I. 3. XI. AND THE NUBA OF MERGE 39
direction : the two tendencies may even be at work contemporaneously, and the movement is definitely directed one way or the other at any
particular period by the political conditions of the moment.
XI Whenever mention is made of Bega or Blemyes by classical
or mediaeval historians it is, I believe, always in connection with the
eastern bank of the river and the eastern deserts. There is hardly a sug-
gestion that there were also Bega or Blemyes to the west of the river.
A passage in Pomponius Mela would naturally be taken, as Quatremere^ and Letronne apparently do take it, to mean that the Blemyes, or rather some of them, were west of the Nile: he says:
Above those parts which are washed by the Libyan sea are the Egyptian Libyans and the Leucoaethiopes and the large nation of the Getuli with
its numerous branches. Beyond these is a vast empty region, uninhabitable throughout its length. Beyond it again [are other races]. Beginning from
the east these are first the Garamantae, then the Augilae and the Troglo-
dytae, and lastly and furthest west the Atlantes. Further inland are people who, if one may believe it, are scarcely human, but rather half-wild-beasts,
the Aegipanes and Blemmyae and Gamphafantes and Satyri, who wander about without any settled habitation and may be said rather to occupy than to dwell in the country ^.
But this passage does not necessarily bear the interpretation that
the Blemyes were west of the Nile, and if it did need not be accepted
as strictly accurate, for as we have seen there is the evidence of a
perfect host of writers to the contrary. If Mela thought that the bulk of the Blemyes were west of the Nile he was certainly wrong
:
if he did not the passage has no value as evidence that they were
there. Strabo, who ascended the Nile with Aelius Gallus in 24 e.g.,
quotes Eratosthenes to the following effect 3:
Lower down, on either side of Meroe, along the Nile [and] towards
the Red Sea, are Megabari and Blemyes, subject to the Ethiopians and
^ u, 128. "Pomponius Mela...les place dans I'int^rieur de I'Afrique au dela
les Garamantes."
- "Super ea quae Libyco mari abluuntur Libyes Aegyptii sunt, et Leuco- aethiopes et natio frequens multiplexque Getuli. Deinde late vacat regio perpetuo tractu inhabitabilis. Turn primos ab oriente Garamantas, post Augilas et Troglo- dytas et ultimos ad occasum Atlantas audimus. Intra (si credere libet) vix iam homines magisque semiferi Aegipanes et Blemmyae et Gamphasantes et Satyri sine tectis passim ac sedibus vagi habent potius terras quam habitent." (Pomp. Mela, de Situ Orbis, Ch. iv.)
* TO. 5k KaTiiiripu} eKO/ripuOev 'Mep6r)s, irapa /xev tov NerXoc TrposTr]v 'Epvdpav Meyd^apoi
Kal BXi/Mves, AldidTroiv viraKovvres AlyvTrrioLS 3' 6/u.opot...e^ apiarepuiv 5L.,8cc. (Strabo, xvn, I, 53). Budge (u, 174) says of the '- tribes of the Eastern Desert " about the third century
"it is said that these tribes had settlements even in the oasis of Kharga," but no authority for the statement is quoted. Makrizi (Khetdt, 561-571) quotes a very
full description of the Bega from Ibn Selim, who lived in the tenth century, but there is no hint in it of any Bega west of the Nile.