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The last excavations made by the Khedival Government, the final reports of which have not yet been entirely published, have brought to light between the First and Second Cataracts the cemeteries of a distinctly non-Egyptian people which Bates boldly identifies as the Temehu or Libyans." These cemeteries date from about the end of the Sixth Dynasty to the Eighteenth Dynasty, and show burial in a contracted position, tombs with a circular superstructure, i.e., a circular wall of stones, tattooing or body painting, and other signs of a material culture like that of the Libyans, with some intrusions of a negro character of technique, e.g., punctured ornamentation of pottery. But most important are the skeletons which the discoverer of these cemeteries, Heisuer, calls "C Group," or Middle-Nubians, the majority of which, he affirms, exhibit marked traces of negrism, those of the most recent epoch bearing the most striking instances.
The Middle-Nubians certainly existed for many centuries during the Middle Empire, and Reisner compares them to the Ababdeh in Upper Egypt and to the Bedawins in Lower Egypt at the present time, considering them of Nubian origin. Bates, on the other hand, notes that these so-called negroids discovered by Reisner only exceptionally have woolly or "peppercorn-like" hair, and that generally their hair is straight or wavy. Moreover, the anatomist Elliot Smith testifies that their prognathism is not of the characteristic negroid type but rather "an exaggerated "form of that prognathism which is so common in the pre-dynastic Egyptian." As these were not Negroes, Bates concludes that Reisner's Middle-Nubians ought to be classed rather with the Libyans than with the Negroes.
The fact that this C Group is related to the pre-dynastics, as Elliot Smith,* Bates, and others affirm, certainly excludes the possibility of their being Negroes, of which probably only 2 per cent, are found among the pre-dynastics,t but does not indicate that they are Libyans as it is far from demonstrated that the pre-dynastic Egyptians were Libyans. It is true that Seligman writes that in his opinion the pre-dynastics are "one of the purest branches of the great white race,"J but he has not troubled to ascertain how many of the Anthropologists who have expressed their opinion on this point agree with him.
One gathers from Elliot Smith, who has visited and studied the material, and who, as an anatomist, is specially competent to judge, that going back through the centuries one must bear in mind a series of ethnical movements which have followed the Nile valley from south to north, scattering partially also to the east of the river, where the Beja are now found. The skeletons of C Group certainly belonged to the members of one of these movements. To the same district another such movement, earlier by about one thousand years, brought the A Group, which shows a still slighter negroid admixture, as the Negroes at that epoch were fading away. This A Group buried their dead, laying them on their side and in a contracted position, like that of the pre-dynastic Egyptians, and they had pottery and other ware identical in material and manufacture with those found in the pre-dynastic Egyptian tombs.
This A Group was preceded in their journey towards the north by pre-dynastics who strongly resembled them; they came into Upper Egypt, but none of their representatives are found in Lower Egypt, and their absence there excludes their coming from the north, that is from the Mediterranean area. Elliot Smith believes that the area from which all these similar ethnical waves sprung is some country to the north of the union of the White and Blue Nile, that is immediately north of the Ethiopian area and near the negro area, from which they got their knowledge of elephants, giraffes, and ostriches, all of which are found represented in pre-dynastic tombs, along with a large quantity of ivory and ostrich eggs. .
If we go back to a still more remote epoch, towards the end of the Palasolithic age, it is possible to suppose that similar ethnical waves invaded all Northern Africa. Favoured by climatic conditions other than the present, they laid the basis of a proto-Ethiopian substratum reaching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic in all those countries where they have left their rough stone implements along the great watercourses now dried up; but the Libyans are much more recent, and, from the pictures of them which the Egyptians have left us, they do not appear at all Ethiopian. They came from the north, belonged to another branch of humanity, and remembered having found the Sahara inhabited.§ They probably also found the Nile Delta inhabited, if that was inhabitable. In any case the Leucoderms took footing in Lower Egypt, giving rise to an ethnical movement opposite to the precedent, as is
reflected in the legend of Horus, who, after the conquest of Seth, passed into Nubia, and there obtained a great victory. Nothing is clearer than such an ethnical change in the Nile Valley, whatever may be said to the contrary by those who from parti-pris always go against the so-called Oriental thesis, which is not necessarily wrong becanse believed for a long time!
The changes are undeniable in certain particulars of civilisation,* and in the mean of the physical traits of the population, which no longer corresponds to the pre-dynastic mean—related to C Group and to the actual Abyssinian—but assumes the truly Mediterranean features of the dynastic Egyptians. Along with this has been noted the apparition of Armenoid traits, the percentage of which, from being extremely small during the first dynasties, grows steadily, and can only be explained by an Asiatic infiltration. The presence of an aristocracy of an Armenoid type, noticed by Elliot Smith, indicates the road previously followed by the Mediterranean people to get to Egypt, they departed from those Asiutic centres which are designated as the common seat of the Hamito-Semites.'l" The Leucoderms followed the same road into Libya, but the formation of a potent state in the Kile Delta obstructed the passage of the latest arrivals, who could only filtrate into Egypt.
It is not to be wondered that among these were some brachycephalic people from Arabia and Syria, who would also have contributed to make the native still more orthognathous and more leptorrhine, as can be observed particularly in the male series; but one cannot believe that in neighbouring Asia there were only brachycephals; on the contrary, the great majority must have been dolico-meso-cephalic of a Mediterranean type, identical with the Egyptians and Libyans. Still less can one believe that it was the small Armenoid minority which made the dynastic Egyptians of Lower Egypt so strikingly different from the pre-dynasties. The difference is in toto and comes from the fact that they are a Mediterranean people, while the predynastics were nearer, both geographically and anthropologically, to the Ethiopian area. Thus, and not otherwise, can one interpret Elliot Smith's impression, which he thus happily expresses: "No competent observer who has examined material "from Lower Egypt and compared it with pre-dynastic remains from Upper Egypt "has failed to detect this obvious and unquestionable fact," i.e., the contrasting features of the two people.J The contrast becomes attenuated later by the prevalence in Upper Egypt of Mediterranean traits, though the prevalence is not complete under the first dynasties. Where the descendants of the Ethiopians remain, i.e., in Nubia, archaelogists (ex. Firth),§ find the survival of pre-dynastic African art, and anthropologists a great resemblance to the pre-dynastics but none to the Libyans.
Having thus replied in the negative to the question whether C Group was related to the Libyans as Bates believed, we think that the comparison between the Middle-Nubians and the actual Ababdeh made by Reisuer is correct, only we must at once add that the Ababdeh are not negroid, but Ethiopians metamorphosed by a cross with the negro, just as C Group was.
The actual Barabra who occupy the left bank of the Kile from the First to the Second Cataract, and whom we have already classified with the Ababdeh as Ethiopians more or less negrified by crossing with the Sudan Negro, their neighbour,* cannot be very different from those whom Bates erroneously identifies as a Libyan population living 3,000 years u.C. Bates's alleged proofs are not convincing; that the metis of the left bank of the Nile between the First and Second Cataracts could be believed by Strabo to be Nubio-Libyans by reason of the excessive geographical extension then assigned to Libya, is a comprehensible confusion, but it has no value in relation to their anthropology and still less to that of their predecessors. As to the other, still more antique, alleged proof, the inscription of the Sixth Dynasty (about 2500 B.C.), in which the Temehu are spoken of as being north of the Yam, there is still the possibility suggested by Hrdlickaf that these Temehu lived, not between the First and Second Cataracts, but on the oases of Kharga and Dakhla, which are in the Libyan desert (1 degree farther north than the first Cataract), and might already be more or less protected by the Egyptian Government. Thus by placing the Temehu farther north everything becomes likely, and one can think that the so-called negroids, their neighbors to the south, the Yam, and the VVawat, were simply Ethiopians allied to the Middle-Nubians, a group which we have recognised as Ethiopians crossed with Sudan Negroes. Given also their geographical position intermediate between the Temehu of the oases and the Negroes of the Sudan, one can explain their civilization, which was partly Libyan and partly Negro. They arc anyhow at the edge of the true Ethiopian area from which they went north in a prehistoric age, following the course of the Nile. It is obvious, therefore, that they can be placed anthropologically nearer to the Abyssinians than the Berbers if we wish to adopt the modern terms corresponding to the two races between which we have placed the archaeological contest. Without excluding the presence of isolated individual Negroes we exclude the Negro mass, whose area did not extend over Kordofan till a recent epoch, that is, not till about 2,000 years ago, which may be the date of the descent of the Nubians, as HaddonJ and others believe. The area which is assigned to the Yam, on the other band, is Lower Nubia between Trthet and the present Aswan, as Trthet has been identified by Petrie as Upper Nubia between Derr and Dongola. On the opposite bank to the Yam were the Wawat.§ We are thus much farther north than Kordofan, between the First and Second Cataracts, nearer the first than the second, and just south-east of the oasis of Kharga, so that the whole topography corresponds to our interpretation: that we are not dealing with Negroes, who at that epoch were much farther away towards the south.
To recapitulate. On one hand we have, anthropologically, pre-dyuastic Egyptians, Nubians (A Group), Yam, Wawat, Middle-Nubians or Group C, and the actual Abyssinians, who all show the same physical traits, which are certainly not Mediterranean—e.g., the nasal index of the skeletons whose average is above 50; on the other hand we have Libyans, dynastic Egyptians, and modern Egyptians, in whom the average nasal index never goes above 50.
Without referring in detail to the Egyptian series illustrated by various anthors (Schmidt, Oetteking, Ginffrida-Ruggeri, Biasutti), it is specially interesting to note that Schmidt gives the nasal index of modern Egyptian crania* as 46-3 (J and ?); on the other hand nine Beja (Hadendoa) skulls measured by Seligmanf gave a nasal index of 52-9, which is certainly not the nasal index of a white race. That a like index is found amongst pre-dynastie Egyptians, whom SeligmanJ believes "essentially similar" to the Beja, precisely confirms our thesis, that the one, as the other, were Ethiopians, i.e., distinct from Leucoderms. The same can be said of some Barabra less mixed with the Negro type—ex., the natives of the island of Philae. Schmidt§ measured 15 J skulls and 13 ? of these natives derived from a modern burialground, and although the series was rather scarce, it is interesting to note that the nasal index coincides sufficiently with that which Sergi, Jun.| | obtained from a more numerous Abyssinian series. The relationship of all these non-Egyptian stocks can be clearly seen from the following figures :—
The series of Nagada studied by Miss Fawcett^f may be considered as a transition series, although it was believed to be pre-dyuastic posterior research, shows it to be only so to a small degree, the greatest part of it belonging to the first four dynasties. As its locality is in Upper Egypt it is comprehensible that the predynastic (Ethiopic) type is still prevalent, as is the case in other series,** for the same reason.
We see the opposite in Lower Egypt, where the series of Giza, which is a little later (Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Dynasties), shows, along with that Armenoid infiltration which so impressed Elliot Smith, a nasal index of 46-2 in 103$. The indigenous substratum shows itself, on the other hand, in the females with a nasal index of 50 in 65 ?.ft
It is probable that the difference between Lower and Upper Egypt has been continually fed by the two opposite ethnological strains, and we may say that this difference has beeu perennially maintained because it is still found.
The nasal index of 349 Egyptian soldiers measured by Myers* gives a sensible angmentation going from north to south; while the average is 73,4 in the district of Dakahlia, it is 78 ,1 at Assint, and 78 ,9 at Kena, which almost reaches the latitudes of the oasis of Kharga.
It is permissible to suppose that the actual difference between the leptorrhines and the mesoplatyrrhines is correlated to other differences, in the skin colouring, in the hairiness of the body, and in the facial profile, and that it was so in the prehistoric Egyptian epoch; and as it is difficult to imagine the mesoplatyrrhine predynastics as orthognathous (certainly they were not so) and white-stained like the Libyans, there is no reason to suppose them of the same race of leptorrhines; it is therefore an error to speak of the Libyans as if they were identical with pre-dynastic Egyptians, when everything leads us to believe that the one, as the other, belonged to two different branches of humanity.
On the other hand, it is possible that the Libyans were related to the pre-dynastic Mediterraneans of Lower Egypt (which would explain how a proto-Berber linguistical element entered the Egyptian language), but these pre-dynastics of Lower Egypt are still unknown. It is true that as soon as the population of Lower Egypt appears in its tombs, that is, in the first dynasties, it confirms its Mediterranean origin by its nasal index, which is very different from the Ethiopic nasal index of the pre-dynastics of Upper Egypt. We may infer that such a fundamental difference also existed between the neolithic populations, that of LTpper Egypt being positively Ethiopian, while that of Lower Egypt (if it existedf) was positively Libyan.
The Middle-Nubians certainly existed for many centuries during the Middle Empire, and Reisner compares them to the Ababdeh in Upper Egypt and to the Bedawins in Lower Egypt at the present time, considering them of Nubian origin. Bates, on the other hand, notes that these so-called negroids discovered by Reisner only exceptionally have woolly or "peppercorn-like" hair, and that generally their hair is straight or wavy. Moreover, the anatomist Elliot Smith testifies that their prognathism is not of the characteristic negroid type but rather "an exaggerated "form of that prognathism which is so common in the pre-dynastic Egyptian." As these were not Negroes, Bates concludes that Reisner's Middle-Nubians ought to be classed rather with the Libyans than with the Negroes.
The fact that this C Group is related to the pre-dynastics, as Elliot Smith,* Bates, and others affirm, certainly excludes the possibility of their being Negroes, of which probably only 2 per cent, are found among the pre-dynastics,t but does not indicate that they are Libyans as it is far from demonstrated that the pre-dynastic Egyptians were Libyans. It is true that Seligman writes that in his opinion the pre-dynastics are "one of the purest branches of the great white race,"J but he has not troubled to ascertain how many of the Anthropologists who have expressed their opinion on this point agree with him.
One gathers from Elliot Smith, who has visited and studied the material, and who, as an anatomist, is specially competent to judge, that going back through the centuries one must bear in mind a series of ethnical movements which have followed the Nile valley from south to north, scattering partially also to the east of the river, where the Beja are now found. The skeletons of C Group certainly belonged to the members of one of these movements. To the same district another such movement, earlier by about one thousand years, brought the A Group, which shows a still slighter negroid admixture, as the Negroes at that epoch were fading away. This A Group buried their dead, laying them on their side and in a contracted position, like that of the pre-dynastic Egyptians, and they had pottery and other ware identical in material and manufacture with those found in the pre-dynastic Egyptian tombs.
This A Group was preceded in their journey towards the north by pre-dynastics who strongly resembled them; they came into Upper Egypt, but none of their representatives are found in Lower Egypt, and their absence there excludes their coming from the north, that is from the Mediterranean area. Elliot Smith believes that the area from which all these similar ethnical waves sprung is some country to the north of the union of the White and Blue Nile, that is immediately north of the Ethiopian area and near the negro area, from which they got their knowledge of elephants, giraffes, and ostriches, all of which are found represented in pre-dynastic tombs, along with a large quantity of ivory and ostrich eggs. .
If we go back to a still more remote epoch, towards the end of the Palasolithic age, it is possible to suppose that similar ethnical waves invaded all Northern Africa. Favoured by climatic conditions other than the present, they laid the basis of a proto-Ethiopian substratum reaching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic in all those countries where they have left their rough stone implements along the great watercourses now dried up; but the Libyans are much more recent, and, from the pictures of them which the Egyptians have left us, they do not appear at all Ethiopian. They came from the north, belonged to another branch of humanity, and remembered having found the Sahara inhabited.§ They probably also found the Nile Delta inhabited, if that was inhabitable. In any case the Leucoderms took footing in Lower Egypt, giving rise to an ethnical movement opposite to the precedent, as is
reflected in the legend of Horus, who, after the conquest of Seth, passed into Nubia, and there obtained a great victory. Nothing is clearer than such an ethnical change in the Nile Valley, whatever may be said to the contrary by those who from parti-pris always go against the so-called Oriental thesis, which is not necessarily wrong becanse believed for a long time!
The changes are undeniable in certain particulars of civilisation,* and in the mean of the physical traits of the population, which no longer corresponds to the pre-dynastic mean—related to C Group and to the actual Abyssinian—but assumes the truly Mediterranean features of the dynastic Egyptians. Along with this has been noted the apparition of Armenoid traits, the percentage of which, from being extremely small during the first dynasties, grows steadily, and can only be explained by an Asiatic infiltration. The presence of an aristocracy of an Armenoid type, noticed by Elliot Smith, indicates the road previously followed by the Mediterranean people to get to Egypt, they departed from those Asiutic centres which are designated as the common seat of the Hamito-Semites.'l" The Leucoderms followed the same road into Libya, but the formation of a potent state in the Kile Delta obstructed the passage of the latest arrivals, who could only filtrate into Egypt.
It is not to be wondered that among these were some brachycephalic people from Arabia and Syria, who would also have contributed to make the native still more orthognathous and more leptorrhine, as can be observed particularly in the male series; but one cannot believe that in neighbouring Asia there were only brachycephals; on the contrary, the great majority must have been dolico-meso-cephalic of a Mediterranean type, identical with the Egyptians and Libyans. Still less can one believe that it was the small Armenoid minority which made the dynastic Egyptians of Lower Egypt so strikingly different from the pre-dynasties. The difference is in toto and comes from the fact that they are a Mediterranean people, while the predynastics were nearer, both geographically and anthropologically, to the Ethiopian area. Thus, and not otherwise, can one interpret Elliot Smith's impression, which he thus happily expresses: "No competent observer who has examined material "from Lower Egypt and compared it with pre-dynastic remains from Upper Egypt "has failed to detect this obvious and unquestionable fact," i.e., the contrasting features of the two people.J The contrast becomes attenuated later by the prevalence in Upper Egypt of Mediterranean traits, though the prevalence is not complete under the first dynasties. Where the descendants of the Ethiopians remain, i.e., in Nubia, archaelogists (ex. Firth),§ find the survival of pre-dynastic African art, and anthropologists a great resemblance to the pre-dynastics but none to the Libyans.
Having thus replied in the negative to the question whether C Group was related to the Libyans as Bates believed, we think that the comparison between the Middle-Nubians and the actual Ababdeh made by Reisuer is correct, only we must at once add that the Ababdeh are not negroid, but Ethiopians metamorphosed by a cross with the negro, just as C Group was.
The actual Barabra who occupy the left bank of the Kile from the First to the Second Cataract, and whom we have already classified with the Ababdeh as Ethiopians more or less negrified by crossing with the Sudan Negro, their neighbour,* cannot be very different from those whom Bates erroneously identifies as a Libyan population living 3,000 years u.C. Bates's alleged proofs are not convincing; that the metis of the left bank of the Nile between the First and Second Cataracts could be believed by Strabo to be Nubio-Libyans by reason of the excessive geographical extension then assigned to Libya, is a comprehensible confusion, but it has no value in relation to their anthropology and still less to that of their predecessors. As to the other, still more antique, alleged proof, the inscription of the Sixth Dynasty (about 2500 B.C.), in which the Temehu are spoken of as being north of the Yam, there is still the possibility suggested by Hrdlickaf that these Temehu lived, not between the First and Second Cataracts, but on the oases of Kharga and Dakhla, which are in the Libyan desert (1 degree farther north than the first Cataract), and might already be more or less protected by the Egyptian Government. Thus by placing the Temehu farther north everything becomes likely, and one can think that the so-called negroids, their neighbors to the south, the Yam, and the VVawat, were simply Ethiopians allied to the Middle-Nubians, a group which we have recognised as Ethiopians crossed with Sudan Negroes. Given also their geographical position intermediate between the Temehu of the oases and the Negroes of the Sudan, one can explain their civilization, which was partly Libyan and partly Negro. They arc anyhow at the edge of the true Ethiopian area from which they went north in a prehistoric age, following the course of the Nile. It is obvious, therefore, that they can be placed anthropologically nearer to the Abyssinians than the Berbers if we wish to adopt the modern terms corresponding to the two races between which we have placed the archaeological contest. Without excluding the presence of isolated individual Negroes we exclude the Negro mass, whose area did not extend over Kordofan till a recent epoch, that is, not till about 2,000 years ago, which may be the date of the descent of the Nubians, as HaddonJ and others believe. The area which is assigned to the Yam, on the other band, is Lower Nubia between Trthet and the present Aswan, as Trthet has been identified by Petrie as Upper Nubia between Derr and Dongola. On the opposite bank to the Yam were the Wawat.§ We are thus much farther north than Kordofan, between the First and Second Cataracts, nearer the first than the second, and just south-east of the oasis of Kharga, so that the whole topography corresponds to our interpretation: that we are not dealing with Negroes, who at that epoch were much farther away towards the south.
To recapitulate. On one hand we have, anthropologically, pre-dyuastic Egyptians, Nubians (A Group), Yam, Wawat, Middle-Nubians or Group C, and the actual Abyssinians, who all show the same physical traits, which are certainly not Mediterranean—e.g., the nasal index of the skeletons whose average is above 50; on the other hand we have Libyans, dynastic Egyptians, and modern Egyptians, in whom the average nasal index never goes above 50.
Without referring in detail to the Egyptian series illustrated by various anthors (Schmidt, Oetteking, Ginffrida-Ruggeri, Biasutti), it is specially interesting to note that Schmidt gives the nasal index of modern Egyptian crania* as 46-3 (J and ?); on the other hand nine Beja (Hadendoa) skulls measured by Seligmanf gave a nasal index of 52-9, which is certainly not the nasal index of a white race. That a like index is found amongst pre-dynastie Egyptians, whom SeligmanJ believes "essentially similar" to the Beja, precisely confirms our thesis, that the one, as the other, were Ethiopians, i.e., distinct from Leucoderms. The same can be said of some Barabra less mixed with the Negro type—ex., the natives of the island of Philae. Schmidt§ measured 15 J skulls and 13 ? of these natives derived from a modern burialground, and although the series was rather scarce, it is interesting to note that the nasal index coincides sufficiently with that which Sergi, Jun.| | obtained from a more numerous Abyssinian series. The relationship of all these non-Egyptian stocks can be clearly seen from the following figures :—
The series of Nagada studied by Miss Fawcett^f may be considered as a transition series, although it was believed to be pre-dyuastic posterior research, shows it to be only so to a small degree, the greatest part of it belonging to the first four dynasties. As its locality is in Upper Egypt it is comprehensible that the predynastic (Ethiopic) type is still prevalent, as is the case in other series,** for the same reason.
We see the opposite in Lower Egypt, where the series of Giza, which is a little later (Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Dynasties), shows, along with that Armenoid infiltration which so impressed Elliot Smith, a nasal index of 46-2 in 103$. The indigenous substratum shows itself, on the other hand, in the females with a nasal index of 50 in 65 ?.ft
It is probable that the difference between Lower and Upper Egypt has been continually fed by the two opposite ethnological strains, and we may say that this difference has beeu perennially maintained because it is still found.
The nasal index of 349 Egyptian soldiers measured by Myers* gives a sensible angmentation going from north to south; while the average is 73,4 in the district of Dakahlia, it is 78 ,1 at Assint, and 78 ,9 at Kena, which almost reaches the latitudes of the oasis of Kharga.
It is permissible to suppose that the actual difference between the leptorrhines and the mesoplatyrrhines is correlated to other differences, in the skin colouring, in the hairiness of the body, and in the facial profile, and that it was so in the prehistoric Egyptian epoch; and as it is difficult to imagine the mesoplatyrrhine predynastics as orthognathous (certainly they were not so) and white-stained like the Libyans, there is no reason to suppose them of the same race of leptorrhines; it is therefore an error to speak of the Libyans as if they were identical with pre-dynastic Egyptians, when everything leads us to believe that the one, as the other, belonged to two different branches of humanity.
On the other hand, it is possible that the Libyans were related to the pre-dynastic Mediterraneans of Lower Egypt (which would explain how a proto-Berber linguistical element entered the Egyptian language), but these pre-dynastics of Lower Egypt are still unknown. It is true that as soon as the population of Lower Egypt appears in its tombs, that is, in the first dynasties, it confirms its Mediterranean origin by its nasal index, which is very different from the Ethiopic nasal index of the pre-dynastics of Upper Egypt. We may infer that such a fundamental difference also existed between the neolithic populations, that of LTpper Egypt being positively Ethiopian, while that of Lower Egypt (if it existedf) was positively Libyan.
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African anthropology has received an immense impetus from the excavations now for several years carried on in Upper and Lower Egypt. As ancient cemeteries are revealed, more or less perfect skulls come to light, from the study of which anthropologists, and more especially a small group of medical men, of whom Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri is one, are endeavouring to reconstruct the ancient races out if which the kingdom of Egypt emerged. Obviously such a study raises the secondary issue as to whether any of the races still survive amongst the modern inhabitants of Africa.
To th1s latter problem a general designation, the Hamitic problem, has hitherto been assigned. Professor Giuffrida Ruggeri, however, draws a distinction between Hamites who have been influenced by a white stock approaching Egypt from the Mediterranean side, and a second and possibly earlier group who approached Egypt from the Upper Nile, their 1mmediate predecessors being a light-skinned Arab stock who crossed the Red Sea and were slightly crossed with some Negro element indigenous to Africa. These Hamites were designated by him Ethiopians, and the main purpose of these "New Studies on the Anthropology of East Africa" is admittedly to advocate this theory; its last and final sentence reads: "This monograph is just one contribution towards establishing the separate existence of the Ethiopian as an anthropological type."
There would have been no particular difficulty in the way of such a theory, had not the fashion of previous writers been to adopt an opposite view, deriving every stage of Hamitic culture from a Mediterranean white race imported by way of Egypt. Now there is a vast difference, at the outset, between the mental horizon of the negroised Hamite and that of the purer representatives of the Hamitic group. Prof. GiuffridaRuggeri remarking upon this is probably right in maintaining that the difference is due to two sources of origin rather than one. Bisharin, Berber and Kabyle, for instance, exemplify the Mediterranean type of mind; Nandi, Masai, Irangi and such tribes as Wahima or Wagogo (this one by the way, not mentioned by the writer but possibly better known to English readers than Watusi), with their different outlook might well be descended from the group which he calls Ethiopian.
Linguistically these are Hamitic; in only a very few exceptional cases do they speak a Bantu language; anthropologically, says the Professor, the latter are pseudo-Hamitic. Mental outlook is an important factor in the problem about which much yet remains to be said by those who know, by actual residence, something of the mind and thought of the particular people they describe—thus carrying the subject into the, kindred realm of Ethnology from which it should not be divorced.
Another matter on which any writer familiar with Africa as distinct from Egypt would lay stress is stature and facial characteristic—not that varieties of these do not abound in Egypt, but because in the continent of Africa itself they are to be met with in more impressive groups. Stature is not difficult to measure; but facial measurements are more intricate without anatomical training. Though the cephalic index is the one most usually talten, possibly in no small degree due to the fact that it is the most straightforward measurement of the head and face. Professor Giunrida-Ruggeri regards the nasal index as by far the most important. Varying breadth of nose is undoubtedly the most characteristic and noticeable feature of the African native. Indeed our author would be interested should he ever find himself in Uganda to notice how his Ethiopian type persists among the aristocracy (bami) after thirty generations of contact with the lower people (bakopi), a prev1ous indigenous race of peasants with whom they exhibit every conceivable type blending. All the group have curly hair; but some at least of the aristocracy are still sharply differentiated from the bakopi both in stature and facial characteristic. Might not this contrast be explained far more clearly by nasal index than by cephalic?
From these and similar sidelights to his subject we infer that Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri has decided to approach the. problem from the new vantage ground of the more southern representatives of the Hamitic group, races and tribes, that is, which are much more closely bound up with African life as a whole than the northern groups which confront the traveller in North Africa, the tour1st in Egypt, and the Egyptologist. From this angle of vision he finds it necessary to introduce a third type—the Ethiopic. His treatment should appeal to readers of the African Society's Journal, and those who follow his argument unbiassed by the older theories will, we think, be strongly inclined to agree with him.
An extremely brief summary of his treatment must suffice. He quotes from an address by Professor Seligmann in 1915 the opinion that when the glacial epoch was gradually breaking up in Europe, the increased atmospheric prec1pitation must have given rise to considerable extension of the Upper Nile swamps northward. Hence at the commencement we find no direct communication between Egypt and the Equatorial regions; the way is barred by impassable physical obstacles. Whatever approach, if any, there was southward must have first trended westwards towards the Congo-Nile watershed before it could proceed south. Traces of infiltration of Egyptian culture are still traceable among a few Congo tribes, but not, accord1ng to Seligmann, in any races such as Dinka or Shilluk immed1ately to the south. Along the watershed then was established that contact with the round-headed (mesaticephalic) Negroes indicated by the X group of skulls1 discovered in Nubia, and dating from predynastic times to about 2ooo B.C.
"These skulls, studied by Elliot Smith and Derry, furnish the same cephalic index (70.8) as the Shilluk, some two or three units lower than the cephalic index of the dynastic Negroes whose tombs were excavated near Shellal, known as 'E Group.' The chronological precedence of the mesaticephalic group indicates contact establ1shed with mesaticephalic Negroes of the Congo-Nile watershed advancing north and east."
In passing it may be well to note that this bears out what is known to take place to-day. Communication from Egypt has never penetrated far into Equatorial Africa; the outposts of Dufile and Wadelai, known from the writings of Sir Samuel Baker, have been practically its furthest limits. Attempts to reach Unyoro and Uganda from that side never produced more than a transient and local result. But from the neighbourhood of Lake Chad through Wadai and Darfur still runs a pilgrim route to Mecca; is it in the least degree probable that this route never existed until the days of Muhammed? Moreover, by this route have come into Western Africa those weird remnants of chain armour and Crusaders' swords still noted by travellers in Northern Nigeria and Bornu; and what more natural than that this has been Africa's main highway from time immemorial.
Now if these Muhammedan pilgrims to-day can cross the Red Sea to Mecca, is there anything improbable in Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri's conjecture that his Ethiopians originally came from the Yemen across the Straits of Bab-el
Mandeb—or for the matter of that across any other part of the Red Sea? Once in Africa they might have skirted the Abyssinian tableland and arrived eventually on the Nile. No trace of pure Arabs, such as may perhaps be seen to-day in the case of Khababish of Kordofan,1 is to be found in the history of the Ethiopian past. The Ethiopian type is always found with some admixture of Negro blood, however far back the evidence may be traced; in general, they have a darker skin than the pure Arab and the skull is rounder than that of the brachycephalic Arab.
The Ethiopic type or one closely like it appears also in Egypt for the first three dynasties; Professor GiuffridaRuggeri considers it Ethiopic. But things change when we get to the end of the third dynasty. Mummies then appear for the first time; burial is no longer in the flexed position; pyramids are built and the friendly relations with Upper Egypt cease, giving place to a period of bitter contempt and host1lity. It may be that this is the era of a new migration arising from some Caucasian strain flowing into Egypt from the Mediterranean and reversing the south to north move of the Ethiopian. In any case no skull of Ethiopian type has been found in Lower Egypt, a significant fact and one which affords strong evidence in favour of the theory that the Ethiopian type of Hamite is not only older than the Mediterranean, but also distinct.
The earliest known skulls in Lower Egypt were found at Giza and belong to the 4th, 5th, and 6th dynasties. They are the exact reverse of the Ethiopian type, being more mesorhinian, less prognathous, and brachycephalic rather than dolicocephalic. From this Mediterranean infusion have in all likelihood arisen the Libyans, to whom Oric Bates in his exhaustive treatise would ascribe not only an extremely ancient origin but also a markedly wide influence on early culture. One other prominent race may also be mentioned, viz., the Abyssinians, as being a cross between this newer Mediterranean type and the older Agau.
The Ethiopic type appears to be well nigh lost at the rise of the 4th dynasty, but Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri brings forward evidence to show that this was not by any means the case. The Ethiopian type was in reality present in all those races against whom the Pharaohs of the earlier dynasties made war, Temehu, Yam, Wawat, and Nehesi. Indeed he thinks they still survive in various modern day fragments of tribes in Abyssinia and among certain Nile tribes like the
Barabra. Of the Abyssinian tribes he brings forward the names of Agau, Waito, Baria, Kunama, Sidama and others —in fact, it appears as though he would include almost all remnants of tribes of any obviously early origin in Abyssinia.
Great confusion has however arisen from the fact that nehesi are depicted in 18th dynastjy monuments as fullblooded Negroes, so that nehesi has been uniformly rendered Negro. Now there is no picture of any nehesi earlier than the 18th dynasty; and as for the land of Nehes all that seems clear is that it was to the south of Egypt. In one or two instances these nehesi are said to have "curly" hair, a translation purely conjectural from the supposed fact that these people were Negroes.
Four years ago Professor Seligmann wrote an extremely able paper on the Hamitic problem, in the course of which occurs this sentence: "With regard to the word in the inscription of Thotmes, I rendered 'curly-haired' as a synonym of 'Negro' (nehesi), written earlier in the inscription, and which seems at once to settle the question of the significance of Nehesi, it is necessary to exercise a certain amount of caution" In reality it is nebed-haired. On the authority of Brugsch "nebed"1 means "plaited," and it should be rendered, the people with "plaited hair."
Now those readers who have known something of the earlier days of Uganda history will remember this plaited hair as a very striking character1stic of the Nubian women who came with the soldiers brought from the Nile by Sir F. Lugard. They were certainly a very mixed conglomerate of Nile Valley tribes;- but they had this in common, they were most markedly a people with "plaited hair," little plaits going all round the crown of the head and hanging down like a fringe. We have, therefore, very good reason to expect that Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri is right; the nehesi are not Negroes, but races of the Ethiopian type in process of being gradually more and more intermixed with Negro strain. As for the pictures of the 18th dynasty Nehesi, this particular branch may have been almost completely negroised, a feature quite recognisable in some tribes to-day; or a more careful examination may show that the description of the figures as full-blooded Negroes has been a little overdone.
To th1s latter problem a general designation, the Hamitic problem, has hitherto been assigned. Professor Giuffrida Ruggeri, however, draws a distinction between Hamites who have been influenced by a white stock approaching Egypt from the Mediterranean side, and a second and possibly earlier group who approached Egypt from the Upper Nile, their 1mmediate predecessors being a light-skinned Arab stock who crossed the Red Sea and were slightly crossed with some Negro element indigenous to Africa. These Hamites were designated by him Ethiopians, and the main purpose of these "New Studies on the Anthropology of East Africa" is admittedly to advocate this theory; its last and final sentence reads: "This monograph is just one contribution towards establishing the separate existence of the Ethiopian as an anthropological type."
There would have been no particular difficulty in the way of such a theory, had not the fashion of previous writers been to adopt an opposite view, deriving every stage of Hamitic culture from a Mediterranean white race imported by way of Egypt. Now there is a vast difference, at the outset, between the mental horizon of the negroised Hamite and that of the purer representatives of the Hamitic group. Prof. GiuffridaRuggeri remarking upon this is probably right in maintaining that the difference is due to two sources of origin rather than one. Bisharin, Berber and Kabyle, for instance, exemplify the Mediterranean type of mind; Nandi, Masai, Irangi and such tribes as Wahima or Wagogo (this one by the way, not mentioned by the writer but possibly better known to English readers than Watusi), with their different outlook might well be descended from the group which he calls Ethiopian.
Linguistically these are Hamitic; in only a very few exceptional cases do they speak a Bantu language; anthropologically, says the Professor, the latter are pseudo-Hamitic. Mental outlook is an important factor in the problem about which much yet remains to be said by those who know, by actual residence, something of the mind and thought of the particular people they describe—thus carrying the subject into the, kindred realm of Ethnology from which it should not be divorced.
Another matter on which any writer familiar with Africa as distinct from Egypt would lay stress is stature and facial characteristic—not that varieties of these do not abound in Egypt, but because in the continent of Africa itself they are to be met with in more impressive groups. Stature is not difficult to measure; but facial measurements are more intricate without anatomical training. Though the cephalic index is the one most usually talten, possibly in no small degree due to the fact that it is the most straightforward measurement of the head and face. Professor Giunrida-Ruggeri regards the nasal index as by far the most important. Varying breadth of nose is undoubtedly the most characteristic and noticeable feature of the African native. Indeed our author would be interested should he ever find himself in Uganda to notice how his Ethiopian type persists among the aristocracy (bami) after thirty generations of contact with the lower people (bakopi), a prev1ous indigenous race of peasants with whom they exhibit every conceivable type blending. All the group have curly hair; but some at least of the aristocracy are still sharply differentiated from the bakopi both in stature and facial characteristic. Might not this contrast be explained far more clearly by nasal index than by cephalic?
From these and similar sidelights to his subject we infer that Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri has decided to approach the. problem from the new vantage ground of the more southern representatives of the Hamitic group, races and tribes, that is, which are much more closely bound up with African life as a whole than the northern groups which confront the traveller in North Africa, the tour1st in Egypt, and the Egyptologist. From this angle of vision he finds it necessary to introduce a third type—the Ethiopic. His treatment should appeal to readers of the African Society's Journal, and those who follow his argument unbiassed by the older theories will, we think, be strongly inclined to agree with him.
An extremely brief summary of his treatment must suffice. He quotes from an address by Professor Seligmann in 1915 the opinion that when the glacial epoch was gradually breaking up in Europe, the increased atmospheric prec1pitation must have given rise to considerable extension of the Upper Nile swamps northward. Hence at the commencement we find no direct communication between Egypt and the Equatorial regions; the way is barred by impassable physical obstacles. Whatever approach, if any, there was southward must have first trended westwards towards the Congo-Nile watershed before it could proceed south. Traces of infiltration of Egyptian culture are still traceable among a few Congo tribes, but not, accord1ng to Seligmann, in any races such as Dinka or Shilluk immed1ately to the south. Along the watershed then was established that contact with the round-headed (mesaticephalic) Negroes indicated by the X group of skulls1 discovered in Nubia, and dating from predynastic times to about 2ooo B.C.
"These skulls, studied by Elliot Smith and Derry, furnish the same cephalic index (70.8) as the Shilluk, some two or three units lower than the cephalic index of the dynastic Negroes whose tombs were excavated near Shellal, known as 'E Group.' The chronological precedence of the mesaticephalic group indicates contact establ1shed with mesaticephalic Negroes of the Congo-Nile watershed advancing north and east."
In passing it may be well to note that this bears out what is known to take place to-day. Communication from Egypt has never penetrated far into Equatorial Africa; the outposts of Dufile and Wadelai, known from the writings of Sir Samuel Baker, have been practically its furthest limits. Attempts to reach Unyoro and Uganda from that side never produced more than a transient and local result. But from the neighbourhood of Lake Chad through Wadai and Darfur still runs a pilgrim route to Mecca; is it in the least degree probable that this route never existed until the days of Muhammed? Moreover, by this route have come into Western Africa those weird remnants of chain armour and Crusaders' swords still noted by travellers in Northern Nigeria and Bornu; and what more natural than that this has been Africa's main highway from time immemorial.
Now if these Muhammedan pilgrims to-day can cross the Red Sea to Mecca, is there anything improbable in Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri's conjecture that his Ethiopians originally came from the Yemen across the Straits of Bab-el
Mandeb—or for the matter of that across any other part of the Red Sea? Once in Africa they might have skirted the Abyssinian tableland and arrived eventually on the Nile. No trace of pure Arabs, such as may perhaps be seen to-day in the case of Khababish of Kordofan,1 is to be found in the history of the Ethiopian past. The Ethiopian type is always found with some admixture of Negro blood, however far back the evidence may be traced; in general, they have a darker skin than the pure Arab and the skull is rounder than that of the brachycephalic Arab.
The Ethiopic type or one closely like it appears also in Egypt for the first three dynasties; Professor GiuffridaRuggeri considers it Ethiopic. But things change when we get to the end of the third dynasty. Mummies then appear for the first time; burial is no longer in the flexed position; pyramids are built and the friendly relations with Upper Egypt cease, giving place to a period of bitter contempt and host1lity. It may be that this is the era of a new migration arising from some Caucasian strain flowing into Egypt from the Mediterranean and reversing the south to north move of the Ethiopian. In any case no skull of Ethiopian type has been found in Lower Egypt, a significant fact and one which affords strong evidence in favour of the theory that the Ethiopian type of Hamite is not only older than the Mediterranean, but also distinct.
The earliest known skulls in Lower Egypt were found at Giza and belong to the 4th, 5th, and 6th dynasties. They are the exact reverse of the Ethiopian type, being more mesorhinian, less prognathous, and brachycephalic rather than dolicocephalic. From this Mediterranean infusion have in all likelihood arisen the Libyans, to whom Oric Bates in his exhaustive treatise would ascribe not only an extremely ancient origin but also a markedly wide influence on early culture. One other prominent race may also be mentioned, viz., the Abyssinians, as being a cross between this newer Mediterranean type and the older Agau.
The Ethiopic type appears to be well nigh lost at the rise of the 4th dynasty, but Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri brings forward evidence to show that this was not by any means the case. The Ethiopian type was in reality present in all those races against whom the Pharaohs of the earlier dynasties made war, Temehu, Yam, Wawat, and Nehesi. Indeed he thinks they still survive in various modern day fragments of tribes in Abyssinia and among certain Nile tribes like the
Barabra. Of the Abyssinian tribes he brings forward the names of Agau, Waito, Baria, Kunama, Sidama and others —in fact, it appears as though he would include almost all remnants of tribes of any obviously early origin in Abyssinia.
Great confusion has however arisen from the fact that nehesi are depicted in 18th dynastjy monuments as fullblooded Negroes, so that nehesi has been uniformly rendered Negro. Now there is no picture of any nehesi earlier than the 18th dynasty; and as for the land of Nehes all that seems clear is that it was to the south of Egypt. In one or two instances these nehesi are said to have "curly" hair, a translation purely conjectural from the supposed fact that these people were Negroes.
Four years ago Professor Seligmann wrote an extremely able paper on the Hamitic problem, in the course of which occurs this sentence: "With regard to the word in the inscription of Thotmes, I rendered 'curly-haired' as a synonym of 'Negro' (nehesi), written earlier in the inscription, and which seems at once to settle the question of the significance of Nehesi, it is necessary to exercise a certain amount of caution" In reality it is nebed-haired. On the authority of Brugsch "nebed"1 means "plaited," and it should be rendered, the people with "plaited hair."
Now those readers who have known something of the earlier days of Uganda history will remember this plaited hair as a very striking character1stic of the Nubian women who came with the soldiers brought from the Nile by Sir F. Lugard. They were certainly a very mixed conglomerate of Nile Valley tribes;- but they had this in common, they were most markedly a people with "plaited hair," little plaits going all round the crown of the head and hanging down like a fringe. We have, therefore, very good reason to expect that Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri is right; the nehesi are not Negroes, but races of the Ethiopian type in process of being gradually more and more intermixed with Negro strain. As for the pictures of the 18th dynasty Nehesi, this particular branch may have been almost completely negroised, a feature quite recognisable in some tribes to-day; or a more careful examination may show that the description of the figures as full-blooded Negroes has been a little overdone.
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