INSCRIPTIONAL
EVIDENCE OF THE REMOTENESS AND THE CONTINUITY OF EGYPTIAN CONTACT WITH THE
NEGRO
In Egypt there is an immense mass of pictorial and
sculptural material for ethnological study covering a range of many centuries.
Over three thousand years ago the artists who decorated the royal tombs
distinguished between four races: the Egyptians, the Asiatics, the Negroes and
the Western and North Europeans. (A.C. Haddon, The Study of Man, p. 13)
The Egyptian artists also pictured Negroes of different degrees of purity.
The Canaanites of the Bible, described as a tall people (Deut. 9:2), are shown
as blond. Of the four "races" as mentioned, three in reality are
members of what is popularly called the "Caucasian race."
It is not, however, with pictorial or sculptural evidence that we are
primarily concerned. In the introduction to his translations of the Ancient
Records of Egypt (in four volumes, by James Henry Breasted, Professor of
Egyptology and Oriental History in the University of Chicago), Breasted says,
"The volumes did not deal with the product of the artist and craftsman as
such, but the written documents from which the history may be drawn
today."
It should be made clear that the quotations from these volumes bearing upon
the prolonged contact of the white Egyptians with the Negro peoples to the
south, which it is possible to include in the scope of this chapter, are but a
minor proportion of those available. From the time of the consolidation of the
kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt by Menes (3400 B.C.), to the final decay and
overthrow of the kingdom of the Pharaohs, is a period of approximately three thousand
years, and this period is divided into possibly thirty dynasties. But it is in
the Twenty-fifth Dynasty that the mulatto Taharka inherits the throne of the
once powerful Pharaohs, that his sister is the divine head of the Egyptian
religion, which in these centuries has become grossly debased, and that the
mulatto king's Nubian mother becomes a Queen Mother before whom all bow down.
For a period prior to the accession of the mulatto Pharoah (Taharka) the
civilization of Egypt was stagnant, while those dynasties succeeding Taharaka's
reign were imposed by foreigners, conquerors of Egypt.
In order to obtain documentary evidence ofthe constant intermingling of
Egyptians and Negroes during the age of Egyptian greatness and decay, we may
arbitrarily select certain dynasties and look to their records. As the
preceding chapter included a discussion of the predynastic inhabitants and the
racial character of those of the earliest dynasties, we will now select the
sixth, twelfth, eighteenth, and, as the twenty-fourth covered only six years,
the twenty-fifth dynstates. This will enable us to cover more than fifteen
centuries of Egyptian history -- from the creative works of white Egypt in the
Old Kingdom to the decayed and stagnant culture of negroid rule of the twenty-fifth
dynasty.
Not only will we find it impossible to include from the available records of
these dynasties all references bearing upon the Egyptians' dealin with the
Negro, but it should also be observed that the ancient records preserved to us
are but fragments of Egyptian history. The Pharaohs kept a yearly summary of
their activities, but only two of these summaries have survived the ravages of
time. So the following quotations should be understood to be limited as
evidence in three ways:
It will thusly be readily seen that we have before us but a
meager account.
THE SIXTH DYNASTY
Inscription of Uni, Count and Governor of the South. (Uni was an official of
the Old Kingdom. This inscription is the most important document preserved.)
"His majesty made war on the Asiatic Sand-Dwellers
and his majesty made an army of many ten thousands: in the entire South. . . .
among the Irthet Negroes, the Mazoi Negroes, the Yam Negroes, among the Wawat
Negroes, among the Kau Negroes, and in the land of Temeh." Here we see
that in the Old Kingdom (2980-2475 B.C.) The Pharaoh levied Negroes by the ten
thousands for use against a white neighbor. The army was sent into southern Palestine
and "returned in safety after it had hacked up the land of the
Sand-Dwellers.
"His majesty sent me to dig
five canals in the South, and to make three cargo-boats and four row boats of
Acacia wood of Wawat. Then the Negro chiefs of Irthet, Waway, Yam and Mazoi
drew timber therefor, and I did the whole in only one year." The Pharaoh
came to inspect this work and at the coming of the king himself, standing
behind the hill country, while the chiefs of Mazoi, Irthet and Wawat, did
obeisance and gave great praise."
In this inscription and others we have ample testimony of
the early use of the Negro as a laborer. With the growing demand for the black
in peace and war, there was a gradual movement of the Negro from the south into
Egypt.
Inscription From The
Tomb Of Harkhuf
("The important inscriptions of this tomb inform us more fully than any
other source of the commercial relations of the Old Kingdom with the Negro
peoples of the extreme south, involving indirect traffic with the Sudan"
-- Breasted.)
Harkhuf made four journeys to the distant Negro country of yam. Of his
return from the third journey he says: "I descended with three hundred
asses laden with incense, ebony, heknu, grain, panthers....ivory
(throw-sticks), and every good product. Now when the chief of Irthet, Sethu and
Wawat saw how numerous was the troop of Yam, which descended with me to the
court, and the soldiers who had been sent with me, then this chief brought and
gave me bulls and small cattle, and conducted me to the roads of the highlands
of Irthet, because I was more excellent, vigilant...than any count, companion
or caravan conductor who had been sent to Yam before."
At the time of the fourth journey to Yam, the old king Menere was dead and
had been succeeded by Pepi II, who was, as yet, but a child. With the youthful
Pepi II in mind, Harkhuf had secured a dwarf (pygmy) in the court informing the
king that he was returning with many products of the south, including the
dwarf,. The child Pharaoh showed the greatest solicitude for the dwarf and
dispatched a letter of instruction and promise to Harkhuf, which the latter
considered of such value as to include it in his tomb inscriptions:
"Come northward to the court immediately, thou
shalt bring this dwarf with thee, which then bringest living, prosperous and
healthy...to rejoice and gladden the heart of the king of Upper and Lower
Egypt...When he goes down with thee into the vessel, appoint excellent people
who shall be beside him on each side of the vessel; take care lest he fall into
the water. When he sleeps at night, appoint excellent people who shall sleep
beside him in his tent, inspect ten times a night. My majesty desires to see
this dwarf more than the gifts of Sinai and Punt. If thou arrives at court this
dwarf being with thee alive, prosperous and healthy, my majesty will do for
thee a greater thing than was done for the treasurer of the god. Burded in the
time of Isesi, according to the heart's desire of my majesty to see the
dwarf."
Tomb inscriptions of Pepi-Nakht, an Elephantine nobleman of
high rank:
"I gave bread to the hungry, and clothing to the
naked. Never did I judge between two brothers in such a way that one son was
deprived of his paternal possession. I was one beloved of his father, praised
of his mother, whom his brothers and sisters loved. The majesty of my lord sent
me to hack up Wawat and Irthet.I did so that my lord praise me. I slew a great
number there...I brought a great number to court as living prisoners."
The Sixth Dynasty, from which the selections above are made,
came to an end 2475 B.C. The Twelfth Dynasty selections which will follow cover
the period between 2000-1788 B.C.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
The inscription of a Benihasin noble states that the Asiatics (Caucasioan
peoples) of the north and the Negroes of the south submitted to the king. The
Nubian conquests of his dynasty were begun by Amenehet I, the first king of the
dynasty. The inscription of Korusco contains a reference to the expedeition to
overthrow Nubia: "I seized the people of Wawat, I captured the people of
Mazoi." A sandstone stela found in the sanctuary of Wadi Halfa contains an
account ofthe Nubian expedition of Sesostris I, which carries this king's wars
to their southrnmost limits. At the top of this stela there is a relief showing
Sesostris I standing facing the Lord of Thebes, who says, "I have brought
for thee all countries which are in Nubia, beneath thy feet." The god then
gives to the king a line of bound captives, symbolizing Nubian towns.
Inscription of Prince
Ameni
(Carved in the doorway of his cliff-tomb in Benihasin.)
"I passed Kush (a large Negro territory) sailing
southward, ... then his majesty returned in safety having overthrown his
enemies in Kush the vile."
Inscription of
Sihathor,
Assistant Treasurer
(The stela containing this inscription is now in the British Museum.)
"I reached Nubia of the Negroes, ... I forced the
Nubian chiefs to wash gold."
The final conquest of Nubia was attained by Sesostris III in
1840 B.C. This king
"conducted not less than four campaigns in this
district, and probably more; and by his canalization of the cataract passages,
and the errection of fortresses at strategic points, he made this country a
permanent possession of the Pharaohs, which was never lost except for a time
during the Hyksos period, until the dissolution of the Empire."
(Breasted.)
The first and second Semneh stela inscriptions recounting
the subjugation of Nubia by Sesostris III are as follows:
The First Semnah
Stela
"Southern boundary, made in the year 8, under the
majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Sesostris III, ... in order to
prevent that any Negro should cross it, by water or by land, with a ship, or
any herds of the Negroes; except a Negro who shall come to do trading in Iken,
or with a commission. Every good thing shall be done with them but without
allowing a ship of the Negroes to pass by Heh, going down stream,
forever." (The "Ship" is a Nile boat.)
The Second Semnah
Stela
The king had to suppress numerous rebellions in Kush. Here we get an
Egyptian estimate of the Negro:
"When one is eager against him (the Negro) he turns
his back; when one slinks back he begins to be eager. But they are not a people
of might, they are poor and broken in heart. I captured their women. I carried
off their subjects, went forth to their wells, smote their bulls; I reaped
their grain and set fire thereto."
Eighteenth Dynasty
(1580-1350 B.C.)
There are numerous references to Egyptian contact with the Negro in the
Eighteenth Dynasty. We shall be able to use but a few of them.
Inscription of Ahmose:
"Now after his majesty had slain the Asiatics, he
ascended the river...to destroy the Nubian Troglodytes; his majesty made a
great slaughter among them."
It is also recorded that females were taken for slaves.
The Tombos Stela of
Thutmose I
"He hath overthrown the chief of the Nubians; the
Negro is helpless, defenseless, in his grasp. He hath united the boundaries of
his two sides, there is not a remnant among the curly-haired, who came to attack;
there is not a single survivor among them...They fall by the sword...the
fragments cut from them are too much for the birds."
In the annals of the great warrior king, Thutmose III, at
the sixth Karnak pylon there is "a list which contains no less than 115 of
the names of the towns and districts of the Nubian regions conquered"
(Breasted). Another pylon at Karnak contains possibly four hundred towns,
districts, and countries conquered in Nubia. Thutmose III probably extended
Egyptian conquest to Napata at the fourth cataract. It is known that his son,
Amenhotep II, established his southern boundary there.
Tomb of Rekhmire, Prime Minister under Thutmose III during Egypt's greatest
power. (The scenes and inscriptions of this tomb depict in color and describe
the peoples of Punt, Retunu, and Nubia.)
Hymn of Victory
(Inscribed on a black granite tablet discovered by Mariette at Karnak.)
"I have bound together the Nubian Troglodytes by
the tens of thousands. The northerners by hundreds of thousands as prisoners."
For centuries the Pharaohs brought captives into Egypt,
white prisoners from the north, and black prisoners from the south. Egypt has
long been the meeting ground of the Caucasian and the Negro. Intermingling of
these races has produced the present Egyptian.
The Amata and
Elephantine Stelar
Seven princes had been taken in revolt in Asia. On the return from this
campaign these princes were carried head downward on the prow of the Pharaoh's
vessel. When arriving at Thebes, six of the princes were slain by the hand of
the Pharaoh (Amenhotep II) himself.
"Then the other fallen one was taken up-river and
hanged on the wall of Napata, in order to cause to manifest the victories of
his majesty, forever and ever in all the land and country of the Negro."
Konosso Inscriptions
Cut in the rocks of the Peninsula of Konosso. These inscriptions are classed
by Treasted as "the most interesting record of all the many Nubian
wars." They give another specific reference to the custom of bringing
Negroes into the Empire.
A messenger reported to the king, Thutmose IV, that the Negroes were in
revolt and descending from beyond Waway, gathering all the barbarians and
revolters of other countries. A description of the battle is given in which the
Negro rebels are routed. The prisoners taken were settled in the mortuary
temple of the kings at Thebes and their selection marked with a tablet bearing
the words "Colony of Kush the wretched, which his majesty brought back
from his victories." Another inscription described Thutmose IV as a
"fierce-eyed lion who seized Kush."
Semmeh Inscription of
Amenhotep III
(Stela now in the British Museum.)
"List of the captivity which his majesty took in
the land of Ibbet the wretched."
List of Prisoners and
Killed
|
Living Negroes Hands thereof |
150 heads
|
Tablet of Victory (Amenhotep III)
The king is pictured driving over the fallen of Kush, with their chief bound
upon his horse, "annihiliating the heir of wretched Kush, bringing their
princes as living prisoners."
Hymn of Amon
(On a building stela of the Temple of Soleo.)
The temple is described as "surrounded by a great wall reaching to
heaven" and "settled with the children of the chiefs of the Nubian
Troglodytes."
Tomb of Huy, Viceroy
of Kush:
Tribute of the South
"In the top line of Negroes are children of Kushite
chiefs, among them a princess in a chariot drawn by oxen. The Negro chiefs wear
Egyptian clothing, they bring similar tribute, and also curiously decorated
oxen." (Breasted.)
In the following dynasty the Negroes include in their
tribute to Rameses III, "furniture of ebony and ivory; panther hides; gold
in large rings; bows, myrrh, shields, elephants' tusks, billets of ebony,
ostrich feathers, ostrich eggs, live animals, including monkeys, panthers, a
giraffe, ibexes, a dog, oxen with carved horns, an ostrich." (Breasted.)
THE TWENTY-FIFTH
DYNASTY
From the Eighteenth Dynasty (1580-1350 B.C.) to the Twenty-fifth (663-525
B.C.) is a period of six centuries. They mark the decay of Egyptian
civilization.
Egyptian contact with the Negro peoples to the south, beginning in
prehistoric times, had been continuous. It is known that Negroes constituted a
small percentage of the population prior to the dynastic age, and also that
there were some mixbreeds at this remote date. We have followed such history of
contact as is preserved in the meager records of the three dynasties; the
Sixth, the Twelfth, and the Eighteenth.
Dropping now to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, we find that a mulatto has
inherited the throne of the Pharaohs. From the First to the Twenty-fifth
Dynasty there intervene twenty-eight centuries. From the Eighteenth to the
Twenty-fifth Dynasty there is a period of six centuries. During this period
Egyptian initiative and ingenuity slowly declined. When the mulatto was
received as king, religion hand fallen from an ethical test for the life
hereafter to a cult of animal worship. The early Pharaohs built the pyramids
and temples which stand today. The later Pharaohs built not; instead, they cut
out the names of the early kings and inserted their names upon some of the
greatest architectural achievements of the world. Art, science, and literature
were dead.
Nubia, long a colony of Egypt, became independent under the rule of
aristocratic priests of Thebes. Its capital was Napata, far south in Negro
land. A priest-king of Nubia, taking advantage of internal dissension in Egypt,
invaded that country and conquered it. The priest of Amon in Egypt welcomed the
Nubian (Ethiopian) conqueror, for the Egyptian priesthood was divided and at
enmity, and the aristocracy of Nubia were worshipers of Amon. The priests of
Amon in Egypt sympathized with the religion of Nubia, and their exorbitant
praise of Nubia led certain of the Greek historians to suppose that Egyptian
civilization was derived from Nubia.
We are struck with awe when we consider the duration of Egyptian
civilization. There were three thousand years of progress. We are no less
struck with awe when we consider the completeness of its decay. There have been
three thousand years of stagnation. During the past thirty centuries numerous
white nations have sent additions to the Caucasic elements in Egypt, Assyria,
Persia, Greece, Rome, Arabia and modern Europe have made Caucasic contributions
in the persons of government officials, educators, religious instructors,
merchants, agriculturalists, irrigationists, artists, explorers. But there
coming did not impart permanent life to the dead body. Egypt is a bog which has
received, but not given, for three millennia. It is a Negroid quagmire which
engulfs the agencies of progress a little more slowly, but quite hopelessly, as
does the Negro quagmire farther south in Equatorial Africa.
But thirty centuries of progress is comparatively a long period. How are we
to account for such a lease on life? The answer is clear; isolation.
Geographical location was the chief factor in perpetuating the civilization.
Fringing deserts held off the white nations that might have overthrown it; the
long and tortuous Nile, the only gateway into Equatorial Africa, with granite
locked cataracts, rendered this route impracticable for massed race movements.
The Pharaohs of the Middle Period of Egyptian history canalled the cataracts
and extended their control far into Negro Africa. From this source came a race
that had imparted no impulse to cultural progress. In Egypt, as in all other
places upon the earth's surface, the white race has interbred with the subject
races which it did not exterminate or expel. This interbreeding has been
accomplished more slowly in some places than in others, but the end always has
been the same.
Ages of interbreeding resulted in the blood of the non-progressive reaching
all classes of the Egyptians. "Kush, the wretched," "Ibbet, the
vile," placed a son upon the throne. A Negroid people welcomed a mulatto
Pharaoh.
Tanis Stela
Taharka, the mulatto prince of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, was a son of
Piankhi, priest-king of Nubia, and Nubian woman. Pictorial representations of
him by contemporary artists show "unmistakable Negroid features"
(Breasted). The Tanis stela records that he was brought up among the royal
children. At an early age he was made an officer in the army and was given the
command of the Egyptian and Ethiopian forces sent into Palestine. This
expedition was intended to aid the Syria-Palestine state in revolt against
Assyria. "Only in Judea did the prophet Isaiah see the futility of
dependence upon Egypt." The Assyrian army was visited by a plague and for
a time Assyrian triumph was delayed.
In the interval Taharka succeeded his father upon the throne of Ethiopia and
Egypt. The Assyrians conquered Syria and invaded Egypt. Taharka was easily
defeated and fled to his capital at Napata in the "black belt" of the
Egyptian domain and, at the instance of the pretty princes of Egypt, made
several attempts to oust the Assyrians. The "color line" had
vanished. The Egyptian nobles sought time and again to reinstate the mulatto
Pharaoh. In the subterranean passages of temples, inscriptions were recorded in
his name, although the Assyrians possessed the land. Negroid Egypt wished a
Negroid prince in preference to the greatest white monarch.
The High Priest of Amon was now a woman. Taharka had placed his sister in
this office. When he became king, he sent for his mother, who was at Napata.
When she saw him attired in his princely robes "she rejoiced
greatly," and the people, when they saw the mother, "bowed to the
ground to this king's mother, the young as well as the old." (Tanis
stela).
So we leave Egypt, after its illustrious civilization, with a mulatto upon
the throne of the Pharaohs, his sister the divine head of the Egyptian
religion, and his mother the Queen Mother before whom all bow to the ground.
Driven from Egypt, the mulatto Pharaoh returned to Nubia.
"The retirement of Tautamon to Napata was the
termination of the Ethiopian supremacy in Egypt. His whole career was
characteristic of the feeble and inglorious line form which he sprang. Emerging
from the remote regions of the upper Nile, the Ethiopians had attempted an
imperial role and attempted to intervene in the international politics of
western Asia. At a time that Assyria was dominating the East, without a worthy
rival elsewhere to stay her hand, it was to be expected that the historic
people of the Nile should confront her and dispute her progress on even terms.
To this great task the Ethiopians were appointed; but there was never a line of
kings so ill-suited to their high destiny. Unable to weld together the nation
which they had conquered into any effective weapon against the Assyrians, every
attempt to stay the advance of that formidable enemy furnished only another
example of feebleness and futility. Only once does Taharka seem to cope
successfully with the internal difficulties of his situation and to check for a
brief moment the triumphant progress of Esarhaddon; but the indomitable
Assyrian was never dealing with a first-class power in her conquest of Egypt,
when the unhappy Nile dwellers were without a strong ruler; and for such a
ruler they looked in vain during the supremacy of the inglorious Ethiopians.
"Withdrawing to Napata, the
Ethiopians never made another attempt to subdue the kingdom of the lower river,
but gave their attention to the development of Nubia. As the Egyptian residents
in the country died out and were not replaced by others...the Egyptian gloss
which the people had received began rapidly to disappear, and the land relapsed
into semi-barbaric condition." (Breasted, History of Egypt, p.
561.)