Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/818

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EKH—ELA

In I860 the total population was 1,138,749, and in 1867, 1,281,482. At the former date there were about 35,000 Greeks, more than 23,000 Jews, more than 20,000 Germans, 19,000 Arme nians, 9000 Moldavians and Wallachians, 7000 Poles, 7000 Lithu anians, 500 Servians, and 5000 Gipsies ; while the Little Russians and the Great Russians stood to each other in the ratio of 83 to 17. Upwards of 5500 were Russian dissenters or Raskolniks, 20,318 Protestants, and 7040 Catholics. Two cities only, RostoiT and Taganrog had more than 20,000 inhabitants ; four, Ekaterinoskil , Nakhichevan, 13akhmut, and Petrokovka, had upwards of 10,000; and several, such as Novomoskofsk, Pavlograd, Mariupol, and Azoff had more than 5000.

Ekaterinoslaff, a town of European Russia, capital of the above government, is situated on the right bank of the Dnieper, at a height of 210 feet above the sea, 984 miles from St Petersburg and 600 from Moscow, in 48 21 N. lat. and 34 4 E. long. If the suburb of Novi Koiudak be included, it extends for upwards of four miles along the river, and its average breadth is about li miles. The oldest part lies very low, and is consequently much exposed to floods. Contiguous to the town on the north-west is the royal village of Novi Maidani or the New Factories, and in the south-east Kazannaya Mandrikovka. Only about 200 houses are built of stone. The bishop s palace, eight churches, a Raskolnik place of worship, a syna gogue and four Jewish oratories, a gymnasium, a library, and several benevolent institutions, make up the list of the public buildings. The house now occupied by the Nobles Club was formerly occupied by Potemkin. Among the industrial establishments are brickworks, foundries, flour-mills, and numerous tallow-boileries and soap-works. The general trade is rather restricted by the position of the town above the rapids of the Dnieper; but there is a very extensive trade in wood. Three yearly markets are held, at the largest of which the movement amounts to upwards of 2.200,000 roubles. Population in 1861, 18,881, of whom 3472 were Jews; in 1871, 24,267.

On the site of the town of Ekaterinoslaff there formerly stood the Polish castle of Koindak, built in 1635 by the French general Beauplau. The Cossacks, having destroyed the castle, founded the villages of Old and New Koindak and Polvitza. In 1786, the town was established by Potemkin, and in the following year the empress, Catherine II., with her own hand laid the foundation stone of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. The schemes of Potemkin for the extension of the city were neglected after his death, and Paul I. changed the very name into Xovo Rossiesk. The original name was restored in 1802, and the city raised to its present rank. In 1830, the cathedral was built on the site originally proposed, but according to a less extensive scale.

EKHMIN, or Akhmin, a town of Upper Egypt, a short distance from the right bank of the Nile, between two and three miles above Suliag. It is a place of about 3000 or 4000 inhabitants, has several mosques and two C jptic churches, maintains a weekly market, and manufac tures shawls and checked cotton. Outside of the walls are the ruins of two ancient temples, one of which, identified by an inscription of the 12th year of the emperor Trajan as that of Pan, was regarded by Abulfeda as among the most important in Egypt.

Ekhmin, in Coptish Khmin or Shmin, is the ancient Chemmis or Panopolis, chief town of the Chemmite nome in the Thebaid, and, according to Strabo, inhabited by skilful stone-cutters arid linen-weavers. It was reputed one of the oldest cities in the country. Herodotus particularly mentions a temple of Perseus, and asserts that the inhabitants celebrated gymnastic games in honour of this hero; but it has not been ascertained to which of the Egyptian gods this account should be assigned. Panopolis probably decayed with the rise of Thebes, and long after it sutfered greatly at the hands of the Arab invaders. At the time of Pococke s visit in 1738, it was still the seat of a powerful emir, who extended his protection to the Coptic Catholics ; but the dynasty is long ago extinct, leaving nothing but its traditions and sepulchres behind. Xonuus, the Greek poet, was born at Chein- mis in 410, and Nestorius died and was buried there about 447.

EKRON, in the Septuagint and Apocrypha Accaron), a royal city of the Philistines, identified with the modern Syrian village of Akir, five miles from Ramle.h, on the southern slope of a low ridge separating the plain of Philistia from Sharon. Though included by the Israelites within the limits of the tribe of Judah, and mentioned in Judges xix. as one of the cities of Dan, it was in Philistine possession in the days of Samuel, and apparently main tained its independence. According to the narrative of the Hebrew text, here differing from the Septuagint and Josephus, it was the last town to which the ark was transferred before its restoration to the Israelites. Its maintenance of a sanctuary to Beelzebub is mentioned in 2 Kings i. At the time of the Crusades it was still a large village ; but now, according to Porter, it contains only 50 mud houses, and has no visible remains of antiquity except two finely built walls.

ELAGABALUS. See Heliogabalus.

ELAM. This is the name given in Scripture to the

province of Persia called Susiana by the classical geographers, from Susa or Shushan its capital. In one passage, how ever (Ezra iv. 9), it is confined to Elymais, the north-western part of the province, and its inhabitants distinguished from those of Shushan, which elsewhere (Dan. viii. 2) is placed in Elam. Strabo (xv. 3, 12, &c.) makes Susiana a part of Persia proper, but a comparison of his account with those of Ptolemy (vi. 3, 1, &c.) and other writers would limit it to the mountainous district to the east of Babylonia, lying between the Oroatis and the Tigris, and stretching from India to the Persian Gulf. Along with this mountainous district went a fertile low tract of country on the western side, which also included the marshes at the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris and the north-eastern coast land of the Gulf. This low tract, though producing large quan tities of grain, was intensely hot in summer ; the high regions, however, were cool and well watered. The whole country was occupied by a variety of tribes, all speaking agglutinative dialects allied to each other and to the so- called Accadian language of primitive Chaldea, but in very different stages of civilization. The most important of the, tribes were the natives of southern Susiana, called Anzan in the cuneiform inscriptions, who established their capital at Susa, and founded a powerful monarchy there at a very early date. Strabo (xi. 13, 3, 6), quoting from Nearchus, seems to include them under the Elymseans, whom he associates with the Uxii, and places on the frontiers of Persia and Susa ; but Pliny more correctly makes the Eulseus the boundary between Susiana and Elymais (A 7 . //., vi. 29-31). The Uxii are described as a robber tribe in the mountains adjacent to Media, and their name is apparently to be identified with the title given to the whole of Susiana in the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, Uwaja, or "Aborigines." Uwaja is probably the origin of the modern Khuzistan, though Mordtmann would derive the latter from ^:L " a sugar-reed." Immediately border ing on the Persians were the Amardians or Mardians, in whom we may see the Apharsathchites and Apharsites of Ezra iv. 9, as well as Khapirti or Khalpriti, the name given to Susiana in the Protomedic cuneiform texts, which are written in the agglutinative dialect of the Turanian Medes and northern Elamites. Khapirti appears as Aipir in the inscriptions of Mai-Amir. Passing over the Messabatse, who inhabited a valley which may perhaps be the modern Mah-Sabadan, as well as the level district of Yamutbal or Yatbur (with its capital Duran or Deri) which separated Elam from Babylonia, and the smaller districts of Characene, Cabandene, Corbiana, and Gabiene mentioned by classical authors, we come to the fourth principal tribe of Susiana, the Cissii (jEsch., Per*., 16 ; Strab. xv. 3, 2) or Cosszci (Strab. xi. 5, 6 ; xvi. 11, 17; Arr., Ind., 40 ; Polyb.

v. 54, &c.), the Cassi of the cuneiform inscriptions