192 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



he may be the original of Merodach, the tutelary god 

 of Babylon. Independently of this, there was cer- 

 tainly an early Chaldean and * Turanian' empire, 

 which must have had some founder, whatever his 

 name, and which was not Semitic or Aryan, and 

 therefore what an early writer would call Hamitic. 

 Further, our author traces from this region the great 

 Cushite line of migration, which includes such well- 

 known names as Seba, Sabta, Sheba and Dedan, into 

 Arabia on the way to Africa. Here the Egyptian 

 monuments take up the tale, and inform us of a South 

 Arabian and East African people, the people of Pun 

 or Punt, represented as like to themselves and to the 

 Kesh or Ethiopians, and who thus correspond to the 

 Arabian Cushites of Genesis. In accordance with 

 this the Abyssinian of to-day is scarcely distinguish- 

 able from the old Punites as represented on the 

 Egyptian monuments. 1 



Thus the primitive Cushite kingdom and one of 

 the great lines of Cushite migration are established 

 by ancient monuments. Let it be further observed 

 that, as represented in Egypt, these primitive 

 Ethiopians were not black, but of a reddish or 

 brownish colour, like the Egyptians themselves, and 

 that their migration explains the resemblance of the 

 customs and religion of early Egypt to those of 

 Babylonia, and the ascription by the Egyptians of 

 the origin of their gods to the land of Pun. 



1 The recent discoveries of Glaser with reference to the early 

 civilisation of Southern Arabia also bear on this point. 



