People
Memnocones Aethiopes
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The Memnocones Aethiopes are probably the people Greek legend traced back to Memnon, king of Ethiopia, who came to help his uncle Priam at Troy and was killed by Achilles. The Roman writer Pliny placed these descendants on the African side of the Nile, while the geographer Ptolemy set them near the island of Meroë. On the map they sit beside the Nasamones, divided only by a nameless range of mountains, perhaps the Ethiopian Mountains that Ptolemy saw running along the Nile. The entry seems to preserve knowledge from the third or second century BC.