scriptions vary, and so strangely in their writings do Egyptian attributes
diverge, from the Caucasian type. A passage in H ekodotus has
been often cited; and it possessed the more weight, inasmuch as he
travelled in Egypt; and because his authority is generally reliable in
such matters as fell beneath his personal observation. Of the people
of Colchis he says, that they w;ere a colony of Egyptians; supporting
his assertion, unique among ancient authorities, by the argument that
they were “ black in complexion and woolly-haired.” 267
P indar also, copying the Halicarnassian, in his fourth Pythian
Ode, speaks of the Colchians as black. In another passage, when
retailing the fable of the Dodonian Oracle, Herodotus again alludes
to the swarthy complexion of the Egyptians, as if it were exceedingly
dark, or even black. MSschyltjs, in the Supplices, mentions the crew
of an Egyptian hark seen from the shore. The person who espies
them concludes they must he Egyptians from their black complexion:
4 4 The sailors too I marked,
Conspicuous in ■white robes their sable limbs.”
Prichard has collected ample Greek and Latin testimony, of similar
import, to show that the Egyptians were dark. His erudition renders
any further ransacking of the Classics here supererogatory: hut we may
remark that the Greek terms might often apply with equal propriety to
a jet-black jSTegro, or to a brown or dusky Nubian. The various
names given to Egypt and her people, together with the mistakes of
translators, are, however, analyzed in our Part H., where we treat
upon “ Mizraim; ” and therefore a pause to discuss them now would
he superfluous.
Prichard sums up in the following strong language: —
“ From comparing these accounts, some of which were written by persons who had travelled
in Egypt, and whose testimony is not likely to have been biassed in any respect, we
must conclude that the subjects of the Pharaohs had something in their physical character
approximating to that of the Negro.”
In opposition to which classical opinions, B eke, in a paper uOn the
Complexion of the Ancient Egyptians, ’ ’258 had set forth: —
1st. The negative testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures-—how
J oseph’s brethren, when they first saw him in Egypt, supposed him
to he an Egyptian |@| how alliances with the Egyptians were permitted
by the Israelitish lawgiver:260 how an Egyptian woman was the
mother of the heads of two of the tribes of Israel:261 another the
wife of Solomon, &c.:
2d. That 1 a description given by Lucian, in one of his Dialogues,
(‘Navigium, seu Vota,’) of a young sailor on hoard an Egyptian
vessel, who, besides being black, is represented as having pouting lips
and spindle-shanks” — rather proves an exception to the usual tint of
the Egyptian people:
3d. The incontrovertible evidence of the paintings, and mummy-
cases. j
We place these discussions of the learned in juxta-position; although
new facts supersede the necessity for recurring to past disputations.
That the skins of Egyptians, in Grecian times, were much darker
than those of Greeks and other white races around the Archipelago,
there can be no question ;.nor that this complexion was accompanied
sometimes with curly or frizzled hair, tumid lips, slender limbs; small
heads, with receding foreheads and chins, which, by contrast, excited
the wonder or derision of the fair-skinned Hellenes. But, while it
must be conceded that Negroes, at no time within the reach even
of monumental history, have inhabited any part of Egypt, save: as
captives; it may, on the other hand, be equally true, that the ancient
Egyptians did present a type intermediate between other African and
Asiatic races; and, should such be proved to have been the case, the
autocthones of Egypt must cease to be designated by the misnomer
of “ Caucasian.”
Whatever the complexion of the real Egyptians may have been,
all authorities' agree that the races south of Egypt were and are
darker; and it is equally clear that the local habitats of'Negroes in
early times; having ever been the same as they are now, render it
geographically impossible that Egyptians could be confounded with
distinct types of men, never voluntarily resident within 1200 miles of
the Mediterranean.
The Egyptians,-on their oldest monuments, always painted their
males in red and their females in yellow; thus adopting in their painted
sculptures, (in order to demarcate themselves from foreign nations
around them,) colors which, of course, were conventional. That there
was considerable diversity of color among the denizens of Egypt
need not be doubted, inasmuch as we now find parallel diversity of
hues among Berbers, Abyssinians, Nubians, &c. The “ Ethiopians”
were always darker than the Egyptians proper, as their Greek name
(atiu, burn, and uf, face) of “ sun-burned faces ” implies. In the Ptolemaic
papyrus published by Young,262 and cited by Morton, one of the
parties to a sale of land) P sammouthes, is described as being of a
dark, while the four others are stated to possess sallow, complexions.
Rosellini supposes the Egyptians to have been of a brown or reddish-
brown color (rosso-fosco) like the present inhabitants of Nubia; but
Morton thinks this remark applicable only to Austral Egyptians, and
not to the inhabitants of Egypt proper, except when arising from
intermixture of races.
28