Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

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 associated 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 relationship 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 classify his Mediterranean-Hamite-Semite group as the "Brown Race[1127]."

A most fortunate combination of circumstances 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 sturdier lines, their bones being more massive, 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 gods, 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 assigning priority to the Negro, assume 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 homogeneous 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,