XII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 485 



round of daily life until the next taxgathering 1 ." The bread 

 above referred to was usually in the form of small round or oblong 

 cakes about half-an-inch thick, and was so coarse and gritty that in 

 the long run it ruined the strongest teeth a . It is this dire misery 

 which, combined with their unchangeable type, connects the 

 pyramid-builders through the long ages with the modern fellahin, 

 who have only now been relieved from hopeless oppression by 

 British intervention in Egypt. 



A brighter if ruder social state is presented by the kindred 

 Eastern Karaites, who form a continuous chain of other 

 dark Caucasic peoples from the Mediterranean to Eastern 



Hamites 



the equator, and whose ethnical unity is now Bejas 

 established by Sergi on anatomical grounds 3 . Bor- 

 dering on Upper Egypt, and extending thence to the foot of the 

 Abyssinian plateau, is the Beja section, whose chief divisions 

 Ababdeh, Hadendowa, Bishari, Beni-Amer have from the earliest 

 times occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red 

 Sea. Recent events have familiarised the English reader with 

 many of their tribal names, and with some of their usages, notably 

 that fondness for elaborate coiffures, which has earned for our 

 late foes, now the friendly Hadendowas, the popular designation 

 of " Fuzzy- Wuzzies." They never need have been foes, had our 

 officials, at the time of the Mahdi's revolt, been able to under- 

 stand that they were not " Arabs," but Hamites, whom a little 

 diplomacy would have easily gained over to our side without any 

 bloodshed 4 . 



In peaceful times many hours are daily given up to the toilet, 

 and in Suakim " hair-dressing plays such an important part that a 

 whole street is devoted to this business. I saw some twelve shops 

 which dealt exclusively in the egg-shaped balls of mutton-fat, the 

 favourite hair ointment. Close by were, perhaps, as many stores 

 trading in various mineral powders in all colours of the rainbow, 



1 Maspero, p. 314, where Am. Marcellinus is quoted : "Erubescit apud eos, 

 siquis non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat, " xxn. ch. 

 16, 23. 



2 Ibid. p. 320. 



3 A fried) passim. 



4 See on this point my Ethnology of Egyptian Sudan, p. 10. 



