ABSTRACT
The early history of that section of the “blackvisaged” peoples whose home was the country in north-east Africa now known as Abyssinia is lost, if it ever existed, and of the superstitions and religion of the primitive Ethiopians there is nothing to be said. A black stone Cippus of Horus, which was imported into Ethiopia from Egypt, and was discovered by the great traveller Bruce, proves that there lived in the country during the IVth or IIIrd century B.c. people who were acquainted with, and who probably practised, the “Black Magic” of Egypt. The Arabs who invaded Ethiopia in the Xth century B.c. introduced Sabaeism, or the cult of the sun, and moon, and stars, and sky, and earth, into the country, and the Hebrew traders who settled in Ethiopia several centuries before Christ, of course took with them their religion of Yahweh or J#x00E2;h. One thing is quite clear; up to the beginning of the IVth century A.d. the Ethiopians were pagans, magicians were their priests, and every branch of magic flourished. The conquests of the Egyptians in Upper Nubia in the second millennium before Christ were known to the peoples of Northern Ethiopia, and they learned from the Egyptians many kinds of magic, and the use of Egyptian amulets. But of the native amulets of that period we know nothing. Whilst king ‘Êzânâ, king of Aksûm, was fighting on the Island of Meroë his soldiers captured a priest who was wounded in the fight. They took from the priest a ḳedâda of silver, and a ḥeḳat of gold. The ḥeḳat of gold was, undoubtedly, a magical box or case in which was placed the ḳedâda of silver, which was probably a figure of some object which the priest carried about with him to give him magical power over the enemy against whom his lord was fighting. (See my History of Ethiopia, vol. i.p. 256, 1. 26.)
