The Negro in the South / His Economic Progress in Relation to his Moral and Religious Development

rs of activity and culture, namely: the valleys of the Nile and of the Congo, the borders of the great Gulf of Guinea, the Sudan, an

the world. At the same time Egyptian civilization seems to have been African in its beginnings and in its main line of development, despite strong influences from all parts of Asia. Of what race, then, were the Egyptians? They certainly were not white in any sense of the modern use of that word-neither in color nor physical measurement, in hair nor countenance, in language nor social customs. They stood in r

gnificant 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 o

an population were Negroes, and that of the predynastic Egyptians less than half could be classed as non-Negroid. Judging from

ead measurements of Negro Americans would probably place most of them in the category of whites. The evidence of language also connects Eg

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. Per

e 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 f

gypt 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 t

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 C

rils.' 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 al

me 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 t

s 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 w

lasted fifteen hundred years. His queen, Nefertari, "the most venerated figure of Egyptian history,"[10] was a Negress of great beauty, strong

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

rld. 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 T

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

, 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 w

th and from the black tribes of Punt, and certainly "at the earliest period in which human remains h

e 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 t

rotect that civilization against the incursion of barbarians. Hundreds of campaigns through thousands of years repeatedly subdued or chec

Egypt and centered at Nepata and Meroe. Widespread trade in gold, ivory, precious stones, skins,

t, when the dread Hyksos appeared, Ethiopia became both a physical and cultural refuge for conquered Egypt. The legitimate

. Both mulatto Pharaohs, Aahmes and Amenhotep I, sent expeditions into Ethiopia, and in the latter's day sons of the reigning Phar

nd in the region of the African lakes. The Sudanese tribes were aroused by these and othe

n, therefore, Shesheng I, the Libyan, usurped the throne of the Pharaohs in the tenth century B.C., the Egyptian legitimate dynasty went to Nepata as king priests

le Egypt, just as formerly a royal Egyptian had ruled Kush. In many ways this Ethiopian kingdom showed its Negro peculiarities: first, in its worship of distinctly Sudanese gods; secondly, in the rigid custom of female succession in the kingdom, and thirdl

represented as full-blooded Negroes, ruled from 630 to 600 B.C. Horsiatef (560-525 B.C.) made nine expeditions against the warlike tribes south of Meroe, and his successor, Nastosenen (525-500 B.C.) wa

nd Greek culture penetrating from the east. King Arg-Amen (Ergamenes) showed strong Greek influences a

usand artisans and two hundred thousand soldiers. It was here that the famous Candaces reigned as queens. Pliny tells us that one

allisthenes tells an evidently fabulous story of the visit of Alexander the Great to Candace, Queen of Meroe, which nevertheless illustrates her fame: Candace will not let him enter Ethiopia and says he is not to scorn her people

peared in the east, the Emperor Diocletian invited the wild Sudanese tribe of Nubians (Nobad?) from the west to re

in evidence, predominant in Africa and influential in Asia. Ludolphus, writing in the seventeenth century, says that the Abyssinians "are ge

ital of which, Axume, was a flourishing center of trade. Ptolemy Evergetes and his successors did much to open Abyssinia to the world, but most of the population of that day was nomadic. In the fourth century Byzantine influences began to be felt, and in 330 St. Athanasius of Alexandria consecrated Fromentius as Bishop of Ethiopia. He tutored the heir

ompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten." Throughout th

desert. The Nubians had formed a strong league of tribes, and as the ancient kingdom of Ethi

develop. A new capital, Dongola, replaced Nepata and Meroe, and by the twelfth century churches and brick dwellings h

. When the Mohammedan flood finally passed over Nubia, the Fung diverted it by declaring themselves Moslems. This left the Fung as the dominant power in the fifteenth century from the Three Cataracts

d its highest power in the seventh century. This dynasty was overthrown by the Negroid Mabas, who established Wadai to the eastward about 1640. South of Wadai lay the heathen and cannibals of the Congo valley, against which Islam n

pean knowledge. Without doubt, in the centuries of silence, a civilization of some height had flourished in Abyssinia, but all authentic records were d

rks until the nineteenth century, when the Sudan was made nominally a part of Egypt. Continuous upheaval, war, and

(Mahdi), the Sudan arose in revolt in 1881, determined to resist a hated religion, foreign rule, and interference with their chief commerce, the trade in slaves. The Sudan was soon aflame, and the able mulatto general, Osman Digna, ai

h the Italians after King John had been killed by the Mahdists. The exact terms of the treaty were disputed, but undoubtedly the Italians tried by this means to reduce Menelik to vassalage. Menelik stoutly resisted, and at the great battle of Adua, one of the decisive battles of

trange story of the valley of the Nile-of

d Ethiop Que

beauty's

ea ny

TNO

? ο?λ?τριχεσ. Greek: "autos de eikasa têde kai hote m

Thompson: Ancient

f Race Develo

istory of Egy

Africa to Pale

f the Hyksos kings or to an earlier period (cf. Petrie, I, 52-53, 237). That Negroid

History of Eg

ournal of Race Deve

History of Eg

heological Survey

that the arch had it

and Wooley:

cts VI