emporium of the trade between the richest and most productive portions
of the earth; the gold countries of eastern Africa, the spice lands of
India, and the region of frankincense and precious stones in southern
Arabia. He has shown that the communication between these countries
was established in the most ancient periods, and continued without
interruption through successive ages of time; that the ruins of Adulé,
Azab, and Axum, yet mark the caravan routes between Meroë and Arabia
Felix; and that Yemen, though separated from India by an open sea, is
yet connected with it by nature in an extraordinary manner. “One half
of the year,” he adds, “from spring to autumn, the wind regularly sets
in and wafts the vessels from Arabia to India; the other half, from
autumn to spring, it as regularly carries them back from India to
Arabia.”[86]
In truth, what Diodorus says, in general, of early Egyptian commerce
and conquest by sea, need be no longer regarded as fabulous, although
the details, like much that we glean from the remote history of all
heathen nations, are to be received with circumspection. He tells us
that Sesostris (Rameses III.) fitted out a fleet of four hundred ships
in the Arabian gulf, with which he conquered all the countries
bordering on the Erythrean sea, as far as India, whence he led an army
beyond the Ganges until he again reached the ocean. This account is
not likely to be _all_ fable, especially since it comes from a Greek
historian; and we may safely regard it as an indication of that
extensive maritime enterprise in which the Egyptians engaged with the
southern nations of Asia. When the Romans under the guidance of
Hippalus, eighty years after their conquest of Egypt, began to trade
with India by way of the Red Sea and Malabar, they only re-established
the ancient route, which had been long forgotten amidst the chaos of
political revolutions. In fine, if the Egyptians had been their own
historians, we should probably learn that they were as familiar with
India in ancient as the English are in modern times.[87]
While we conclude, therefore, that the Egyptians were a distinct
people from either the Arabs or Hindoos, we cannot deny those
resemblances which are too obvious to be mistaken, yet not to be
accounted for without difficulty; nor can there be a reasonable doubt
that the people of both these nations formed an important part of the
once multitudinous population of Egypt.[88]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. THE HYKSHOS.
There is no fact in history more familiar than the rule of the Hykshos
or shepherd kings in Egypt. The word Hykshos is the same as we have
seen (p. 38,) both in the Egyptian and Berber or Libyan tongues, and
signified a _shepherd_ or a wanderer. It was applied to all those
foreigners who at different times displaced the native
dynasties,—Scythians, Hellenic tribes, Phenicians, and others.
Reserving some remarks for a future part of this memoir, we shall
briefly observe that there is no monumental record of more than one of
these sovereignties, namely, that which was expelled by Amunoph the
First of the eighteenth dynasty, about eighteen centuries before
Christ. These people, whose name was held in execration by the
Egyptians, are said by Herodotus and other historians to have
possessed a fair complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair. That they
were of the Caucasian race there is no question; but the preceding
traits apply equally to the Scythians, the Phenicians, and the Edomim
or Edomites, and it is probable that the shepherd dynasties of Manetho
embraced kings from all these sources.[89]
The portraits of these intrusive kings, as recently discovered in
various parts of Egypt, not only present a physiognomy entirely
different from that of the legitimate monarchs, but the symbol of
their religion is also different, being “the sun, whose rays terminate
in human hands,” while the accompanying hieroglyphic legends make no
allusion to the Egyptian deities. “Their features,” observes Mr.
Perring, from whom I derive these facts, “do not at all resemble the
Egyptian; and, though much defaced, are evidently the same as those
found on the propyla of Karnak, where we may recognise a similarity
with the tall, white, slender, blue-eyed, and red-haired race, painted
on the soles of the Egyptian sandals, and appearing also on the
monuments, where they are emphatically called the _wicked race of
Scheto_.”[90] One of these effigies is found only on fragments of
stone which had pertained to temples antecedent to the eighteenth
dynasty, which structures were overturned by the legitimate kings of
that and the succeeding reigns, and the _materials_ used in erecting
those splendid Pharaonic monuments of which they yet form a part.
The three following heads are copied from Mr. Perring’s very
interesting memoir.
[Illustration]
No. 1, the portrait of a king whose name is read _Skai_ by
Champollion, copied from his tomb in the western valley near Thebes.
The bold, heavy features, and harsh expression are very remarkable,
and Mr. Perring observes that this personage is represented of a much
lighter red than is usual with the Egyptians.
No. 2. Head of another king of this exotic dynasty, with long sharp
features, whose name reads _Atenre-Backhan_ on the monuments, copied
from a stone in the second propylon of Karnak.
No. 3. Another effigy of the same king, from the grottoes of El Tell,
of which Mr. Perring remarks, that having been copied in haste it is
somewhat in caricature.
El Tell, or Tel-el-Amarna, appears to have been the stronghold of
these “foreign marauders,” respecting whom Mr. Gliddon, after
suggesting the probability that the sovereigns may have been of
Arabian origin, inquires—“whether the present inhabitants, whose
village occupies the once warlike camp or city of _Atenre_, have in
their views and in their physical conformation, some vestiges of that
early tribe of heterodox conquerors? And may not then the cause of the
almost instinctive terror with which the natives of other parts of
Egypt regard this vicinity, proceed from vague traditions of ancient
predatory habits,—some fitful legend that has outlived thirty-five
centuries?”[91]
[Illustration]
There are many effigies of the same general character of the age of
the fourth Rameses. One of them, a captive, is figured in the margin.
Wilkinson reads their name Tochari on the monuments; Rosellini
translates it Fekkaro. To my view they have the lined and hardy
features of the Celts or Gauls, of whom, however, we have little
knowledge at that remote date, (B.C. 1400,) although even then they
occupied a large part of southern Europe. They perhaps rather pertain
to the Phenician branch of the Caucasian race.
[Illustration]
There are other paintings, especially some at Abousimbel of the age of
Rameses III., which correspond in every particular with the Scythian
physiognomy as recorded in history;[92] and the name of _Scheto_, by
which they are designated on the monuments, confirms the suggestion of
the hieroglyphists that they represent a Scythian or Scytho-Bactrian
people.[93]
The researches of Lord Lindsay seem to prove that the Assyrians were
also among the Hykshos conquerors of Egypt; and the shepherds who
invaded Egypt before the time of Abraham are called _Cushim_ by the
ancients, which means Ethiopians or Babylonians; for the country on
both sides of the Persian Gulf was called _Cush_.[94]
Plutarch, quoting Manetho, asserts that Tiphonean or red-haired men
were sacrificed in the temples of Eletheias, and their ashes scattered
to the winds. Was this done in commemoration of the hatred which the
Egyptians bore to the red-haired Hykshos?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. THE COPTS.
From various antecedent remarks it will be perceived that I regard the
Copts as a mixed community, derived in diverse proportions from the
Caucasian and the Negro; and this diversity of origin may explain the
dissimilar characteristics which travellers have ascribed to them.
Denon, for example, described them as having “flat foreheads, eyes
half closed, and raised up at the angles, high cheek bones, a broad,
flat, and short nose, a large, flattened mouth, placed at a
considerable distance from the nose, thick lips, a little beard, a
shapeless body, crooked legs, without expression in the contour, and
long, flat toes.”[95] Denon even thinks that these features
correspond, in a remarkable manner, with the human face and figure as
represented in Egyptian painting and sculpture! And Sonnini, after
describing them in nearly analogous terms, adds the moral reproach,
that while “they are the ugliest of men, they are the filthiest and
most disgusting.”[96]
If we compare these seemingly exaggerated descriptions with those of
Brown, Lane, and some other travellers, the discrepancy is so great
as, at first thought, to baffle all explanation. Brown, for example,
“was not struck with any resemblance to the Negro features or form;”
and he saw nothing remarkable in the texture of the hair.[97] “The
eyes of the Copts,” says Mr. Lane, “are generally large and elongated,
slightly inclining from the nose upwards, and always black. The nose
is straight, excepting at the end, where it is rounded and wide; and
the lips are rather thick, and the hair is black and curly.”[98]
Madden adds that they are characterized by a remarkable distance
between the eyes. Belzoni observed among them some as fair as
Europeans; Rosellini assures us that they are largely mixed with
Jewish and Roman blood;[99] and D’Avezac, like Depauw, discovers in
them a partial Chinese ancestry. These, and numberless other opinions
which might be cited, prove that the Copts differ greatly among
themselves; and that they are, physically and morally, a mixture of
all the nations which have successively held dominion in Egypt, or
swelled its varied population—Egyptians of various castes, Greeks,
Romans, Arabs, Hebrews, Negroes, and some others Such was, at least in
part, the opinion of Pugnet, (whose memoir I have not seen,) for he
separates them “into two divisions; those whose ancestry has been
intermixed, and partly of Greek and Latin descent, and a class of
purely Egyptian origin.”[100] But, after all, perhaps the traces which
are most invariable in the Copt are derived from the Negro; and they
are manifest in the very bones of the head and face.
“The inhabitants of the towns of Arabia and Egypt,” says Burckhardt,
“are in the daily habit of taking in wedlock Abyssinian as well as
Negro slaves;”[101] and, in a subsequent part of his travels, the same
intelligent author describes a class of people in Nubia who are the
direct offspring of this mixture of race, and who seem, from his
description, to answer the characters of the Copts themselves. “The
Nouba slaves (among whom must be reckoned those who are born in Senaar
of male Negroes and female Abyssinians) form a middle class between
the blacks and the Abyssinians. Their features, though they retain
evident signs of Negro origin, have still something of what is called
regular; their noses, though smaller than those of Europeans, are less
flat than those of Negroes their lips are less thick, and the cheek
bones less prominent. The hair of some is woolly but among the greater
part it is similar to the hair of Europeans, but _stronger_, and
always curled.” Another, and yet more striking example of the Negroid
conformation is seen in the vast Foulah or Fellatah population of
central Africa, which is now spread over a region of fifteen hundred
miles from east to west, and five hundred miles from north to south.
That they are a mixed progeny of Arabs, Berbers and Negroes, no longer
admits of a reasonable doubt. Such is the opinion of D’Avezac and
Hodgson, Vater, Adelung, and most other inquirers. “In the midst of
the Negro races,” observes M. D’Avezac, “there stands out a métive
population, of tawny or copper colour, prominent nose, small mouth,
and oval face, which ranks itself among the white races, and asserts
itself to be descended from Arab fathers and Taurodo mothers. Their
crisped hair, even woolly, though long, justifies their classification
among the _Oulotric_ (woolly-haired) populations; but neither the
traits of their features, nor the colour of their skin, allow them to
be confounded with Negroes, however great the fusion of the two types
may be.”[102] These and other facts derived from the slave trade, when
considered in connexion with the Negro colonization of Nubia in the
reign of Dioclesian, will account, I may repeat, not only for every
blending of race observable in that country, but also assists us in
tracing the origin of the Copts;—not to a _period_ of time, it is
true, but to circumstances which have been in operation for ages, and
which were once, in all probability, far more active than they are at
present.
By the kindness of Mr. Gliddon I possess three Coptic skulls, two of
which are adult, and are accurately sketched in the subjoined
drawings, (A and B.)
[Illustration]
In A the cranium is elongated, narrow, but otherwise mediately
developed in front, with great breadth and fulness in the whole
posterior region. The nasal bones, though prominent, are broad, short,
and concave, and the upper jaw is everted. There is, also, a
remarkable distance between the eyes. The facial angle measures 81°,
the internal capacity 85 cubic inches.
In the second head, B, the head is long and narrow, with a receding
forehead, flat or concave nasal bones, and short, everted upper
maxilla. Facial angle 78°; internal capacity 77 cubic inches.
A glance at these two crania will satisfy any one that they possess,
in degree, both the conformation and expression of the Negro.
The third skull, that of a child of two years of age, corresponds in
general form with the preceding, without having the African
characteristics quite so obviously expressed.
It therefore follows, from all the evidence we possess in relation to
the Copts, that, as a people, they partake sensibly, and sometimes
largely, of Negro lineage.
An inspection of the royal portraits preserved in Rosellini, shows
several heads which are obviously of the Coptic form; those, for
example, of Sabakon and Tirhaka, of the Ethiopian dynasty, and of the
queen Metumva, of an earlier epoch. (Plate XIV.) The same lineaments,
though in less degree, are also obvious in the effigies of Sheshonk
(Shishak) and Osorkon II., of the twenty-second dynasty, and in a few
others of different periods of time. I wish it to be understood that I
do not say these sovereigns were of Coptic lineage; but merely that
their physiognomy, as expressed on the monuments, has the Coptic
character. The history of the Copts remains an enigma in Egyptian
ethnography.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. THE NUBIANS.
It seems necessary, in further elucidation of this subject, to submit
a few additional facts and observations in reference to the Berbers,
or present inhabitants of Nubia, in order to show their relative
position to the ancient occupants of that country. As the celebrated
Burckhardt saw them in almost every locality, we shall mainly content
ourselves with his graphic delineation. The Berbers, says he, are of a
dark red-brown complexion, “which, if the mother is a slave from
Abyssinia, becomes a light brown in the children; and if from the
Negro countries, extremely dark. Their features are not at all those
of the Negro, the face being oval, the nose often perfectly Grecian,
and the cheek bones not prominent. The upper lip, however, is somewhat
thicker than is considered beautiful among northern nations, though it
is still far from the Negro lip. Their hair is bushy and strong, but
not woolly.” The same intelligent traveller subsequently speaks of
their language, respecting which he was certainly well qualified to
judge; he assures us that the people south of Siout are ancient
Bedouin tribes, who speak a very pure Arabic; and he makes a nearly
similar remark respecting those who inhabit the river banks from
Dongola to Senaar, and thence westward to Bornou, although they speak
many different dialects.[103]
It is well known, however, that there are whole tribes in Nubia whose
language is not derived from the Arabic; and these may be more nearly
allied to the primitive population. “The inhabitants of Dar Dongola,”
says Dr. Rüppell, “are divided into two principal classes, namely, the
Barábra, or _descendants of the old Ethiopian natives of the country_,
and the races of Arabs who have emigrated from the Hedjar. The
ancestors of the Barábra, who, in the course of centuries have been
repeatedly conquered by hostile tribes, must have undergone some
intermixture with people of foreign blood; yet an attentive inquiry
will enable us to distinguish among them the old national physiognomy
which their forefathers have marked upon colossal statues, and the
bas-reliefs of temples and sepulchres. A long, oval countenance, a
beautifully curved nose, somewhat rounded towards the tip,
proportionately thick lips, but not protruding excessively, a
retreating chin, scanty beard, lively eyes, strongly frizzled but
never woolly hair, a remarkably beautiful figure, generally of middle
size, and a bronze colour, are the characteristics of the genuine
Dungolawi.”[104] He adds, that the same traits of physiognomy are
generally found among the Ababdé, the Bishareen, and partially among
the people of Shendy and Abyssinia.
It must be acknowledged, however, that we can hardly expect to find
the genuine Egypto-Ethiopian lineaments in any considerable number
among the modern Nubians. Placed as the former were, between the
Egyptians on the north, the Indo-Arabian nations on the east, and the
Negroes on the south and west, and this, too, through the long period
of several thousand years, their features must have become sensibly
modified, even in the earliest times, by that blending of race which
was inseparable from their position; and as the Koldagi and other
Negro tribes have, at different times, established themselves in large
bodies in Nubia, we need be at no loss, I conceive, in accounting for
any traces of Negro lineage in some Barábra communities of the present
day.
Dr. Prichard considers “the descent of the modern Nubians, or Barábra,
from the Nouba (a Negro nation) of the hill country of Kordofan, to be
as well established as very many facts which are regarded as certain
by writers on ethnography.” With every deference to that distinguished
ethnographer, we may inquire, what became of the pre-existing
inhabitants when the tribes of Kordofan colonized Nubia? Were they
destroyed or expelled? History makes no mention of either; and we are
justified in the opinion that an amalgamation of races took place,
whence some of those diversities of organization observable in the
modern Nubians. That this intermixture of races has continued to the
present time, the reader will find abundant evidence in other parts of
this memoir; yet I cannot here refrain from adding an observation from
Cailliaud, who, remarking on the shortness of life among the people of
Senaar from disease and dissipation, declares that the number of
Negroes which pours into the country, and the fruitfulness of the
women, are the resources which serve to repair the vast and continual
waste of population.[105] I may be told that this is proving too much.
A sensible writer, and one who has ingeniously and instructively
investigated the Nubian question, remarks as follows:—“The Arab tribes
near Shendy may still, perhaps, justly boast of the purity of their
blood; but, generally speaking, within the limits mentioned above, the
slave or Negro population is about a sixth of the whole, and
continually amalgamating with it. While nature kindly endeavours to
wash out the stain, every caravan from the south or west pours in a
new supply of slaves, and restores the blackening element.”[106]
This author, however, in his desire to ascribe to climate the chief
agency in the transformation of the Negro into the Nubian, seems to
overlook the fact that while the Negroes flow into the country on the
one side, the migratory Arabs invade it on the other, thus furnishing
inexhaustible materials for the blending of the two races. I fully
acquiesce, as before hinted, in the accuracy of the following opinion,
as applied to a large proportion of the modern Nubians; namely, “that
they are descended, not from the possessors of Ethiopia in its
flourishing period, but from the prædial and slave population of the
country, increased by colonists, and raised into a nation by peculiar
circumstances between the third and sixth centuries of the Christian
era.”[107]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. THE NEGROES.
We have the most unequivocal evidence, historical and monumental, that
slavery was among the earliest of the social institutions of Egypt,
and that it was imposed on all conquered nations, white as well as
black.[108] So numerous was this unfortunate class of persons, that it
was the boast of the Egyptian kings, recorded by Diodorus, that the
vast structures of Luxor and Karnak were erected by the labour of
foreigners alone. Of Negro slavery, in particular, the paintings and
sculptures give abundant illustration. “Black people,” says Sir G.
Wilkinson, “designated as natives of the _foreign land_ of Cush, are
generally represented on the Egyptian monuments as captives or bearers
of tribute to the Pharaohs;” and the attendant circumstances of this
inhuman traffic appear to have been much the same in ancient as in
modern times. It is curious, also, in a numerical point of view, to
observe that Arrian, who wrote in the second century, gives three
thousand as the number of Negroes annually brought down the Nile in
his time; while Madden, writing in our own day, and consequently
sixteen hundred years later than Arrian, estimates the present number
in nearly the same words. If it be allowable to make these data the
basis of calculation for the past thirty-five centuries, it will
follow that upwards of ten millions of Negroes have been brought as
bondsmen into Egypt during that period. This I regard a reasonable
calculation; for in the present wasted and depopulated condition of
the country, the demand for servants and slaves must be far below what
it was in the flourishing epoch of the Pharaohs.[109]
This vast influx of Negroes into the valley of the Nile must
necessarily have left its impression on the physical traits of the
Egyptians themselves; in modern times, as seen in the Copts, and in
more distant periods, as proved by the Negroid heads, in which both
the configuration and expression are too obvious to be mistaken. But
it may be inquired, how does it happen that Negroes or their
descendants should be found in the catacombs, if they constituted a
menial or slave-caste in Egypt? In reply, it may be observed that
persons of this race have been capable, in all ages, of elevating
themselves to posts of distinction in the east, and especially and
proverbially those who have belonged to the class of eunuchs.[110] It
is also important to observe, that so tenacious were the Egyptians of
the rights of their offspring, that they admitted them to equal
privileges with themselves, _even when the mother was a slave_; and
these usages extended to inheritance.[111]
The preceding facts, without multiplying more on the same subject,
amply account for that interminable amalgamation of the Caucasian and
Negro races which has been going on in Egypt from the remotest times;
while they also explain that incidental social elevation of the Negro
caste, to which the monuments and catacombs alike bear witness.
This blending of races is farther illustrated in the present
population of Nubia. The traveller Burckhardt remarks, that the slaves
sent down the Nile, and those transported to Arabia, bear but a small
proportion to the number kept by the Mahommedans of the more southern
countries of Africa. At Shendy, for example, from one to six are seen
in every family; and the custom prevails as far as Senaar, and
westward to Kordofan, Darfour and Bornou. All the Bedouin tribes who
inhabit or surround these countries are well stocked with slaves, nor
does the number diminish in the very remote provinces of Houssa and
Begarmeh; and we are told by the same intelligent observer, that the
result of this promiscuous intercourse is a mixed progeny, which
blends the characteristics of the Arab with those of the Negro.[112]