receiving gifts from the king, which carries the
permanent dominion of the Ethiopian kings as far as the
second cataract.

** Now Old Dongola.

*** Berua is the Meroe of Strabo, Astaboras the modern Ed-
Dameir, and Alo the kingdom of Aloah of the mediaeval Arab
geographers.

[Illustration: 147.jpg ETHIOPIAN GKOUP]

Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph by Berghoff.

A number of half-savage tribes, Maditi and Bohrehsa, were settled to
the right and to the left of the territory watered by the Nile, between
Darfur, the mountains of Abyssinia, and the Red Sea; and the
warlike disposition of the Ethiopian kings found in these tribes an
inexhaustible field for obtaining easy victories and abundant spoil.
Many of these sovereigns--Pionkhi, Alaru, Harsiatef, Nastosenen--whose
respective positions in the royal line are still undetermined, specially
distinguished themselves in these struggles, but the few monuments
they have left, though bearing witness to their military enterprise and
ability, betray their utter decadence in everything connected with art,
language, and religion. The ancient Egyptian syllabary, adapted to
the needs of a barbarous tongue, had ended by losing its elegance;
architecture was degenerating, and sculpture slowly growing more and
more clumsy in appearance. Some of the work, however, is not wanting in
a certain rude nobility--as, for instance, the god and goddess carved
side by side in a block of grey granite. Ethiopian worship had become
permeated with strange superstitions, and its creed was degraded,
in spite of the strictness with which the priests supervised
its application and kept watch against every attempt to introduce
innovations. Towards the end of the seventh century some of the families
attached to the temple of Am on at Napata had endeavoured to bring about
a kind of religious reform; among other innovations they adopted the
practice of substituting for the ordinary sacrifice, new rites, the
chief feature of which was the offering of the flesh of the victim raw,
instead of roasted with fire. This custom, which was doubtless borrowed
from the negroes of the Upper Nile, was looked upon as a shameful heresy
by the orthodox. The king repaired in state to the temple of Anion,
seized the priests who professed these seditious beliefs, and burnt them
alive.

[Illustration: 148.jpg Encampment de Bacharis]

The use of raw meat, nevertheless, was not disconti