132 ‘OBSERVATIONS ON EGYPTIAN ETHNOGRAPHY, 
left, or vice versa, or horizontally,” a singular accordance with the graphical system of 
the ancient Egyptians.* It would therefore appear, that these roving descendants of the 
Libyan race possess, even now, some vestiges of that innate love of sculpture which was 
cultivated on so grand a scale by the temple-builders of the Nile. 
Yet farther south are the darker Berber tribes called Siwahs or Shouas, who are said 
by Major Denham to have “free open countenances, with aquiline noses and large eyes; 
their complexion is a light copper colour. They possess great cunning with their cou- 
rage, and resemble, in appearance, some of the best favoured Gypsies in England.” 
Dark as they are, he remarks that “in comparison with the Negresses they are almost 
white.” They are vastly numerous throughout all Soudan, Houssa and Bornou, and the 
Sultan of the latter country has no less than 15,000 of them in his army.t 
In other instances, although they are few in comparison, the Berbers assimilate more 
to the Negro on account of the proximity of the two races; a remark which is especially 
made by Dr. Oudney in reference to the Tuaricks of _Mourzouk, who have black and 
curling hair, but which, “from a Negro mixture, is inclined to be crispy.’’t 
Here then are the various gradations of the Caucasian type which appear to have 
marked the ancient Egyptians, together with a degree of that intermixture of the Negro 
race which is revealed in the catacombs, and perpetuated in the modern Coptic popula- 
tion. 
In connexion with this subject, it is curious to remark that the Guanches of the Ca- 
nary Islands were a branch of the Berber or Libyan stock; and the singular perfection to 
which they brought the art of embalming, long since led to the supposition that they 
might have been affiliated with the Kgyptians. The only Berber skull.in my possession 
is of this insular branch of that race, and like the one figured by Professor Blumenbach, 
bears a striking resemblance to the Egyptian conformation.§ 
Tue Erniortans.—Every one who has paid the slightest attention to the present in- 
quiry, is aware of the entire vagueness of the name E/hiopia (Cush) as used by the 
ancients; which, like India in modern times, was applied to countries very remote from 
each other, and whose inhabitants were remarkably dissimilar. Thus Austral- -Egyptians, 
Hindoos, Arabs, and Negroes, and even the Peypians themselves, have each in turn 
been embraced in this designation. 
Our present inquiry, however, relates to that people who occupied the valley of the 
Nile, from Phil to Meroé, and perhaps yet farther south; a region at the present time 
inhabited by the Nubians, Sendaree and the Abyssinians, with all those endless varieties 
of race which necessarily result from immemorial proximity to the Negro countries. It 
is a point of great interest and importance to ascertain the physical characteristics of the 
aboriginal communities of this branch of the Nilotic family; but they become at an early 
* Denham and Clapperton, Introd. p. 67. To give some idea of the number of the Tuaricks, these gentlemen mention 
that no less than two thousand were executed at Sackatoo, in Houssa, on a single occasion, for a predatory irruption 
into the territories of the Negro sultan of that country.—Journey from Kano to Sackatoo, p. 107. 
+ Ibid. p. 941, 213, 237, 268, 315. 
t Denham, and Clapperton, p. 50. See also Hornemann, Voy. en Afrique, p. 147.—All the Tibboo tribes appear to be 
Negroes modified by intermixture with the Arabs and Berbers who surround them. 
§ For the funereal rites of the Guanches as compared with those of the Egyptians, see Bertholet, ‘ Mémoires sur les 
Guanches,” in Memoires de la Societé Ethnologique de Paris, Tome I.—See also Blumenbach, Decad. Cran. Tab. XLIT. 
