554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
Egyptians were Libyans.” * If we turn to Professor Sergi, professor 
of anthropology at Rome, we find that he finishes his chapter on the 
physical character of the Libyans by the following words:® “The 
Kgyptians were a racial branch from the same stock which gave 
origin to the Libyans specially so called, one of the four peoples of 
the Mediterranean.” It is well known that Professor Sergi’s state- 
ments rest mainly on the study of skulls considered in a point of view 
different from that of other anthropologists. 
These two quite contradictory statements are the best proof that 
we can trust craniology in the main lines, in its broad distinctions, 
while it is no safe guide in the minor differences which constitute the 
ethnological characters. Virchow himself, the illustrious anthro- 
pologist, has declared that from the sight of a skull it is impossible 
to trace with certainty the ethnic position which it occupies. 
Thus we find at the origin of the Egyptian civilization a people 
with the Caucasian type, with long hair, occupying the valley of the 
Nile, as far as Assuan and farther south. Even now various authors 
suppose that the valley was peopled from Asia, and that these pre- 
historic inhabitants came from the east. We see absolutely no rea- 
son to dispute their native character. We can not touch here the 
vexed question of how the different nations were born, and how, leav- 
ing their cradle, they dispersed in the various parts of the world. We 
must take them when they first appear as nations. At the first sight 
which we have of the Egyptians, they show themselves to us as Afri- 
cans, having some connection with the neighboring natives of the 
west, Libyans and Berbers, as they are called now, Tehennu and Tam- 
ahu as they are styled in the Egyptian inscriptions. 
Certainly their civilization, such as it appears in the prehistoric 
tombs, is no foreign import. It is so completely determined by the 
nature of the soil and by the animals and plants which occupied the 
land that we are compelled to affirm that it is of African growth. 
It seems nearly certain that in that remote epoch the white races 
of the north extended farther south than they did later, and that 
they were driven northwards by the negroes. If we consult an in- 
scription of the fifth dynasty of the old empire, found in the tomb 
of an officer called Herkhif at Assuan, we read that he went to a 
country called Amam, which could not be farther north than Khar- 
ttim or the Soudan. The people of Amam wished to drive the Tam- 
ahu toward “the western corner of the sky.” He himself went 
through Amam, reached the Tamahu, and pacified them, so that at 
that time the Tamahu must have occupied countries now called Kor- 
dofan or Darfur, or perhaps Borku. Later on, in the struggles which 
the Libyans waged against the Egyptians, we find them inhabiting 
@—), Randall-MacIver and A. Wilkin, Libyan Notes, pp. 103, 107. 
’G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, p. 88. 
