Macrobians

[3][4][2] According to Herodotus' account, the Persian Emperor Cambyses II upon his conquest of Egypt (525 BC) sent ambassadors to Macrobia, bringing luxury gifts for the Macrobian king to entice his submission.

[7] This is described by Herodotus in the following quote: "and after this [the Persian spies] saw last of all their receptacles of dead bodies, which are said to be made of crystal in the following manner:—when they have dried the corpse, whether it be after the Egyptian fashion or in some other way, they cover it over completely with plaster 21 and then adorn it with painting, making the figure as far as possible like the living man.

[10] So Cambyses, instead of crossing the western desert directly from Memphis to attack the Ammonians and Macrobians of Libya, decided first to go south to Thebes where he fought no battle and plundered the old abandoned city of Amun.

After conquering Ethiopia south of Egypt with no food provision and no baggage beast, Cambyses entered upon the desert west of Ethiopia in order to try and reach the Macrobians dwelling at the ends of the earth or the opposite end of the continent, but after getting deeper into the desert and only accomplishing a fifth of the distance (south of Siwa), the army of Cambyses resulted to cannibalism on their own fellow troops.

[16] Herodotus also makes it known that only two tribes accomplished this long journey from the Nile river to the western ends of Africa (Libya), these two tribes were known as the Libyan Nasamones, who spoke an alien language to the inhabitants, and the Ichthyophagi of Elephantine, who spoke the same language as the inhabitants, but Cambyses with his huge army failed to accomplish what the Nasamones and Ichthyophagi had already completed.

Cambyses, after being insulted by the tallest and long-lived (Macrobian) King of Ethiopia in the west, he eagerly wanted to conquer and subdue all people of Amun and destroy all temples of the God, but failed in his desperate attempt.

[21] Historical accounts of the Macrobians also have much in common with the pastoral Somali figures who are similarly known to be tall, handsome warriors, that sustained themselves with a diet mainly composed of meat and milk.

This perspective that places the Macrobians in Somali territory was suggested by the German historian Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren in the 1800s, and later affirmed by Indian scholar, Mamta Agarwal, who wrote "these people were none other than the inhabitants of Somalia, opposite the Red Sea.