58 INTRODUCTION. 



the hair long- ami flowing. Adopting the Biblical term, he thinks 

 the children of Ham, or Mizraimites, (he does not believe that Ham 

 was the progenitor of the Negro race,) entered Africa by the isthmus 

 of Suez, and were the aboriginal inhabitants of the valley of the 

 Nile; "and that their institutions, however modified by intrusive 

 nations in after times, were the offspring of their own minds;" he 

 believes a portion spread themselves over the north of Africa, and 

 became the nomadic tribes of Libyans. Dr. Beke revers* a the route, 

 ami thinks the " Cushite descendants of Hani first Milled on the 

 western Bide of the Arabian peninsula, crossed thence into Ethiopia, 

 ind, descending the Nile, became the Egyptians of after times." 



The term Ethiopian has been used very vaguely, to embrace 

 Arabs, Hindoos, Austral-Egyptians, and Negroes : it is properly 

 applied to the people who occupied the valley of the Nile from 

 Philae to Meroe, including the present nations of Nubians and 

 Abyssinians, and the great variety of mixed races resulting from 

 proximity. Monumental evidence abundantly shows that the 

 Meroites and Ethiopians had no affinity to the Negro race ; the former 

 are always represented red like the Egyptians, while the latter has 

 also the characteristics of his race. 1 [»■ believes " that the- Egyptians 

 and monumental Ethiopians were of the tame lineage, and probably 

 descended from a Libyan tri 



The Fellahs are a mixture of the Arab with the old Egyptian 

 stock, and are the lineal descendants of, and least removed from, the 

 monumental race of any now occupying the valley of the Nile. 



The monuments also prove that the Egyptian race must have been 

 modified by Pelasgic, Semitic, Arab, and Hindoo tribes, of the Cau- 

 casian family. He regards the Copts as a mixed community derived 

 from the Caucasian and Negro. The modern Nubians, he thinks, 

 are "descended, not from the possessors of Ethiopia in its flourish- 

 ing period, but from the preedial and slave population of the country, 

 increased by colonists, and raised into a nation by peculiar circum- 

 stances between the third and sixth centuries of the Christian era."' 



The monuments give ample evidence of the existence of > 

 slavery among the Egyptians ; and the vast influx of Negroes must 

 have left an impression on their masters, as we see in the ancient 

 Negroid heads and the modern Copts, thus also explaining the inci- 

 dental elevation of the Negro caste. Comparing the ancient Egyp- 

 tian and Negro with their modern representatives, it may be said 

 " that the physic 1 or organic characters which distinguish the sev- 

 eral races of men are as old as the oldest records of our species." 



