It is thus that we trace this peculiar style of countenance in its several modifications through epochs and in localities the most remote from each other, and in every class of the Egyptian people. How different from the Pelasgic type, yet how obviously Caucasian! How varied in outline, yet how readily identified! And if we compare these features with those of the Egyptian series of embalmed heads, are we not forcibly impressed with a striking analogy not only in osteological conformation, but also in the very expression of the face? Compare, for example, the head on page 17 . Observe, also, the six skulls figured, Plate [VII]., Plate [XII]., Fig. 4; Plate [X]., Fig. 4; Plate [VIII]., Fig. 9, and the numerous accompanying illustrations, and no one, I conceive, will question the analogy I have pointed out. This type is certainly national, and presents to our view the genuine Egyptian physiognomy, which, in the Ethnographic scale, is intermediate between the Pelasgic and Semitic forms. We may add, that this conformation is the same which Prof. Blumenbach refers to the Hindoo variety in his triple classification of the Egyptian people.[[42]] And this leads us briefly to inquire, who were the Egyptians?
It is in the sacred writings only that we find any authentic records of the primeval migrations of our species. “In the general allotment of territories to the offspring of Noah,” observes Mr. Gliddon, “Egypt, by the concurrent testimony of all Biblical commentators, was assigned to Mizraim, the son of Ham, as a domain and for an inheritance;” whence Egypt has, from the remotest times, been called by the names of Mizraim and Ham, or Khemé. Mr. Gliddon adds, that “although the name of Mizraim has not yet been found in hieroglyphic legends, there is abundant scriptural evidence to prove that the country was called Mizraim and Mitzar by the Jews; while at the present day throughout the east, Egypt and Cairo are universally known by the cognate appellation of Muss’r.”[[43]]
Entering Africa by the Isthmus of Suez,[[44]] the children of Ham were ushered into the fertile valley of the Nile, a region prepared by nature for settled communities and a primeval civilization. In a country bounded by the Red Sea on the one side, and by a wilderness on the other, and presenting but a narrow strip of land for its inhabitants, laws would at once become necessary for mutual protection; and we may suppose that while one portion of the Mizraimites embraced these social restrictions, another, impatient of control, passed beyond the desert barrier on the west, and spreading themselves over the north of Africa, became those nomadic tribes to which the earliest annals give the name of Libyans.[[45]] It follows from this view of the question, that we suppose the Egyptians and Libyans to have been cognate people; that the former were the aboriginal[[46]] inhabitants of the valley of the Nile; and that their institutions, however modified by intrusive nations in after times, were the offspring of their own minds.
It will, however, be very naturally objected that among the Egyptians no gradations are apparent between barbarism and refinement, “It is a remarkable fact,” says Sir G. Wilkinson, “that the first glimpse we obtain of the history and manners of the Egyptians, shows a nation already advanced in the arts of civilized life; and the same customs and inventions that prevailed in the Augustan era of that people, after the accession of the eighteenth dynasty, are found in the remote age of Osortasen, the contemporary of Joseph.” How then could a branch of the Libyan race, a people so comparatively obscure, have become the mighty Egyptian nation? How could families of mankind so widely different in their intellectual manifestations, have been derived from a cognate stock? To which we reply, that the Egyptians and Libyans were not in this respect more widely separated than were the Saracens under the Caliphs, and the wandering Bedouins; yet, both these were branches of the Arabian race. Egypt may perhaps be regarded as the intellectual centre of the posterity of Ham.
The evidences of these opinions, it must be confessed, are as yet few in number. That the Libyan or Berber speech was once the language of all northern Africa has long been maintained by Ritter, Heeren and Shaler, and by Mr. Hodgson in his very interesting Letters from Algiers, during the period in which he held the United States consulate in that regency.[[47]] Prof. Ritter (whose work I have not seen) asserts that the Amazirgh, or Berber language, as detected by certain prefixes and affixes peculiar to it and the Coptic tongue, is to be found across the whole breadth of the continent, from the Red Sea to the Canary Isles; and he supposes, too, that the Hazorta tribes, like the old Bejas and modern Bishareens, were originally of the same parent stock. To these evidences we may add those of Prof Vater, who traced some affinity between the Berber and the Coptic and Amharic, but not sufficient to lead to satisfactory results.
I have before me an obliging communication from Mr. Hodgson, in which he informs me, that he also discovered what he believed to be incontrovertible evidence of the Berber origin of the Bishareen language, before he had read the work of Prof. Ritter; and in an essay just published on the Foulahs of central Africa, he reiterates the opinion early expressed by him, that the Berber or Libyan tongue was spoken in the valley of the Nile, prior to the existence of the Coptic or monumental language; a theory which, he further remarks, is in accordance with the nature of things and the probable course of events.
“Whilst the positive records of modern history,” observes Mr. Hodgson, “show that the Coptic tongue has been obliterated from the map of Egypt within the short period which has elapsed since the Saracenic invasion, need we wonder that so few traces remain of the language of that country in primeval and unrecorded times? These vestiges, however, have been detected by me, and, I think, with a strong degree of probability, in the mythologic and geographical names transmitted to us from the earliest periods of Egyptian history. The meaning of Ammon, Thebes, Themis, and Nile, and of Heliopolis (Tadij) and Apollinopolis (Etfu) have been explained from the modern Berber language; and the very name of Hykshos, who were called shepherds, means also shepherds in Berber.[[48]]
“These etymologies serve, at least, as tokens of the existence of the Libyans in the valley of the Nile, at a period anterior to that of the monumental Egyptians. I have, also, found grammatical affinities between the Coptic and the Berber, which suggest that the monosyllabic elements of the former have been imposed upon the Berber syntax, and, therefore, that the Coptic is posterior in nationality to the Berber.”
Leaving this important and difficult philological inquiry to the abler hands of Mr. Hodgson, (for it involves some points on which I am not qualified to judge, and therefore offer no opinion,) we may merely remark, that the Berber theory is farther countenanced by various mythological considerations, among the most remarkable of which is the supposed Libyan origin of several Egyptian divinities.
Particular communities of the Libyans are familiar in history by the names of Mauritanians, Numidians and Getuli. Respecting the physical characteristics of these people, history is nearly silent; yet there is sufficient evidence to prove, that they possessed those features which are now called Caucasian, independently of any modifications that may have resulted from their long intercourse with Phenician colonies, and the Romans, Arabs and Vandals in later periods of time. The Libyans were a nomadic and warlike people; they were habitually employed in the Carthagenian armies, and in the earlier ages contended with the Egyptians themselves; for we learn from a passage in Manetho, (Cory, Frag. p. 100,) that in the remote age of Necherophes, of the third dynasty, the Libyans revolted from the Egyptians, but were soon again subdued. The monuments record similar triumphs in the reigns of Osortasen 1st., Thotmes 1st., Rameses the 3d, and indeed in almost every dynasty down to the Ptolemaic epoch, when Libya continued to be an Egyptian province. In fact, the Libyans hung upon the skirts of Egypt as the Goths did upon Rome; and until the researches of the hierologists identified the Hykshos or shepherd kings with an Asiatic people, there was strong presumptive evidence that these ruthless invaders were, at least in part, no other than the Libyans themselves.[[49]]