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The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great; being a Series of Translations of the Ethiopic Histories of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes and other Writers, with Introduction, &c

Abstract

WITHIN recent years it has been recognised that the legends and epics of ancient peoples are something more than collections of quaint and amusing tales, that they have a scientific value, and that they yield important results when studied, classified, and compared. The sagas of many nations are well known, and have been already subjected to an exhaustive process of inquiry, but those of others have still to be unearthed. Among this latter class the legendary literature of the Ethiopians had until recently to be set, but the volume by Dr. Wallis Budge, the title of which stands above, will go some way to remove the obscurity in which the beliefs and traditions of that nation have been shrouded. Hitherto the Ethiopic literature that has been published, has in the main been biblical and of interest chiefly to biblical students; Dr. Budge, however, has collected a goodly body of Ethiopian traditions from MSS. in the British Museum and in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, two of the former having been among those which were brought to England from the Treasury of King Theodore by the British Army in 1868. The Ethiopic texts of these MSS. have been edited by Dr. Budge, and they have been printed for private circulation by Lady Meux. An English translation and introduction which accompanied the text has, however, been published separately on smaller paper, for the use of those to whom the subject-matter, rather than the text of the MSS., would be of interest; and it is with some of the results to be obtained from a perusal of this latter volume, that we propose in the present article to deal. It is not our purpose, however, to treat the legends from a literary point of view; our object is rather to extract from them such information as will indicate what was the condition of geographical and astronomical knowledge among early Oriental nations, and to notice briefly the stories of heroes and others which grew up when the world was yet in its childhood, and when early man was himself still mystified by the phenomena of nature he beheld around him.

The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great; being a Series of Translations of the Ethiopic Histories of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes and other Writers, with Introduction, &c.

By E. A. Wallis Budge Pp. xv + liv + 610. (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1896.)

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The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great; being a Series of Translations of the Ethiopic Histories of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes and other Writers, with Introduction, &c. Nature 53, 483–485 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/053483a0

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