DERIVED FROM ANATOMY, HISTORY, AND THE MONUMENTS. 151 
are the resources which serve to repair the vast and continual waste of population.* I 
may be told that this is proving too much. A sensible writer, and one who has inge- 
uiously and instructively investigated the Nubian question, remarks as follows:—‘'The 
Arab tribes near Shendy may still, perhaps, justly boast of the purity of their blood; but, 
generally speaking, within the limits mentioned above, the slave or Negro population is 
about a sixth of the whole, and continually amalgamating with it. While nature kindly 
endeavours to wash out the stain, every caravan from the south or west pours in a new 
supply of slaves, and restores the blackening element.’’t 
This author, however, in his desire to ascribe to climate the chief agency in the trans- 
formation of the Negro into the Nubian, seems to overlook the fact that while the Ne- 
groes flow into the country on the one side, the migratory Arabs invade it on the other, 
thus furnishing inexhaustible materials for the blending of the two races. I fully acqui- 
esce, as before hinted, in the accuracy of the following opinion, as applied to a large pro- 
portion of the modern Nubians; namely, “that they are descended, not from the posses- 
sors of Inthiopia in its flourishing period, but from the pradial and slave population of the 
country, increased by colonists, and raised into a nation by peculiar circumstances be- 
tween the third and sixth centuries of the Christian era.’’t 
8. THE NEGROES. 
We have the most unequivocal evidence, historical and monumental, that slavery was 
among the earliest of the social institutions of Egypt, and that it was imposed on all con- 
quered- nations, white as well as black. So numerous was this unfortunate class of per- 
sons, that it was the boast of the Egyptian kings, recorded by Diodorus, that the vast 
structures of Luxor and Karnak were erected by the labour of foreigners alone. Of Negro 
slavery, in particular, the paintings and sculptures give abundant illustration. “ Black 
people,” says Sir G. Wilkinson, “designated as natives of the foreign land of Cush, are 
generally represented on the Egyptian monuments as captives or bearers of tribute to the 
Pharaohs;” and the attendant circumstances of this inhuman traffic appear to have been 
much the same in ancient as in modern times. It is curious, also, in a numerical point 
of view, to observe that Arrian, who wrote in the second century, gives three thousand as 
the number of Negroes annually brought down the Nile in his time; while Madden, 
writing in our own day, and consequently sixteen hundred years later than Arrian, esti- 
* Voyage & Meroé, IL., p. 276. + Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 811. 
{Idem., p. 807. The antiquity of the name Nubia, is of some importance in this discussion. Heeren and others state 
that it first occurs in history during the epoch of the Ptolemies; but Rosellini has now discovered that it is at least 
as old as the age of Meneptha I., (B. C. 1600,) on whose monuments it is found. 
Since the above note was written, Mr, Gliddon has obligingly furnished me with the following interesting memorandum: 
‘The name Nubia, with its derivatives of Nouba and Noubate, may be readily traced to Noubnoud, a Nubian divinity 
in the hieroglyphical legends of Meneptha I. and Rameses II. and III., and may possibly be derived from the root noud, 
gold, from the proximity of Nubia to the Ethiopian gold countries. The word Berber, as applied to the people of Nubia, 
(now called Berabera in the plural, from Berberri, the singular,) is without question derived from the hieroglyphical name 
Barobaro, by which at least one tribe inhabiting Nubia was known to the Egyptians of the 18th dynasty.” 
} Sir G. Wilkinson observes that “no difficulty occurred to the Ishmaelites in the purchase of Joseph from his bre- 
thren, nor on his subsequent sale to Potiphar on arriving in Egypt.” Ancient Egyptians, I., p. 404. 
