of the Pyramids and Temples in the S4ddn. 347 



date of the pyramids of Nun, on which no inscriptions have been 

 found, and the date of some of the pyramids of Meroe on which also 

 no inscriptions have been found ; but before we can arrive at any con- 

 clusion on these points, we must briefly consider the question of the 

 ancient civilisation of the Sudan and its origin. 



In the first place we must put aside the name Ethiopian which is so 

 often applied to it, because there is no evidence whatever to show that 

 it is of Ethiopian origin ; the term " Ethiopian " has been loosely 

 applied to the ancient peoples of the Eastern Sudan and their works, 

 just as to any object the source of which was unknown the name 

 "Phoenician" or "Hittite" has been applied in our own day. The 

 ancient tribes who lived on the east bank of the Nile from Wadi Haifa 

 to Khartum were not negroes, and they had but little in common with 

 the tribes who lived south and west of Khartum ■ indeed they were 

 not a black race at all. The colour of the men's skins was red, not 

 black, and that of their women, who did not expose themselves to the 

 sun's rays, was of a yellowish-red. Between these peoples and the 

 ancient Egyptians a more or less friendly intercourse existed from the 

 earliest times ; otherwise how could the Egyptian officials who were 

 sent to the Sudan, to the district of " big trees," to bring back huge 

 tree trunks to cut up for coffins and sarcophagi for their royal masters, 

 have succeeded in their enterprises 1 Men sent upon missions of this 

 kind must have followed the course of the river, for the shorter desert 

 routes were quite impossible, at any rate on the return journey for 

 men laden with baulks of timber. Still more remarkable is the fact 

 that a high official, called Ba-ur-Tattu, in the reign of Assa, about B.C. 

 3300, travelled as far south as the land of the pygmies, and brought 

 back one of these folk for the king; and eighty years later Heru- 

 Khuf, a governor of Abu, or Elephantine, did the same thing. It is 

 difficult to imagine that Egypt could have exercised any great power 

 over the country south of Wadi Haifa, but that there should have 

 been a relatively brisk intercourse between Egypt and the Sudan for 

 trading purposes is only natural. Again, if the Egyptians made any 

 colonies in the south, the introduction of Egyptian civilisation and 

 religious ideas would inevitably follow, and intermarriages between 

 Egyptian strangers and natives would take place. Moreover, the 

 natives who visited Egypt would bring back with them new ideas, 

 which in course of time they finally adopted, adding such modifications 

 as their opinions dictated. The Egyptian viceroys and Sudan princes 

 would naturally build temples and tombs (i.e., pyramids) after the 

 manner of those they found in Egypt, but the orientation of these 

 would be altered in accordance with the religious views of those who 

 built them. But suitable sites for temples and pyramids are more rare 

 in the Sudan than in Egypt, and priests in both countries were unwil- 

 ling to abandon a spot which had become associated with sacred beliefs 



