Man, Past and Present Part 51

Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that the difficulties are not all overcome by this hypothesis, and the further question of language divides even its stanchest supporters into opposing groups, for while Sergi's Mediterraneans necessarily speak a non-Indo-European language[1090], Ridgeway's Pelasgians speak Aeolic Greek[1091].

The range and importance of the Pelasgians are most strictly limited by J. L. Myres[1092], who thinks that the Alpine type may even be primitive in the Morea, Mediterranean man being an intruder from the south merely fringing the coast and never penetrating inland. The researches of von Luschan in Lycia support this view[1093], and Ripley's map of the present inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula shows the "Greek contingent closely confined to the sea-coast[1094]." Ripley, however, though carefully avoiding any dragging of "Pelasgians" into the question, a.s.sumes a primitive substratum of Mediterranean type all over Greece.

"The testimony of these ancient Greek crania is perfectly harmonious.

All authorities agree that the ancient h.e.l.lenes were decidedly long-headed, betraying in this respect their affinity to the Mediterranean Race.... Whether from Attica, from Schliemann's successive cities excavated upon the site of Troy, or from the coast of Asia Minor[1095]; at all times from 400 B.C. to the third century of our era, it would seem proved that the Greeks were of this dolichocephalic type.... Every characteristic of their modern descendants and every a.n.a.logy with the neighbouring populations, leads us to the conclusion that the cla.s.sical h.e.l.lenes were distinctly of the Mediterranean racial type, little different from the Phoenicians, the Romans or the Iberians[1096]." Nevertheless Dorpfeld[1097] claims that there were, from the first, two races in Greece, a Southern, or Aegean, and a Northern, who were the Aryan Achaeans of history, and recent archaeological discoveries certainly support this view.

Another attempt to solve the Pelasgian problem is that of E.

Meyer[1098]. After enumerating the various areas said to have been occupied by the Pelasgians "_ein grosses Urvolk_" who ranged from Asia Minor to Italy, he p.r.i.c.ks the bubble by saying that in reality there were no Pelasgians save in Thessaly, in the fruitful plain of Peneus, hence called "Pelasgic Argos[1099]," and later Pelasgiotis. They, like the Dorians, invaded Crete from Thessaly and at the beginning of the first millennium were defeated and enslaved by the incoming Thessalians.

These are the only true Pelasgians. The other so-called Pelasgians are the descendants of an eponymous Pelasgos who in genealogical poetry becomes the ancestor of mankind. Since the Arcadians were regarded as the earliest of the indigenous peoples, Pelasgos was made the ancestor of the Arcadians. The name "Pelasgic Argos" was transferred from Thessaly to the Peloponnesian city. Attic Pelasgians were derived from a mistake of Hecataeus[1100]. So the legend grew. The only real Pelasgian problem, concludes Meyer, is whether the Thessalian Pelasgians were a Greek or pre-Greek people, and he is inclined to favour the latter view.

The ident.i.ty of "the most mysterious people of antiquity" is further obscured by philology, for, as P. Giles points out, their name appears merely to mean "the people of the sea," so that "they do not seem to be in all cases the same stock[1101]."

Whether we call them Pelasgians or no, there would seem to be little doubt that the splendours of Aegean civilisation which have been and still are being gradually revealed by the researches of British, Italian, American and German archaeologists are to be attributed to an indigenous people of Mediterranean type, occupying an area of which Crete was the centre, from the Stone Age, right through the Bronze Age, down to the Northern invasions of the second millennium and the introduction of iron. In range this culture included Greece with its islands, Cyprus, and Western Anatolia, and its influence extended westwards to Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and eastwards to Syria and Egypt. Its chief characteristics are (1) an indigenous script both pictographic and linear, with possible affinities in Hitt.i.te, Cypriote and South-west Anatolian scripts, but hitherto indecipherable; (2) a characteristic art attempting "to express an ideal in forms more and more closely approaching to realities[1102]," exhibited in frescoes, pottery, reliefs, sculptures, jewelry etc.; (3) a distinctive architectural style, and (4) type of tomb, which have no parallels elsewhere. Excavations at Cnossos go far towards establis.h.i.+ng a chronology for the Aegean area. At the base is an immensely thick neolithic deposit, above which come pottery and other objects of Minoan Period I. 1, which are correlated by Petrie with objects found at Abydos, referred by him to the 1st Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Minoan Period II. 2 corresponds with the Egyptian XII Dynasty (2500 B.C.), characteristic Cretan pottery of this period being found in the Fayum.

Minoan Period III. 1 and 2 synchronises with Dynasty XVIII (1600 to 1400 B.C.). Iron begins to be used for weapons after Period III. 3, and is commonly attributed to incursions from the north, the Dorian invasion of the Greek authors, about 1000 B.C. which led to the destruction of the palace of Cnossos and the subst.i.tution of "Geometric" for "Mykenaean" art.

Turning to the African branch of the Mediterranean type, we find it forming not merely the substratum, but the great bulk of the inhabitants throughout all recorded time from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and from the Mediterranean to Sudan, although since Muhammadan times largely intermingled with the kindred Semitic stock (mainly Arabs) in the north and west, and in the east (Abyssinia) with the same stock since prehistoric times. All are comprised by Sergi[1103] in two main divisions:--

1. EASTERN HAMITES, answering to the _Ethiopic Branch_ of some writers, of somewhat variable type, comprising the _Old_ and _Modern Egyptians_ now mixed with Semitic (Arab) elements; the _Nubians_, the _Bejas_, the _Abyssinians_, collective name of all the peoples between Khor Barka and Shoa (with, in some places, a considerable infusion of Himyaritic or early Semitic blood from South Arabia); the _Gallas_ (Gallas proper, Somals, and Afars or Danakils); the _Masai_ and _Ba-Hima_.

2. NORTHERN HAMITES, the _Libyan Race_ or _Berber (Western) Branch_ of some writers, comprising the _Mediterranean Berbers_ of Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli; the _Atlantic Berbers_ (_Shluhs_ and others) of Morocco; the _West Saharan Berbers_ commonly called _Tuaregs_; the _Tibus_ of the East Sahara; the _Fulahs_, dispersed amongst the Sudanese Negroes; the _Guanches_ of the Canary Islands.

Of the Eastern Hamites he remarks generally that they do not form a h.o.m.ogeneous division, but rather a number of different peoples either crowded together in separate areas, or dispersed in the territories of other peoples. They agree more in their inner than in their outer characters, without const.i.tuting a single ethnical type. The cranial forms are variable, though converging, and evidently to be regarded as very old varieties of an original stock. The features are also variable, converging and characteristic, with straight or arched (aquiloid) nose quite different from the Negro; lips rather thick, but never everted as in the Negro; hair usually frizzled, not wavy; beard thin; skin very variable, brown, red-brown, black-brown, ruddy black, chocolate and coffee-brown, reddish or yellowish, these variations being due to crossings and the outward physical conditions.

In this a.s.sumption Sergi is supported by the a.n.a.logous case of the western Berbers between the Senegal and Morocco, to whom Collignon and Deniker[1104] restrict the term "Moor," as an ethnical name. The chief groups, which range from the Atlantic coast east to the camping grounds of the true Tuaregs[1105], are the Trarsas and Braknas of the Senegal river, and farther north the Dwash (Idoesh), Uled-Bella, Uled-Embark, and Uled-en-Nasur. From a study of four of these Moors, who visited Paris in 1895, it appears that they are not an Arabo-Berber cross, as commonly supposed, but true Hamites, with a distinct Negro strain, shown especially in their frizzly hair, bronze colour, short broad nose, and thickish lips, their general appearance showing an astonis.h.i.+ng likeness to the Bejas, Afars, Somals, Abyssinians, and other Eastern Hamites.

This is not due to direct descent, and it is more reasonable to suppose "that at the two extremities of the continent the same causes have produced the same effects, and that from the infusion of a certain proportion of black blood in the Egyptian [eastern] and Berber branches of the Hamites, there have sprung closely a.n.a.logous mixed groups[1106]."

From the true Negro they are also distinguished by their grave and dignified bearing, and still more by their far greater intelligence.

Both divisions of the Hamites, continues Sergi, agree substantially in their bony structure, and thus form a single anthropological group with variable skull--pentagonoid, ovoid, ellipsoid, sphenoid, etc., as expressed in his terminology--but constant, that is, each variety recurring in all the branches; face also variable (tetragonal, ellipsoid, etc.), but similarly identical in all the branches; profile non-prognathous; eyes dark, straight, not prominent; nose straight or arched; hair smooth, curly, long, black or chestnut; beard full, also scant; lips thin or slightly tumid, never protruding; skin of various brown shades; stature medium or tall.

Such is the great anthropological division, which was diffused continuously over the greater part of Africa, and round the northern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. According to Stuhlmann[1107] it had its origin in South Arabia, if not further east, and entered Africa in the region of Erythrea. He regards the Red Sea as offering no obstacle to migrations, but suggests a possible land connection between the opposite sh.o.r.es.

Nothing is more astonis.h.i.+ng than the strange persistence not merely of the Berber type, but of the Berber temperament and nationality since the Stone Ages, despite the successive invasions of foreign peoples during the historic period. First came the Sidonian Phoenicians, founders of Carthage and Utica probably about 1500 B.C. The Greek occupation of Cyrenaica (628 B.C.) was followed by the advent of the Romans on the ruins of the Carthaginian empire. The Romans have certainly left distinct traces of their presence, and some of the Aures highlanders still proudly call themselves _Rumaniya_. These _Shawias_ ("Pastors") form a numerous group, all claiming Roman descent, and even still keeping certain Roman and Christian feasts, such as _Bu Ini_, _i.e._ Christmas; _Innar_ or _January_ (New Year's Day); Spring (Easter), etc.

A few Latin words also survive such as _urtho_ = hortus; _kerrush_ = quercus (evergreen oak); _milli_ = milliarium (milestone).

After the temporary Vandal occupation came the great Arab invasions of the seventh and later centuries, and even these had been preceded by the kindred _Ruadites_, who had in pre-Moslem times already reached Mauretania from Arabia. With the Jews, some of whom had also reached Tripolitana before the New Era, a steady infiltration of Negroes from Sudan, and the recent French, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers, we have all the elements that go to make up the cosmopolitan population of Mauretania.

But amid them all the Berbers and the Arabs stand out as the immensely predominant factors, still distinct despite a probably common origin in the far distant past and later interminglings. The Arab remains above all a nomad herdsman, dwelling in tents, without house or hamlet, a good stock-breeder, but a bad husbandman, and that only on compulsion. "The ploughshare and shame enter hand in hand into the family," says the national proverb. To find s.p.a.ce for his flocks and herds he continues the destructive work of Carthaginian and Roman, who ages ago cleared vast wooded tracts for their fleets and commercial navies, and thus rendered large areas barren and desolate.

The Berber on the contrary loves the sheltering woodlands; he is essentially a highlander who carefully tills the forest glades, settles in permanent homes, and often develops flouris.h.i.+ng industries. Arab society is feudal and theocratic, ruled by a despotic Sheikh, while the Berber with his _Jemaa_, or "Witenagemot," and his _Kanun_ or unwritten code, feels himself a freeman; and it may well have been this democratic spirit, inherited by his European descendants, that enabled the western nations to take the lead in the onward movement of humanity. The Arab again is a fanatic, ever to be feared, because he blindly obeys the will of Allah proclaimed by his prophets, marabouts, and mahdis[1108]. But the Berber, a born sceptic, looks askance at theological dogmas; an unconscious philosopher, he is far less of a fatalist than his Semitic neighbour, who a.s.sociates with Allah countless demons and jins in the government of the world.

In their physical characters the two races also present some striking contrasts, the Arab having the regular oval brain-cap and face of the true Semite, whereas the Berber head is more angular, less finely moulded, with more prominent cheekbones, shorter and less aquiline nose, which combined with a slight degree of sub-nasal prognathism, imparts to the features coa.r.s.er and less harmonious outlines. He is at the same time distinctly taller and more muscular, with less uniformity in the colour of the eye and the hair, as might be expected from the numerous elements entering into the const.i.tution of present Berber populations.

In the social conflict between the Arab and Berber races, the curious spectacle is presented of two nearly equal elements (same origin, same religion, same government, same or a.n.a.logous tribal groupings, at about the same cultural development) refusing to amalgamate to any great extent, although living in the closest proximity for over a thousand years. In this struggle the Arab seems so far to have had the advantage.

Instances of Berberised Arabs occur, but are extremely rare, whereas the Berbers have not only everywhere accepted the Koran, but whole tribes have become a.s.similated in speech, costume, and usages to the Semitic intruders. It might therefore seem as if the Arab must ultimately prevail. But we are a.s.sured by the French observers that in Algeria and Tunisia appearances are fallacious, however the case may stand in Morocco and the Sahara. "The Arab," writes Malbot, to whom I am indebted for some of these details, "an alien in Mauretania, transported to a soil which does not always suit him, so far from thriving tends to disappear, whereas the Berber, especially under the s.h.i.+eld of France, becomes more and more aggressive, and yearly increases in numbers. At present he forms at least three-fifths of the population in Algeria, and in Morocco the proportion is greater. He is the race of the future as of the past[1109]."

This however would seem to apply only to the races, not to their languages, for we are elsewhere told that Arabic is encroaching steadily on the somewhat ruder Berber dialects[1110]. Considering the enormous s.p.a.ce over which they are diffused, and the thousands of years that some of the groups have ceased to be in contact, these dialects show remarkably slight divergence from the long extinct speech from which all have sprung. Whatever it be called--Kabyle, Zenatia, Shawia, Tamashek, Shluh--the Berber language is still essentially one, and the likeness between the forms current in Morocco, Algeria, the Sahara, and the remote Siwah Oasis on the confines of Egypt, is much closer, for instance, than between Norse and English in the sub-Aryan Teutonic group[1111].

But when we cross the conventional frontier between the contiguous Tuareg and Tibu domains in the central Sahara the divergence is so great that philologists are still doubtful whether the two languages are even remotely or are at all connected. Ever since the abandonment of the generalisation of Lepsius that Hamitic and Negro were the sole stock languages, the complexity of African linguistic problems has been growing more and more apparent, and Tibu is only one among many puzzles, concerning which there is great discordance of opinion even among the most recent and competent authorities[1112].

The Tibu themselves, apparently direct descendants of the ancient Garamantes, have their primeval home in the Tibesti range, _i.e._ the "Rocky Mountains," whence they take their name[1113]. There are two distinct sections, the Northern _Tedas_, a name recalling the _Tedamansii_, a branch of the Garamantes located by Ptolemy somewhere between Tripolitana and Phazania (Fezzan), and the Southern _Dazas_, through whom the Tibu merge gradually in the negroid populations of central Sudan. This intermingling with the blacks dates from remote times, whence Ptolemy's remark that the Garamantes seemed rather more "Ethiopians" than Libyans[1114]. But there can be no doubt that the full-blood Tibu, as represented by the northern section, are mainly Mediterranean, and although the type of the men is somewhat coa.r.s.er than that of their Tuareg neighbours, that of the women is almost the finest in Africa. "Their women are charming while still in the bloom of youth, unrivalled amongst their sisters of North Africa for their physical beauty; pliant and graceful figures[1115]."

It is interesting to notice amongst these somewhat secluded Saharan nomads the slow growth of culture, and the curious survival of usages which have their explanation in primitive social conditions. "The Tibu is always distrustful; hence, meeting a fellow-countryman in the desert he is careful not to draw near without due precaution. At sight of each other both generally stop suddenly; then crouching and throwing the litham over the lower part of the face in Tuareg fas.h.i.+on, they grasp the inseparable spear in their right and the shanger-mangor, or bill-hook, in their left. After these preliminaries they begin to interchange compliments, inquiring after each other's health and family connections, receiving every answer with expressions of thanksgiving to Allah. These formalities usually last some minutes[1116]." Obviously all this means nothing more than a doffing of the hat or a shake-hands amongst more advanced peoples; but it points to times when every stranger was a _hostis_, who later became the _hospes_ (host, guest).

It will be noticed that the Tibu domain, with the now absolutely impa.s.sable Libyan desert[1117], almost completely separates the Mediterranean branch from the Hamites proper. Continuity, however, is accorded, both on the north along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean to the Nile Delta (Lower Egypt), and on the south through Darfur and Kordofan to the White Nile, and thence down the main stream to Upper Egypt, and through Abyssinia, Galla and Somali lands to the Indian Ocean. Between the Nile and the east coast the domain of the Hamites stretches from the equator northwards to Egypt and the Mediterranean.

It appears therefore that Egypt, occupied for many thousands of years by an admittedly Hamitic people, might have been reached either from the west by the Mediterranean route, or down the Nile, or, lastly, it maybe suggested that the Hamites were specialised in the Nile valley itself.

The point is not easy to decide, because, when appeal is made to the evidence of the Stone Ages, we find nothing to choose between such widely separated regions as Somaliland, Upper Egypt, and Mauretania, all of which have yielded superabundant proofs of the presence of man for incalculable ages, estimated by some palethnologists at several hundred thousand years. In Egypt the palaeoliths indicate not only extreme antiquity, but also that the course of civilisation was uninterrupted by any such crises as have afforded means of chronological cla.s.sification in Western Europe. The differences in technique are local and geographical, not historic. The Neolithic period tells the same tale, and the use of copper at the beginning of the historic period only slowly replaced the flint industry, which continued during the earlier dynasties down to the period of the Middle Empire and attained a degree of perfection nowhere surpa.s.sed. Prehistoric pottery strengthens the evidence of a slow, gradual development, the newer forms nowhere jostling out the old, but co-existing side by side[1118].

It might seem therefore that the question of Egyptian origins was settled by the mere statement of the case, and that there could be no hesitation in saying that the Egyptian Hamites were evolved on Egyptian soil, consequently are the true autochthones in the Nile valley. Yet there is no ethnological question more hotly discussed than this of Egyptian origins and culture, for the two seem inseparable. There are broadly speaking two schools: the African, whose fundamental views are thus briefly set forth, and the Asiatic, which brings the Egyptians with all their works from the neighbouring continent. But, seeing that the Egyptians are now admitted to be Hamites, that there are no Hamites to speak of (let it be frankly said, none at all) in Asia, and that they have for untold ages occupied large tracts of Africa, there are several members of the Asiatic school who allow that, not the people themselves, but their culture only came from western Asia (Mesopotamia). If so, this culture would presumably have its roots in the delta, which is first reached by the Isthmus of Suez from Asia, and spread thence, say, from Memphis up the Nile to Thebes and Upper Egypt, and here arises a difficulty. For at that time there was no delta[1119], or at least it was only in process of formation, a kind of debatable region between land and water, inhabitable mainly by crocodiles, and utterly unsuited to become the seat of a culture whose characteristic features are huge stone monuments, amongst the largest ever erected by man, and consequently needing solid foundations on _terra firma_. It further appears that although Memphis is very old, Thebes is much older, in other words, that Egyptian culture began in Upper Egypt, and spread not up but down the Nile. On the other hand the Egyptians themselves looked upon the delta as the cradle of their civilisation, although no traces of material culture have survived, or could be expected to survive, in such a soil[1120]. Moreover it is not necessary to introduce Asiatic invaders by way of Lower Egypt. F. Stuhlmann postulates a land connection between Africa and Arabia, but even without this a.s.sumption he regards the Red Sea as affording no hindrance to early infiltrations[1121]. Flinders Petrie, while rejecting any considerable water transport for the uncultured prehistoric Egyptians (whom he derives from Libya), detects a succession of subsequent invasions from Asia, the dynastic race crossing the Red Sea to the neighbourhood of Koptos, and Syrian invasions leading to the civilisation of the Twelfth Dynasty, besides the later Hyksos invasions of Semito-Babylonian stock[1122].

The theory of Asiatic origins is clearly summed up by H. H.

Johnston[1123]. He regards the earliest inhabitants of Egypt as a dwarfish Negro-like race, not unlike the Congo Pygmies of to-day (p.

375), with possibly some trace of Bushman (p. 378), but this population was displaced more than 15,000 years ago by Mediterranean man, who may have penetrated as far as Abyssinia, and may have been linguistically parent of the Fulah[1124]. The Fulah type was displaced by the invasions of the Hamites and the Libyans or Berbers. "The Hamites were no doubt of common origin, linguistically and racially, with the Semites, and perhaps originated in that great breeding ground of conquering peoples, South-west Asia. They preceded the Semites, and (we may suppose) after a long stay and concentration in Mesopotamia invaded and colonised Arabia, Southern Palestine, Egypt, Abyssinia, Somaliland and North Africa to its Atlantic sh.o.r.es. The Dynastic Egyptians were also Hamites in a sense, both linguistically and physically; but they seem to have attained to a high civilisation in Western Arabia, to have crossed the Red Sea in vessels, and to have made their first base on the Egyptian coast near Berenice in the natural harbour formed by Ras Benas. From here a long, broad wadi or valley--then no doubt fertile--led them to the Nile in the Thebaid, the first seat of their kingly power[1125]. The ancestors of the Dynastic Egyptians may have originated the great dams and irrigation works in Western Arabia; and such long struggles with increasing drought may have first broken them in to the arts of quarrying stone blocks and building with stone. Over population and increasing drought may have caused them to migrate across the Red Sea in search of another home; or their migration may have been partly impelled by the Semitic hordes from the north, whom we can imagine at this period--some 9000 to 10,000 years ago--pressing southwards into Arabia and conquering or fusing with the preceding Hamites; just as these latter, no doubt, at an earlier day, had wrested Arabia from the domain of the Negroid and Dravidian" (p.

382).

That the founding of the First Dynasty was coincident with a physical change in the population, is proved by the thousands of skeletons and mummies examined by Elliot Smith[1126], who regards the Pre-dynastic Egyptians as "probably the nearest approximation to that anthropological abstraction, a pure race, that we know of (p. 83)." He describes the type as follows (Chap. IV.).

The Proto-Egyptian (_i.e._ Pre-dynastic) was a man of small stature, his mean height, estimated at a little under 5 ft. 5 in., in the flesh for men, and almost 5 ft. in the case of women, being just about the average for mankind in general, whereas the modern Egyptian _fellah_ averages about 5 ft. 6 in. He was of very slender build with indications of poor muscular development. In fact there is a suggestion of effeminate grace and frailty about his bones, which is lacking in the more rugged outlines of the skeletons of his more virile successors. The hair of the Proto-Egyptian was precisely similar to that of the brunet South European or Iberian people of the present day. It was a very dark brown or black colour, wavy or almost straight and sometimes curly, never "woolly." There can be no doubt whatever that this dark hair was a.s.sociated with dark eyes and a bronzed complexion. Elliot Smith emphatically endorses Sergi's identification of the ancient Egyptian as belonging to his Mediterranean Race. "So striking is the family likeness between the Early Neolithic peoples of the British Isles and the Mediterranean and the bulk of the population, both ancient and modern, of Egypt and East Africa, that a description of the bones of an early Briton might apply in all essential details to an inhabitant of Somaliland." But he points out also that there is an equally close relations.h.i.+p linking the Proto-Egyptians with the populations to the east, from the Red Sea as far as India, including Semites as well as Hamites. Rejecting the terms "Mediterranean" or "Hamite" as inadequate he would cla.s.sify his Mediterranean-Hamite-Semite group as the "Brown Race[1127]."

A most fortunate combination of circ.u.mstances afforded Elliot Smith an opportunity for determining the ethnic affinities of the Egyptian people.

The Hearst Expedition of the University of California, under the direction of G. A. Reisner, was occupied from 1901 onwards with excavations at Naga-ed-Der in the Thebaid, where a cemetery, excavated by A. M. Lythgoe, contained well-preserved bodies and skeletons of the earliest known Pre-dynastic period. Close by was a series of graves of the First and Second Dynasties; a few hundred yards away tombs of the Second to the Fifth Dynasties (examined by A. C. Mace), with a large number of tombs ranging from the time of the Sixth Dynasty to the Twelfth. "Thus there was provided a chronologically unbroken series of human remains representing every epoch in the history of Upper Egypt from prehistoric times, roughly estimated at 4000 B.C., up till the close of the Middle Empire, more than two thousand years later." To complete the story Coptic (Christian Egyptian) graves of the fifth and sixth centuries were discovered on the same site.

"The study of this extraordinarily complete series of human remains, providing in a manner such as no other site has ever done the materials for the reconstruction of the racial history of one spot during more than forty-five centuries, made it abundantly clear that the people whose remains were buried just before the introduction of Islam into Egypt were of the same flesh and blood as their forerunners in the same locality before the dawn of history. And nine years' experience in the Anatomical Department of the School of Medicine in Cairo," continues Elliot Smith, "has left me in no doubt that the bulk of the present population in Egypt conforms to precisely the same racial type, which has thus been dominant in the northern portion of the Valley of the Nile for sixty centuries[1128]."

As early as the Second Dynasty certain alien traits began to appear, which became comparatively common in the Sixth to Twelfth series. The non-Egyptian characters are observable in remains from numerous sites excavated by Flinders Petrie in Lower and Middle Egypt, and are particularly marked in the cemetery round the Giza Pyramids (excavated by the Hearst Expedition, 1903), containing remains of more than five hundred individuals, who had lived at the time of the Pyramid-builders; they are therefore referred to by Elliot Smith as "Giza traits," and attributed to Armenoid influence. Soon after the amalgamation of the Egyptian kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt by Menes (Mena), consequent perhaps upon the discovery of copper and the invention of metal implements[1129], expeditions were sent beyond the frontiers of the United Kingdom to obtain copper ore, wood and other objects. Even in the times of the First Dynasty the Egyptians began the exploitation of the mines in the Sinai Peninsula for copper ore. It is claimed by Meyer[1130] that Palestine and the Phoenician coast were Egyptian dependencies, and there is ample evidence that there was intimate intercourse between Egypt and Palestine as far north as the Lebanons before the end of the Third Dynasty. From this time forward the physical characters of the people of Lower Egypt show the results of foreign admixture, and present marked features of contrast to the pure type of Upper Egypt. The curious blending of characters suggests that the process of racial admixture took place in Syria rather than in Egypt itself[1131]. The alien type is best shown in the Giza necropolis, and its representatives may be regarded as the builders and guardians of the Pyramids. The stature is about the same as that of the Proto-Egyptians, possibly rather lower, but they were built on far st.u.r.dier lines, their bones being more ma.s.sive, with well-developed muscular ridges and impressions, and none of the effeminacy or infantilism of the prehistoric skeletons. The brain-case has greater capacity with no trace of the meagre ill-filled character exhibited by the latter.

Characteristic peculiarities were the "Grecian profile" and a jaw closely resembling those of the round-headed Alpine races.

These "Giza traits" were not a local development, for they have been noted in all parts of Palestine and Asia Minor, and abundantly in Persia and Afghanistan. They occur in the Punjab but are absent from India, having an area of greatest concentration in the neighbourhood of the Pamirs; while in a westerly direction, besides being sporadically scattered over North Africa, they are recognised again in the extinct Guanches of the Canary Islands. From these considerations Elliot Smith shapes the following "working hypothesis."

"The Egyptians, Arabs and Sumerians may have been kinsmen of the Brown Race, each diversely specialized by long residence in its own domain; and in Pre-dynastic times, before the wider usefulness of copper as a military instrument of tremendous power was realized, the Middle Pre-dynastic phase of culture became diffused far and wide throughout Arabia and Sumer. Then came the awakening to the knowledge of the supremacy which the possession of metal weapons conferred upon those who wielded them in combat against those not so armed. Upper Egypt vanquished Lower Egypt in virtue of this knowledge and the possession of such weapons. The United Kingdom pushed its way into Syria to obtain wood and ore, and incidentally taught the Arabs the value of metal weapons. The Arabs thereby obtained the supremacy over the Armenoids of Northern Syria, and the hybrid race of Semites formed from this blend were able to descend the Euphrates and vanquish the more cultured Sumerians, because the latter were without metal implements of war. The non-Semitic Armenoids of Asia Minor carried the new knowledge into Europe[1132]."

This hypothesis might explain some of the difficult problems connecting Egypt and Babylonia[1133]. The non-Asiatic origin of the Egyptian people appears to be indicated by recent excavations, but, as mentioned above, there are still many who hold that Egyptian culture and civilisation were derived mainly, if not wholly, from Asiatic (probably Sumerian) sources. The Semitic elements existing in the ancient Egyptian language, certain resemblances between names of Sumerian and Egyptian G.o.ds, and the similarity of hieroglyphic characters to the Sumerian system of writing have been cited as proofs of the dependence of the one culture upon the other; while the introduction of the knowledge of metals, metal-working and the crafts of brick-making and tomb construction have, together with the bulbous mace-head, cylinder-seal and domesticated animals and plants[1134], been traced to Babylonia.

But the excavations of Reisner at Naga-ed-Der and those of Naville at Abydos (1909-10) appear to place the indigenous development of Egyptian culture beyond question. Reisner's conclusions[1135] are that there was no sudden break of continuity between the neolithic and early dynastic cultures of Egypt. No essential change took place in the Egyptian conception of life after death, or in the rites and practices accompanying interment. The most noticeable changes, in the character of the pottery and household vessels, in the materials for tools and weapons and the introduction of writing, were all gradually introduced, and one period fades into another without any strongly marked line of division between them. Egypt no doubt had trading relations with surrounding countries. Egyptians and Babylonians must have met in the markets of Syria, and in the tents of Bedouin chiefs. Still, as Meyer points out, far from Egypt taking over a ready-made civilisation from Babylonia, Egypt, as regards cultural influence, was the giver not the receiver[1136].

One more alien element in Egypt remains to be discussed. Most writers on Egyptian ethnology detect a Negro or at least Negroid element in the Caucasoid population, and although usually a.s.signing priority to the Negro, a.s.sume the co-existence of the two races from time immemorial to the present day. Measurements on more than 1000 individuals were made by C. S. Myers, and these are his conclusions. "There is no anthropometric (despite the historic) evidence that the population of Egypt, past or present, is composed of several different races. Our new anthropometric data favour the view which regards the Egyptians always as a h.o.m.ogeneous people, who have varied now towards Caucasian, now towards negroid characters (according to environment), showing such close anthropometric affinity to Libyan, Arabian and like neighbouring peoples, showing such variability and possibly such power of absorption, that from the anthropometric standpoint no evidence is obtainable that the modern Egyptians have been appreciably affected by other than sporadic Sudanese admixture[1137]."

It was seen above (Chap. III.) that non-Negro elements are found throughout the Sudan from Senegal nearly to Darfur, nowhere forming the whole of the population, but nearly always the dominant native race.

These are the Fulah (Fula, Fulbe or Fulani), whose ethnic affinities have given rise to an enormous amount of speculation. Their linguistic peculiarity had led many ethnologists to regard them as the descendants of the first white colonists of North Africa, "Caucasoid invaders,"

15,000 years ago, prior to Hamitic intrusions from the east[1138]. Thus would be explained the fact that their language betrays absolutely no structural affinity with Semitic or Libyo-Hamitic groups, or with any other speech families outside Africa, though offering faint resemblances in structure with the Lesghian[1139] speech of the Caucasus and the Dravidian tongues of Baluchistan and India. Physically there seems to be nothing to differentiate them from other blends[1140] of Hamite-Negro. The physical type of the pure-bred Fulah H. H. Johnston describes as follows: "Tall of stature (but not gigantic, like the Nilote and South-east Sudanese), olive-skinned or even a pale yellow; well-proportioned, with delicate hands and feet, without steatopygy, with long, oval face, big nose (in men), straight nose in women (nose finely cut, like that of the Caucasian), eyes large and "melting," with an Egyptian look about them, head-hair long, black, kinky or ringlety, never quite straight[1141]." They were at first a quiet people, herdsmen and shepherds with a high and intricate type of pagan religion which still survives in parts of Nigeria. But large numbers of them became converted to Islam from the twelfth century onwards and gained some knowledge of the world outside Africa by their pilgrimages to Mecca. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries an uprise of Muhammadan fanaticism and a proud consciousness of their racial superiority to the mere Negro armed them as an aristocracy to wrest political control of all Nigeria from the hands of Negro rulers or the decaying power of Tuareg and Songhai. This race was all unconsciously carrying on the Caucasian invasion and penetration of Africa.

A less controversial problem is presented by the Eastern Hamites, who form a continuous chain of dark Caucasic peoples from the Mediterranean to the equator, and whose ethnical unity is now established by Sergi on anatomical grounds[1142]. Bordering on Upper Egypt, and extending thence to the foot of the Abyssinian plateau, is the Beja section, whose chief divisions--Ababdeh, Hadendoa, Bisharin, Beni Amer--have from the earliest times occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red Sea.

C. G. Seligman has a.n.a.lysed the physical and cultural characters of the Beja tribes (_Bisharin_, _Hadendoa_ and _Beni Amer_), the _Barabra_, nomad Arabs (such as the _Kababish_ and _Kawahla_), Nilotes (_s.h.i.+lluk, d.i.n.ka, Nuer_) and half-Hamites (_Ba-Hima, Masai_), in an attempt by eliminating the Negro and Semitic elements to deduce the main features which may be held to indicate Hamitic influence. He regards the _Beni Amer_ as approximating most closely to the original _Beja_ type which he thus describes. "Summarizing their physical characteristics it may be said that they are moderately short, slightly built men, with reddish-brown or brown skins in which a greater or less tinge of black is present, while in some cases the skin is definitely darker and presents some shade of brown-black. The hair is usually curly, in some instances it certainly might be described as wavy, but the method of hair dressing adopted tends to make difficult an exact description of its condition. Often, as is everywhere common amongst wearers of turbans, the head is shaved.... The face is usually long and oval, or approaching the oval in shape, the jaw is often lightly built, which with the presence of a rather pointed chin may tend to make the upper part of the face appear disproportionately broad. The nose is well shaped and thoroughly Caucasian in type and form[1143]." Among the Hadendoa the "Armenoid" or so-called "Jewish" nose is not uncommon.

Seligman draws attention to the close resemblance between the _Beja_ type and that of the ancient Egyptians.

Through the Afars (Danakil) of the arid coastlands between Abyssinia and the sea, the Bejas are connected with the numerous Hamitic populations of the Somali and Galla lands. For the term "Somal," which is quite recent and of course unknown to the natives, H. M. Abud[1144] suggests an interesting and plausible explanation. Being a hospitable people, and milk their staple food, "the first word a stranger would hear on visiting their kraals would be 'So mal,' _i.e._ 'Go and bring milk.'"

Strangers may have named them from this circ.u.mstance, and other tribal names may certainly be traced to more improbable sources.

The natives hold that two races inhabit the land: (1) ASHA, true Somals, of whom there are two great divisions, _Darod_ and _Ishak_, both claiming descent from certain n.o.ble Arab families, though no longer of Arab speech; (2) HaWiYA, who are not counted by the others as true Somals, but only "pagans," and also comprise two main branches, _Aysa_ and _Gadabursi_. In the national genealogies collected by Abud and c.o.x, many of the mythical heroes are buried at or near Meit, which may thus be termed the cradle of the Somal race. From this point they spread in all directions, the Darods pus.h.i.+ng south and driving the Galla beyond the Webbe Shebel, and till lately raiding them as far as the Tana river.