PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 655 



agreement in underlying ideas and (or) in highly specialised customs or devices, 

 that we are justified in considering an Egyptian origin, and even then it is 

 necessary to bear in mind the possibilities of common ethnic origin and of ' con- 

 vergence.' It is obvious that under these conditions facts will be differently 

 interpreted, and opinions will vary within wide limits, while new discoveries 

 may at any moment disturb views hitherto regarded as well founded. 



Although in this address I propose generally to confine myself to the area 

 included in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, yet in considering the question of 

 Egyptian influence in Negro Africa I shall overstep these limits. The reasons 

 for doing so are, I think, obvious. The data will not be abundant, and will 

 not be restricted to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, while instances occurring out- 

 side that area will possess the same evidential value. Moreover, the records from 

 the Belgian Congo, for example, are more numerous, while recent work in the 

 north-west of Africa has provided material of much value from this compara- 

 tively new point of view. Thus, I shall not hesitate to cite West African 

 instances, even though it is probable that the cultural drift responsible for them 

 crossed North Africa and travelled down the west coast. It must not be for- 

 gotten that North Africa was permeated with Egyptian influence during the last 

 few centuries B.C. Evidence for this statement might be drawn from many 

 sources, but I will cite only one, that offered by the coinage, which is parti- 

 cularly convincing. In the third century B.C. many Carthaginian electrum and 

 bronze coins bore the disc and urrei (12, ii. 85, 93); a little later the coins of 

 Numidia also bore Egyptian symbols, while in the first century B.C. those of 

 Bogud II. of Mauritania (50-38 B.C.) were stamped with the winged disc. One 

 of his successors, Juba II., married an Egyptian lady, Cleopatra Selene, daughter 

 of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and, while his coins bear the urseus, those struck 

 in her name bear the sistrum, the crown of Isis, and such Nilotic animals as the 

 crocodile and hippopotamus (12, iii. 17, 95, 105, 110). These facts become the more 

 significant when it is remembered that the coinage of the Ptolemies, the only 

 pre-Roman coinage that Egypt had, was derived from the Greek and bore no 

 Egyptian symbols. 



Some will have it that we are faced with yet another difficulty ; an Egypto- 

 logist has recently produced a work showing evidence of much patient research, 

 in which he argues that a number of bloodthirsty rites, which he states occurred 

 in predynastic and early dynastic Egypt, are closely related to those practised 

 in West Africa at the present day, and indicate that the Egyptian religion is 

 essentially ' African ' in origin. His use of this word seems to indicate that he 

 employs it as the equivalent of ' Negro,' though the latter word is never actually 

 used. I believe that there is good and valid evidence against this view, both on 

 the physical and the cultural side. All the work of the Archajological Survey of 

 Nubia confirms the idea that the predynastic Egyptians were not even negroid, 

 and it has extended this conclusion to the early Nubians who lived during the 

 first three or four Egyptian dynasties. On the cultural side the evidence, 

 though less absolute in that the data cannot be so objective as those supplied by 

 long series of physical measurements, is none the less clear. It is generally held 

 that the sed festival of Ancient Egypt was a survival, in a much weakened form, 

 of the ceremonial killing of the king, and that its essential element was the 

 identification of the king with Osiris. It was an important ceremony which per- 

 sisted through the whole historic period, and was so much to the Pharaohs' 

 taste that it was enacted no less than six times during the reign of Rameses II. 

 The oldest known representation of the ceremony is that on the mace head of 

 King Narmer (Menes). The king is seated in a shrine at the top of nine steps, 

 dressed as Osiris, and holding the flail. On one side in front of the king are a 

 number of standards, the first bearing the jackal Upwawet, ' the opener of the 

 ways,' described on the seal of King Zer of the I. dynastv as ' he who opens 

 the way when thou advancest towards the under-world.' "The seal shows King 

 Zer as Osiris preceded by Upwawet and 'the shed-slied which is in front,' the 

 emblem of lightness or space. It is well known that kings are still killed cere- 

 monially in Negro Africa at the present day ; there are also rites which seem to be 

 weakened forms of the same ceremony in which the king is permitted to survive. 

 Assuming the above hypothesis of the origin of the sed festival to be correct it 

 cannot be seriously argued that the early Egyptians took over the custom from 



