192 REPOKTS ON THE STATE Oi'^SCIENCE. — 1915. 



known negro practice of slaughtering the wives and retainers of the 

 deceased. - 



In the hght of such considerations the hypothesis that should first 

 be tested is that an Egyptian colony, settled in Kerma in proto-Dynastic 

 times, continued to cultivate its original Egyptian cultural heritage, 

 which was modified on the one hand by the taint of negro barbarism 

 and the influence of a succession of later Egyptian immigrants. 



I have put forward this tentative explanation of the archaeological 

 evidence advisedly, not merely because it naturally suggests itself as the 

 most probable interpretation of the state of affairs found by Dr. Eeisner, 

 but also because the anthropological data, so far as I have investigated 

 them, seem to favour this view. 



Amongst the human remains there is a considerable number of 

 individuals conforming in every respect to the proto-Egyptian type, 

 such as is found in pre- and proto-Dynastic cemeteries in Upper Egypt. 

 These might well represent the descendants of the original Egyptian 

 colony which was planted in Kerma during the Old Empire. There 

 are also many representatives of that modification of the proto- 

 Egyptian racial type for which I coined the distinctive expression 

 ' Middle Nubian ' (the people whose culture Dr. Reisner classified as 

 his ' C-group '). These were the people who constituted the normal 

 population of Lower Nubia during the time from the Middle Empire 

 until the country was overrun by Egypt in the New Empire : in other 

 words, they were the distinctive inhabitants of Nubia during the time 

 of the Kerma burials; and it would have been very surprising 

 if they had not been well represented. Even in Lower Nubia 

 they exhibited definite traces of some negro admixture; and in 

 this respect the Kerma material agrees with the more northern 

 remains of the same age. But in the Kerma material there is 

 perhaps a greater variety of slightly negroid types than in Lower 

 Nubia — a state of affairs that is not surprising considering that it is 

 nearer the negro domain. In fact it is remarkable that strongly marked 

 negro traits are so infrequent as they are shown to be in material from 

 such a southerly site. 



The most interesting remains that this cemetery has yielded are a 

 minority conforming in evein^ essential respect to the type from Lower 

 Egypt which I illustrated in last year's Eeport (p. 219, figs. 1, 2, and 

 3). It represents a type of mankind which made itself apparent in 

 Lower Egypt in proto-Dynastic times and spread up the river very 

 gradually, until by the time of the Middle Empire the aristocratic 

 population throughout Egypt was more or less permeated by the 

 influence of admixture with such people. It is in the highest degree 

 unlikely that the effects of such admixture could have become apparent 

 at the Third Cataract before the Middle Empire. That it did so soon 

 afterwards suggests — as, indeed, might have been expected — that the 

 expeditions to the Sudan at that time were commanded by people of 

 this aristocratic type. This is further confirmed by the results of 



2 See my article ' On the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummifl 

 cation, &c.,' Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 1915, p. 56. 



