BLEMMYES, the name of a people who appear to have inhabited part of Ethiopia ; and who, proba bly from the circumstance of depressing their heads and raising their shoulders, were represented by the ancients as without heads, and as having their eyes and mouths in their breasts. Agathemerus (c..10. p. 49. Geogr. Min. i. ii.) supposes that this people inhabited the part of Ethiopia under the equator,,or the vallies of the high chain of Ethiopian mountains. Deme trius of Lampsacus places them in the same region.
This barbarous people appeared in the third cen- B tury, as the allies of the Egyptians against Diock sian. " The number of the Blemmyes (says Gib bon), scattered between the island of Meroe and the Red Sea ; their disposition was unwarlike,. their weapons rude, and unoffensive.. Yet in the public disorders, these barbarians, whom antiquity, shocked with the deformity of their. figure, had almost ex cluded from the ,human species, presumed .to rank
themselves among the enemies of Rome. Such had been the unworthy allies• of the Egyptians ; and while the attention of the state was engaged in more • serious wars, their vexatious inroads might again harass the repose of the province. With a • view of opposing to the Blemmyes a suitable adversary, Dio clesiae persuaded the Nobatx, a people of Nubia, to remove from their-ancient habitations in the desarts of Libya, and resign to them an extensive but unpro fitable territory above Syene and the cataracts of the Nile ; with the stipulation, that they should ever re spect and guard the frontier of the empire." See Gibbon's Hist. chap. xiii. vol. ii. p. 114 ; Strabo,, lib. xvii. p. 1, 172. ; Pomponius Meta, lib. i. c. 4. ; Univers. gist. ,vol. xv. p. 475 (F), 491, 497 ; xvi.. 132; xviii. 258. ( j)•