The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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| 20 would have been used by immigrants from Yemen, strongly suggests that it reached Abyssinia from the direction of the Nile and not from Arabia. The Greek language had spread far and wide during the Ptolemaic period and was used in Abyssinia as a lingua franca. In the Bible Meroe is called Cush, the anciient Egyptian and Meroitic name for the country, while the Greeks named it Ethiopia and later it became known as Nubia or Sudan. Occupying the territory on the southern border of Upper Egypt, it represented an extension of Egyptian culture, though with its own language and script. Towards the end of the eighth century BC, when the Middle East was in turmoil as a result of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquest.,, Meroe overran Egypt, then in a period of decline, and provided her with the pharaohs of the twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) dynasty, who held sway for more than a hundred years. Around this time, anxious to reinforce their southern frontier, the Egyptians established a garrison manned by foreign mercenaries on Elephantine island, near the First Cataract of the Nile where Aswan stands today. The garrison included a Jewish element about whom a good deal is known thanks to the collection of Aramaic papyri of the fifth century BC which were found there early in the present century. Herodotus reported that in the sixth century BC some of the soldiers of the garrison revolted and moved across the border into the Meroitic kingdom. Although there is no direct evidence it is possible that some Jews went too. This seems likely as there are biblical references which suggest that there were already Jewish communities in Cush, or Ethiopia, at the time of the prophets Isaiah and Zephaniah, which was before the Babylonian captivity. Moreover, it was a prosperous country and 'at that time enjoyed the reputation of a kind of El Dorado'. (1) By the third century BC the kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt were greatly extending their sphere of influence in every direction and encouraging the development of commerce. Trade in the Red Sea, which was a royal monopoly, (2) flourished. Adulis, the port of Axum, 'took on the look of a provincial GraecoEgyptian city'.(3) Caravans followed the Nile basin from Egypt through Meroe to the Abyssinian highlands. A monument and inscription in Greek at Adulis, which was copied in the sixth century AD by Cosmas Indicopleustes, recorded the exploits of (1)Gardiner, Egypt ef the Pharaohs, p. 357. |