PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



661 



onwards suggest that the Negroes were driven north in a succession of waves 

 by some force from wliich this direction offered the only chance of escape. 

 Such can only have been applied by other Negroes behind them. It may well 

 be that there was more or less continual ferment on the southern border of 

 Egypt in the early part of the first millennium B.C., and that the northern 

 Nilotes were beginning to make their reputation as fighting men. Indeed, the 

 passage in Isaiah can scarcely bear any other meaning than that this people was 

 working north with sufficient energy for their peculiarities and those of their 

 land to have become known to the Mediterranean world. ' All, the land of the 

 rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia : that sendeth ambas- 

 sadors by the sea, even in vessels of papyrus upon the waters, saying, Go, ye 

 swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people terrible from their 

 beginning onward ; a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the 

 rivers divide! ' (Isa. xviii. 1, 2, Revised Version.) But while the tall Negroes 

 seem to have been the first to reach Nubia in organised groups, stray examples 

 of short bracliycephalic Negroes (usually female) have been found as far back 

 as protodynastic times. I am indebted to Professor Elliot Smith for the 

 information that the four Negresses found in cemetery No. 79 at Gerf Hussein 

 (2, Bull. iii. 22) were short in stature with relatively broad oval crania, while 

 at Dabod in a Middle-Kingdom cemet-ery there was found a skeleton of a 

 man measuring 1-61 ni. (about 5 feet 3 inches), witli definite prognathism, 

 typical Negro hair, and a cephalic index of 80 (2, ii. 121). Presumably these 

 were representatives of the group of short mesaticephalic Negroes who are at 

 the present time found on both sides of the Nile-Congo divide, but predomi- 

 nantly west of it, a group represented by the Bongo, Azande, and cognate 

 tribes. We thus reach the position that the Nubians, who were proto- 

 Egyptians, were, in the earlier part of their history, in contact with just that 

 class of Negroes among whom customs and ideas apparently of Egyptian origin 

 are found at the present day. It must not, however, bo assumed that it was 

 this contact that led to the dissemination of Egyptian ideas, indeed our 

 present information suggests that it can scarcely have been sufliciently intense. 



The following table, giving the measurements and indices available for the 

 comparison of the E-group Negroids with the tall Negroes of the present day, 

 shows that the former belonged to the mesaticephalic group, which includes the 

 Burun, the Bari, and the Nuba. As regards head length, head breadth, 

 cephalic index and stature, the E-group stands closer to the Nuba than to the 

 other tribes, while even in head breadth it is as near the Nuba as the Dinka. 



At the present day the mesaticephalic group includes the Hameg and the 

 Berta of the hills between the White and Blue Niles. The excavations at Jebel 

 Moya — also between these two rivers — have enabled Dr. Derry to show that 

 in Ptolemaic times this hill stronghold was inhabited by tall mesaticephali 

 with a cephalic index almost identical with that of the Nuba, so that we are 

 led to conclude that all these tribes, including the E-group Negroids, belong to 

 one and the same stock. 



A number of similarities between Ancient Egypt and Modern Africa have 

 been set out recently by Professor Petrie (15). He does not discuss the routes 

 by which Egyptian influence may have reached Negroland, but simply marshals 

 the evidence of similarity under sixty-one headings. A good many of these are 



• The H.L. and H.B. of the E-group skulls have been increased by 7 mm. 

 and 8'5 mm. respectively in order to make these measurements comparable with 

 those on tlie living. For the same reason the C.I. has been increased by 2 units. 



