The Egyptians, eldest historical branch of the Hamitic group of:
races, now appear to science as terras geniti, or autochthones, of the
lower valley of the Nile,—and this, of course, from a period incalculably
beyond all “ chronology.” Upon them, at a secondary phase
of the existence of the former, but prior even to the erection of the
earliest pyramid of the IHd Dynasty, Semitic races by degrees
became infiltrated and, at a later period—XHth to XXlId Dynasties
r—superposed. From about the twenty-second century b. c., down to
the seventh, Eyksos invasions, Israelitish sojourn, Phoenician commerce,
Assyrian and Babylonish relations, greatly Semiiicized the
people; at the same time that frequent intermarriages of the pharaonic
and hierogrammatic families with princesses and noblesse of the
Semitic stock in Palestine, Arabia, Syria,, and Mesopotamia, materially
affected the original type of the ruling class of Egyptians.
About b. C. 650, P s am m e t i c h u s I., by throwing open the army and
the ports of Egypt to the Greeks, introduced a third element of
amalgamation, viz: the Indo-European; which received still' stronger
impetus after CambyseB (b. c . 525) and his successors held Egypt
prostrate under Arian subjection. A l e x a n d e r (b. e. 332),. and the
Ptolemies, then overwhelmed Lower Egypt with Macedonians and
other Grecians; -CiESAR (b. c . 39-30), and the Roman emperors, injected
streams of Indo-Germanic, Celtic, and some Sarmatian blood,
through legionaries drawn even from Britannia et Dacia antiqv.ee,
into the already-altered Egyptian veins. Lastly, B, c. 641, Arabia
sent her wild dromedary-riders along the Nile from its mouths to its
Abyssinian sources.
Now, at this period of. Egyptian life, about twelve centuries ago,
no population, in the world perhaps, had undergone such transformations
(individually speaking) of type as had these Hamites through
Semitic and Indo-European amalgamation with their females,—never
famous for continence, at any time. Besides, a certain but really
infinitesimal and ephemeral quantum of Ethiopian and Nigritian
blood had, through importation- of 'concubines, all along, from the
Xllth Dynasty, been flowing in upon this corrupted mass from the
south. Preceded, under the Khalifates, by occasional, Turanian
captives ; increased during the period of the “ Ghuz ” through contact
with the Mongolian offshoots of Hulagou ; and stimulated daily by
fresh accessions of “ Caucasian” Memlooks,—the Ottomans, about
a . d . 1517, commenced despoiling the fairest land amidst all those
doomed to their now-evanescent dominion. But, —and here is the
new point in ethnology to which the reader’s attention is. solicited—
from and after the era of the Saracenic conquest, a revulsion in the
order of these conflicting amalgamations began to take effect. On
the advent of IsIàm and its institutions, which were received with
rapture by the Egyptian masses, unions between the Mohammedan-
ized Fellàh women and any males but Mussulmans became unlawful.
It will also be noted, too, that neither the “ Caucasian” Memlooks,
nor the Turanian Turks, could or can raise hybrid offspring (permanent,
I mean to say), in Egypt: and again, that all these importations
of foreign rulers, since the time of Cambyses, consisted in soldiery,—
very disproportionate in numerical amount to the gross bulk of the
indigenous agricultural population.
Hence, under Islamism, the people began to pause, as regards
any important effects, in this promiscuous intermixture with alien
races; except (in cities chiefly) with their congeners the Arabs.
But, on the other hand, among the decaying mongrels termed
“ Copts” (Christian Jacobites) — no Muslim law forbidding their
intercourse with any nation —the action of hybridity has never
stopped from that day to this: -which is the simple rationale of the
discrepant' accounts of tourists in respect to the multiform varieties
beheld in this small section of the Egyptians. Now, from the commencement
of that pause, in the 7th century of our era, down to
the present time, some thirty-six generations have elapsed ; during
which the Muslim peasant population — that is, between two and
three millions — intermarrying among themselves, have really absorbed,
or thrown off, those alien elements previously injected into
their blood, — and thus, the Fellàhs of the present day have, to an
amazing degree, and after some fifty centuries, actually recovered
the type of the old IVth dynasty. Indeed, one might almost assert
that, from blank centuries before Christ down to the XlXth century
after, the greatest changes which time has wrought upon the bulk
of the indigenous Egyptian race reduce themselves,—in religion, to
Mohammed for Osiris ; in language, to Semitic for Hamitic ; in institutions,
to the musket for the bow; but, in blood, to little if any.
See again Mr. Pulszky’s Chapter (I, pp. 107-122), and our plates
(I and H, infra).
One word more, as concerns my individual contributions in
Chapters Y and VI.
With the exception of Chapter HI, which D r . M e i g s has been so
good as to revise himself, the entire labor of editorship has fallen
upon me ; and, as an inevitable consequence, I have not had the
time, even supposing possession of the ability, to bestow upon my
own contributions the verbal criticism they might, otherwise, have
received. Furthermore, apart from a few pages of my manuscripts
regarding the natural history of monkeys submitted last summer to
the obliging perusal of my friends, P r o f . L e id y and D r . M e ig s , I