Baron Larrey, Dr. Ruppell, M. de Chabrol, and others. Some of these -writers include in
the same department the Ahyssins, the native Egyptians and the Barabra, separating them
by a broad line from the Negroes, and almost as widely from the Arabs and Europeans.
The Egyptians or Copts, who form one branch of this stock, have, according to Larrey, a
< yellow, dusky complexion, like that of the Abyssins. Their countenance is full without
being puffed ; their eyes are beautiful, clear, almond-shaped, and languishing ; their cheekbones
are projecting; their noses nearly straight, rounded at the point; their nostrils
dilated ; mouth of moderate size ; their lips thick ; their teeth white, regular, biit a little
projecting ; their beard and hair black and crisp.’230 In all these characters, the Egyptians,
according to Larrey, agree with the Abyssins, and are distinguished from the Negroes.”
The Baron enters into a minute comparison of the Ahyssinians,
Copts, and Negroes ; concluding that the two former are of the same
.race ; and supporting this idea with Egyptian sculptures and paintings,
and the crania of mummies.
M. de Chabrol, describing the Copts, says that they evince decidedly
an African character of physiognomy ; which, he thinks, establishes
that they are indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, identifying them with
the ancient inhabitants : —
“ On peut admettre que leur race a su se conserver pure de toute mélange avec le Grecs,
puisqu’ils n’ont entre eux aucun trait de ressemblance.” 231
[This must he taken with many' grains of allowance ; for the present
Copts are hybrids of every race that has visited Egypt : at the same
time that his “ African physiognomy” evidently means no more than
that the character of countenance termed Ethiopian is not that of the
Negro.—G-. R. G.]
Dr. Ruppell has also portrayed the Ethiopian style of counte7
nance and bodily conformation as peculiarly distinct from the type
both of the Arabian and the Negro. He describes its character as
more especially belonging to the Baràbra, or Berberins, among whom
he long resided; but he says that it is common to them, together
with the Ababdeh and the Bishari, and in part with the Ahyssinians.
This type, according to Ruppell, hears a striking resemblance to the
•characteristics of the ancient Egyptians and Nubians, as displayed in
the statues and sculptures in the temples and sepulchral excavations
along the course of the Nile.
The complexion and hair of the Ahyssinians vary veiy much : their
•complexion ranging from almost white to dark brown or black ; and
their hair, from straight to crisp, frizzled, and almost woolly. Hence
the deduction, if these are facts, that they must he an exceedingly
mixed race. Dr. Prichard, in defining the Ahyssinians, has taken much
pains, as we have said, to prove that they, together with families
generally of the eastern basin of the Nile, down to Egypt inclusive,
not only are not Negro, hut were not originally Asiatic races ; displaying
somewhat of an intermediate type, which is nevertheless essentially
African in character. To us, it is very gratifying to see this
view so ably sustained; because, regarding it as an incontrovertible
fact, we have made it the stand-point of our argument respecting the
origin of the ancient Egyptians, whose effigies present this African
type on the earliest monuments of the Old Empire more vividly than
upon those of the New. This autochthonous type, as we shall prove,
ascends so far hack in time, is so peculiar, and withal so connected
with a primordial tongue — presenting but small incipient affinity
with Asiatic languages about 3500 years b. c .— as to preclude every
idea of an Asiatic origin for its aboriginally-Nilotic speakers and
hieroglyphical scribes.
Languages of Abyssinia. — In tracing the history of this country,
we find the Gheez, or Ethiopie, the Amharic, and other Abyssinian
languages. It is no longer questionable, that the Gheez or Ethiopie
— idiom of the Ethiopie version of the Scriptures, and other modem
books which constitute the literature of Abyssinia—is a Semitic dialect,
akin to the Arabic and Hebrew.
“ There is no reason to doubt [says Prichard], that the people for whose use these
books were written, and whose vernacular tongue was the Gheez, were a Semitic race.
How, and at what time, the highlands of Abyssinia came to be inhabited by a Semitic
people, and what relations the modern Ahyssinians bear to the family of nations, of which
that people were a branch, are questions of too much importance, in African ethnography,
to be passed without examination. ”
The Gheez is now extant merely as a dead language.
The Amharic, or modern Abyssinian, has been the vernaéular of
the country ever since the extinction of the Gheez, and is spoken over
a great part of Abyssinia. It is not a dialect of the Gheez or Ethiopia,
as some have supposed, but is now recognized to be, as Prichard
affirms, I a language fundamentally distinct.” It has incorporated
into itself many words of Semitic origin; but accidents of recent date
do not alter the case, as concerns the former existence of local Abys-
synian idioms, non-Asiatic in structure. So with the Atlantic Berber
language, which has likewise become much adulterated by foreign
grafts: yet Venture, Newman, Castiglione, and Graberg de Hemso,
have fully proved that it is essentially, and in the primary or most
original parts of its vocabulary, a speech entirely apart, and devoid
of any relation whether to Semitic or to any other known language.
The same remark applies with equal truth to the Amharic, which was
probably an ancient African tongue, and one of the aboriginal idioms
of the inhabitants of the south-eastern provinces of Abyssinia. Prichard
winds up his investigation with the following emphatic avowal,
so that we may consider the question settled: — “ The languages of
all these nations are essentially distinct from the Gheez and every
other Semitic dialect.” Our own general conclusion from the pre