their black complexions.

Modern measurements, with all their admitted limitations, show that in the
Thebaid from one-seventh to one-third of the Egyptian population were
Negroes, and that of the predynastic Egyptians less than half could be
classed as non-Negroid. Judging from measurements in the tombs of nobles
as late as the eighteenth dynasty, Negroes form at least one-sixth of the
higher class.[5]

Such measurements are by no means conclusive, but they are apt to be
under rather than over statements of the prevalence of Negro blood. Head
measurements of Negro Americans would probably place most of them in the
category of whites. The evidence of language also connects Egypt with
Africa and the Negro race rather than with Asia, while religious
ceremonies and social customs all go to strengthen this evidence.

The ethnic history of Northeast Africa would seem, therefore, to have been
this: predynastic Egypt was settled by Negroes from Ethiopia. They were of
varied type: the broad-nosed, woolly-haired type to which the word "Negro"
is sometimes confined; the black, curly-haired, sharper featured type,
which must be considered an equally Negroid variation. These Negroes met
and mingled with the invading Mediterranean race from North Africa and
Asia. Thus the blood of the sallower race spread south and that of the
darker race north. Black priests appear in Crete three thousand years
before Christ, and Arabia is to this day thoroughly permeated with Negro
blood. Perhaps, as Chamberlain says, "one of the prime reasons why no
civilization of the type of that of the Nile arose in other parts of the
continent, if such a thing were at all possible, was that Egypt acted as a
sort of channel by which the genius of Negro-land was drafted off into the
service of Mediterranean and Asiatic culture."[6]