September 30, 19 15] 



NATURE 



^16 



at one of these rocks ran somewhat as follows : 

 "Grandmother Soba . . . permit us to go on our 

 journey and return in safety." There was obviously 

 rhe utmost confusion in this woman's mind between 

 Soba the goddess, who may be asked to relieve sick- 

 ness, and Soba the stone, on which she had just 

 placed a handful of sand. Few will doubt that in 

 the Soba of the Hameg belief there is preserved the 

 memory of such queens as Candace the ruler of the 

 Sembritae, grafted on the recollection of the great 

 city, which to the Negroids of the Gezira no doubt 

 appeared to dominate the north. Nor do these traces 

 of ancient tradition stand alone; at Jebel Mova near 

 the Blue Nile some 150 miles south of Khartum there 

 is actual archaeological evidence of northern influence. 

 Mere, besides stone implements, were found beads 

 ,ind amulets, a number of scarabs, and small plaques 

 bearing Ethiopian and Egyptian cartouches ranging 

 from about 700 B.C., or perhaps going back to an 

 oven earlier date. I may also note that on the as yet 

 unexplored site of Faragab in northern Kordofan, 

 besides potsherds, stone implements and ivory objects, 

 I have found a carnelian bead, identified by Prof. 

 Petrie as of XVIII. dynasty make, as well as dolo- 

 mite and scolecite beads which are certainly not of 

 Negro workmanship or character. 



These sites seem to mark the southern limit of 

 Egyptian influence as far as the actual transmission 

 (if objects derived from the north is concerned. Of 

 the racial afiinities of the inhabitants of Faragab 

 nothing is known, but we are better informed con- 

 I erning the old residents of Jebel Moya. The ceme- 

 teries of -this site have yielded the remains of a tall 

 roarsely built Negro or Negroid race with extra- 

 ordinarily massive skulls and jaws. In a general way 

 they appear to resemble the coarser type of Nuba 

 living in South Kordofan at the present day, and it 

 is significant that the cranial indices of the men of 

 Jebel Moya and the Nuba hills agree closely. Thus 

 there is the clearest evidence that Egyptian influence 

 reached south of Khartum, and since it has persisted 

 to the present day in oral tradition airong the tribes 

 of the little known country between the Blue and 

 White Niles, traces might equailv be expected among 

 the Nilotes of the White Nile. But, strangely 

 <nough, nothing of the sort has been found, although 

 the Shilluk and Dinka are better known than any 

 other of the Sudan tribes. On the other hand, the 

 tribes of the Congo basin have a number of customs 

 "which do suggest Egyptian influence, and the same 

 may be said perhaps of Uganda, so that it seems 

 reasonable to believe that Egyptian influence spread 

 up the White Nile and passed westwards across the 

 Nile-Congo watershed. An alternate route would be 

 along the Blue Nile and its tributaries, the Dinder 

 and the Rahad, to the Abyssinian hills, southward 

 through the highlands to about 5° N., and thence 

 westward to the head waters of the Congo. 



To return to the Shilluk and Dinka, the most 

 northern of the Negro tribes of the White Nile. The 

 fact that no cultural elements which can be con- 

 nected with Egypt are found on the White Nile, 

 where they might have been expected, suggests either 

 that the tribes now occupying the district were not 

 there when Egyptian influence spread south, or that 

 the country presented such difficulties that the foreign 

 stream left it on one side, as would have been the 

 case had it followed the route via the Blue Nile and 

 the highlands of Abyssinia. In other words, either 

 the Shilluk and Dinka reached their present territory 

 In comparatively recent times, or else led a wander- 

 ing and precarious life in swamps as formidable as 

 the Sudd of the present day. There is, I think, a 

 good deal in favour of the latter view. The existence 



NO. 2396, VOL. 96] 



in the depths of the Sudd of Nuer communities, of 

 which we know little except through rumour, shows 

 that such a life is possible; while among the Dinka 

 the Moin Tain, or " marshmen," who possess no 

 cattle and scarcely cultivate, but live by hunting and 

 fishing, exist under almost as unfavourable condi- 

 tions. Moreover, there is abundant evidence that 

 North-West Africa is drier now than it was a few- 

 thousand years ago, and if those authors are right 

 who state that there was a general melting of 

 glaciers in Eur-Asia some 5000 years B.C., giving rise 

 to widespread floods (the origin of the Biblical deluge), 

 the increased precipitation may well have given rise 

 to a considerable northern extension of the Nile 

 swamps. In support of this argument, it may be 

 noted that in numerous XVIII. dynasty paintings 

 Negroes are represented with bows and arrows and 

 throwing sticks (boomerangs), i.e. their weapons are 

 not those of the northern Negroes of the present day, 

 the Shilluk and Dinka, who are not bowmen and do 

 not use the throwing stick. Shilluk traditions state 

 that they came from the south, and a language sub- 

 stantially identical with theirs is spoken by the Acholi 

 of the Uganda Protectorate. 



Evidence pointing in the same direction exists on 

 the physical side ; the results of the archaeological 

 survey of Nubia show that even in late dynastic times 

 the tall Negroids (E-group) whose skeletons have 

 been found near Shellal were mesaticephals, with a 

 cephalic index higher by three or four units than 

 those of the Dinka and Shilluk respectively. On the 

 other hand, a people with a cephalic index nearer 

 that of the northern Nilotes had reached Nubia by 

 the Byzantine-Pagan period (200-600 a.d.). Elliot 

 Smith and Derry speak of these people (the X-group) 

 as prognathous and flat-nosed Negroids who suddenly 

 made their way north into Nubia. Sixteen X-group 

 skulls (eleven male and five female) in the College of 

 Surgeons give a cephalic index of 708, and, com- 

 paring them with the series of about the same number 

 of Dinka skulls in the collection, my impression is 

 that as a group they show as many Negroid 

 characters. 



The numerous records of Negro incursions from the 

 Middle Kingdom onwards suggest that the Negroes 

 were driven north in a succession of waves by some 

 force from which this direction offered the only 

 chance of escape. Such can only have been applied 

 by other Negroes behind them. It may well be that 

 there was more or less continual ferment on the 

 southern border of Egypt in the early part of the first 

 millennium B.C., and that the northern Nilotes were 

 beginning to make their reputation as fighting men. 

 Indeed, the passage in Isaiah can scarcely bear any 

 other meaning than that this people was working 

 north with sufficient energy for their peculiarities and 

 those of their land to have become known to the 

 Mediterranean world. "Ah, the land of the rustling 

 of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia : 

 that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels 

 of papyrus upon the waters, saying. Go, ye swift 

 messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people 

 terrible from their beginning onward ; a nation that 

 meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the rivers 

 divide!" (Isa. xviii. i, 2, Revised Version). But 

 while the tall Negroes seem to have been the first to 

 reach Nubia in organised groups, stray examples of 

 short brachycephalic Negroes (usually female) have 

 been found as far back as protodynastic times. I 

 am indebted to Prof. Elliot Smith for the informa- 

 tion that the four Negresses fou.id in cemetery No. 79 

 at Gerf Hussein were short in stature with relatively 

 broad oval crania, while at Dabod in a Middle- 

 Kingdom cemetery there was found a skeleton of a 



