There would thus seem to have been a community of root between the Egyptians on the one part and the Arabs, Hebrews, and Phœnicians on the other, but the separation took place at such an early period, that the tribes who came to establish themselves in the valley of the Nile had both the time and the opportunity to acquire a very particular and original physiognomy of their own. The Egyptians are therefore said to belong to the proto-Semitic races. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Statue from the Ancient Empire, in calcareous stone. (Boulak.[49]) Drawn by G. Bénédite.] [49] _Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries provisoires du Musée d' Antiquités égyptiennes de S. A. le Vice-Roi, à Boulaq_ (1876), p. 582. With the exception of a few woodcuts from photographs the contents of the museums at Cairo and Boulak have been reproduced from drawings by M. J. Bourgoin. The Boulak Museum will be referred to by the simple word Boulak. The reproductions of objects in the Louvre are all from the pencil of M. Saint-Elme Gautier. This opinion has been sustained with more or less plausibility by MM. Lepsius, Benfey, and Bunsen, and accepted by M. Maspero.[50] But other critics of equal authority are more impressed by the differences than by the resemblances, which, however, they neither deny nor explain. M. Renan prefers to rank the Copts, the Tuaregs, and the Berbers in a family which he would call Chamitic, and to which he would refer most of the idioms of Northern Africa.[51] A comparison of the languages is, then, insufficient to decide the question of origin. [50] MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne_, p. 17. [51] _Histoire des Langues sémitiques_, Book i. ch. ii. § 4. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--The _Sheikh-el-Beled_. (Boulak.) Drawn by J. Bourgoin.]