[237]Die Gräber von Abydos. Correspondenzblatt der Deutschen anthropologischen Gesellschaft, 1902, pp. 119 foll.
[238]Only one ethnologist of the first rank—R. Hartmann—has spent any considerable time in the Sudan, and this was forty years ago. Except for his work we have to depend on (1) reports of officials and travellers: these are often very valuable, but the different criteria of race, language, etc., used by these writers make it very difficult to use them with any confidence; (2) the observations of “arm-chair savants” who base great theories upon stray skulls, fragmentary vocabularies, chance studies of natives touring about Europe “on show,” etc. This is not the place for a nice criticism of the respective values of these works.
[239]E.g., Cust (Modern languages of Africa, London, 1883, I, p. 142) includes as “Nubas-Berta, Fung, Hameg, Golo, Sheri Monbutto, Nyam-Nyam, and others.”
[240]The Nubas of Kordofan, although certainly not negroes, are black.—G.
[241]Heinrich Schäfer, “Die Aethiopische Königsinschrift des Berliner Museums,” Leipzig, 1901.
[242]“Nubische Grammatik,” Berlin, 1880, p. lxxvii.
[243]Skizze der Nilländer, Berlin, 1860, p. 258.
[244]Mentioned in Strabo and Makrizi. To these African customs in vogue among the Sudanese “Arabs” may be added the Dilka and the Tadkhin. The former is their method of cleaning themselves: instead of washing they prefer, like the ancient Greeks, first to grease themselves over and then scrape the skin with a stone or other scraper. For the Tadkhin, see Baker, “Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,” p. 81.