History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent DiscoveryKing, L. W. (Leonard William)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery
King, L. W. (Leonard William)
Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C.; History, Ancient
But it should be observed that, in spite of the present absence of all
primitive remains (whether mere flints, or actual graves with bodies and
relics) of the primeval population between the Fayyûm and el-Kawâmil,
there is no proof that the primitive race of Upper Egypt was not
coterminous and identical with that of the lower country. It
might therefore be urged that the whole Neolithic population was
“Mediterranean” by its skull-form and body-structure, and specifically
“Nilotic” (indigenous Egyptian) in its culture-type. This is quite
possible, but we have again to account for the legends of distant origin
on the Red Sea coast, the probability that one element of the Egyptian
population was of extraneous origin and came from the east into the Nile
valley near Koptos, and finally the historical fact of an advance of the
early dynastic Egyptians from the South to the conquest of the North.
The latter fact might of course be explained as a civil war analogous
to that between Thebes and Asyût in the time of the IXth Dynasty, but
against this explanation is to be set the fact that the contemporary
monuments of the Southerners exhibit the men of the North as of foreign
and non-Egyptian ethnic type, resembling Libyans. It is possible that
they were akin to the Libyans; and this would square very well with the
first theory, but it may also be made to fit in with a development of
the second, which has been generally accepted.
According to this view, the whole primitive Neolithic population of
North and South was Miotic, indigenous in origin, and akin to the
“Mediterraneans “of Prof. Sergi and the other ethnologists. It was not
this population, the stone-users whose nécropoles have been found by
Messrs. de Morgan, Pétrie, and Maclver, that entered the Nile valley by
the Wadi Hammamat. This was another race of different ethnic origin,
which came from the Red Sea toward the end of the Neolithic period,
and, being of higher civilization than the native Nilotes, assumed the
lordship over them, gave a great impetus to the development of their
culture, and started at once the institution of monarchy, the knowledge
of letters, and the use of metals. The chiefs of this superior tribe
founded the monarchy, conquered the North, unified the kingdom, and
began Egyptian history. From many indications it would seem probable
that these conquerors were of Babylonian origin, or that the culture
they brought with them (possibly from Arabia) was ultimately of
Babylonian origin. They themselves would seem to have been Semites,
or rather proto-Semites, who came from Arabia to Africa by way of
the straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and proceeded up the coast to about the
neighbourhood of Kusêr, whence the Wadi Hammamat offered them an open
road to the valley of the Nile. By this route they may have entered
Egypt, bringing with them a civilization, which, like that of the other
Semites, had been profoundly influenced and modified by that of the
Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia.
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