38 THE BEGA, THE BLEMYES 1. 3. viii.
the eastern desert really bore this name as it was common to mis- apply some known name to any unknown folk who appeared similar i.
Eratosthenes-, Theocritus^, Ptolemaeus^, Procopius^ and Vopiscus^
refer to the Blemyes in terms which would make their main habitat round Aswan extend much further southwards and eastwards towards
the territories of Axum and Adulis, and are clearly referring to the country which we know was peopled then as now by Bega'.
The inscriptions of Axum and Adulis, though enumerating the
peoples between Abyssinia and Egypt who were conquered by the king of Axum, make no mention of the Blemyes by name, but speak
instead of Tangaites and Bogaites (Bega).
IX One concludes, therefore, with Letronne, that the people who
called themselves Blemyes lived chiefly in the valley of the Nile below Nubia on the confines of Egypt, and the people of the east and
south-east between the Nile and the Red Sea, to whom the historians mentioned vaguely gave the same name, called themselves something
else. In fact, early Christian writers were very haphazard in their nomenclature and used the name Blemyes to represent the Bega who seemed to be much the same type of people,
X The Bega were essentially a nomad folk and the Blemyes
primarily sedentary and riverain^, and there can be little doubt that
the Blemyes were originally a branch of the Bega who had settled on the river and abandoned the nomadic life.
A similar tendency has been and still is very marked all along the
Nile valley. It has already been suggested that there was probably
a similar connection at one time on the western side between the
riverain Nubians and the nomad Nobatae; and in more modern
times the forbears of many of the "Arabs" at present settled on
the river were wont a few generations ago to lead a nomad life inland.
This is not to deny many cases of a movement in the contrary
^ Letronne {loc. cit.). - Ap. Strabo, p. 786.
' Idyll, VII, 114:
" iv de dipei Trv/j,dToifft Trap AldiuTreacri vofifvoi^
ir^Tpq. vTTO BXe/xi/wp", bdtv ovk^ti NelXos bparos."
Theocritus was bom 290 B.C. and died very old.
* Bk. IV, Ch. VIII. He follows Eratosthenes. His date is about 500-565 a.d.
* De Bella Persico, i, 19, p. 59. He places them east of the Nile between Axum and Elephantine (Aswdn).
* In Hist. Augustae Scriptares, pp. 220 and 239, quoted by Quatremfere, loc.
cit., and Letronne, loc. cit.
' Letronne, loc. cit.
* Woolley and M'^Iver have shown that the old ruin called Karan6g near Ibrim was the castle of a Blemyan chief. See Korandg: the Cemetery (1910) and Karandg:
the Tozvn (191 1) in the Publications of the E. B. Coxe, Jnr. Expedition to Nubia, Univ. Museum, Philadelphia (reviewed by H. R. Hall in Man, May 1912).