Around 450 BC Herodotus, Greek author of History, wrote of the inhabitants of Colchis (in modern Georgia) : "it is undoubtedly a fact that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent. I noticed this myself before I heard anyone else mention it ... My own idea on the subject was based first on the fact that they have black skins and woolly hair... and secondly, and more especially, on the fact that the Colchians, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians are the only races which from ancient times have practiced circumcision." He also noted the Colchians wove a form of linen identical to that woven in Egypt. Archeologists confirmed that Colchians and Egyptian used the same kind of vertical 2-beam loom.
Herodotus cited a story told by Egyptian priests about a Pharoah Sesostris, who once led an army northward through Syria and Turkey all the way to Colchis, westward across Southern Russia, and then south again through Romania, until he reached Bulgaria and the Eastern part of Greece. Sesostris then returned home the same way he came, leaving colonists behind at the Colchian river Phasis. Herodotus cautioned the reader that this story came 2nd hand via Egyptian priests, but also noted that the Colchians themselves had legends of an Egyptian colonization.
Some modern historians regard Herodotus as unreliable, and even Herodotus cautioned the reader that his story is hearsay. But Herodotus' account is not the only claim of an African presence in Eastern Europe. In the late 4th century, Church Fathers St Jerome and Sophronius, wrote of Colchis as the "second Ethiopia" because of its black population.
The Nart Epic of Abkhazia (on Georgia's northwestern coast) is folklore believed to be thousands of years old. It tells of 100 black-skinned horsemen who visited the Caucasus and liked it so much some of them stayed. Dmitri Gulia (1874-1960), a Abkhazian linguist, ethnographer and historian, amassed a large collection of words and names that were similar in the Egyptian, Ethiopian and Abkhazian languages. The names included family names, names of pre-Christian deities, names of rivers and mountains. He also noted customs and folk beliefs Abkhazia seemed to share with Egypt and Ethiopia.
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