period of the world which preceded the discrimination of languages.
To express this, argument in a few words, if the
Goths, the Hindoos, the Greeks and Latins, originally speaking
one language, had so far diversified their speech as they must,
be allowed to have done fifteen centuries before the Christian
era, the diversifying process within nearly an equal period of
time may have given rise to differences even so great as those
which exist between the Semitic and Indian languages.
That such was the fact we have the historical proof above
cited. But if so great a diversity in language as this, was
really brought about, no difference of human idioms will afford
proof of original diversity of race, and the Egyptians and
Hindoos may have had common ancestors from whom they
derived their characteristic traits of resemblance.
CHAPTER XI.
ON THE PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RACE.
S e c t io n I.—General Remarks on th&physteal Characters
of the Egyptians.
We must now direct our attention to a subject more closely
related to the ethnography of one quarter of the world, than
the inquiries to which the preceding chapter has been devoted,
though these are not unconnected with the history and origin
of the African nations.
To what physical department of mankind the Egyptian race
belonged has often been a matter of discussion. If we were to
form an opinion of the old Egyptians from the accounts left
us by Herodotus and other ancient writers, who say that the
Egyptians were “ ooXorpi^eg—peXay^jooeg-—irpo^eiXoi'—
y woolly-haired blacks, with projecting lips,” we should entertain
no doubt they were perfect Negroes. But neither the Copts,
their descendants, nor the Egyptian mummies, of which so
many thousands are yet extant as unquestionable witnesses,
allow this supposition to be maintained. If, as it appears,
the Egyptians were not Negroes properly so termed, we
are not thence entitled to deny the fact of their consanguinity
with the Ethiopians, who are proclaimed by the voice
of all antiquity to have been a black and a genuine African
race. We have seen proofs that the Nubee or Barabra,
who now occupy the country of the old Ethiopians, belonged
originally to the class of African nations termed Nouba, who
are Negroes of a particular class; and the same causes, whatever
they may have been, which transmuted the Nouba into
the modern Berberins, may have produced a corresponding
effect on the more ancient inhabitants of the same regions.
q 2