Blemmyes were mythological monsters described by Pliny the Elder, later associated with the real African Beja people. They were headless with eyes and mouth on their chest. They were a nomadic tribe engaged in military struggles with the Romans. They invaded Lower Egypt five times, but suffered a crushing defeat under Marcus Aurelius Probus. They later invaded Egypt again, but a peace treaty was negotiated with the emperor Diocletian in AD 298.
Blemmys are mythological monsters described by Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia (about 77 AD). In later stories of the Roman era, the name was associated with a real African ethnic group, the Beja people. The Beja known as Blemmyes to later Romans were a nomadic tribe engaged in a series of military struggles with the Romans.
In Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder describes Blemmyes as headless, or headless, with his mouth and eyes on his chest. Similar creatures were later described in other works of so-called natural history. Following the tradition of attributing monstrous attributes to little-known people and places, Sir Walter Raleigh places them in the New World and calls them Ewaipanoma in his 1595 Discovery of Guyana.
The creatures later entered English folklore as cannibals or man-eaters. Shakespeare mentions them in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) and Othello (1605). Blemmyes also appeared in various European encyclopedias of the Middle Ages.
The Blemmy historians lived mainly in today’s Sudan. They were Nubian Egyptians and their chief deities included Isis, Mandulis and Anhur. The Greek geographer Strabo, writing in the century before Pliny, described them as peaceful people. However, by the end of the 2nd century AD, they had grown into a significant military power.
In AD 194, the Blemmyes aided Pescennius Niger in his fight against Septimius Severus for the imperial seat. Septimius Severus finally prevailed. Throughout the 3rd century AD, the Blemmyes engaged the Romans in battle a number of times, often fighting on the side of would-be Roman usurpers.
The Blemmyes also invaded Lower Egypt, or Thebes, no less than five times. This posed a particular problem for the Romans, as the area was the center of grain production for the empire. While the Blemmys often fought hard, they were ultimately no match for the Roman military forces.
The Blemmyes suffered a crushing defeat under Marcus Aurelius Probus in AD 279-280. However, they again invaded Egypt, together with the Nobatae tribe, during the reign of Diocletian. In AD 298, the emperor negotiated a peace treaty with the tribes, withdrawing Rome’s borders north to Philae and giving the two tribes an annual stipend of gold.
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