1843.] and the Abyssinian Church. 693 



tradition, the Jewish faith had been for ages established firmly in the 

 empire. 



No Hebrew literature remains to support the legend. The Holy 

 Scriptures were not even translated into the language of the country. 

 No connexion was in after-times maintained with the land of fellow- 

 faith, neither was any assistance afforded in the day of her distress, 

 when Israel suffered under the despoiling hand of the Abyssinian and 

 the Babylonian, and bent her oppressed neck to the yoke of Egypt and 

 of Rome. 



The family of Menelech Ibnel Hakim are stated, in the Kebra Negest, 

 the glory of the kings, to have possessed the throne in uninterrupted 

 felicity until the year 960, when the massacre of the issue of Solomon 

 was perpetrated by the woman Essat, and one solitary prince of the 

 blood royal alone escaped to take refuge in the distant and loyal pro- 

 vince of Shoa. During the succeeding four hundred years, it is asserted 

 by the learned historians, that the usurping rulers of the fairer provinces 

 of the empire were Jews, who exerted their utmost endeavours towards 

 the propagation of their religious creed, and that when the legitimate 

 dynasty was again restored under lean Amlac, the Hebrew prejudices 

 had taken too deep a root, to be easily eradicated from the mind. 



But the names and histories of many of these usurpers still remain 

 to confute the tale ; and although in furtherance of political objects, 

 privileges might have been granted to the numerous Jews residing in 

 the country, it does not appear that the party ever gained sufficient pre- 

 ponderance to place one of their own faith upon the throne, and thus 

 the origin of the existing rites must take a humbler flight to be in union 

 with the truth. 



Ignorance is indeed too glaring a feature in the character of the na- 

 tion, and remains a monument of the first conspicuous fruit of her 

 delight in the confusion of truth and falsehood ; superstition required 

 the consistence of fable, and learned doctors of the law became robbers 

 of the temple. The conscience was not galled by the fabrication of ten 

 thousand miracles, which stain the pages of her Church History, and 

 the honor of Ethiopia triumphed in an origin, which was ascribed to 

 base illegitimacy and intrigue. 



The ancestors of those Jews who to the present day exist in Abys- 

 sinia, arrived long before the nation had embraced the Christian religion, 



