those privileges which had once been sacred to particular castes. For these and other oppressive acts, the Meröite kings were hated by the Egyptians; and no sooner were they expelled than their names were erased from the monuments.[123] THE THIRD EPOCH dates from the conquest by Cambyses, B.C. 525, and continues through the whole of the Persian dynasty, or, in other words, until the Ptolemaic era, B. C. 332,—a period of nearly two hundred years. Every one knows that the Persian dominion in Egypt was marked by an utter disregard of all the established institutions. No occasion was omitted which could humble the pride or debase the character of the people. The varied inhabitants of Europe, Asia and Nigritia poured into the valley of the Nile, abolishing in degree the exclusiveness of caste, and involving an endless confusion of races. The prelude to these changes and misfortunes can be traced to the reign of Psammeticus the First, who permitted to foreigners, and especially to the Greeks, a freedom of ingress which the laws and usages of the country had previously denied them. The same policy appears to have been fostered by the subsequent kings of the same dynasty, until its consummation by Amasis; (B.C. 569) when, in the language of Champollion-Figéac, Egypt became at once Egyptian, Greek, and Asiatic; her national character was lost for ever; her armies were filled with foreign mercenaries; the throne was guarded by European soldiers, and continual wars completed the destruction of a tottering kingdom.[124] ------------------ CONCLUSIONS. 1. The valley of the Nile, both in Egypt and in Nubia, was originally peopled by a branch of the Caucasian race. 2. These primeval people, since called Egyptians, were the Mizraimites of Scripture, the posterity of Ham, and directly affiliated with the Libyan family of nations. 3. In their physical character the Egyptians were intermediate between the Indo-European and Semitic races. 4. The Austral-Egyptian or Meröite communities were an Indo-Arabian stock engrafted on the primitive Libyan inhabitants. 5. Besides these exotic sources of population, the Egyptian race was at different periods modified by the influx of the Caucasian nations of Asia and Europe,—Pelasgi, or Hellenes, Scythians and Phenicians. 6. Kings of Egypt appear to have been incidentally derived from each of the above nations. 7. The Copts, in part at least, are a mixture of the Caucasian and the Negro in extremely variable proportions. 8. Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves. 9. The national characteristics of all these families of Man are distinctly figured on the monuments; and all of them, excepting the Scythians and Phenicians, have been identified in the catacombs.