1

use is to slice off noses and ears. The offending member is placed at the commissure, and an upward shear effects the mutilation. I reserve for a future page the 'split Swords,' two blades in one scabbard, which were used in mediæval Europe, and which have been preserved in China.

To conclude this long and technical chapter. The Sword should be tightly mounted and well shouldered-up before and behind, leaving no interval between hilt and blade. The grip must be firm, and the tang secured either by rivets or, better still, by a screw at the pommel: if this be neglected, the weapon will not deliver a true edge. In trials both back and edge should be repeatedly struck with force upon a wooden post. Should the handle show no sign of loosening, and the blade ring with the right sound, it is a sign that the mounting is satisfactory : the reverse is the case if the blow jars or stings the hand: this suggests that the cut will not prove efficient.

NOTE. The type and model of the straight blade is the form of Rapier which we call the Toledo. It is probably derived from the Spatha or long Sword of the Roman cavalryman; but it assumed its present perfect shape during the reign of Charles Quint (A.D. 1493-1519). The exemplar of the curved blade is the so-called 'Damascus' sabre, dating probably from the early days of El-Islam (seventh century), when Eastern armies were chiefly composed of light Bedawi horsemen. Of these in Part II.

1 Capt. Cameron and I exhibited a specimen, made for us by good King Blay of Attábo, at a special meeting of the Anthropological Institute of London.

143

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SWORD IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND IN MODERN AFRICA.

THE present state of our history shows us nothing anterior to Egypt in the civilisation of Language, of Literature, of Science, Art and Arms. We must now modify and modernise the antiquated and obsolete saying-'ex Oriente lux'-the fancy that illumination came from India, when the reverse is true. The light of knowledge dawned and dayed not in the East, but in the South, in the Dark Continent, which is also the High Continent. Nor can we any longer admit that

Westward the course of empire takes its way.

As Professor Lepsius teaches us, 'In the oldest times within the memory of man, we know of only one advanced culture; of only one mode of writing, and of only one literary development, viz. those of Egypt.' Karl Vogt, a man who has the courage to say what he thinks, bluntly states: 'Our civilisation came not from Asia, but from Africa.' For our origin we must return to

The world's great mistress in the Egyptian vale.

The modern Egyptologist is reforming the false and one-sided theories based upon the meagre studies of anthropological literature in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Yet in the Nile Valley we are only upon the threshold of exploration - topographical, linguistic, and scientific. Of its proto-Egyptians and its primeval workmanship as yet we know little; and it is truly preposterous to suppose that man began his artistic life by building pyramids, cutting obelisks, and engraving hieroglyphs. The 'Cushite School,' based upon the Asiatic Ethiopians of Eusebius the Bishop,2 and unfortunately represented by Bunsen, Maspero, Wilkinson, Mariette, Brugsch, and a host of minor names, has determined that the old Nilotes 'undoubtedly came from Asia.' The theory utterly lacks proof; and the same may be said of the popular assertion, based upon Biblical grounds-'The early colonists of Egypt

The Austrian geographer, Dr. Josef Chavanne, estimates the mean altitude of Africa at 2,170 feet (round numbers), or more than double that of Europe (971 feet, M. G. Leipoldt).

He makes his Ethiopians emigrate from India to Egypt-but where? when? how? The Asiatic

Æthiopians' of Herodotus lie between the Germanii (Persian Kerman) and the Indus (iii. 93, &c.). The bas-reliefs of Susiana show negroid types, and Texier found the Lamlam tribe in the marshes round the head of the Persian Gulf to resemble the Bisharin of Upper Egypt. Was the Buddha one of these Cushite Ethiopians?

came thither from Mesopotamia.' We seem to be reading fable when told (by William Osburn '), 'The skill of these primitive artists of Egypt was a portion of that civilisation which its first settlers brought with them when they located themselves in the Valley of the Nile.'

My conviction is that the ancient Egyptians were Africans, and pure Africans; that the Nile-dwellers are still negroids whitened by a large infusion of Syrian, Arabian, and other Asiatic blood; and that Ethiopia is its old racial home. Æschylus had already robed their black limbs in white raiment when Herodotus (ii. 104) made them dark-skinned compared with the Arabs 2 and North Africans. Every traveller finds his description hold good to the present day. Blumenbach declared the old Egyptians to be of Berber origin, the race of Psametik, or the Son of the Sun. Hartmann opined that they were not Asiatics but Africans, and Dr. Morton modified his first opinion, finding the cranium to be negroid. I hope to prove their correctness by making a large collection of mummy skulls. It is certain that the modern Egyptian's hair-that great characteristic of race, according to Pruner Bey—is not silky, as Professor Huxley says, but wiry like that of his forefathers. Moreover, his type, as distinctly shown by the Sphinx, is melanochroicnegroid. Lastly, there are other signs, which need not here be noticed, distinguishing the African-horse as well as human-from the Arabian.

There is a history of ancient Egypt, into which we have not yet penetrated. Herodotus (ii. 142) glances at it when he makes the Ptah-priest at Memphis pretend to an antiquity of 11,340 years, during which reigned 341 generations of kings and pontiffs. Plato does the same when he speaks of hymns 10,000 years old, and Mela when he numbers 330 kings before Amasis, who ruled more than 30,000 years. Mena (Menes), the first man-monarch who founded Memphis (B.C. 4560?) some centuries before the Hebrew Creation, was preceded for 13,000 years by the

1 Monumental History, &c.

2 The late Mr. Lane, who was greatly attached to Cairo and its population, insisted upon the Arab origin and kinship of the Egyptian. To those who know both races they appear as different as Englishmen and Greeks. Place an Arab, especially a Bedawi, by the side of a Fellah, and the contrast will strike the least experienced eye.

The first instalment was sent in May 1881 to the Royal College of Surgeons for the benefit of Professor Flower and Dr. C. Carter Blake. I am aware of the difficulty in determining mummy-dates, but the fact of mummification shows a certain antiquity whose later limit is sharply defined. The mummy of King Mer en Rá (Sixth Dynasty), found near the Sakkaraḥ pyramids, had been stripped of its bandages; but the marks impressed upon the skin showed that the system was that of later years. He can hardly be dated later than B. C. 3000; and, reckoning from that period to A.D. 700, when mummifying ceased, we have a population of embalmed bodies of some 730,000,000 in round numbers.

The hair is of intermediate type between negro and Malay. The Nilotes are ουλότριχοι and ἐριόKOμo, with woolly locks, slightly flat like ribbons, evenly distributed (not in peppercorns) over the scalp. It is also a mistake to make the Nubians λισσότριχοι : none of the Nile Valley races are lank-haired like Hindús, Chinese, and Australians.

♪ The full number of Herodotus is 52,000 years. Mr. Day (p. 59) is scandalised by these dates, which argue for the high antiquity theory'; and appears astonished to find anything placed centuries previous to the Noahitic Deluge.' Of this more presently.

• Each generation contained a 'Piromis, son of a Piromis.' The word, made equivalent to Kalos k' agathos (= galantuomo), is Pe-Rome, the man, opposed to Pe-Neter, the god.

Mela has been blamed for repeating Herodotus without understanding him. When he states that the sun twice set at the point where it now rises ('solem bis jam occidisse unde oritur'), he probably means that the greater light left to the west the zodiacal sign which presided at its rising.

'Dynasty of the Gods' (god-kings), suggesting a governmental hierarchy of the fetisheer caste and this lasted for ages, till the Soldier upset the Priest and raised himself to the rank of Pharaoh' and king. Traces of the proto-Egyptian dynasties in which the men of the Pen controlled the men of the Sword long survived; and in later times the ecclesiastical order again ruled the military. We know nothing of the hierarchical supremacy but its baldest outline. When our modest chronologists allow 6000 years to its incept, they run into the contrary extreme of those who assign to it myriads of centuries. Rodier' is more reasonable; he opines that the cycle of 1,460 years dates in Egypt from B.C. 14,611.

FIG. 151.-1. BRONZE DAGGER; 2. SWORD (14 inches long).

Again, it will probably be found that ancient Egypt was not 'the narrowest strip of land in the world running between a double desert.' The extent of Kemi' has been arbitrarily confined to the Riverine Valley as far as the First Cataract, or seven hundred by seven miles widening out in the Delta-netherland to a base of eighty-one miles. We may fairly suspect that modern Masr is only a slice from the eastern half of the antique Mizraim. The Greeks made the frontier of Asia extend beyond the Suez isthmus and the Nile to the lands of Libya. This Greater Egypt is still suggested by the system of Bahr bilá má, large Fiumare now bone-dry, and by the alignment of the oases in the wilderness west of the River Valley with their giant ruins of a protohistoric Past. These may date from the days when the basin of the Bahr el-Ghazal a lake like the Tanganyika and the Victoria Nyanza-discharged its annual flood to the North in channels parallel with the 'River Ægyptus.' The lacustrine bed would silt up by the natural process of warping, and the surplus water, no longer able to discharge northwards, would force itself eastwards to the Nile. The easier drainage would presently convert the lake into a river-basin and system, and the lands no longer irrigated would become a waste dotted like a leopard skin with oases or watered valleys.

The word at first applied probably to the commander-in-chief. Wilkinson's day derived it from Phra (pa-Ra), the sun; now it is explained Per-áo, the Great House, in the sense of 'Sublime Porte.'

2 Antiquité des Races Humaines. Paris, 1862.

The 'black land,' opposed to Tesher, the 'red land' (Edom, Idumæa, Erythræa), the wilds of North-Western Arabia. It is also called on the monuments A'in (an in Pliny) and Ta-mera (Mera, Tomera), the 'inundation region.' Another old name, Aeria, is from , Yior, the Nile. Kemi must not be confounded with Khem, Chemmis, universal nature, the generative and reproductive principle-Pan. When Q. Curtius writes that Chemmis umbraculo maxime similis est habitus,' I would change the first word to umbilico.' The stepped cone in the Elephanta Caves exactly explains the latter.

Hecatæus and Anaximander divided the globe into Europe (Ereb, Gharb, the West) and Asia (Asiyeh, the East). Their successors added Libya (Africa), a term derived from the Libu or Ribu tribes; and the Father of History a most insufficient fourth-the Nilotic Delta. The latter, however, is ethnologically correct: Egypt is neither Africa nor Asia, but a land per se.

• In Homer, Ægyptus always applies to the Nile (Od. xiv. 268). Manetho makes it the name of a king, Sethos = Seti I. M. Maspero proposes as a derivation of the word, Ha Kahi Ptah (the land of the god Ptah). Hence the Biblical Pathros = Ptahland (Ezek. xxix. 14). Pathyris, the western side of Thebes, and the western Provinces generally, may have named the TáTaiko (Herod. iii. 37), the obscene dwarfs who made Cambyses laugh.

L

An abundance of popular literature has familiarised the public with the outer aspect of ancient Egypt, but the world is still far from recognising the message she sent to mankind. We must go back to 'the Wonderland on the banks of the mighty Nile' for the origin of all things which most interest us. It is the very cradle-land of language. Her tongue contains all the elements of the so-called 'Aryan,'1 Semitic, and Allophyllian or Turanian families, and dates long before the days of the present distribution. Bunsen's 'Egypt' first noticed this fact at some length, without, however, dwelling upon its importance. All Semitic pronouns and suffixes,' says M. C. Bertin, 'can be traced back to Egyptian, especially the Egyptian of the earliest dynasties'; he might have added much about other mechanical forms. Brugsch tells us (i. 3) that the primitive roots and the essential elements of the Egyptian grammar point to an intimate connection of the IndoGermanic and Semitic languages.' The Allophyllian or Agglutinative Turanian,3 a tertium quid which is neither 'Aryan' nor 'Semitic,' is also traceable in old Coptic.

What, then, do these facts suggest? Simply that the elements existing in Egyptian travelled from the banks of the Nile and evolved, discreted, and differentiated themselves in many centres. The word-compounding or Iranian scheme found homes in Eastern Europe (Greece, Italy, and the Slavonic or quasi-Asiatic half); in Asia Minor-especially Phrygia—in Mesopotamia, in Persia, and finally in India, where the settlement was comparatively modern. This explains how a philologist would derive Sanskrit from Lithuania. This saves us from the 'Aryan heresy'; this abolishes 'Indo-European,' and worse still 'Indo-Germanic '—that model specimen of national modesty. Both are terms which contain a theory and an unproved theory. Again, the word-developing or Arabian scheme, absurdly termed Semitic (from Shem !), increased, multiplied, and perfected itself in Northern Africa and Arabia, while the Turanian, becoming independent and specialised in Akkadian, overspread Tartary and China.

And this one primæval language of Egypt framed for itself an alphabet whence

Herodotus (vii. 66) specifies the Arians, a racial name then synonymous with the Medes. This is not the place to enter upon the subject of Aria's enormous development.

2 As a specimen of the roots-which are most remarkable when they consist of single consonants, whose reduplication made the earliest words-take 'papa' and ' mamma.' The former is from the Egyptian pa-pa (root p), to produce, the original idea of the begetter; and the latter is ma-ma (root m), to carry, be pregnant, bear. Mut becomes mátá, μýtne, mater, mother: Mer (a-mor), love; meran (morior), die, and more (mare), the sea. In Semitic' we have má, Heb. and Arab. má, water; and a long array of other words (as ia, yes, yea; and na, nay) too extensive for notice.

3 Characterised chiefly by post- instead of prepositions, by additions to the verb which make it causal,

reflective, and so forth, and by the peculiar form of sentences. Examples: the Finn-Ugrian-Magyar and the Turk-Mongol-Tartar, both probably deriving from the ancient Sakas Scythians.

=

4 To Aryan I much prefer the older term 'Iranian'; Iran (Persia), which once extended from the Indus to the Mediterranean, being one of the great centres where the 'Aryo '-Egyptian element of language developed itself, and where a typical race is still found. Nor is there much objection to Turanian,' Turan being the non-Iranian regions to the east, Tartary and China. But Semitic,' which contains a myth and a theory, should be changed into 'Arabian.' EgyptoArabic attained its purest and highest development in the Peninsula; Hebrew is a northern and somewhat barbarous dialect; Syriac is a north-western offspring; Galla, a western; and so forth.