518 ANNUAL KEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



weapons appearing before the Pharaoh, as represented on the Egyptian 

 mural paintings, could readily have come from the eastern shore of the 

 Red Sea — that is, have been Phenicians; von Luschan's hypothesis 

 would thus lose one of its main supports. 



The assertion that the dark people carryhig blue-colored objects 

 were Negroes may thus perchance be right, but not necessarily so. 



(6) The same is the case as regards the assertion that the blue- 

 painted objects can only be iron ones, for eminent scholars, among 

 whom I may again mention Schweinfurth, absolutely deny that blue 

 designates iron exclusively. Schweinfurth, who points to the blue- 

 painted beards of men, 1 thinks, with Maspero, that blue may also 

 designate gray, 2 and when it is recalled that arsenical bronze, which 

 because of its hardness was much used in high antiquity, is of a 

 pronounced gray color, there is no reason why those blue-colored 

 objects presented by the dark men may not have been made of arsen- 

 ical bronze. This assertion, therefore, lacks conclusive proof. 



(c) Even if the assumptions under (a) and (6) were admitted, 

 the conclusion that the dark men (Negroes) carrying the blue, or 

 supposedly iron, objects must also be the makers of these utensils is 

 unwarranted. Such may be the case, but it is not necessarily so. 

 It would be about the same as if one should assert that the Phenicians, 

 who presented to the Pharaoh gold ornaments obtained by them in 

 India, had themselves produced the gold and worked it into orna- 

 ments. 



From the preceding it clearly follows that from our present knowl- 

 edge the old-Egyptian mural paintings should not be adduced as 

 proof of a very early iron industry developed by the African Negroes. 



I do not, however, mean to deny an early native iron industry 

 among the Negroes, but to express my astonishment that these 

 peoples could have remained through many milleniums with that 

 industry in its most primitive stage, while all other peoples have 

 advanced and developed the art to a higher degree of perfection. 



Thus the first proof required from von Luschan, namely, that iron 

 working existed in high antiquity among the Negro peoples, may be 

 considered as not having been furnished by him. As to the second 

 proposition, that the assumed ancient iron industry of the Negroes 

 was in high antiquity imported into Egypt, the evidence can not be 

 considered as adequate and conclusive. But even von Luschan him- 

 self does not maintain, much less try to prove, that this supposed 

 imported industry from the Negro lands was in any way practically 

 exploited in ancient Egypt, so that there were old-Egyptian black- 



1 Compare Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1908, pp. 63, 64. 



2 Von Luschan himself, in Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1909, p. 48, points out that the god Amon is painted blue, 

 which he declares himself to be unable to explain; but this does not prevent him from categorically desig- 

 nating as iron ores other blue-painted objects on the same painting. 



