Contributions to Egyptian anthropology / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Contributions to Egyptian anthropology / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/56 page 99
    CONTEIBUTIONS TO EGYPTIAN ANTHEOPOLOGY. By Chaeles S. Myees. y. GENEEAL CONCLUSIONS. We are now in a position to bring together the various results that have come to light in the course of these contributions, and to study their relation to one another and to the broad problem of Egyptian ethnology. We have seen^ that in modern Egypt the Moslem population takes on increasingly negroid characters as we proceed from the Mediterranean towards the First Cataract. Is this the result of more frequent intermarriage with the inhabitants of the Sudan ? In preparing to answer this question, we cannot neglect the fact that similar differences in degree of negroid characters appear to exist among the Copts of Lower and Upper Egypt, who are known to have remained free from Sudanese admixture during the past 1,300 years. If, then, an increasing amount of Sudanese admixture be the cause of the increasing negroid character of Upper as compared with Lower Egypt, it is clear that the intermarriage must have occurred at a very remote date, and that its results have been perpetuated since then. But we may reasonably doubt whether so long a persistence of the effects of intermarriage is possible. From many different quarters we have indications that ultimately an aboriginal people absorbs and exterminates the physical characters of those who come to settle among them. In the third of these contributions^ we saw that the repeated migrations of Greeks into the Eayum, beginning about 2,500 years ago, and ending soon after the start of the Christian Era, have left no trace of an effect to-day on the physique of the modern dwellers in this oasis. The latter have a nasal index which is distinctly higher than that which occurs among the northern provinces of the Delta, and almost identical with the index found in the Nile Valley in the same latitude as the Eayum. There are many writers on Egyptian ethnology who believe that from time immemorial there have always been at least two races in Egypt, the one Caucasian (Mediterranean or Libyan), the other negroid, and that to this day both these races are present throughout Egypt, although prevalent in different degrees in different regions. Now we may conceivably look for support of this hypothesis in the following directions. * Journal Anthrop. Inst.^ 1906, vol. xxxvi, pp. 237-261. 2 pp. 261-263. Similar conclusions were reached in the second of these contributions, in our comparison of the “Prehistoric” and Modern Populations of Egypt 1905, vol. XXXV, pp. 80-91). a 2
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