Herodotus mentions that a large band of Egyptian soldiers, said by him to be two hundred and forty thousand in number, deserted and marched into Ethiopia at a date corresponding to about 650 before Christ, and were settled by the Ethiopian king as far beyond Meroë as Meroë was beyond Elephantine. These people he termed the Automoli or Deserters, but by succeeding writers they are called the Sembritæ or Sebritæ. The locality assigned to them was in about 13° to 14° north latitude, Meroë being not far above the junction of the Atbara with the Nile, or in latitude 17° north. This may not be correct,[1] and certainly, if there was any foundation for the statement, the number of the deserters must be enormously exaggerated, but it shows that such migrations were not deemed impossible at that time.
It is therefore not unlikely that at a much earlier date a small body of men, perhaps soldiers, did make their way from Egypt to Somaliland, and took to themselves there women of the Bushman race, there being no other females for them to associate with. All the difficulties of the problem are solved by this supposition, and to support it there are the following facts:—
1. The Egyptian picture of the queen of Punt is seen to be a correct portrait.
2. The Hottentot language, in its structure North African, and yet containing the four Bushman clicks most easily pronounced, is at once accounted for.
3. The possession by the Hottentots of horned cattle and Syrian sheep covered with hair and having very large tails is immediately explained.
4. The peculiarly shaped drilled stones found recently in considerable numbers by Germans in Somaliland, and now to be seen in the museum at Berlin, which are exactly similar to those used by Hottentots in South Africa and to one in the British museum found in Central Africa, also support this view.
The original Hottentots were therefore mixed breeds, but judging by analogy, there must have been a second intrusion of
- ↑ There is no mention of the Automoli in Egyptian history, nor any trace in the hieroglyphic inscriptions so far deciphered of the desertion of such an army. But nations do not usually record their own disasters.
