ETHIOPIA, THE GREAT BLACK EMPIRE
THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE AND ALSO RECENT DISCOVERIES IN AFRICA PROVE THE ANCIENT AND POWERFUL CIVILIZATION OF THE COLORED RACE 3,000 YEARS B. C.—THE STORY OF CANDACE, THE BEAUTIFUL BLACK QUEEN OF ETHIOPIA, AND THE MARRIAGE OF MOSES TO AN ETHIOPIAN WOMAN 1490 B. C.—HOW PIANKHI, THE BLACK KING, CONQUERED EGYPT 750 B. C., AND HOW EGYPT TOOK HER CIVILIZATION FROM ETHIOPIA.
We read about Napoleon, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine of Russia, Marie Antoinette of France, and other kings and queens, many of whom led mysteriously cloudy lives and came to a bad ending, but few have ever heard of Queen Candace, Queen of Ethiopia.
You are referred to the Bible (Acts 8:27) as a beginning of the information to follow.
Few among the learned in this present age, and less of the unlearned, know anything about the origin of the colored race in the United States. They are completely in the dark as to their ancestry, as a powerful and highly civilized race of people.
The fact is, that while the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians, Germans, and so on, wore skin coats, devoured their food raw, lived in caverns, and were busily engaged in cutting one another’s throats over dry bones, the ancestors of our Colored people in these United States were enjoying the highest arts of civilization, lived in palaces, and erected magnificent specimens of the most wonderful architecture in the world, and behaved generally like civilized people.
Recent and authentic discoveries in Africa have brought to light, through monuments and other evidences, that the Hamitic race played a very important part in the first stages of the world’s history. There are modern records, which, together with the great number of monuments of great antiquity, demonstrate without the shadow of a doubt that the African civilization of the Hamitic race, was older than the most ancient history recorded of the Egyptians, going back centuries before the birth of Moses.
THE BLACK NATIONS A POWERFUL CIVILIZATION
It appears now that Egypt took its civilization from Ethiopia, the black empire south of it.
The old theories have been smashed into atoms, and it now appears that the black nations of certain regions of the continent of Africa were not races in their infancy, but the descendants of a powerful civilization gradually broken by misfortunes and disastrous wars against it.
The Egyptians have always contended that their forefathers learned their arts and largely received their laws from the black empire farther south. Throughout the pages of Homer, the Ethiopians are spoken of with great respect, as the friends of the gods, the “blameless Ethiopians” being a common phrase.
The great Greek historian, Herodotus, who has been charged with drawing upon his imagination in his accounts of Africa, is now demonstrated to have been truthful. His extraordinary stories about the ancient empire of Ethiopians, south of Egypt, are being verified from the recently unearthed monuments, as having been erected by the very people of whom the historian wrote, to celebrate their victories and honor their gods.
Although the most ancient inscriptions on the monuments along the upper Nile have not yet been deciphered, the story of the Land of the Blacks is well known as far back as eight hundred years before Christ.
THE BLACK KINGS
As showing a common civilization, in fact, perhaps a common origin, the doings of the Black Kings were chronicled after the same fashion as those of the Egyptian kings.
The writing of the people of the Great Black Empire, is like that of the Egyptians, and the gods they worshiped were closely related to the gods of Egypt.
Inscriptions on these monuments that have been deciphered, tell us that Piankhi, the black king, conquered Egypt 750 B. C., and that he worshiped without question in Egyptian temples, and the carvings in the excavated ruins, which show men and women unmistakably Negro, give evidence of the similarity of religion.
We have always supposed, as told by the scientists, that civilization went up the Nile, whereas, it is now proven that it came down the Nile, that is, from Ethiopia to Egypt, instead of the other way.
When Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered Egypt six hundred years before the Christian era, he ventured to arrange an expedition against the black empire to the south, stories of the greatness of which he had been told. He sent to the Black King gifts of gold, palm wine and incense, and asked to be informed whether or not it was true that on a certain spot called the “Table of the Sun,” the magistrates, every night, put provisions of cooked meats so that every one who was hungry might come in the morning and help himself.
The history proceeds to tell us, that the black king, Nastasenen, received the envoys of Cambyses peacefully but without enthusiasm. He showed them the “Table of the Sun” mentioned by Cambyses, and took them to the prisons where the prisoners wore fetters of gold, so that the Persians might be properly impressed.
Cambyses was very much impressed by the fact that gold was so common that it was used in making the shackles of prisoners, and he made war upon the black empire to get that gold, but miserably failed.
THE BEAUTIFUL BLACK QUEEN
We now come to the Queen Candace mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. The account there given is as follows (Chapter 8):
“26th verse. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, arise and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.
“27th verse. And he arose and went: and behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship.”
This is all that relates to Queen Candace, but it transpires from subsequent verses of the same chapter, that the treasurer of Queen Candace was baptized and went on his way rejoicing.
One queen Candace of Ethiopia, was a famous black queen, tales of whose prowess spread as far as Greece. It appears from the monuments, that the kingdom was ruled by successive queens each bearing the name of Candace, which may account for the different descriptions of her, some showing her as very beautiful, and some allowing her but one eye with the disposition of a termagant.
These kings and queens, whose records have been deciphered, are of comparatively recent years—not more than 2,500 or 3,000 years old. It is expected that the results of the excavations of the older ruins will be more interesting.
ETHIOPIANS FIRST LIVING MEN
To revert to Herodotus. This ancient historian was a great traveler, the first, perhaps, to visit the region of the blacks and their empire.
He says, somewhere in his history: “The Ethiopians were the first men who ever lived.”
There is more astounding evidence of the civilization of the black men to be found in recent excavations.
Lying north of Egypt and a little southeast of Greece, in the Mediterranean Sea, is the famous Island of Crete, or Candia, embracing 3,326 square miles, and at the present time it has a population of about 300,000 people all told.
This island was anciently regarded as the spot where Jove himself was cradled, and it became the center or reservoir of the highest forms of ancient civilization. All the ancient Greek and Roman gods had their origin or birthplace on this island, and under the famed King Minos, nothing disgraceful or monstrous was permitted to find a resting place. It has always been a mysteriously unknown island, and the great aim of delvers into antiquities.
Within the last ten years, there has been dug out in this island of Crete, the remains of a civilization two thousand years more ancient than any hitherto known in Europe.
THEATRES, PALACES AND TEMPLES
There are actual buildings, theatres, palaces, and temples that existed in 3,000 B. C., and were mere guess work in Homer’s time. What has been unearthed shows that there was communication between Crete and Egypt 2,000 years before Christ. One of the frescoes found shows some religious ceremonial in the Egyptian style. Some of the priestesses are black, others white, and the connection between African and Cretan civilization as to dates will soon be settled.
Enough appears to show that there were two great civilizations at a very early time, that in the Nile country begun and maintained by black men, and the other in Crete. The Cretans seem to have been a dark race, rather small, with regular, almost Greek profiles and full lips.
Nothing has been found in this newly discovered cradle of the human race to indicate that civilization came to them or to Africa from Asia, whence it has always been thought all knowledge originated.
Everything so far unearthed in Crete and in the Soudan, favors the theory that all around the Mediterranean there arose in the stone age a common race of men, who in the course of centuries developed differing physical characteristics, and they peopled Europe and Africa where the first civilizations arose in Crete and the Soudan.
There is tremendous food for thought in these discoveries. It may transpire after all is discovered the Colored American descended from the African, the Hamitic, or the Negro—call him anything, it will not harm his ancestry—is in fact descended from a superior race of people.
While the colored race do not care for any admixture of their blood with the Aryan, the latter need have no fear that it will ever be forced upon him.
MOSES MARRIED A COLORED WOMAN
What would Moses, the great lawgiver, say to you? Listen to the good book in Numbers 12:1. “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.”
For this reviling, the Lord made Miriam leprous, and punished her, and Aaron acknowledged that he had sinned.
While on this subject, it may be interesting to specify some of the doings of the Ethiopians in ancient history. First, Moses married an Ethiopian woman in B. C. 1490, quite a number of years before any legislature had an opportunity to prevent it.
The Ethiopians must have flourished after the last mentioned date, because we read in II Kings 9, that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had come out to fight the Assyrians—quite a distance from Ethiopia—and the frightened Assyrian king besought the aid of Hezekiah, king of Judah. This happened in B. C. 710.
Again, in B. C. 957, we learn from II Chronicles 14:9, that Zerah, the Ethiopian, came out against Asa, king of Judah, with a million men and three hundred chariots. The scripture reads, “an host of a thousand thousand.”
GREAT ANCESTRY OF COLORED RACE
Let the Colored American live up to the records of the past history of his race and prove himself worthy of his great ancestry.
It was said in another place in this article that there appear to have been two great civilizations at a very early period of time. One flourished in the Nile country, maintained by black men, and the other in Crete.
It is an astonishing fact, for it is fast developing into a historical fact, that a common race of men arose, and that in the course of centuries, they developed differing physical characteristics, due to climatic necessities, either black, brown or swarthy, and that they peopled Europe and Africa, the first civilizations arising in Crete and the Soudan, which is the very heart of the continent of Africa, extending from the Equator to 25 degrees north latitude, and from 20 degrees west longitude to 50 degrees east longitude. A territory comprising 1,650 by 4,650 miles extent, and including the “Phut” territory, it is nearly as large again.
All this vast territory constituted the Empire of Ethiopia. An empire that was able more than 600 years before the Christian era to send a million of fully equipped soldiers against a Jewish king.
A very slight circumstance has been the beginning of explorations that will undoubtedly alter all of our text-books upon the subject of the origin of the human race.
A German explorer recently unearthed, in a remote region in the Soudan, a bronze head of fine and exquisite workmanship. This has been taken as another evidence of an ancient African civilization—indeed, a black men’s civilization, and has operated as an incentive for other explorations.
THE BIBLE AS A PROOF
We read in the Bible (I Kings 10), a whole chapter concerning the visit of the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, coming to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bore spices, and very much gold and precious stones. And that when she departed she presented Solomon with a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones. “There came no more such abundance.”
The same account of this great queen is given in 2nd Chronicles, and in Matthew 12:42 she is styled “The Queen of the South.”
A queen from the South who could present Solomon with about a million dollars of our money in gold and precious stones, was certainly a rich and powerful queen.
The Queen of Sheba had many successors, however, and they were all warlike, leading their armies either to victory or successfully defending the Ethiopian empire against attack. Ahasuerus, the most powerful Persian monarch, who ruled over 146 provinces, attempted to extend his dominion over into Ethiopia but could not succeed.
Some years ago, ruins of ancient dwellings were discovered in Upper Rhodesia, which were declared by Dr. MacIver of Oxford to be those of an ancient African civilization.
BLACK MEN DISCOVER ART OF WORKING METALS
Within the past ten years, excavations in the Upper Soudan, verify the claim that the black man was the first to discover the art of working metals, and that they gave this knowledge to Europe and Asia. Dr. Schweinfurth, the famous German ethnologist, and the University of Berlin, have adopted this theory.
Lady Lugard, the authoress, gathered from old Arab books, many details of this high civilization among the black men of the Upper Nile, their customs and government until quite recent times.
We know as a historical fact, that the Nubians conquered Egypt, and set the pace for a good government among the Egyptians, suppressing many of their cruel practices.
The end of these discoveries is far from having been reached. Indeed, they are just beginning to attract attention. Enough has been unearthed, however, to establish the ancestry of the Colored race of America, greater and higher than that of any of the mixed races.