“Now it is known that the Egyptian priests had stated incomes, from appropriated lands; which circumstance attached them to their native country: and hence they hated an unsettled life. Neither did they desire to make proselytes; and strangers, who wished to be initiated into the rites and mysteries of Isis, were obliged to submit to be circumcised;—this ceremony was indispensable: on the contrary, the before-mentioned priests of Isis wandering about the Roman provinces, never mentioned a word of circumcision to their new converts. Very sensible critics have produced palpable evidence that they were Ethiopians and Troglodytes, who could the more easily pass for Egyptians, as their features, persons, customs, and religion, were the same. “Of all the writers who mention these emigrations, from Egypt, into Italy, Greece, and every part of the globe which was known in the time of the Romans, I shall refer only to Heliodorus. It was very possible that, sometimes, real Egyptians who had been driven by misfortunes from their native country, or perhaps some of the very lowest rank of people who had nothing to lose, might be mixed with these wanderers. From this mixture of Ethiopians, Troglodytes, and Egyptians, then, sprang a distinct wandering race, which partakes, in some measure, of all the three nations; and from which, according to the foregoing observations, we may reasonably conclude the Gipseys of our time to be descended; as in all of them we discover, sometimes the Troglodyte, sometimes the Ethiopian, and sometimes the Egyptian. “That no mention is made of them in the Hungarian yearly publications before the year 1417, is by no means a proof that they were not known long before, both in that kingdom and the Banat. If we admit the Roman coins which are dug out of the earth as proof that the Romans have been inhabitants of any place, without the concurrent testimony of any historian; we are equally authorised to admit the little Egyptian idols, of bronze, which are dug up near them in the Banat, as proof for the Gipseys. Being dispersed all over the Roman conquest, why might they not as well, when Dacia became a province, have gone there likewise, and propagated the worship of Isis, Anubis, and other Egyptian deities, the same as in Italy?”