660 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION H. 



evidence that Egyptian influence reached south of Khartum, and since it has 

 persisted to the present day in oral tradition among the tribes of the little 

 known country between the Blue and White Xiles, traces might equally be 

 expected among the Nilotes of the White Nile. But strangely enough nothing 

 of the sort has been found, although the Shilluk and Dinka "are better known 

 than any other of the Sudan tribes. On the other hand, the tribes of the 

 Congo basin have a number of customs which do suggest Egyptian influence, 

 and the same may be said perhaps of Uganda; so that it seems reasonable 

 to believe that Egyptian influence spread up the White Nile and passed 

 westwards across the Nile-Congo watershed. An alternate route would be 

 along the Blue Nile and its tributaries the Binder and the Eahad to the 

 Abyssinian hills, southward through the highlands to about 5° N., and thence 

 westward to the head waters of the Congo. 



To return to the Shilluk and Dinka, the most northern of the Negro 

 tribes of the White Nile. The fact that no cultural elements which can be 

 connected with Egypt are found on the White Nile, where they might have 

 been expected, suggests, either that the tribes now occupying the'' district 

 were not there when Egyptian influence spread south, or "thai; the country 

 presented such difliculties that the foreign stream left it on one side, as would 

 liave been the case had it followed the route via the Blue Nile and' the high- 

 lands of Abyssinia. In other words, either the Shilluk and Dinka reached th'eir 

 present territory in comparatively recent times, or else led a wandering and 

 precarious life in swamps as formidable as the Sudd of the present day. There 

 is, I think, a good deal in favour of the latter view. The existence in the 

 depths of the Sudd of Nuer communities, of which we know little except 

 through rumour, shows that such a life is possible; while among the Dinka 

 the Moin Tain or ' marshmen,' who possess no cattle and scarcely cultivate, but 

 live by hunting and fishing, exist under almost as unfavourable conditions. 

 Moreover, there is abundant evidence that North-West Africa is drier now 

 than it was a few thousand years ago, and if those authors are right who ?tate 

 that there was a general melting of glaciers in Europe some 5000 years B.C., 

 giving rise to widespread floods (the origin of the Biblical deluge), the 

 increased precipitation may well have given rise to a considerable northern 

 extension of the Nile swamps. In support of this argument it may be noted, 

 that in numerous XVIII. dynasty paintings Negroes are represented with bows 

 and arrows and throwing sticks (boomerangs), i.e., their weapons are not those 

 of the northern Negroes of the present day, the Shilluk and Dinka, who are 

 not bowmen and do not use the throwing stick. Shilluk traditions state that 

 they came from the south, and a language substantially identical with theirs is 

 spoken by the Acholi of the Uganda Protectorate. 



Evidence pointing in the same direction exists on the physical side; the 

 results of the archjeological survey of Nubia show that even in late dynastic 

 times the tall Negroids (E-group) whose skeletons have been found near 

 Shellal were mesaticephals (?, 80), with a cephalic index higher by three or 

 four units than those of the Dinka and Shilluk respectively. On the other 

 hand, a people with a cephalic index nearer that of the northern Nilotes had 

 reached Nubia by the Byzantine-Pagan period (200-600 a.d.). Elliot Smith 

 and Derry speak of these people (the X-group) as prognathous and flat-nosed 

 Negroids who suddenly made their way north into Nubia f 2. Bulletin V. 12). 

 Sixteen X-group skulls (eleven male and five female) in the College of Surgeons 

 give a cephalic index of 70'8, and comparing them with the series of about 

 the same number of Dinka skulls in the collection, my impression is that as 

 a group they show as many Negroid characters. 



It seems reasonable to believe that the Negroids, whose skeletons form the 

 majority of those found in Negro graves in Nubia, belonged to the group of 

 Negroes with whom the Egyptians were in contact on their southern frontier. 

 In other words, the tribes resembling the modern Dinka were so little in 

 effective contact with the Egyptians, that they did not reach Nubia till some 

 1500 years ago, the cattle-owning Negroes whose representations were so 

 frequent being the tall mesaticephals whose remains occur in Nubia in late 

 dynastic times. 



The numerous records of Negro incursions from the Middle Kingdom 



