144 OBSERVATIONS ON EGYPTIAN ETHNOGRAPHY, 
between the Ethiopic and Sanscrit systems of writing, as pointed out by Dr. Wall and 
Mr. Tudor.* 
Dr. Prichard, whose profound investigations into this and all other questions in eth- 
nography, command our highest respect, while he admits that great difficulties present 
themselves in the present inquiry, remarks ‘that a common origin, if not of the races 
themselves, at least of the mental culture characteristic of both of them, has been proved; 
and that the people of India and of Igypt derived from one source the first principles of 
all their peculiarities of thought and action, of their religious and social observances, and 
civil and political institutions; and that these principles had even been developed toa 
considerable extent, before the nations themselves were entirely cut off from communica- 
tion with each other or with a common centre.’’+ 
It has been proved by the philosophic Heeren, that Meroé was the grand emporium of 
the trade between the richest and most productive portions of the earth; the gold coun- 
tries of eastern Africa, the spice lands of India, and the region of frankincense and pre- 
cious stones in southern Arabia. He has shown that the communication between these 
countries was established in the most ancient periods, and continued without interruption 
through successive ages of time; that the ruins of Adulé, Azab, and Axum, yet mark the 
caravan routes between Meroé and Arabia Ielix; and that Yemen, though separated 
from India by an open sea, is yet connected with it by nature in an extraordinary man- 
ner. “One half of the year,” he adds, “from spring to autumn, the wind regularly sets 
in and wafts the vessels from Arabia to India; the other half, from autumn to spring, it 
as regularly carries them back from India to Arabia.’’} 
In truth, what Diodorus says, in general, of early Kgyptian commerce and conquest 
by sea, need be no longer regarded as fabulous, although the details, like much that we 
glean from the remote history of all heathen nations, are to be received with circumspec- 
tion. He tells us that Sesostris (Rameses III.) fitted outa fleet of four hundred ships 
in the Arabian gulf, with which he conquered all the countries bordering on the Eryth- 
rean sea, as far as India, whence he led an army beyond the Ganges until he again 
reached the ocean. This account is not likely 10 be aM fable, especially since it comes 
from a Greek historian; and we may safely regard it as an indication of that extensive 
maritime enterprise in which the Egyptians engaged with the southern nations of Asia. 
When the Romans under the guidance of Hippalus, eighty years after their conquest of 
Egypt, began to trade with India by way of the Red Sea and Malabar, they only re- 
established the ancient route, which had been long forgotten amidst the chaos of political 
revolutions. In fine, if the Egyptians had been their own historians, we should probably 
learn that they were as familiar with India in ancient as the English are in modern times.§ 
* Trans. Roy. Soc. of Literature, I., p. 173. (London.) 
+ Prichard, Researches, Vol. I., p. 218. 
¢ Ancient African Nations.—That the Indo-European race (of which the Hindoos are a branch,) has been among the 
most enterprising and widely distributed nations of the earth, is incontestably proved by the prevalence of the Sanscrit 
tongue as an element of many languages from Hindostan westward to the shores of Iceland, and eastward to the Poly- 
nesian Isles.—Malte Brun, Geography, Vol. J., p. 660. 
} It is curious to observe that although the Hindoos in our day have little intercourse with Nubia and the adjacent 
provinces, the circumstance is owing to a want of those incentives to commerce which existed in antiquity; but Burck- 
hardt describes the remains of Indian traffic as now seen in Mecca and Djidda, in Arabia, where the Hindoos yet sell the 
manufactures and other productions of their own country.—Travels in Arabia, p. 14, 119. 
