people darker than a Hellene—Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans, from
Joppa (Jaffa) westward to Carthage: nor, camels being unknown to
the Carthaginians, as well as to the early Cyreneans, could Negroes
have been brought across the Sahara deserts into the Barbary States,
until about the first century before the Christian era. The only
channel to the natural habitat of Hegro races, (which never has lain
geographically to the northward of the limit of the Tropical rains, or
about 16° 1ST. lat.,) until camels were introduced into Barbary, after
the fall of Carthage, was along the Hile, and through Egypt exclusively.
The Carthaginians never possessed Hegro slaves, excepting
what they may have bought in Egyptian bazaars; of which incidents
we have no record. It is worthy of critical attention, that in the
Periplus of H anno, and other traditionary voyages outside the Pillars
of Hercules, while we may infer that these Carthaginian navigators
(inasmuch as they reached the country of the Gorillse, now known
to be the largest species of the chimpanzee,) must have beheld
Hegroes also; yet, after passing the Lixitse, and other “ men of
various appearances,” they merely report the whole coast to be inhabited
by “ Ethiopians.” 318 How, the Punic text of this voyage being
lost, we cannot say what was the original Carthaginian word which
the Greek translator has rendered by “ Ethiopians;” so that, even if
Negroes be a very probable meaning, these Atlántico-African voyages
prove nothing beyond the fact that, in H anno’s time, b. c. five or six
centuries, there was already great diversity of races along the northwestern
coast of Africa, and that all of them were strange to the
Carthaginians.
It is now established, moreover, that the account given by H erodotus
of the Nasamonian expedition to the country of the Garamantes,
never referred to the river Higer, but to some western journey into
Mauritania; as we have explained in Part H.
Apart, then, from a few specimens of the Hegro type that, as curiosities,
may have been occasionally carried from Egypt into Asia,
there was but one other route through which Hegroes, until the times
of Solomon, could have been transported from Africa into Asiatic
countries; viz.: by the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea.
We have diligently hunted for archaeological proofs of the existence
of a Negro out of Egypt in such ancient times, and have found but
two instances ; dependent entirely upon the fidelity of the superb
copies of T exier, and of E landin. fH jp
In Texier’s work319 we think a Negro, (in hair, lips, and facial
angle,) may be detected as the last figure,*m the third line, among
the foreign supporters of the throne of one of the Achsemenian kings
at Persepolis. There is nothing improbable in the circumstance; for
the vast Satrapies of Persia, in the fifth century b. c., extended into
Africa. The more certain example we allude to is found in the sculptures
of Khorsabad, or Hineveh;320 and probably appertains to the
reign of Sargan, b. o. 710-668. It is a solitary figure of a beardless
Hegro with woolly hair, wounded, and in the act of imploring mercy
from the Assyrians.
Turn we now to Roman authority.
Latin description of a Negress, written early in the
second century after c.
“ Interdum clamat Cybalen ; erat unica custos ;
A fra genus, tota patriam testante figura;
Torta comam, labroque tumens, et fusca colorem ;
Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alyo,
Cruribus çxilis, spatiosa prodiga planta ;
Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant.”
“ In the meanwhile he calls Cybale. She was
his only [house-] keeper. African by race, her
whole face attesting her father-land : with crisped
hair, swelling lip, and blackish complexion ; broad
in chest, with pendant dugs, [and] very contracted
paunch ; her spindle-shanks [contrasted with her]
enormous feet ; and her cracked heels were stiffened
by perpetual clefts.”
Egyptian delineation of a N egress,
cut and painted some 1600 years
before the Latin description.
F ig. 177.
To Mr. Gustavus A. Myers, (an eminent lawyer of Richmond, Va.,)
are we indebted for indicating to us this unparalleled description of a
Negress; no less than for the loan of the volume in which an unapplied
passage of Virgil321 is contained. Through it we perceive
that, in the second century after c., the physical characteristics of a
“ field,” or agricultural, “ Higger” were understood at Rome 1800
years ago, as thoroughly as by cotton-planters in the State of Alabama,
still flourishing in a. d. 1858.
Time, as every one now can see, has effected no alteration, even by
transfer to the Hew World, upon African types (save through amalgamation)
for 3400 years downwards. Let us inquire of the Old continent
what metamorphoses time may have caused, as regards such
alleged transmutations, upwards.
About the sixteenth century b. c., Pharaoh H orus of the XVHIth
dynasty records, at Hagar Silsilis, his return from victories over Hi-
gritian families of the upper Hile.322 The hieroglyphical legends
above his prisoners convey the sense of— “ KeSA, barbarian country,
perverse race;” expressive of the Egyptian sentimentalities of that
day towards Hubians, Hegroes, and “ foreigners” generally.