Kabàylee : whilst the Kabyle mountaineer, in bringing his produce
to market, has much more need of Arabic than an Algerian Arab
has of Berber.393
“ Albeit, there exist whole tribes who present the bilingual character.
But, among such septs the principal localities almost always
bear names of Berber origin | which seems to announce that, upon
these different points, the Kabäil had originally possessed the soil.
The existence of these double-languaged populations expresses,
therefore, nothing else than the transition between the primitive
stratum, formed out of the Kabyle element, and the alluvial stratum,
formed out of the Arabic element. * * *
“ Two incontestable facts are the following, viz : prior even to the
most ancient of invasions [the Punico-Canaanitish ?], there existed,
along this part of the African coast, a people and an idiom differing
from all those peoples, and from all those idioms, which were to
succeed each other during 2000 years ; and that, now-a-days, the
last [French] invasion finds again, in this country, a people and an
idiom different from all those which preceded it.”
The well-known “ monument of Dugga” contained 7 lines in
Phoenician, and 7 others in an unknown writing. After the French
occupation (1830), abundant bilingual inscriptions were found,—
sometimes • Latin, at others Punic ; but ever accompanied by the
same unintelligible characters. The Berber alphabet, observed by
O u d n ey in 1822, advanced by D e S aulcy in 1844, and recovered by
B e is so n n e t in 1845, has aided to unfold a great fact, viz: “ the
examination of these documents leaves no doubt as to the close
relationship that exists between the idiom of these antique inscriptions
and that other idiom now being spoken from the Egyptian
Oasis of Seewah (westwards) to the shore of the Ocean, and (southwards)
from the Mediterranean to the confines of the Soodàn
(negro-lands). Hence the secular filiation of the Libyan tongue has
revealed itself,— a tongue poor and simple, of which the type has
perpetuated itself in the present idiom of the Kabàil, athwart the
course of ages and the vicissitudes of revolutions; without any
other parchment than the surface of desert-rocks, without any other
means of conservation than the vis inertise of tradition ;—now known
by the several names of Berber, Chçtwèeya, or Kabyle; which
becomes a dialect called Lar'oua in parts of the Sahara, and Shil-
Meya on the Atlas range.
393 For the topographical distribution of these clans, see the excellent “ Carte de
l’Algérie divisée par Tribus,” by C a r e t t e and W a r n i e r , Paris, 1 8 4 6 : -— also, W i l h e lm
O b e r M ü l l e r , A tla s elhno-géographique, “ Les pays et les peuples * * * de la ß e rb e r it
dans leur état actuel,” Paris and Leipzig (Brockhaus and Avernarius).
“ The different names under which this idiom presents itself are
recognized in a common appellative, as if forming branches of one
and the same trunk. The word Berber comprises equally the Kabail
of the littoral, the Chawéeya of the south-east, the Shilhéeya of Morocco,
the Beni-M’zab, and the Touàriks : and, in the same manner
that,all these dialects offer but slight differences among themselves,
leaving no doubt whatever as to their community of origin, so the
peoples that make use of them must be regarded as the scattered
members of one and the same family.” On the Jurjura plateaux
there is a tribe still called (beni, Arabic for “ sons”) Beni-Kébîla;
another on the Aures is (owlàd, = “ children ”) Oued-Shelih, or Shilhéeya;
and a third, Beni-Berber : and thus, without break in the chain
of nomenclature, we can now ascend,—in the same language, race,
and country—from the T-Amazirg, or Amazirg-T, or “ Free-men,”
name given by this people to themselves,394 through the Mazée-eh of
Arab authors, to the Grentes Mazicse of the Romans,—and thence,
finally to the Maguss of Herodotus, in whose day they were /3«p/3apoi ;
that is to say, not barbarians etymologically, but these same old Ber-
beroi, our “ Berbers.”
From the earliest times, when they were the “ iow-country ” and
the “ nine-bow-countries ” of Egyptian hieroglyphics of the XHth
dynasty, 2 2 centuries b . c., through the period when they had become
the Misulani, Saboubares, and quinquegentani of Latin writers, these
Berbers have ever been the same “ unconquerable Moors (Mauri)
to such degree, that their highland fastnesses amid the Atlas were
designated as “ mons ferratus ” by the Roman legions, and “ el-
adoôwa ” (the inimical!) by the later Saracenic lancers—
“ (Gens) 'torva, ferox, procax, verbosa, rebellis.”395
My above allusion to the familiar hieroglyphics for Libyan nations
prompts reference to new inquiries that have just arisen as to the
question—How far did the pharaonic Egyptians push their conquests
into Western Africa ? Manetho396 says that M e n e s (1st dynasty, b . c.
40 centuries) gained glory from his foreign wars ; and that under He-
CHe r o c h is (IHd dynasty), not very long after, the “ Libyans were
defeated by the Egyptians but, until recently, no corroborative testimonies
had been suspected, even, in Barbary itself. ^The first discovery
of such monumental analogy was made by the daring travel-
894 H o d g s o n (of Savannah, Ga.), cited in G l id d o n , Otia Ægyptiaca, pp. 11.7-29.
895 As G ib b o n somewhere says of the Armoricans : or, in the more explicit Castilian of
a wrathy old Spanish writer, not partial to Mussulmans, Hædo,— “ Moros, Alarbes Ca-
bayles, y algunos Torcos, todos gente puerca, suzia, torpe, indomita, inhavil, inhumana,
bestial ; y por tanto, tuvo por cierto razon el que da pocos aSns aca acustumbro llamar a
esta tierra Barlaria ( P a s c a r D u p r a t , Afrique Septentrionale, 1845, p. 65, note).
886 Text in B d n s e n , Egypt's Place, i pp. 611, 615.