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The Niger and the Classics: the History of a Name
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Extract
On 8 January 1897 the name of ‘Nigeria’ appeared in print for the first time. It was the title of an article in our leading newspaper, written by Miss Flora Shaw, who at that time ‘did the Colonies for The Times’, as Cecil Rhodes expressed it. Miss Shaw later became the wife of Lord Lugard, the great builder of Nigeria; and one of the greatest of all British Colonial Administrators. And here is what Miss Shaw said.
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References
1 The term ‘Niger-Sudan’ was also in use during the nineties of last century.Google Scholar
2 This information and the reference to The Times article were kindly supplied by Lord Lugard (in a letter dated 21 Oct. 1940). The article quoted from The Times appeared in the issue of 8 Jan. 1897.Google Scholar
3 Illo to Forcados (on the sea) is 767 miles. The total length of the Niger is about 2600 miles.Google Scholar
4 The term ‘Nile of the Negroes’ seems to have been applied mostly to the Senegal river which Ibn Said, writing in the thirteenth century, had called ‘the Nile of Ghana’.Google Scholar
5 But Mungo Park had established, in 1805, the easterly course of the Niger.Google Scholar
6 A Dissertation on the Course and Probable Termination of the Niger, by Lieut.-Gen. Sir Rufane Donkin, G.C.B., K.C.B., F.R.S. (1829).Google Scholar
7 Necho, 610–594 B.C. The translations of the various extracts from Herodotus are, in the main, those of Rawlinson.Google Scholar
8 Bk. IV, 42.Google Scholar
9 The account of Hanno's voyage was inscribed on a tablet in Phoenician and hung in the temple of Melkarth at Carthage. The account, now extant, is a Greek translation—the Periplus, but originally it was written in the Punic language.Google Scholar
10 Herodotus, 11, 191.Google Scholar
11 Herodotus, 11, 22.Google Scholar
12 Herodotus, II, 32–4.Google Scholar
13 Mela, III, IX.Google Scholar
14 See Rawlinson's note on Herodotus, II, 32.Google Scholar Bochart derives Nasamones from Mata-Ammon, the tribe of Ammon. (See Bohn's translation of Pliny, N.H. I, 397, footnote.)Google Scholar
15 Herodotus, IV, 189.Google Scholar
16 Herodotus, IV, 172.Google Scholar
17 See Strabo, XVII, 3, 20Google Scholar, Sallust, B.J. 79Google Scholar, and Valerius Maximus, B.V.C. 6.Google Scholar The Philanoi were supposed to be two brothers, citizens of Carthage, who, in order to settle a boundary dispute with the people of Cyrene, allowed themselves to be buried alive. A well-known translator of Pliny discredits the story because of the supposed Greek name of the brothers, viz. ‘Lovers of praise’! ϕίλος + àινος. (See Bohn's translation of Pliny, N.H. I, 394, footnote.)Google Scholar
18 See Herodotus, IV, 180.Google Scholar
19 Herodotus, 11. ch. 36.Google Scholar
20 In Hausa, e.g. and many other languages of Northern Nigeria the word for maize is Masara.Google Scholar
21 There is some doubt about the date at which Vitruvius wrote, but most scholars believe that Augustus is the Imperator Caesar to whom he dedicated his work, which is quoted later by the elder Pliny.Google Scholar
22 De Architectura, VIII, 2. The text followed is that of Rose (Teubner) but the name of the marsh, ‘Coloe’, is inserted, following locundus.Google Scholar
23 Juba died in A.D. 20.Google Scholar
24 See, e.g., Mela, I, 4, 3 and III, 10, 4Google Scholar and Pliny, N.H. v, 8, 8, § 43.Google Scholar But nigritia was also in common use among post-Augustan writers in the abstract sense to describe the colour ‘blackness’. Our English words Nigritian, Nigritic and the obsolete Nigrite seem to be regarded (by the Oxford Dictionary) as derivatives of the Latin adjective niger = black. Yet the term Nigritia was being commonly used in England during the nineteenth century with the geographical connotation of ‘the region nearly co-extensive with the Sudan’ (see Shorter Oxford Dictionary).
25 Strabo, II, 5, 33 XVII, 3, 3; XVII, 3. 7.Google Scholar
26 Mela, I, 4, 3; III, 10, 4.Google Scholar
27 N.H. v, 8, 8.Google Scholar
28 Strabo, XVII, 3, 5.Google Scholar
29 Mela, III, 9, 9.Google Scholar
30 ‘Big river’ in Jukun would be ‘Nu chu’ or ‘Nu chuo’.Google Scholar
31 From the Greek participle χατωβλέπων=looking down.Google Scholar
32 See my A Sudanese Kingdom, 418: ‘It is said that this animal, when it has been severely wounded and lies down to die, keeps its upper eye open; and if the hunter approaches it before it has died and meets its dying glance, he will be pursued by the animal's ghost until his own has been captured.’Google Scholar;
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35 Pliny, N.H., V, 1.Google Scholar
36 Solinus, xxv, 5, ‘Nigris, inquit, qui Nilum parit’.Google Scholar
37 Anon. Rav. III, 8, 158.Google Scholar
38 Pliny, N.H. v, 4, 4, § 30.Google Scholar
39 Pliny, N.H. v, 9, 10.Google Scholar
40 Odyssey, I, 23–4. (‘The Ethiopians, the most remote of mankind are divided into two parts: The one at the setting of Hyperion, the other at his rising.’)Google Scholar
41 Pliny, N.H. v, 8, 8.Google Scholar
42 See Herodotus, IV, 183–5.Google Scholar
43 Journal, etc., 119.Google Scholar
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50 Compare Pliny's account of the Amantes who ‘find water without any difficulty at a depth of about two cubits’ ( Pliny, N.H. III, 23, 26).Google Scholar
51 Atagara or Ida is on the Lower Niger.Google Scholar
52 Barth, Travels in Central Africa, v, 151.Google Scholar
53 Ibid. IV, 250.
54 Ibid. V, 613.
55 Les Touareg du Nord, 469 ff.Google Scholar
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57 Agathemerus, 11, 10.Google Scholar
58 Dio Cassius, LXXVI.Google Scholar
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60 ‘De lacu Nilide oriri (Nilum) significat (Juba)’ (cap. 6, 676; Pliny, N.H. v, 10). Solinus (xxxii, 2) says also ‘Lacum efficit quem vocant Nilidem.’Google Scholar;
61 See Encyc. Brit, article, ‘Niger’.Google Scholar
62 Leo Africanus, III, 828 (temporal).Google Scholar
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64 Barth, op. cit. IV, 241.Google Scholar
65 Servius ad Verg. Georg. IV, 291.Google Scholar
66 Lydus, , De Mensibus, IV, 68 (Valens, 259).Google Scholar
67 But there are powerful arguments against this view—notably, the use of the expressions ‘Nigeira Metropolis’ and The Geir Ethiopians’. Pliny's river Niger was clearly conceived to flow south of the Sahara, while the great length of the river as described by the classical writers, coupled with the belief that it joined up with the Nile and that there was a seasonal swelling of the river (a feature of the Niger's great easterly affluent—the Benue), together with the account given of the fauna, are all inconsistent with the identification of the Niger with some small river of the Atlas region.Google Scholar