6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 
Lib. 2, which indicates that in the time of Josephus the population 
of those remote tracts was considered as pure Egyptian. In attack- 
ing Apion, Josephus accuses him of wishing to be considered a 
Greek, when he is an Egyptian, and says " He believes himself [a 
Greek], and that too, being born in the Oasis of Egypt whence he 
is, as one would say, the first of all Egyptians." 
During the periods of the Persian, Greek, and Roman dominions 
of Egypt, the Oasis was evidently regarded as an inherent part of 
Egypt and its inhabitants as not differing from the Valley Egyptians. 
It suffered, as it probably did before, invasions of the more southern 
and more warlike tribes, which, however, did not result in coloniza- 
tion. 
Edmonstone thus quotes (pp. I 39-140) * two letters of the bishop 
Nestorius, referring to later times, particularly to destructive raids 
on the Oasis by the " Blemmyes " and other more southern tribes : 
" After the Oasis was, as I mentioned above, taken by the bar- 
barian (Blemmyes), and completely laid waste and devastated by 
fire, they who, for what cause I know not, carried me off, suddenly 
took compassion and dismissed me, adding threats, however, if I 
did not instantly leave the country, for they said the Maziei were to 
take possession as soon as we left it." The Blemmyes, according 
to Strabo (Xylandri, L. 17, p. 786), were subject to the Ethiopians, 
and inhabited " both sides of the Nile, on the borders of Egypt, to 
which country, being a nomad race, they became very troublesome 
neighbors." These raids have in all probability repeatedly reduced 
the population of the Oasis, but did not alter its ethnic nature. 
There are a few later records concerning Kharga, touching on its 
famous wines, on its tributes to Egypt, on its being used as a place 
of banishment (particularly during the early centuries of the Chris- 
tian era) and on its temples, its Christians (Copts), and its garri- 
sons, 2 but these contain nothing of anthropological interest except 
the indication of the affluence to the Oasis, through those who were 
banished thither and through the garrison personnel, of foreign 
1 From Evagrius, Hist. Eel., Lib. I, cap. 5. 
* The references apply in some of the cases to the oases in general. Thus, 
for instance, the " Notitia dignitatum," composed under the sons of Theo- 
dosius the Great and mentioned by Schweinfurth in his " Notizen zur Kennt- 
niss der Oase El-Chargeh " (Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1875, P- 385), speaks 
of the garrisons of the oases as having been composed of Quades, Armenians 
and Ahasges. And when the Great Oasis is spoken of separately it doubt- 
less includes mostly Dakhla as well as Kharga, for these were not always 
distinguished as two separate territories. 
