Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Troglodytes
TROGLODYTES (T/xayAoSvrai), a Greek word meaning "cave-dwellers." Caves have been widely used as human habitations both in prehistoric and in historic times (see Cave), and ancient writers speak of Troglodytes in various parts of the world, as in Mcesia near the lower Danube (Strabo, vii. 5, p. 318), in the Caucasus (Id., xi. 5, p. 506), but especially in various parts of Africa from Libya (Id., xvii. 3, p. 828) to the Red Sea. Herodotus (iv. 183) tells of a race of Troglodyte Ethiopians in inner Africa, very swift of foot, living on lizards and creeping things, and with a speech like the screech of an owl. The Garamantes hunted them for slaves. It has been supposed that these Troglodytes may be Tibbus, who still in part are cave-dwellers. Aristotle also (Hist. An., vii. 12) speaks of a dwarfish race of Troglodytes on the upper course of the Nile, who possessed horses and were in his opinion the Pygmies of fable. But the best known of these African cave-dwellers were the inhabitants of the "Troglodyte country" on the coast of the Red Sea, who reached as far north as the Greek port of Berenice, and of whose strange and sav age customs an interesting account has been preserved by Diodorus and Photius from Agatharchides.[1] They were a pastoral people, living entirely on the flesh of their herds, or, in the season of fresh pasture, on mingled milk and blood. But they killed only old or sick cattle (as indeed they killed old men who could no longer follow the flock), and the butchers were called " unclean "; nay, they gave the name of parent to no man, but only to the cattle of which they had their subsistence. This last point seems to be a confused indication of totemism. They went almost naked; the women wore necklaces of shells as amulets. Marriage was unknown, except among the chiefs, a fact which agrees with the prevalence of female kin ship in these regions in much later times. They practised circumcision or a mutilation of a more serious kind. The whole account, much of which must be here passed by, is one of the most curious pictures of savage life in ancient literature.
The Biblical Horim, who inhabited Mount Seir before the Edomites, bore a name which means cave-dwellers, and may probably have been a kindred people to the Troglodytes on the other side of the Red Sea. Jerome, on Obadiah 5, speaks of this region as containing many cave-dwellings, and such habitations are still some times used on the borders of the Syro-Arabian desert.
- ↑ See also Artemidorus in Strabo, xvi. 17, p. 785 sq.