habits of priests; the black figures are represented as conferring
on the red the instruments and symbols of the sacerdotal
office. “ This singular representation,” says Mr. Hamilton,
“ which is often repeated in all the Egyptian templfcS, but
only here at Philae and at Elephantine with this distinction
of colour, may very naturally be supposed to commemorate
the transmission of religious fables and social institutions
from the dark Ethiopians to the comparatively fair Egyp*
tian.” It consists of three priests : two of them with black
laces and hands, are represented as pouring from two jars
strings of alternate Sceptres of Osiris and cruces ansatce, over
the head of another whose face is red. There are other paintings
which seem to be nearly to the same purport. In the
temple of Philae, the sculptures frequently depict two persons
adorned equally with the characters and symbols of Osiris,
and two persons answering to those of Isis; but in both cases
one is invariably much older than the other, and appears to
he the superior divinity. Mr. Hamilton conjectures, that
such figures represent the. communication>:©f religious rites
from Ethiopia to Egypt, and the inferiority of the Egyptian
Osiris. In these delineations there is a very marked and positive
distinction between the black figures and those of
fairer complexion; the former are most frequently conferring
the symbols of divinity and sovereignty on the latter.
Besides these representations described by Hamilton, there
are others of a much more unequivocal kind which are frequently
repeated, and of which many specimens msSy be seen
in the beautiful plates of the “ Description de l’Egypte.” I
cannot introduce a detailed account of the latter in this
place, but must refer my readers for particulars to the work
now cited, as well as M. Pugnet’s treatise, to which I have
before referred. It is impossible to mistake the idea which is
intended to be conveyed. It is nothing else than this, that
the Egyptians were connected by kindred with the Ethiopians,
and that the red tribe were descended from, or uniformly begotten
by, the black people.*
* Description de l’Egypte, tom. ii. pL 86. 92. 84. In pi. 92, the parent is red,
but a nola is added, stating, that the original figure is black.
I attach no importance to these conjectures, but have
thought it worth while to take notice of the representations
on which they are founded, and which have excited so much
curiosity in persons who have surveyed them. The only conclusion
which I would venture to draw from all that I have
been able to collect on the history of the Ethiopians, is, that
they formed with the Egyptians, originally one people. This
appears to be the general result of all the traditions of both
nations* and of all the mythical as well as emblematical representations
which have reference to the subject.
As for the physical characters of the Ethiopians of Meroë,
we have few or no very accurate accounts. Such notices, however,
as we can collect, agree in representing them as black,
as indeed are all the present inhabitants of the. same country.
The latter cannot be considered as the descendants of the
old Ethiopians. The Nubians or Barâbra, who occupy the
greater part of the Nilotic Ethiopia, are, as we have seen from
abundant historical evidence, the descendants of a nation
brought from the western Oasis, after the country above
Egypt had been desolated by long wars, to take possession
of it, and form a barrier against other barbarous assailants
of the Roman limits. These are not the descendants of the
Ethiopians, nor is there any evidence whatever to be found in
support ,of ^conjecture lately thrown out, that the Ethiopians
were the same people with the Bejas of the eastern desert and
the coast of the Arabian Gulf. The language of the latter na-
M. Pugnet, who first noticed particularly figures of this description, has the following
observation :
jjg Quoique je ne vueille me livrer id à aucune conjecture sur leur origine : viz.
(celle des Egyptiens) je crois dévoir rétracer un tableau, que m’a offert l ’un des
tombeaux des Rois, Bab-el-melouk—S tant plures virorum effigies, à quibus plane
ostendit pictor gigni hommes è terrâ. Qui gignuntur, colore ruhro sunt, parentes
nigerrimi. Ce langage hiéroglyphique n’exprime-t-il pas ce que pensaient les anciens,
que l’homme rouge est né de l’homme noir ? L’homme noir est certainement
un Ethiopien, et l’Egyptien s’est peint toutes parts sous la couleur rougeâtre qu’il
retient encore aujourd’hui. On voit ailleurs des groupes de l’une et de l’autre
couleur, rendre au même hommage à des divinités noirs, mais bientôt les hommes
rouges se séparent des autres pour se rendre, non loin d’eux, auprès d’une divinité
qui leur ressemble. Ailleurs, enfin, ou recommit l’Heliotrapèze décrite par Homère :
des hommes rouges transportent leurs dieux sur les confins des hommes noirs, et y
célèbrent un festin commun.” (Apperçu du Sayd, p. 44. Mémoires sur les Fièvres
pestilentielles par M. Pugnet, Paris.