Note 848 — Chapter IX

There are some Orientalists who believe that this custom was introduced only after the early Christian settlements in Æthiopia; but as under the Romans the population of this country was nearly all changed, the element becoming wholly Arabic, we may, without doubting the statement, believe that it was the predominating Arab influence which had altered the earliest mode of writing. Their present method is even more analogous to the Devanāgarï, and other more ancient Indian Alphabets, which read from left to right; and their letters show no resemblance to the Phœnician characters. Moreover, all the ancient authorities corroborate our assertion still more. Philostratus makes the Brahmin Iarchus say (V. A., iii., 6) that the Æthiopians were originally an Indian race, compelled to emigrate from the mother-land for sacrilege and regicide (see Pococke’s “India,” etc., ii., p. 206). An Egyptian is made to remark, that he had heard from his father, that the Indians were the wisest of men, and that the Æthiopians, a colony of the Indians, preserved the wisdom and usages of their fathers, and acknowledged their ancient origin. Julius Africanus (in Eusebius and Syncellus), makes the same statement. And Eusebius writes: “The Æthiopians, emigrating from the river Indus, settled in the vicinity of Egypt” (Lemp., Barker’s edition, “Meroë”).