While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was also
receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out.
With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so
that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. The
truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from
her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received and
transmitted Negro ideals.

Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into touch more or less with black
Africa. Carthage, that North African city of a million men, had a large
caravan trade with Negroland in ivory, metals, cloth, precious stones, and
slaves. Black men served in the Carthaginian armies and marched with
Hannibal on Rome. In some of the North African kingdoms the infiltration
of Negro blood was very large and kings like Massinissa and Jugurtha were
Negroid. By way of the Atlantic the Carthaginians reached the African west
coast. Greek and Roman influences came through the desert, and the
Byzantine Empire and Persia came into communication with Negroland by way
of the valley of the Nile. The influence of these trade routes, added to
those of Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, and Yoruba, stimulated centers of culture
in the central and western Sudan, and European and African trade early
reached large volume.

Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies that enabled the
Mohammedans to conquer North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the tenth
century and slowly creeping across the desert into Negroland, the new
religion found an already existent culture and came, not a conqueror, but
as an adapter and inspirer. Civilization received new impetus and a wave
of Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the great kingdoms of Melle, the
Songhay, Bornu, and the Hausa states. The older Negro culture was not
overthrown, but, like a great wedge, pushed upward and inward from Yoruba,