In Egypt there is an immense amount of pictorial and sculptured material for ethnological study, covering a range of many centuries. Over three thousand years ago the artists—“untrained but not unobservant ethnologists”[[3]]—decorated the walls of royal tombs with representations of the four races of mankind, among whom the Egyptians of the nineteenth dynasty supposed the world to be partitioned—(1) The Egyptians, whom they painted red; (2) the Asiatics or Semites, yellow; (3) the Southerns or Negroes, black; and (4) the Westerns or Northerners, white, with blue eyes and fair beards. Each type is clearly differentiated by peculiar dress and characteristic features. In addition to these four types, other human varieties were delineated by the Ancient Egyptians, most of which can be identified. “On the Egyptian monuments we not only find very typical portraits, but also an attempt at classification; for the Egyptians were a scientific people, with a knowledge of medicine, and also skilled mathematicians; therefore their primitive anthropology is not unexpected.”[[4]] This facility for race discrimination was still earlier exhibited in the prehistoric or early historic slate palettes of Egypt.
[3]. D. Randall-Maciver and A. Wilkin, Libyan Notes, 1901, p. 1.
[4]. Man, viii., 1908, p. 129.
Belonging to the fifth century B.C. are the realistic portraiture figurines in pottery discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie at Memphis,[[5]] “which clearly are copied from various races which were welded together by the Persians, and who all met in the foreign settlement at Memphis.” Professor Petrie identifies Sumerians or Accadians, the old Turanian people who started civilisation in Babylonia. “Their heads are identified by closely similar portraits carved in stone about 3000 B.C., and found in Mesopotamia.” Persians, Scythians, Mongols, and even Indians, are also recognised by him; but some of the latter are dated by him at about 200 B.C.
[5]. Poole, l.c.
Assyrian monuments are less explicit in this respect.
The Assyrians themselves are shown to have been of a very pure type of Semites; but in the Babylonians there is a sign of Cushite blood.... There is one portrait of an Elamite (Cushite) king on a vase found at Susa; he is painted black, and thus belongs to the Cushite race. The Ethiopian type can be clearly seen in the reliefs depicting the Assyrian wars with the kings of Ethiopia; but it is hard to discriminate Arabs and Jews from Assyrians; in fact, it is only in the time of good art that distinctions are traceable.[[6]]
[6]. H. H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary, i., 1892, p. xxxviii.
Rock carvings in Persia, Scythian coins, and numerous other monuments and remains from other countries and belonging to diverse ages, illustrate that the head-form, features, character of the hair and mode of wearing it, ornaments, dress, and weapons, were all recognised as means of discriminating between different peoples from the earliest times.
Ancient literature, of which one example must suffice, tells the same tale:—