44 THE BEGA, THE BLEMYES i. 3. xx.

and had received a Greek education^. Ergamenes declined to acknow-

ledge the authority of the priests and put them to death.

Strabo- gives a similar account of Meroe, based largely on

Eratosthenes.

To these and the rest of the Greek and Roman geographists the

Ethiopians who lived not in Meroe itself but in the surrounding

country were no more than wild savages, "wretched Kush," as the Pharaohs would have called them.

XXI Soon after the beginning of the Christian era began the great days of Meroe which are associated with the Queens Candace. The

first of these who is a historical personage and not purely mythical^

appears to have ruled from Napata*. She was powerful enough to

capture Syene (Aswan) with its Roman garrison of three cohorts in

24 B.C.; but in the following year Petronius defeated her and Napata was destroyed^.

About 60 A.D. Nero's centurions, sent to explore the Nile, found another Candace reigning at Meroe^. They reported, too, that the

kings of Ethiopia were forty-five in number, and that the country between Meroe and Aswan was mostly deserted, little trace remain-

ing of all the towns and the thriving civilization mentioned by the

earlier geographers. In fact, a period of decadence in Egypt syn-

chronized with a state of comparative desolation in Ethiopia, a further proof of the dependence of the southern state upon its great northern

neighbour'^.

XXII Meroe did not, however, cease to be a place of importance. The state of its fortunes still continued to reflect those of Egypt, and

^ /j.eracrxvK'^'s 'EXXT/j'ix-Tjy dywyrjs Kal <f)iKo(To<py]aa^. Mahaffy (p. 140) makes Erga- menes a contemporary of the fourth Ptolemy (222-205).

^ Born between 64 and 54 B.C. Died after 21 a.d.

' See Pseudo-CalHsthenes, ap. Budge, 11, 108, in re Alexander the Great.

* Crowfoot, loc. cit. p. 33, citing Strabo, p. 820.

' Petronius chose Primis (Ibri'm) to be the Roman boundary, but within a year

it was abandoned in favour of Hierosykaminos (Muharraka), the old Ptolemaic frontier town. The frontier remained at Hierosykaminos until Diocletian retired the legions to Aswan.

* Pliny, Hist. Nat. vi, Ch. 35. Griffith {Arch. Surv. Nubia, xix, 80) surmises that " possibly this dynasty of Candaces is identical with the Natakamani-AmanitSre

series of royalties" whose remains are found at Meroe and Naka. There are no records in history of any Candace living after the first century a.d. and from the

pictorial evidence of the monuments it seems that kings ruled in the second, third and fourth centuries (see Crowfoot, loc. cit. p. 39). In the note to para. L of D 7

is given a quotation from Bruce which, if the facts are authentic, shews that in 1619 there was a modern Candace ruling at Mundara in the Isle of Meroe and deriving her income from the great trade-route between east and west as her prototype no doubt did.

' Crowfoot, loc. cit. p. 36. Pliny says (loc. cit.) that warfare with Egypt was responsible for the desolation of Ethiopia, but, as Crowfoot says, there is no warrant in history for this.