Ethiopia proper is highly remarkable in ancient history: in Scripture it is called Koosh, and its kings are distinguished from those of the Mauri. The country of these Mauri was in very ancient times a great state in the south of Egypt; its capital, _Meroe_, contrary to the express testimony of the ancients, has generally been placed too near Egypt; it was probably situated in the neighbourhood of Sennaar. The Meroites had a peculiar kind of civilisation; and there can be no doubt that the hieroglyphics, and all that we afterwards find as Egyptian civilisation, originated among them. At a very remote time they conquered Egypt; the ancients themselves trace to them the knowledge and religion of the Egyptians; they describe their monuments as Ethiopian, and all that can be made out by historical inquiry is confirmatory of this view. The southernmost monuments of Egypt, between the two cataracts, are the grandest and most ancient; then follows Thebes, and as we advance northward, the monuments become smaller and more insignificant. But monuments are found also higher up the river to the south of Meroe. The accounts in Diodorus about the condition of that city are perfectly credible and satisfactory. The Egyptians, like the Celtiberians, Celtoligyans and others, were a mixed people, in which one nation ruled while the other obeyed. In the Greek documents of Egypt, such as contracts, and the like, we find a singular custom, occasioned by the extremely small number of proper names: the notary, in order to prevent confusion, added a description of the persons concerned. Accordingly, we can clearly distinguish the different races, for we find such characteristics as short, yellow, flat nose, curly hair, and the like.[81] The most ancient idols resemble negroes, as, for example, the celebrated Isis of Elephantine. Among the mummies, too, there are a great many negro forms, faces altogether non-European, different both in their skulls and teeth; and this is another sign that Egypt was conquered by the Ethiopians, who settled among the conquered people. Champollion the younger is not only an honest man, but has no doubt discovered the truth. The most ancient documents we have, go back as far as the eighteenth dynasty of Manetho; and the seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties are probably the period when the yoke of the Hycsos was thrown off in consequence of this conquest. The original inhabitants were probably Libyans, who extended as far as lake Mareotis, for Mareotis is a Libyan name; and Egyptians, in the sense in which Herodotus understands the name, do not occur beyond the Canobian mouth of the Nile. The original inhabitants, therefore, may have been under the dominion of a Semitic race, which among the Egyptians bore the name of Hycsos, and was intensely hated by the later Egyptians. This expulsion of the Hycsos, which is so often represented on monuments, was the result of the establishment of the Kooshites in Upper Egypt, who thence also