514 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION H. 



4. The Foreign Relations and Influence of lite Egyptians under the Ancient 

 Empire} By G. Elliot Smith, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 



In a previous communication 2 attention was called to the fact that the popu- 

 lation of Lower Egypt had received a strong infusion of alien blood before the 

 time of the earliest Pyramid-builders. During the past year much more precise 

 evidence has been obtained concerning these foreigners in Egypt and the distri- 

 bution of their kinsmen beyond its frontiers ; and in the process of following 

 these people in Western Asia and North Africa much information has been 

 obtained, which seems to be complementary to that obtained by historical research 

 in Europe and a solvent of many of the apparently insuperable difficulties that 

 have beset archaeologists working in the Mediterranean area. 



The aliens who mingled with the Proto-Egyptians in the early centuries of 

 the third millennium B.C. were in large part the kinsmen of the people variously 

 called 'Armenoid,' 'Alpine,' 'Celtic,' &c, who are said to have introduced 

 the culture of the Bronze Age into Europe. Thus the early history of Egypt 

 is brought into co-relation with the great events that ended the Age of Stone 

 in Europe and Western Asia. 



The people of Upper Egypt discovered copper in early Predynastic times, and 

 during the succeeding centuries slowly learned to appreciate the magnitude of 

 their discovery. In late Predynastic times they were casting formidable metal 

 weapons, which enabled them to unite the whole of Egypt under their sway. 

 They pushed their way beyond the frontiers of Egypt, as they tell us in their 

 own records — to Sinai for copper-ore, and to Syria for cedar from the Lebanons, 

 as well as to the south — and they met and intermingled with the Armenoid popu- 

 lation of Northern Syria, who acquired from them the knowledge of copper and 

 its uses, while the Egyptians themselves took back into Egypt, in their own per- 

 sons, ample evidence of the existence of an Armenoid population in Syria before 

 2800 B.C. 



Before this time the Armenoids had been trickling into Neolithic Europe, 

 without, however, making much impression upon the customs or the physical 

 traits of its population ; but once they had acquired metal weapons from the 

 Egyptians they were able to make their way into Europe by force and to impose 

 their customs upon her people, in virtue both of their numerical strength and the 

 power they wielded from being better armed. 



In Egypt itself the Proto-Egyptians in Predynastic times had learned to make 

 not only weapons of war but also tools of copper. The skill they acquired in 

 using these tools made them expert carpenters and stonemasons ; and during the 

 early dynasties they ran riot in stone, creating the vastest monuments that the 

 world has ever seen. The knowledge of these achievements spread amongst the 

 kindred peoples on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, to the neighbour- 

 ing isles, and to Southern Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. But it was the 

 knowledge of the various kinds of monuments that the Egyptians were building, 

 and not the skill nor the skilled workmen that spread : at the time of the Sixth 

 Dynasty, or thereabouts, the fashion of building stone monuments, dolmens, 

 menhirs, cromlechs, rock-cut tombs, &c, began to spread amongst the kindred 

 peoples, not only on the west but also on the east of Egypt. 



The evidence afforded by the excavations of Orsi and others in Sicily and 

 Southern Italy seems to indicate beyond any doubt that Egypt was the source 

 of the new burial customs that came into vogue in the ^Eneolithic Period. The 

 features that seem so hopelessly inexplicable to the Italian archaeologists are 

 precisely those which the Egyptian evidence elucidates. 



The absence of megaliths and kindred monuments in the track of the main 

 Armenoid stream of immigration from Asia Minor into Europe is valuable nega- 

 tive evidence. The Armenoids of Asia Minor acquired a knowledge of copper 

 weapons by contact with the Egyptians on the battlefields of Northern Syria; 

 but they knew nothing (at the remote date we. are considering) of stone-working 

 or of megalithic monuments because they had no personal knowledge of Egypt. 



1 Published in book form: The Ancient Egyptians, Harper's 'Library of 

 Living Thought,' London, 1911. 



2 Brit. Assoc. Iteports, 1910, p. 727. 



