EGYPTIAN STORIES OF PYGMIES 



235 



he had reached a stature of 4 ft. 8 inches. We had no 

 difficulty in coming to the conclusion that they were, 

 when we saw them, really of exceptionally small stature 

 for their age as indicated by the teeth which were in place 

 in their jaws. 



The Akkas living near the sources of the Nile were 

 known to the ancient Egyptians, and were the foundation 

 of stories and fabulous exaggerations among the ancient 

 Greeks. Even before Homer these stories existed, and 

 the little people were called " pygmies," which means " of 

 the length of the forearm " (Greek, pugme). Homer 



Fig. 28. — Copy of a figure from a group drawn on a Greek vase (dating 

 from 300 B.C.), representing a number of the pygmies of the remote 

 Upper Nile engaged in battle. The resemblance of the peaked 

 cap and of the beard to those of the little figures carved by Black 

 Forest peasants and intended to represent the mythical "gnomes" 

 or dwarf mining-elves is noteworthy. (From Saglio and Deren- 

 berg's ' Dictionnarie des Antiquit^s Grecs et Romaines.') 



refers to the wars of these pygmies with the cranes, and as 

 a matter of fact the African pygmies do wage a kind of 

 war upon the great cranes which swarm in the marsh-land 

 of their country. Naturally enough the really small size- 

 of the African pygmies (they are about 4 ft. in height, some 

 two or three inches less, some as much as eight 'inches- 

 more) was exaggerated by report and tradition, just as the 

 really big eggs of the great extinct ostrich-like bird of- 

 Madagascar were represented in the story of Sindbad, in- 



