BERTAT, Negroes of the Shangalla group of tribes, mainly agriculturists, known to the Arabs as Jebalain. They occupy the valleys of the Yabus and Tumat, tributaries of the Blue Nile. They are shortish and very black, with projecting jaws, broad noses and thick lips. By both sexes the hair is worn short or the head shaved ; on cheeks and temple are tribal marks in the form of scars. The huts of the Bertat are circular, the floor raised on short poles. Their weapons are the spear, throwing-club, sword and dagger, and the kulbeda or throwing-knife. Blocks of salt are the favourite form of currency. Gold washing is practised. Nature worship still struggles against Mohammedanism. Among them are Arab communities governed by their own sheiks, while the meks or rulers of the Bertat speak Arabic, and show traces of foreign blood.
See Koeltlitz, "The Bertat," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. 51; Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (19o5). BERTAUT, JEAN (1552-1611), French poet, was born at Caen in 1552. He figures with Desportes in the disdainful couplet of Boileau on Ronsard : Ce poete orgueilleux, trebuche de si haut, Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut.
He wrote light verse to celebrate the incidents of court life in the manner of Desportes, but his verse is more fantastic and fuller of conceits than his master's. He was successively council lor of the parlement of Grenoble, secretary to the king, almoner to Marie de' Medici, abbot of Aulnay, and finally, in 1606, bishop of Sees. After his elevation to the bishopric he ceased to produce the light verse in which he excelled, though he prepared a new edition of his Recueil de quelques vers amoureux (1602) in 1606. His works were edited by M. Ad. Chenevieres in 1891.