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JULY, 1922)
SODRA.
137
Since the beginning of the war the excavations in the Soudan have been continued by the American Scholar Dr. Reisner, who has succeeded in recreating the history of Ethiopia. He has excavated and explored the pyramids and burial-places of the Ethiopian kings and queens, and a page of history which was practically a blank has now been filled in. He has found the pyramid of Sabako, the founder of the Ethiopian dynasty of Egypt and the antagonist of Sennacherib, and has traced his predecessors and successors, reign by reign and dynasty by dynasty, down to the age of Alexander the Great. It would seem that Sabako's ancestor had originally come from Libya, and so had belonged to that blond Libyan race of which the Berbers are the modern representatives. At first Napata near Dongola was their capital ; subsequently, after the Assyrian conquest of Egypt, they moved to Meroe, 120 miles north of Khartum, which henco-forth remained the capital of the kingdom down to its last days. Some of the royal tombs have yielded jewellery and other precious objects which present a blending of Egyptian and Sudanese art. Among them are massive vases and other objects of solid gold, as well as inlaid brooches and pectorals.
It is not only on the later history of Ethiopia, however, that light has been cast. At Kerma, at the northern extremity of the Dongola province, Dr. Reisner has found remains which reach back to the days of the old Egyptian empire. There was a temple of the 6th dynasty there, and in the age of the 12th Egyptian dynasty, the place was an important Egyptian fortress and settlement. Exquisite enamelled bricks and Vases of turquoise blue were manu. factured there, as well as elaborate bowls and vases of Egyptian pattern. The Egyptian governor married Sudanese wives, and adopted to & certain extent the customs of the country. Human sacrifices were permitted ; the tomb was a tumulus of Sudanese form, and the skull and horns of the sacred ram of Amon was buried with the dead. It was in this age that the city of Napata was founded, partly as the centre of the Egyptian administration, partly as the terminus of the trade-routes to the southern Sudan. When Egypt was conquered by the Hyksos, the Theban princes retreated to the south, and the Hyksos scrabs found at Kenna by Dr. Reisner, show that if the foreign rule did not extend so far to the south, the Egyptians who had taken refuge there were, at all events, in commercial contact with the ancestral home.'
At Napata, Dr. Reisner has cleared the temples which stood under the shadow of Gebel Barkal, and discovered among them remains of the 18th and 19th dynasties. On the opposite bank of the river he has also indentified the city of Ethiopia built by the Heretic King Akhenaten, and his next campaign is likely to be devoted to its excavation. In short, the history of Ethiopia has been at last recovered, and we can trace it almost continuously from the age of the Old Empire of Egypt to the period when it became the prey of negro hordes, and finally vanished from the pages of history
Such are some of the chief additions which have been made to historical and archæo. logical knowledge, during the years of the great world-war.
SÚDRA. BY PANDIT VIDHUSHEKHARA BHATTACHARYA. The derivation of this word which occurs only once in the Rgveda (X. 90. 12) is not yet certain. In Badarayana's Vedanta-Sätra (I. 3. 34)1 the word is divided into two parts, bule 'grief'and dra from V dru' to rush,' and the commentator, Sankara, explains it (with reference to Jánasruti, Chandogya Up., IV, 2. 3) in three ways, viz. (a) as he rushed into grief' (" bucam
1 " aparecer aquel".
