THE NILOTIC FAMILY. 29 



singular people had attained a high degree of civilisation and refinement at a time 

 when the whole western world was still involved in barbarism; when the history 

 of Europe had not yet begun ; and long before Carthage, Athens and Rome were 

 thought of." 



Note. — On the Supposed ^^ffinity between the Egyptians and Negroes. — I trust I shall be 

 excused for offering, in this place, a few brief remarks in reference to a vulgar error which has found 

 support in the superficial observations of some men, and the misapplied benevolence of others: I 

 allude to that hypothesis which classes the ancient Egyptians with the Negro race. Among the 

 advocates of this opinion was Volney, the celebrated traveller. He looked upon the Sphinx, and 

 hastily inferred from its flat features and bushy hair that the Egyptians were real Negroes : yet these 

 circumstances have no weight when we recur to the fact that the Budhists of Asia (the most 

 numerous sect in existence) represent their principal god with Negro features and hair, and often 

 sculptured in black marble ;* yet among the three hundred millions who worship Budha, there is not, 

 perhaps, a solitary Negro nation. The Egyptians borrowed many of their mythological rites from 

 their southern neighbors, in the same way that, in after time, the Greeks borrowed from the 

 Egyptians, and the Romans from the Greeks : yet these facts are no proofs of the affiliation of races. 

 The ruins of Pompeii contain a temple of Isis ; yet would any one thence infer that the inhabitants 

 of that city were Egyptians } There is no absolute proof, moreover, that the Sphinx represented an 

 Egyptian deity: it may have been a shrine of the Negro population of Egypt, who, as traffickers, 

 servants and slaves, were a very numerous body ; whence the boast of the Egyptian kings, recorded 

 by Diodorus, that the vast structures of Karnak and Luxor were erected by the labor of foreigners, 

 and that none of the native Egyptians were employed on them. This remark may be coupled with 

 another statement of the same historian, that the people of Egypt followed their own fancies in 

 reUgion, every one being allowed to worship that object which his ancestors had worshipped before 

 him.t Hence the number and diversity of their gods, from a leek or a reptile to the deified Osiris. 



Another point much insisted on is the following : Herodotus, speaking of the Colchians, says 

 that the Egyptians believed them " to be descended from part of the troops of Sesostris." He then 

 adds, " to this I myself was also inclined, because they are black, and have hair short and curling.^J 

 This description, however, is far from being sufficient to characterise a Negro, and would apply with 

 equal truth to a large proportion of the Nubians of the present day, merely making allowances for 

 the well known vagueness with which the Greeks apphed the term black to all complexions darker 

 than their own. Even if it be admitted that these Colchians were real Negroes, it does not prove the 

 point at issue; for the remark that they were "part of the troops of Sesostris" leads to the reasonable 

 inference that they were either wholly or in part derived from the servile or Negro caste in Egypt, 

 and not of the Egyptian race. This opinion is sustained by another passage in the same historian, 

 who tells us that in the army of Xerxes which invaded Greece, there was a legion of western 

 Ethiopians, who, he adds, "have their hair more crisp and curling than any other men."§ Now, if 

 the Persian army was composed in part of genuine Negroes, how much more likely were the troops 

 of Sesostris to embrace a portion of that race, he being himself a king of Egypt ? But it may be said 



* Heber, Narr. I, p. 254. Am. ed. f Diod. Sic. Hist. (Booth's Tr.) B. I, chap. 7, 



j^ MiXayx^posi xaX ov\o~fiX};. Euterpe, Cap, C, § Herod. Polhym*"Cap. LXX. 



8 



