Beke, Charles Tilstone

(bēk), 1800–1874, English explorer and author. In Ethiopia in 1840–43 he mapped c.70,000 sq mi (181,300 sq km) of the country, determined the approximate course of the Blue Nile, and compiled vocabularies of 14 languages and dialects. He wrote Origines Biblicae (1834), The Sources of the Nile (1860), and The British Captives in Abyssinia (1865). His Discoveries of Sinai in Arabia and of Midian appeared posthumously, and his widow published (1874) a summary of his works.