That there was extensive and long-continued intercourse between the Hindoos and Egyptians is beyond a question; and history speaks, also, of conquest and migration. Which was primitively the dominant power? The Egyptians very naturally decided this point in their own favour; for they assert that Osiris crossed Arabia to the utmost inhabited parts of India, and built many cities there. “He left, likewise,” says Diodorus, “many other marks of his being in these parts, which have induced the inhabitants to believe and affirm, that this god (Osiris) was born in India.”[83] Thus it appears that, in the age of Diodorus, the Hindoos not only worshipped, but claimed as original to themselves, the principal divinity of the Egyptians. There is, moreover, a passage in Syncellus which directly asserts that the Hindoos, who, as we have observed, are sometimes called Ethiopians in ancient history, formed colonies in Egypt. “Æthiopes ab Indo fluvio profecti, supra Ægyptum sedem sibi eligerunt.” Heeren, from whom I derive this quotation, remarks, that as the Hindoos would necessarily arrive by sea, they would establish themselves on the coast. We grant it; but a commercial and migratory people would soon find their way to the great mart of Meroë, and thence to every part of the Egyptian provinces. It has been observed by Mr. Bonomi, that the affiliation of the Hindoos with the people of the upper Nile is confirmed by the affinity which exists between the Ethiopic and Sanscrit systems of writing, as pointed out by Dr. Wall and Mr. Tudor.[84] Dr. Prichard, whose profound investigations into this and all other questions in ethnography, command our highest respect, while he admits that great difficulties present themselves in the present inquiry, remarks “that a common origin, if not of the races themselves, at least of the mental culture characteristic of both of them, has been proved; and that the people of India and of Egypt derived from one source the first principles of all their peculiarities of thought and action, of their religious and social observances, and civil and political institutions; and that these principles had even been developed to a considerable extent, before the nations themselves were entirely cut off from communication with each other or with a common centre.”[85]