The Negro | Page 8

was varied continually; now by
new infiltration of Negro blood from the south, now by Negroid and

Semitic blood from the east, now by Berber types from the north and
west.
Egyptian monuments show distinctly Negro and mulatto faces.
Herodotus, in an incontrovertible passage, alludes to the Egyptians as
"black and curly-haired"[4]--a peculiarly significant statement from one
used to the brunette Mediterranean type; in another passage, concerning
the fable of the Dodonian Oracle, he again alludes to the swarthy color
of the Egyptians as exceedingly dark and even black. Æschylus,
mentioning a boat seen from the shore, declares that its crew are
Egyptians, because of their black complexions.
Modern measurements, with all their admitted limitations, show that in
the Thebaid from one-seventh to one-third of the Egyptian population
were Negroes, and that of the predynastic Egyptians less than half
could be classed as non-Negroid. Judging from measurements in the
tombs of nobles as late as the eighteenth dynasty, Negroes form at least
one-sixth of the higher class.[5]
Such measurements are by no means conclusive, but they are apt to be
under rather than over statements of the prevalence of Negro blood.
Head measurements of Negro Americans would probably place most of
them in the category of whites. The evidence of language also connects
Egypt with Africa and the Negro race rather than with Asia, while
religious ceremonies and social customs all go to strengthen this
evidence.
The ethnic history of Northeast Africa would seem, therefore, to have
been this: predynastic Egypt was settled by Negroes from Ethiopia.
They were of varied type: the broad-nosed, woolly-haired type to which
the word "Negro" is sometimes confined; the black, curly-haired,
sharper featured type, which must be considered an equally Negroid
variation. These Negroes met and mingled with the invading
Mediterranean race from North Africa and Asia. Thus the blood of the
sallower race spread south and that of the darker race north. Black
priests appear in Crete three thousand years before Christ, and Arabia is
to this day thoroughly permeated with Negro blood. Perhaps, as
Chamberlain says, "one of the prime reasons why no civilization of the
type of that of the Nile arose in other parts of the continent, if such a
thing were at all possible, was that Egypt acted as a sort of channel by
which the genius of Negro-land was drafted off into the service of

Mediterranean and Asiatic culture."[6]
To one familiar with the striking and beautiful types arising from the
mingling of Negro with Latin and Germanic types in America, the
puzzle of the Egyptian type is easily solved. It was unlike any of its
neighbors and a unique type until one views the modern mulatto; then
the faces of Rahotep and Nefert, of Khafra and Amenemhat I, of
Aahmes and Nefertari, and even of the great Ramessu II, become
curiously familiar.
The history of Egypt is a science in itself. Before the reign of the first
recorded king, five thousand years or more before Christ, there had
already existed in Egypt a culture and art arising by long evolution
from the days of paleolithic man, among a distinctly Negroid people.
About 4777 B.C. Aha-Mena began the first of three successive
Egyptian empires. This lasted two thousand years, with many Pharaohs,
like Khafra of the Fourth Dynasty, of a strongly Negroid cast of
countenance.
At the end of the period the empire fell apart into Egyptian and
Ethiopian halves, and a silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite
possible that an incursion of conquering black men from the south
poured over the land in these years and dotted Egypt in the next
centuries with monuments on which the full-blooded Negro type is
strongly and triumphantly impressed. The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so
familiar to all the world, the Sphinxes of Tanis, the statue from the
Fayum, the statue of the Esquiline at Rome, and the Colossi of Bubastis
all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and are described by Petrie as
"having high cheek bones, flat cheeks, both in one plane, a massive
nose, firm projecting lips, and thick hair, with an austere and almost
savage expression of power."[7]
Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the
Sphinx at Gizeh: "Her features are decidedly of the African or Negro
type, with 'expanded nostrils.' If, then, the Sphinx was placed
here--looking out in majestic and mysterious silence over the empty
plain where once stood the great city of Memphis in all its pride and
glory, as an 'emblematic representation of the king'--is not the inference
clear as to the peculiar type or race to which that king belonged?"[8]
The middle empire arose 3064 B.C. and lasted nearly twenty-four
centuries. Under Pharaohs whose Negro descent is plainly evident, like

Amenemhat I and III and Usertesen I, the ancient glories