THE HOFFMAN PHILIP ABYSSINIAN ETHNOLOGICAL COL- 

 LECTION. 



By Walter Hough, 



Curator of Ethnology, U. S. National Museum. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The objects comprising this collection were gathered in Abyssinia 

 in the year 1909 by the Honorable Hoffman Philip, minister and 

 consul-general of the United States at Addis Abeba, the capital of 

 Emperor Menelek. Material from Abyssinia is exceedingly rare, and 

 the collection of Mr. Philip, probably the first that has been brought 

 to this country, is interesting on account of the survivals which it 

 exhibits from the ancient culture of northern Africa, the neighboring 

 Asiatic continent, and eastern Europe. 



J. Theodore Bent notes that the fly-flaps carried by the priests are 

 of identical shape with those depicted on Egyptian frescoes, and 

 observes : 



Everything in Abyssinia connected with religion would seem to have its prototype 

 in the ancient world; the sistrum, the fly-flap, the crutch, and many other things have 

 doubtless been brought originally from the valley of the Nile, and, with the peculiar 

 conservatism of primitive races, have been preserved even to our day. 1 



The portion of Abyssinia inhabited by the ruling class, who have 

 inherited the remains of the early civilization, is an elevated plateau 

 terribly gashed by erosive agencies which render it almost inaccessible, 

 and the country, though lying between the great trade routes of the 

 world, the Nile and the Red Sea, has remained isolated. It has also 

 been unaffected by great movements of peoples since the prehistoric 

 wave of Himyarites from Arabia Felix became entangled in the vast 

 recesses of the plateau. 



Abyssinia received its first culture from southern Arabia (Arabia 

 Felix, Yemen) when in the prehistoric period the Himyarites crossed 

 the narrow strait of Bab-el Mandeb and secured a permanent location 

 on the plateau. About the third and second centuries B. C. the 

 Ptolemies sent expeditions to survey the Arabian and African sea- 



1 J. Theodore Bent, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians, London, 1893, p. 65. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 40— No. 181 9. 



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