Volney has offered as a general remark on the Mamlûks of Egypt, that they are easily distinguishable from the natives by having light hair. It is certain that dark hair, eyes, and complexion, do not obtain so universally among them as among the native Egyptians or Arabs; yet in fact, their eyes and hair may be observed much more commonly of a dark than light hue. If then the fondness for generalizing his remarks have operated to deprive this author of the knowlege which hourly experience, continued for several months, could not fail to have given him, what may not be credited as to the effect of his prejudices in matters of remote and doubtful history, where truth is to be drawn out only by patient inquiry, and the frequency of error is exactly proportioned to that of conjecture?
But if all the arguments to confute this new theory should fail, one fact remains which is invincible. The persons of the antient Egyptians, preserved as it were entire by the prescience of that people concerning the errors into which posterity might fall, exhibit an irrefragable proof of their features and of the colour of their skin, which is now, by the quantity of mummies that have been imported into Europe, subject to the inspection of the curious almost throughout that quarter of the globe. This resurrection of witnesses also evinces, that the Copts are their genuine descendants, and preserve the family likeness in their complexion of dusky brown, dark hair and eyes, lips sometimes thick, but the nose as often aquiline, and other marks of a total dissimilitude between them and the negro race.
The black complexion of the Africans seems to extend much farther North in the Western, than in the Eastern part of the continent they inhabit. The people of Fezzân, whose capital is in latitude 27° 48″ or about 2° 10″ to the South of Kahira, are black, while the Egyptians, in the same latitude, are only of brown or olive colour. The Fezzâners, however, have not entirely the negro feature. They have frequently children by their negro slaves, the Egyptians but seldom. The island, near Assûan, consists chiefly of blacks; but the townsmen of Assûan are of a red colour, and have the features of the Nubians, Barabra, whose language they also willingly speak. The people of El-wah are quite of Egyptian or Arab complexion and feature, none of them black: so that I scarcely conceived myself to have arrived at the confines of the blacks, till we reached the first inhabited part of Dar-Fûr. The first I saw are called Zeghawa; they are not negroes, but a distinct race. The Arabs of this empire remain always very distinguishable in colour and feature. The people of Harrâza are of a reddish complexion. Perhaps this being a very mountainous district may occasion some peculiarity. The Fûrians are perfectly black. I have seen some of the natives of Kulla, whence slaves are brought, and which is farther South than Dar-Fûr, that were red. On the whole, one might be inclined to go as far fifteen degrees of north latitude in this part of Africa, to find the line between the Arabs and the Blacks.
CHAP. XIII.
JOURNEY TO FEIUM.
Tamieh — Canals — Feiûm — Roses — Lake Mœris — Oasis Parva — Pyramids — of Hawara — of Dashûr — of Sakarra — of Jizé, or the great Pyramids — Antient Memphis — Egyptian Capitals.
On the 28th of December 1792 left Kahira to visit Feiûm, a city distant about sixty miles to the South-west. At Moknân procured from the Shech a letter to one of his officers, residing at Bedis, another village further on to the Southward, commanding him to accompany me to Feiûm. Proceeded through a grove of large date trees, which are watered from several cisterns, all of them supplied from the Nile, during its increase.
Between Bedis and Tamieh passed a natural opening, in the chain which constitutes the Western wall of Egypt. A small canal runs through Tamieh[29], and here the country again assumes the aspect of cultivation. This little town is remarkable for a manufacture of mats, though the situation be so insecure, that the Arabs in the preceding night had plundered their whole stock, to the value, as they said, of five or six thousand patackes. The Arabs still haunted the neighbourhood, and we were forced to discharge a few musket shot to keep off a small party that assailed us in the morning.