Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker.

Date:
1885-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    part of the valley of the Nile, who form the largest foreign element of the community, and who never entirely assimilate with it, as the Nubians make it a rule never to marry Egyptian wives. The Nubi- ans, on the other hand, speak slightingly of the Egyptians as ‘Wod- er-Rif’, or sons of the Nile valley (comp. p. 31). The two races entertain a great dislike to each other, and their dispositions are fundamentally different. The Nubians are inferior to the Egyptians in industry and energy, especially in tilling the soil, and also in physical strength; and they are more superstitious and fanatical, as is indicated by the numerous amulets they wear round their necks and arms. They are, however, superior to the Egyptians in cleanliness, honesty, and subordination, and possess a more highly developed sense of honour. The Nubian doorkeepers who are to be found in all the mercantile houses of Alexandria and elsewhere are noted for their honesty. The traveller must not expect to find them very sincerely attached or grateful, any more than the native Egyptians (comp. pp. 12, 25), but as servants they are certainly preferable. The inhabitants of the Nubian part of the valley of the Nile are not all strictly Nubians; for in the southern parts of that region a colony of Shegiyeh and other Arabian tribes has settled in comparatively recent times. The genuine Nubians (a name unknown to themselves, and of ancient origin) occupy the valley of the Nile from Gebel Barkal near the fourth cataract down to the first cataract, and are divided in accordance with the principal idioms of their language into Mafias, Kentis , and Don- kolas. Their language belongs to the Libyan group of the N. African tongues, and Dr. Brugsch is of opinion that it may afford a clue to the interpretation of the still undeciphered Ethiopian (Mero'itic) inscriptions of the Nubian part of the Nile valley. Dr. Lepsius, on the other hand, who has published an admirable work on the subject, maintains that the ‘to-bedyawiyeh’ language of the Bega (p. 45) is more likely to be cognate with that of the inscriptions, as he believes that the Blemmyes, the ancestors of the Bega, were the original inhabitants of the region in question, and were expelled by the handsome and intelligent ‘Nuba’ negroes from the district to the S. of Kordofan. Friedrich Muller places the Nuba tongue in a separate category along with the dialects of a few other tribes in different parts of Africa, and there is certainly much to be said in favour of this distinction of it from the languages of the Hamitic races on the one side and the typical negro races on the other. Those Berbers who do not learn Arabic grammatically never speak it thoroughly well; but it is generally, though imperfectly, understood in Nubia. The traveller must therefore not expect to learn good Arabic from his Nubian servants. In their native country they till the banks of the Nile, but their land is of very limited extent and poorly culti- vated ; and as their harvests are scanty they are rarely able to support large families. They accordingly often emigrate at an early age to the
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