Beke

Beke, CHARLES TILSTONE, Abyssinian explorer and biblical critic, was born in London, October 10, 1800; received a commercial education; afterwards studied law in Lincoln's Inn, and devoted a great part of his attention to ancient history, philology, and ethnography. The results of these studies first appeared in his work, Origines Biblicæ, or researches in primeval history (vol. i. 1834), which was an attempt to reconstruct history on the principles of the science of geology, and which gained him the Tübingen degree of doctor of philosophy. In 1837-38 he acted as British consul in Saxony. His historical and geographical studies of the East led Beke to consider the great importance of Abyssinia for intercourse with Central Africa. Supported only by private individuals, he joined in Abyssinia the party led by Major Harris, and distinguished himself (1840-43) by the exploration of countries lying to the south, previously almost unknown in Europe. He fixed the latitude of more than seventy stations, and mapped about 70,000 square miles of country. He also collected the vocabularies of many languages and dialects. The results of these researches appeared in Abyssinia (1845) and in various journals. Having returned to Europe, he excited the attention of geographers by his Essay on the Nile and its Tributaries (1847). In 1853 he had become partner in a Mauri- tius mercantile house, and in 1856 he made unsuccessful attempts at establishing commercial relations in Abyssinia. In 1861 Dr and Mrs Beke journeyed in Palestine; and undertook in 1865 a fruitless mission to Abyssinia, to obtain the release of the captives. In 1870 he was granted a pension on the Civil List. At the commencement of 1874, Dr Beke started for the region at the head of the Red Sea, where he claimed (though his views are disputed) to have discovered Mount Sinai, east of the Gulf of Akabah, and not west as generally supposed. He died at Bromley, Kent, July 31, 1874, being engaged at the time on an account of his journey to Sinai, and a second volume of his Origines Biblicæ. Beke in 1852 edited, for the Hakluyt Society, De Veer's Threc Voyages towards China; he also published The Sources of the Nile (1860); British Captives in Abyssinia (1865); King Theodore (1869); Idol in Horeb (1871); Jesus the Messiah (1872). His posthumous work, Discoveries of Sinai in Arabia (1878), was issued by his widow.