ORIGIN OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION—NAVILLE. 557 
was a region which has had various names. One of them is Kush, 
wrongly translated Ethiopia; another is Punt, very frequent in 
Egyptian texts, where it is synonymous with Zanuter, the divine land. 
It seems that the region originally called by that name was southern 
Arabia, whence the populations emigrated, which settled on the Afri- 
can coast. We do not know exactly the appearance of the race in that 
remote time, but the sculptures of the Temple of Queen Hatshepsu 
at Deir-el-Bahari show us what was the appearance of the people at 
Punt. At that time the population of the country was mixed; it con- 
tained negroes of different kinds, brown and black, but the real 
Puntites, or Punites, as I think their name must be read, are very 
like the Egyptians. They belong also to the Caucasian type, with 
long hair and pointed beards. Their color is a little more purple- 
hued than than of the Egyptians. 
Here a very important question arises. Did the Punites, the inhab- 
itants of southern Arabia, belong to the Semitic stock? Looking at 
the information which we have derived lately from Arabia and from 
Babylonia, I have come to the conclusion that they were not Semites. 
They were Hamites, like the Egyptians themselves and some of the 
north African populations, and like some of the inhabitants of Chal- 
dea, whose origin is also attributed by a few scholars to Arabia, so 
that they should have the same starting point. No doubt I shall hear 
the objection that Egyptian is a Semitic language. My answer is 
that the better we know the Egyptian language the more fully we 
erasp the conceptions of the Egyptian mind, the more it seems evi- 
dent that Egyptian is an ante-Semitic or pre-Semitic language. In 
certain points it has kept the character of infancy. Semitic languages 
are in a more advanced linguistic stage; they have outgrown by far 
the degree of development which Egyptian has reached. To my 
mind we have to reverse the method which is generally followed. We 
are not to look for the origin of Egyptian in the Semitic languages, 
but, on the contrary, to see that what the Semitic languages have 
borrowed from the old Egyptian speech and writing. 
The Arabian origin of the Egyptians is mentioned by the Nu- 
midian King and writer, Juba, quoted by Pliny. After having 
given the names of the various tribes of the Troglodytes, the inhab- 
itants of the African coast, between the Nile and the Red Sea, the 
writer says: “As for the neighbors of the Nile from Syene to Meroe, 
they are not Ethiopian nations, but Arabs. Even the city of the 
Sun, not far distant from Memphis, is said to have been founded by 
the Arabs.” Thus for Juba the Egyptians are Arabs. When he 
says that they are not Ethiopians, we must consider this word as 
meaning negroes. — 
@Muller, Fragm. Hist. Graec., III, p. 477. 
