The texts of Herodotus contained are taken from the Arabic translation shown below, and the pages referred to will be according to what was stated in the translation

History of Herodotus

Translated by Abdul-Ilah Al-Mallah

Review by Dr. Ahmed Al-Saqqaf and Dr. Hamad bin Saray

Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2001

Herodotus's text about the Kushites

Book Two

Pages 144-146

The truth is that I did not find anyone I spoke to, whether Egyptian, Libyan, or Greek, who possessed any amount of knowledge about the sources of the Nile, except that writer, the keeper of the records of the treasures of the Temple of Athena in the Egyptian city of Sais. But even this person, despite his claim to great knowledge, seemed to me to be a man who was not confident in his claims. He told me that between Sayni, near Thebes and the Elephantine, there are two conical-shaped mountains, one of which is known as Mount Crofi and the other is Mofi, and between them there are the sources of the Nile bursting out from deep depths, and half of the water goes north towards Egypt, and the other half goes south to Ethiopia. He said that what proves that the sources of the Nile have no bottom is what the king of Egypt Psamtik did when he tried to measure the depth of its level with a rope several thousand fathoms long (six feet in height), but he did not reach it. It is likely to me that, if this story has any amount of truth, it is evidence of the presence of strong eddies and currents in the springs, caused by the water hitting the mountains, which prevented the end of the rope from reaching the bottom of the spring.

This was the extent of what I heard about the Nile springs from the narrators. I only spoke about the region up to Elephantine in the words of an eyewitness, but as for the south of that region, I spoke about it as I was informed by the narrators’ narrations. As far as I know, the ground rises after Elephantine, and the two sides of the boat must be tied there with a rope, so that it is like a bridle for a bull, lest it escape and be tossed by the current. Thus the journey continues for four days, after which the river expands and becomes like the River of Minder. The length of the area is twelve inches. Here you reach a wide, flat plain, in which the Nile branches into two branches, at an island called Tacumbso. The area south of Elephantine is inhabited by Ethiopians, who also own half of Takemboso Island and the other half by Egyptians. Beyond the island there is a large lake on the banks of which Ethiopian Bedouins live. If you cross the lake, you return again to the course of the Nile, which then empties into the lake. Here you place your loads and spend forty days walking on the banks of the river, because it is impossible to ride it because of the rocks, some of which appear above the water, and some of which remain under the water. If you cross that section of the river within forty days, your walk is over. You board the boat again and spend another twelve days to reach a great town called Meroe, which is said to be the capital of the Ethiopians, and these people worship two gods, without Other than them, Zeus (Amun) and Dionysus (Osiris). These two gods have the greatest status among the Ethiopians. The people built a temple there for Zeus (Amun). He is the one who directs the Ethiopians to war, and if the fortune teller says so, the people take up arms and go wherever he commands.

If you leave this town and ride the river again for a period equivalent to the time you spent arriving from Elephantine to this capital, you will encounter “the deserters,” known as the Azmakh, and the meaning of this word in our language is those standing to the left of the king. These are Egyptian soldiers, numbering two hundred and forty thousand, and they moved to the side of the Ethiopians during the reign of King Psamtik. The story of their escape is as follows: The Egyptians established three garrisons on that day, one in the city of Elephantine, facing the Ethiopians, the other in Belosum and Daphne, facing the Syrians and Arabs, and the third in Meria, facing the Libyans. These sites still exist in our days, and the Persians are based on them, and they have forces residing in Dafnai and Elephantine. It happened that one of these garrisons continued to guard the site, without replacement, for three years, and this was the reason for the soldiers’ revolt and departure to Ethiopia. When news of them reached Samtik, he prepared an expedition to pursue them. He had an interview with them, tried to get them to return, then appeased them and begged them not to abandon the gods of their country and abandon their wives and children. One of them replied, making an inappropriate gesture with his hand, saying: “No, we will not return, and women are inexhaustible and there are many of them, and there is no doubt that we will find wives and children of our own wherever we go.” When these soldiers reached the land of Ethiopia, they put themselves in the service of the king, so he granted them land that belonged to some Ethiopians who had fallen out of favor with him, and ordered them to expel its inhabitants so that it would be theirs. This settlement made the morals and customs of the Egyptians widespread among the Ethiopians and refined their character and ways of life.

Thus, we learned the course of the Nile in Egypt, over the course of a journey of four months, whether by riding the river or walking overland, beyond the borders of Egypt, which is the time it takes to travel from Elephantina to the country of the fleeing. The river heads there from west to east. After that, no one has confirmed information about the conditions of the country, as it is devoid of population, and no person will settle there due to the intense anger there.

Book Three

Pages

Cambyses had planned three campaigns: the first against the Carthaginians, the second against the Ammonites, and the third against the inhabited Ethiopians who live in the part of Libya that borders the Southern Ocean. He intended to send his fleet to fight Carthage, and part of his ground forces to attack the Ammonites. As for the Ethiopians, he decided to send spies on the pretext of offering gifts to the King of Ethiopia, while the real purpose behind this was to collect the greatest amount of information, but he especially wanted to know whether what was called “the table of the sun” was real or not. The story of the Sun Table is that there is a meadow located on the outskirts of the city, in which a large supply of boiled meat from all kinds of animals is kept. It is the duty of the local rulers to boil the meat and place it there at night, and during the day anyone can eat whatever they want of this meat. The country's residents say that meat comes from the land automatically and is the land's gift to them.

After it was decided to send spies, Cambyses sent to Elephantine to bring in some ichthyophage men who knew the Ethiopian language, and at the same time he ordered the fleet to attack Carthage. But the Phoenicians refused to carry out the mission, because of the ties that united them with the Carthaginians, and because waging war against their sons was an evil that they could not commit. Since the rest of the naval forces were too weak to carry out the campaign without the Phoenicians, Carthage escaped the grip of the Persians, as Cambyses saw it as inappropriate to pressure the Phoenicians to force them to participate, as they were serving in his fleet voluntarily, and his naval forces relied entirely on them. Likewise, the Cypriots donated their services to the Persians and participated in the campaign against Egypt.

Cambyses sent the men who had been summoned from Elephantine to Ethiopia, and instructions were given to them on what they were to do, and they carried Cambyses’ gifts to the King of Ethiopia, which were a scarlet dress, a gold collar, bracelets, an alabaster box with myrrh gum inside, and a jar of palm wine. It is said that Ethiopians - the focus of all this attention - are the tallest and most beautiful people on earth. They are distinguished by their laws and customs, and the strangest of them is the way they choose their kings, because they choose the tallest and strongest man to become their king.

The fish-eating ambassadors of Cambyses arrived in Ethiopia and presented their gifts to the king with the following words: “We sent Cambyses, king of Persia, out of a desire for your friendship and alliance with you, and these gifts that we brought him he loved to himself.” However, the King of Ethiopia knew that they were spies, so he replied to them: “The King of Persians did not send you with gifts because he was keen on my friendship. You came with the aim of collecting information about my kingdom. You are liars and your king is unjust. If he had any respect for what is right, he would not have coveted a kingdom other than his own, or enslaved a people against whom he had committed no sin. Present him with this bow and tell him that the King of Ethiopia advises him that when he can The Persians drew a bow with such strength and ease, then let them gather an army of mighty heroes and invade the land of the inhabited Ethiopians, and until the time comes, let them thank the gods because they did not enter into the minds of the Ethiopians about invading other countries. Then he took off the bowstring, presented it to them, picked up the scarlet garment, and asked them what it was and how it was made. When the men described dyeing to him and what it was like, he commented that they were deceivers and that the dyed garment was also a deception. Then he asked about gold chains and bracelets, and when they told him that they were used for decoration, he laughed and said that he had stronger ones, because he thought they were chains. Then he asked about gum myrrh, and after hearing its description and its pleasant smell when massaged with it, he repeated to them what he had said in the scarlet garment. Finally, he reached the wine and after learning the stages of its manufacture, he drank some of it and found it delicious. Then he asked them: What does the Persian king eat? What is the maximum age that a centenarian can reach in Persia? When he heard the description of the nature there and the cultivation of wheat, and that the king of Persia ate bread, and that the Persians rarely exceeded the age of eighty, he said that it was not surprising that anyone who ate dung would die at such an early age, and he added that there was no doubt that they would have died at an earlier age had it not been for this drink that provided them with energy. Here he referred to wine, which was the only thing in which he acknowledged that the Persians excelled. The envoys, in turn, asked the king about the age of death in Ethiopia and what the people eat? They were told that most of them live to be one hundred and twenty years old, and that some of them live beyond that, and that they eat boiled meat and drink milk. When the men expressed their astonishment that a person could reach such an advanced age, he took them to a spring that smelled of violets and made the skin of the person bathing in its water shine as if he had bathed in oil. It is said that the water of this spring is of such low density that nothing floats on its surface, including wood or any lighter material, as it all sinks to the depths. If this story is true, then the Ethiopians’ continuous use of this water is what allows them to live. After visiting the spring, the king led them to the prison, where they saw the prisoners bound with gold chains, because bronze in Ethiopia is the rarest and most expensive metal. Then they went to see the shamash table.

In the end, they were taken to see the coffins, which are said to be made of crystal glass. During burial, they dry the body of the dead person, either in the Egyptian way or perhaps in another way. Then the body is surrounded with colored plaster so that it resembles the person in his life, then it is placed in a crystal cylinder that is hollow from the inside and closed tightly. Crystal is available in large quantities and they are easily manufactured. The body can be clearly seen inside the cylinder, and there is no unpleasant smell or anything disturbing. One of the deceased’s cousins ​​keeps the cylinder in his house for a whole year, and offers it the first fruits and sacrifices, after which it is placed near the city.

After the spies saw everything they could see, they returned to Egypt to present their report, which angered Cambyses to the point that he began his march towards Ethiopia, without caring about providing supplies for his army, or thinking that he would take his men to the end of the world. Hearing this report made him completely lose his mind. Like a man afflicted with a disease, he went at the head of a force of foot soldiers, leaving behind the Greek soldiers who were serving under his command. When he arrived in Thebes, he sent a force of fifty thousand men to attack the Ammonites, enslave them, and burn the temple of Zeus (Amun). Then he continued his march to Ethiopia with the rest of his forces, who ran out of supplies after crossing a fifth of the distance separating them from Ethiopia. The men were forced to kill their animals to secure food, but they also ran out. If Cambyses, when he saw this situation, had turned back, he would have shown some wisdom despite the basic mistake he had committed. However, he did not care about what happened and continued forward. To survive, the soldiers fed on the grass available in the countryside, but when they reached the desert, they began to eat each other, as they chose by lottery one out of ten men to become their food. This was more than anyone could bear, and even Cambyses himself, when reports of this matter came to him, abandoned the idea of ​​campaigning against Ethiopia and turned back and reached Thebes after his forces had greatly diminished. From Thebes, he went to Memphis and allowed the Greeks to sail to their homeland. Thus the campaign against Ethiopia ended.