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Blemmyes
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The Blemmyes (Latin Blemmyae) were a nomadic Nubian tribe described in Roman histories of the later empire. From the late third century on, along with another tribe, the Nobadae, they repeatedly fought the Romans.
They became fictionalized as a race of legendary creatures that were said to live in Africa, in Nubia, Kush, or Ethiopia, generally south of Egypt.
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Encyclopedia
The Blemmyes (Latin Blemmyae) were a nomadic Nubian tribe described in Roman histories of the later empire. From the late third century on, along with another tribe, the Nobadae, they repeatedly fought the Romans.
They became fictionalized as a race of legendary creatures that were said to live in Africa, in Nubia, Kush, or Ethiopia, generally south of Egypt. They were believed to be acephalous (headless) monsters who had eyes and mouths in their bellies. Pliny the Elder writes of them that Blemmyes traduntur capita abesse, ore et oculis pectore adfixis ("It is said that the Blemmyes have no heads, and that their mouth and eyes are put in their chests").
Some authors derive the story of the Blemmyes from this, that their heads were hid between their shoulders, by hoisting those up to an extravagant height. Samuel Bochart derives the word Blemmyes from two Hebrew terms, one a negation, the other meaning "brain", implying that the Blemmyes were people without brains.
In Antiquity
The Greek geographer Strabo describes the Blemmyes as a peaceful people living in the East Desert near Meroe. Later, in the beginning of our Era, Pliny the Elder wrote that the Blemmeys were a people with no head, and with their mouth, eyes and nose on the chest.
In fact, this people had Arabic origins and occupied the area near Meroe to Aswan by the I-II centuries AD.
Their cultural and military power started to enlarge to such a level that in 197 Pescennius Niger asked a Blemmye king of Thebas to help him in the battle against the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. In 250 the Roman Emperor Decius took a lot of effort to win over an invasion army of Blemmyes. A few years later, in 253, they attacked Lower Aegyptus (Thebais) again but were quickly defeated. In 265 they were defeated again by the Roman Prefect Firmus who later in 273 would rebel against the Empire and the Queen of Palmyra Zenobia with the help of the Blemmyes themselves. The Roman general Probus took sometime to defeat the usurper and his allies but couldn't prevent the occupation of Thebais by the Blemmyes. That meant another war and the almost entire destruction of the Blemmyes army.
In the reign of Diocletian the province of Lower Aegyptus (Thebais) was again occupied by the Blemmyes and after defeating them one more time, the Romans retreated to their border Philae.
Culture
The Blemmyes occupied a considerable region in current day Sudan. There were some important cities like Faras, Kalabsha, Balana and Aniba, and they were all fortified with walls and towers of a mixture of Egyptian, Helenic, Roman and Nubic elements.
Their culture had also the influence of the Meroitic culture, and so, Blemmyes religion was centered in the temples of Kalabsha and Philae. The former being a huge masterpiece of Nubian architecture, where a solar lion like divinity named Mandulis was worshiped. Philae was a place of mass pilgrimage with temples for Isis, Mandulis and Anhur, and where the Roman Emperors Augustus and Trajan made many contributions with new temples, plazas and monumental works.
In literature
Othello makes reference to them as "men whose heads | Do grow beneath their shoulders" [I.iii.143-144].
In Umberto Eco's Baudolino, the protagonist meets Blemmyes along with Sciapods and a number of monsters from the medieval bestiary in his quest to find Prester John.
In his 2006 book Tower, Valerio Massimo Manfredi features the Blemmyes as fierce, sand-dwelling creatures located in the southeastern Sahara, and suggests that they are the manifestation of the evil face of mankind.
Science fiction author Bruce Sterling wrote a short story entitled "The Blemmye's Stratagem", included in his collection "Visionary in Residence". The story describes a Blemmye during the Crusades, who turns out to be an extraterrestrial.
Blemmyes appeared in the 2000 novel The Amazing Voyage of Azzam by Kelly Godel as cannibalistic tribesmen who guard a lost treasure of King Solomon. They use clubs, spears, and blow darts as weapons.
See also
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