A Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum by Unknown

ETHNOGRAPHY. THE LAND OF PUNT. NATIONAL CHARACTER. POPULATION. LANGUAGE. FORMS OF WRITING. DECIPHERMENT OF EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. YOUNG AND CHAMPOLLION. HIEROGLYPHIC ALPHABET AND WRITING. WRITING MATERIALS.

The = Egyptians = . -The evidence of the monuments and the literature of Egypt proves that the Egyptians were of African origin, and that they were akin to the light-skinned peoples who inhabited the north-east portion of the African Continent. Further evidence of this fact is supplied by the "table of nations" preserved in the tenth chapter of Genesis, where it is stated that Cush and Mizraim were the sons of Ham. Now this Cush, or Ethiopia, is not the country which we call Abyssinia, but the Northern Sûdân, or Nubia; therefore the Nubians (Cush) and the Egyptians (Mizraim) were brethren, and they were Hamites, or Africans. The relationship between the Nubians and the Egyptians is also asserted by Diodorus, who declared that the Egyptians were descended from a colony of Ethiopians, _i.e._, Nubians, who had settled in Egypt. And there is no doubt that from the earliest to the latest times a very close bond existed between the Northern Nubians and the Egyptians, which manifested itself in the religion and religious ceremonies of both peoples. The Cushites were dark in colour, sometimes actually black, but there is no evidence which proves they were negroes; and the Egyptians were red, or brown-red, or reddish yellow in colour. On the west of the Nile Valley lived the fair-skinned Libyans; on the east the remote ancestors of the Blemmyes and the modern Bîshârî tribes, who were of a light brownish colour, and on the south, near the Equator, were negro tribes, which formed part of the great belt of black peoples that extended right across Africa, from sea to sea.