging his material clearly or keeping our interest continuously. His history of Ethiopia, however, brings together material from European authorities and native sources, solves many difficult problems, and marks a real advance in our knowledge of a great and important nation.

ATAN PORTER.