The Negro | Page 9

of Egypt were
restored and surpassed. At the same time there is strong continuous
pressure from the wild and unruly Negro tribes of the upper Nile valley,
and we get some idea of the fear which they inspired throughout Egypt
when we read of the great national rejoicing which followed the
triumph of Usertesen III (c. 2660-22) over these hordes. He drove them
back and attempted to confine them to the edge of the Nubian Desert
above the Second Cataract. Hemmed in here, they set up a state about
this time and founded Nepata.
Notwithstanding this repulse of black men, less than one hundred years
later a full-blooded Negro from the south, Ra Nehesi, was seated on the
throne of the Pharaohs and was called "The king's eldest son." This
may mean that an incursion from the far south had placed a black
conqueror on the throne. At any rate, the whole empire was in some
way shaken, and two hundred years later the invasion of the Hyksos
began. The domination of Hyksos kings who may have been Negroids
from Asia[9] lasted for five hundred years.
The redemption of Egypt from these barbarians came from Upper
Egypt, led by the mulatto Aahmes. He founded in 1703 B.C. the new
empire, which lasted fifteen hundred years. His queen, Nefertari, "the
most venerated figure of Egyptian history,"[10] was a Negress of great
beauty, strong personality, and of unusual administrative force. She
was for many years joint ruler with her son, Amenhotep I, who
succeeded his father.[11]
The new empire was a period of foreign conquest and internal splendor
and finally of religious dispute and overthrow. Syria was conquered in
these reigns and Asiatic civilization and influences poured in upon
Egypt. The great Tahutmes III, whose reign was "one of the grandest
and most eventful in Egyptian history,"[12] had a strong Negroid
countenance, as had also Queen Hatshepsut, who sent the celebrated
expedition to reopen ancient trade with the Hottentots of Punt. A new
strain of Negro blood came to the royal line through Queen Mutemua
about 1420 B.C., whose son, Amenhotep III, built a great temple at
Luqsor and the Colossi at Memnon.
The whole of the period in a sense culminated in the great Ramessu II,
the oppressor of the Hebrews, who with his Egyptian, Libyan, and
Negro armies fought half the world. His reign, however, was the

beginning of decline, and foes began to press Egypt from the white
north and the black south. The priests transferred their power at Thebes,
while the Assyrians under Nimrod overran Lower Egypt. The center of
interest is now transferred to Ethiopia, and we pass to the more
shadowy history of that land.
The most perfect example of Egyptian poetry left to us is a celebration
of the prowess of Usertesen III in confining the turbulent Negro tribes
to the territory below the Second Cataract of the Nile. The Egyptians
called this territory Kush, and in the farthest confines of Kush lay Punt,
the cradle of their race. To the ancient Mediterranean world Ethiopia
(i.e., the Land of the Black-faced) was a region of gods and fairies.
Zeus and Poseidon feasted each year among the "blameless
Ethiopians," and Black Memnon, King of Ethiopia, was one of the
greatest of heroes.
"The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says Diodorus Siculus (Lib. III),
"to be of greater antiquity than any other nation; and it is probable that,
born under the sun's path, its warmth may have ripened them earlier
than other men. They suppose themselves also to be the inventors of
divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and
every religious practice. They affirm that the Egyptians are one of their
colonies."
The Egyptians themselves, in later days, affirmed that they and their
civilization came from the south and from the black tribes of Punt, and
certainly "at the earliest period in which human remains have been
recovered Egypt and Lower Nubia appear to have formed culturally
and racially one land."[13]
The forging ahead of Egypt in culture was mainly from economic
causes. Ethiopia, living in a much poorer land with limited agricultural
facilities, held to the old arts and customs, and at the same time lost the
best elements of its population to Egypt, absorbing meantime the
oncoming and wilder Negro tribes from the south and west. Under the
old empire, therefore, Ethiopia remained in comparative poverty,
except as some of its tribes invaded Egypt with their handicrafts.
As soon as the civilization below the Second Cataract reached a height
noticeably above that of Ethiopia, there was continued effort to protect
that civilization against the incursion of barbarians. Hundreds of
campaigns through thousands of years repeatedly subdued or checked

the blacks and brought them in as captives to mingle their blood with
the Egyptian nation; but the