20 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academj/. 



other articles of commerce were obtained, whose inhabitants sent forth migra- 

 tions of Eed Men to the Nile and beyond to the Atlantic, and through Nubia 

 to the south. 



About a thousand years after the western immigration to Egypt, some 

 commotion seems to have taken place amongst the Eed Sea people ; probably 

 tlie growing population and the onset of one of those cycles of aridity causing 

 migration, for, about the year 7000 B.C., we see the influx into Egypt of a 

 people who brought products with eastern characteristics, and came by the 

 Eed Sea road,' bringing new gods, Set and Min. These people differed very 

 little physically from the previous population that arrived from the west, and 

 their vases indicate that they must have been in touch with Egypt long before 

 their migration there is traceable. According to Mosso there was in the 

 Neolithic age a uniform culture which extended over the whole basin of the 

 Mediterranean and lasted several thousand years.' 



This Eastern immigration was followed by a distinctly Turanian type 

 which came from the north and had pigtails like those shown on the Hittite 

 monuments, and both these types with their god Set were conquered by the 

 Horns or hawk-worshippers, who also came by the Eed Sea road and drove 

 the worshippers of Set out of Egypt about 5800 B.C., towards the north-east, 

 where they became the Amorites of Palestine. 



During these two thousand years there had been a steady influx to Egypt 

 of people from the west, who gradually came in at first along the coast, then 

 to the unoccupied lands of the Fayum, then by the desert paths further south, 

 until by 2500 B.C. the western desert was everywhere occupied by Libyans, 

 and they entered Nubia, where they founded a kingdom. In the fifteenth 

 century B.C. there was a great invasion of nomads with blue eyes and fair 

 hair coming from the west towards Egypt, and the monuments of Egypt 

 describe this people, and record that of this race was the mother of Amenhotep, 

 for she was a blonde with blue eyes and fair skin. 



The early gods of Egypt are gods of a period of migration, and some are 

 obviously' derived from totem emblems. From totemism the western nomad 

 tribes seem to have developed the Great Mother, and the eastern the divinity 

 of the leader. We know that the ancient Egyptians deified the chieftains who 

 had marched into Egypt at the head of the conquering tribes, probably with 

 totem names, and that when one people conquered another, the god of the 

 conquerors was adopted, and their chieftain was identified with the god whom 

 their tribe had served. This war of the gods is reflected in the legends of 



1 See Mr. A. E. P. Weigall on the " Red Sea Highioiid" in "Travels in the Upper Egyptian 

 Deserts." 



^ " The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilizalion," hj- Angelo Mosso. 



