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Stanley M. Burstein (ed.), Ancient African Civilizations: Kush and Axum. Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998. Pp. vii + 166. ISBN 1-55876-148-9. US$16.95.
Students of the early history of Africa include romantics 'who fill their charts of the African past with tales of Sheba and Ophir, of strange Phoenicians building cities in Rhodesia, and mysterious peoples "from the north" who came and stayed but altogether vanished', enthusiasts such as Emil Torday, who dated the chronology of the kings of Congo by the solar eclipse of 1680, and imperialists who believe that ancient Africa was an island of primitive savagery in a world of ever-increasing enlightenment and progress.' Burstein, an ancient historian from Los Angeles with an established publication record in the field of Greek relations with north-east Africa,2 does not belong to any of these categories; instead he has made the evidence for the kingdoms of Kush and Axum available in readable translations so that English readers can discover for themselves the fragmentary but growing body of source material for these impressive civilisations.
Information about this region in antiquity is tenuous, despite the fact that its monarchs conquered Egypt (Kush between 712-664 BC) and troubled Rome (Axum in AD 298); Burstein's selection of twenty-seven short texts covers a chronological span of approximately one thousand years and encompasses the historical periods of Egyptian and Greek explorations to the south beginning in the third millennium BC (pp. 23-52), Roman imperial hegemony in the first and second centuries (pp. 55-75), Axumite regional supremacy in the third century (pp. 79-10), and the Christianisation of Nubia up to the end of the sixth century (pp. 103-31). Nevertheless, the present collection represents a significant increase in the range of texts included in it by comparison with what was previously available in various English translations and conveniently gathers rather inaccessible material together under one cover. The book has the added benefit of being produced by an experienced editor with a good knowledge of the Greek sources.3 There are, inevitably, still omissions; I would, for instance, have liked to have seen the story of the apostle Philip's conversion of the Ethiopian ambassador (Acts 18.27-40) included. There are also the references to the Blemmyes and Axumites in Vopiscus' life of Aurelian (33.4),...