THE PHARAOHS IN HAUSSALAND 229 the cupola of the king's umbrella which Ibn Batuta mentioned in describing the court ceremonies of the court of Melle in the fourteenth century. Marvels of every kind are catalogued among the creations of the wisest of Egyptian sovereigns. Nor need we confine ourselves to the Soudan to find in later times the prototypes of statues which healed, relics which could detect injustice, dirty water which, being washed over sacred stones, had power to impart saving grace. The ideas which underlay the magic of Egypt have been common to all time. They took sometimes, in Egypt as elsewhere, very charming shape. We hear of one benevolent king who constructed a temple in which he placed statues to heal every human infirmity. On the head of each statue was written the name of the evil which it could cure. When he had cured all recognised evils, he made last of all the statue of a smiling woman, *'and whoever looked on her, lost his secret sorrow."

In the construction of these talismans the "magicians of the south " played their part. We have seen in the Tarikh-es- Soudan that Gao was celebrated in ancient times as a town of magicians, whence the Pharaohs on occasion summoned help. Borgu and its neighbourhood to the south of Gao is to this day celebrated for the pursuit of magic, and the whole coast of West Africa is permeated with a belief in witchcraft and charms. Doubtless when Egyptian records speak of the south, they frequently mean Ethiopia and Meroe. But that the name of Ethiopia was extended in some instances to cover the country as far west as the Atlantic is made quite clear by ancient writers. Strabo expressly says so.

If, in the magic practised by the inhabitants of the territories lying between the Niger and Lake Chad, we find one indication of the very early connection of these countries with Egypt, other indications present themselves, as we approach the period of the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, which appear by comparison to stand on historic ground. I abridge