Negro-mania; being an examination of the falsely assumed equality of the various races of men;...

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Chapter II. Herodotus

As it is always right to discriminate upon the nature of the evidence from the character of a witness in a court of justice, so is it equally fair to criticise the writings of a historian, to see if he relates what is both probable and possible. Whenever we find an author prone to narrate the improbable and marvellous as being not only true facts and veritable transactions, but furthermore, that he relates these from a personal knowledge of his own, then are we justified 4n severely criticising all that such authors speak of, and only pay any credit to their assertions, when not contrary to the laws of nature, and when such assertions are confirmed by the testimony of cotemporary and subsequent authors and investigators.

A case of this kind is now for consideration before us. It has been said, that ‘“ Herodotus is the Father of History.” If by this is meant that his veracity can be depended upon in his relations of facts, he is certainly unworthy of the title; if it is meant that he is merely the first writer, then his title is correct. Herodotus existed about four hundred and thirty years before Christ, or about one hundred years before the time of the

reat Macedonian. Herodotus travelled into Egypt,

id says, that “‘ The Egyptians were black in com-

Jexion and woolly-headed.” How fat”he is to be «~-dited, must be a question for the readers of this 4 book to determine for themselves, but before I proceed to cite authority against the statement of Herodotus, I will give a couple of quotations from himself, in order that a due estimate may be placed upon him. In his Euterpe are to be found the following, among a great mass of similar rubbish :— “The inhabitants become black from excessive heat.”” In page 121, Bohn’s edition, is this—

“The following is the nature of the crocodile.— During the four coldest months it eats nothing, and though it has four feet, it is amphibious. It lays its eggs on land, and there hatches them. It spends _ the greater part of the day on the dry ground, but the whole night in the riverg for the water is then warmer than the air and dew. Of all living things with which we are acquainted, this, from the least beginning, grows to be the largest. For it lays eggs little larger than those of a goose, and the young is at first in proportion to the egg ; but when grown up, it reaches to the length of seventeen cubits, and even more. It has the eyes of a pig, large teeth, and projecting tusks, in proportion to the body : it is the only animal that has no tongue: it does not move the lower jaw, but is the only animal that brings down its upper jaw to the under one. It has strong claws, and a skin covered with scales, that cannot be broken on the back. It is blind in the water, but very quick-sighted on land; and because it lives for the most part in the water, its mouth is filled with leeches.”

Again, p. 174 :—“ The Persians, having marched through the arid region, halted near the Egyptians, as if with the design of engaging ; there the auxiliaries of the Egyptians, consisting of Greeks-and Carians, condemning Phanes because he had led a foreign army against Egypt, adopted the following expedient against him: Phanes had left his sons in Egypt; these they brought to the camp, within sight of their father, and placed a bowl midway between the two armies, then dragging the children one by one, they slew them over the bowl. When they slaughtered all the children, they poured wine and water into the bowl, and, after all the auxiliaries had drank of the blood, they immediately joined battle. A hard battle having been fought, and when great numbers had fallen on both sides, the Egyptians were put to flight. Here I saw a very surprising fact, which the people of the country informed me of. For as the bones of those who were killed in that battle lie scattered about separately, (for the bones of the Persians lay apart in one place, as they did at first, and those of the Egyptians in another,) the skylls of the Persians were so weak, that if you should hit them only with a single pebble, you would break a hole in them ; whereas those of the Egyptians are so hard, that you could scarcely fracture them by striking them with a stone. ‘The cause of this, they told me, is as follows, and I readily assented; that the Egyptians begin from childhood and shave their heads, and the bone is thickened by exposure to the sun: from the same cause also they are less subject to baldness, for one sees fewer persons bald in Egypt than in any other country. This, then, is the cause of their having such strong sculls: and the reason why the Persians have weak sculls is this: they shade them from the first, wearing tiaras for hats. Now, I myself saw that such was the case; and I also observed the same thing at Papremis, with respect to those who were slain with Achsemenes, son of Darius, by Inarus the Libyan.”

GLIDDON.

“The works of Heroporus and Dioporuvs are too familiar to general readers, to require much more than designation. The former was in Egypt about 430 years B. C., during the dominion of the Persians, and after Egypt had fallen entirely from her pristine greatness. The latter was in Egypt in 40 B. C., toward the close of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, at a still lower period of degradation.

‘‘ Valuable, as are the works of these two Greek authors, they have fallen very considerably in our estimation, since Egypt as a country, and the anctent Egyptians as a people have become better known to us; and the inconsistencies, mis-statements, misrepresentations, misconceptions and absurdities, that are hourly exposed in their accounts of Egypt, more than compensate for the information, in which, by accident, they are correct. This assertion may seem audacious; but will be substantiated in the sequel, when a comparison is instituted between Egyptian history, as developed in these chapters and future lectures, and the accounts of Herodotus © or Diodorus. :

“It would require a volume to elucidate. the discrepancies, now demonstrable, between many, nay most of the assertions of Herodotus and Diodorus, in regard to almost every subject relating to anctent Egypt; and the facts, with which we are made ‘acquainted, in the works of the whole Champollion school. Nor, in common fairness, must my assertions be doubted, until an antagonist shall have actually verified in Champollion, Rosellini and Wilkinson, some of the points in which Greek authors are shown to be so lamentably ignorant. I will, however, add the following reasons, gleaned chiefly from long personal acquaintance with Egypt, to show that it was not in the nature of things that Herodotus or Diodorus could be often correct.

“In the first place, Herodotus, though a learned and highly respectable Greek, and who, as the greatest of their ancient travellers and universal historians, deserves our respect and gratitude, was in Egypt, a stranger. He was certainly not in literary, or scientific, or fashionable, or aristocratic society in that country ; which he visited, after intercourse with the Greeks, and the Persian conquest had ruined the former greatness of the higher castes, and had corrupted the inhabitants of Lower Egypt, with whom Herodotus chiefly mixed. For his own sake, we must hope he did not (although he says he did, as far as the first cataract) visit Upper Egypt, else he would not have left Thebes undescribed; or have listened to the idle tale, that the sources of the Nile were at Elephanttne !

‘In his day, 500 years of decline had deteriorated ‘the Priest-caste, the only depositaries of history in Qe

Egypt. Asa foreigner, Herodotus was looked upon by the sinking aristocracy of Egypt in the light of an “impure gentile;” and utterly ignorant of the language, he must have gleaned all his information through an interpreter. If, as we have a full right to do, we judge of Herodotus’s interpreter by those of travellers ia modern times, the result with respect to the sort of information he could receive through such a medium, may well be imagined. Nay, it is proved, by his mistakes upon almost every Egyptian subject which he handles in Euterpe.

“Like some English and other modern writers, who compose volumes on that misrepresented country, that are like Hodges’ razors, only made to sel, Herodotus prepared his work to read at the Olympic games to a Grecian audience, more ignorant in those days on Egyptian affairs, than even Europeans of modern times are generally; and it was necessary to interlard his discourse with occasional fabrications, some of which will scarcley bear the dubious phrase of “Se non 6 vero, é ben trovato.”’

‘“ Diodorus was in Egypt just before the downfall of the house of Lagus, in B. C. 40, when the decline of Egyptian learning had been going on for 700 years—400 of which had been spent under the yoke of foreign masters. Diodorus copied Herodotus, and Hecateus of Miletus, who had visited and written on Egypt, in the reign of Darius ; and, perhaps the later work of Hecateus of Abdera, who was in Egypt after Alexander ; and who, from the little we know of him, appears to have been an intelligent man, although, to the Egyptians, all of them were naught but “impure foreigners’’—so termed in hieroglyphical legends by the Egyptians; in the same manner, that foreign nations are, to this day, in China, termed “ outside barbarians.’”’ Other.information was imbibed by Diodorus, from Greeks in Lower Egypt; whose profound ignorance of Egyptian learning is only exceeded by their indifference, their stupid .self-complacency and egregious impudence. It will not be pretended that Diodorus could speak Egyptian. -

“There is so little dependence to be placed on the accounts of Herodotus or Diodorus, excepting on what they actually saw with their own eyes, or could comprehend from its nature when they saw it, that, by hieroglyphists their narratives are followed only in the absence of better guides; or, when their accounts are confirmed by other testimony. They could not discriminate between the truth or falsehood of the things that were told them ; and often the only way of accounting for the nonsense they often record, is to suppose, that the humorous Egyptians purposely misled them. We have to thank * them however for puting a down; leaving us the task of culling the pearls from the rubbish ; for there is no doctrine, however inconsistent or improbable, that cannot be supported by quotations from Herodotus or Diodorus.

“Let any stranger at the present day, through the medium of an interpreter ask the most intelligent native in the Delta, a question about modern Nubia, and its present relations with Egypt: and the answer will be a fable, modelled into the form the Fellah deems most likely to be pleasing to the stranger, if he does not confess his utter ignorance thereon ; a candor rare in the valley of the Nile, and possibly elsewhere. |

‘‘We must not merely look at the authority, but at the authority’s resources and qualifications for information, no less than at the nature of the sources whence he could acquire that information. It would surprise any one to read descriptions of Egypt in some modern works (published since Champollion’s discoveries,) and then go to Cairo and ask old residents their opinions thereon.

“The authority of Herodotus and Diodorus on ancient Egyptian, and still more on anctent Ethiopian questions, distant 1000 miles from the provinces they visited (the epochs of the occurrence of which, date from 2000 to 3000 years before they were in Egypt,) is of about the same value, as would be the authority of some modern travellers of the last half century, whose puerile information about even modern Cairo would be derived during a fortnight’s residence, from an Arab Rais, or captain, a donkeydriver, or a European hotel-keeper! Ask any of these last, about events which took place in Egypt only 500 years ago!

“Travellers, therefore, who go beyond the first impressions they receive, are liable to err, if they attempt, without time and adequate study, to explain even what they behold.

“That information must be incorrect which is solely derived from a village Arab Shéykh, or Turkish Nazir, on events whereon it is impossible these can possess any information—and which, in either case, is given to the traveller, ignorant of Arabic, through the medium of a stupid rascal, who, because he can jabber a few words of English, waits at table and cleans your shoes, is dignified by the inapplicable and inappropriate title of “‘dragoman’’ or interpreter. Let me ask have not Americans just reason to complain of the cursory notes of English travellers, taken, during a railroad and steamboat trip, through the United States? Yet, in this case the traveller speaks the same language as the nation, through whose country he whirls like an ‘ignis-fatuus.’

“Judge then how incompetent must that traveller be, in a foreign land, unacquainted with the language of the natives, when he inquires of unlettered Fellahs, or of European freshmen, about events that transpired thousands of years before his visit; and yet, such was precisely the position of Herodotus and Diodorus, in Egypt.

“Tf, therefore, my own assertions differ from those met with in works of any epoch, not written by disciples of the Champollion school, the reader will be so indulgent as to make some allowance for diversities of opinion, between one who knows a country from 23 years of domicile and many years of critical investigation, and others, whose sojourn therein rarely equalled the same number of months, generally fell within the same number of weeks, and often did not exceed the same number of days.

“When Herodotus or Diodorus are quoted upon subjects, which we can prove they could learn little or nothing about, it is of no great consequence what inference may be derived from their conclusions; because *the well informed hierologists have better sources of information; and may draw inferences from eztsttng monuments and Egyptian autocthon chronicles, which gave them, in 1843, an infinitely superior knowledge of early Egypt (dating 2000 years before the earliest Greek historian) than could be acquired by, or was known to, the Greeks, or the Romans ? whose testimony may be very often useful, but it is not evidence.

‘All authors who wrote on Egypt and Ethiopia, before the discoveries of Champollion, or without a thorough perusal of the works of his school, are liable to error on subjects now perfectly understood ; and, in the present year, 1843, for a man to write on ancient Egypt, without first making himself really acquainted with what in the last 20 years has been done by the Champollions, by Rosellini, by Wilkinson and all the hieroglyphical students, is to act “the play of Hamlet, the part of Hamlet being left out by particular desire.” Suppose an Egyptian were to write a history of the United States ; and to make a rule of never consulting one American author, while treating on American institutions, systems of government, manners and customs, annals or personages ; what sort of a book would he write? and what opinion would the citizens of the United States have of his one-sided and narrow-minded production, teeming, as it necessarily would, with nonsense, errors and misrepresentation! And yet, it isa deed in absurdity precisely parallel for any one, in 1843, to write on ancrent Egypt, without ascertaining first what its ancient inhabitants record of themselves.

“We have now, however, indisputable evidence of the Asiatic origin and Caucasian race of the earliest denizens of the Nile; and can smile at the long-asserted descent of civilization from Ethiopia, (that unknown land of fable) or, at the idea of its origin among any Afrecan tribe. This will be made clear in the sequel ; and this fact will remove a host of dilemmas, by tracing Hebrews and Egyptians to a probably-simultaneous departure from their common Asiatic hive.

“It is our part now to prove, that not time, nor circumstance, nor climate, effected any palpable change, or physical alteration, in their progeny ; and that Ham’s lineal descendants, the Egyptians, were all pure blooded Caucasians, from the earliest to the latest Pharaonic epoch—modified in the Upper Nilotic provinces by the admixture of exotic Austro- Egyptian (that is, as Dr. Morton explains, by compound Semitico-Hindoo and equally Caucasian) blood ; and this was strictly the fact, except in incidental and individual intermixture with the African races of Berbers and Negroes in those provinces to Ethiopia adjacent. This latter commingling, however, appears to have but partially affected the gross of Egyptian population of Asiatic origin ; and to have been no more visible, (probably still less so) among the Pharaonic Egypto-Caucasian family, than it is now discernible among the Fellahs, of the lower and middle provinces of the present day.

‘¢ As Mizraim and his children were all Caucasians at first start, in order to change their skins from white to black, their hair to wool, and to alter their osteology, “through the effects of clsmate,”’ time at least must be allowed. Who will define the necessary period for these radical changes? Never mind —we grant every facility. Let countless generations transpire. Let them become Negroes, or Berbers, in race. Letthem reach the acme of civilization. Let them surpass Dahomey ; outrival Ashantee ; become as intellectual as Hottentots—as philanthropical as Tuaricks—as constructive as Tibboos. Let them build the pyramids of Meroe, Gebel Birkal, and Noori—which done, let them come down the Nile again, to build the pyramids of Memphis and cover Egypt with stupendous structures; a perfect, and essentially a civilized community ; to confirm Herodotus, and his Egyptian applications, of meddyyeoes xox odio tees “black in complexion, and woolly-haired” to be called also Melepnodmr— the black-footed ;”’ or more appropriately, “the long-heeled race.” On their arrival in Lower Egypt, the Delta, of course, is no longer a marsh ; and having waited for its formation, they cover it with cities.

“‘ Let them, I repeat, perform ai of these impossiblities, and then they are no longer Africans in Egypt. A miracle (of which we have no record) has metamorphosed them again into Caucasians.

“Tt does seem odd, if not unnecessary, to make the Asiatic and Caucasian Mizraimites at once proceed up the Nile, 1500 miles to Meroe; there to study and improve and sojourn, until the wonderful effects of climate should transmute them into Africans;

and then, after countless generations, to lead them back into Egypt, and there witness their transition into pure white men, in a climate where no Ethiopian ever changed his skin!

“ And we must make all these changes in far less than one thousand years: that is, we start with Ham and Mizraim as Caucasians; we transport them from Assyria into Ethiopia, and watch their transition into Negroes, or Berbers, by the effects of climate, and under the vaguest extent of time: we perfect them as such, and doat upon the sable or dusky philosophers, who are to instruct Moses, and civilize the Greeks. We then bring them back into Egypt; and by magic as it were, transmute these Negroes or Berbers, again into pure white men, or Caucasians, such as every Egyptian was, We must accomplish all this between Mizraim and Abraham—in a space of about 100 years, by the Hebrew version: of about 500 by the Septuagint. On Egyptian monuments (as I shall prove. by facsimile copies) we find the Negro and the Berber, painted prior to 1500, B. C., as perfectly distinct from the Egyptian natives, as an Anglo-Saxon is from a Chimpansee. If four thousand years have not had the slightest effect in whitening Negroes, how much change of color could have been accomplished in one-eighth of the time ?

“What should we say, if such a doctrine were maintained in defiance of Scripture, of nature, and of fact? We should disdain to regard such nonsense ; and yet such is precisely the course we must pursue, if Ham be the father - the Egyptians, and the

Egyptians descended the Nile from Ethiopia into Egypt. Such is precisely what must have occured, if we believe Herodotus, Diodorus, and their Roman plagiarists ; and such is, in fine, the analysis of the Ethiopian origin of the Egyptians, if we pretend to believe the Bible. I will cast ethnography to the winds ; I will discard chronology as a dream; but even then, I confess my inability to comprehend, or to accept, such a tissue of absurdities, if not profanations.

“The Scriptures inform us, that Mizraim came from the banks of the Euphrates into Africa, and that his decendants colonized Lower Egypt.

“To bring the ancestors of the Egyptians from Ethiopia, leads to consequences irreconcilable with primeval biblical migrations. Ham and his son were indisputably Caucasians—to find, therefore, that their Egyptian descendants were Caucasians also, is perfectly in accordance with nature, and with Scripture.

“ Lower Egypt and the Delta, would naturally be the region most suited to agriculture; and contrary again to the general current of opinion, it was here that the earliest Egyptians settled—it was here, that the most ancient cities arose—and here, that the most ancient monumental piles still remain, to attest the correctness of the assertion.

“The erection, in Lower Egypt, of the most ancient monuments we encounter, does not at all impede the migration of the Caucasian race, at a very early period into the Thebaid, or even as far as Meroe; . nor is the inferior relative antiquity of those vast .

a edifices, that proudly demand, for Thebes, and the Thebaid, an age nearly parallel to those of Lower Egy pt, devoid of explanation on other grounds; but, it is an indisputable fact, since the application of the Champollion tests to any of the ruins in the Nilotic valley, that the most ancient vestiges preserved to us He north, and the earliest extant are the Memphite pyramids ; while those found to the southward, are comparatively more recent; with the doubtful exception of the pyramids of Meroe in Ethiopia, which will be attended to in due course.

“Tn the interval previous to the accession of Menes, and subsequent to the dispersion of mankind from Shinar, must that wandering tribe of Caucasians, who settled permanently in the valley of the Nile, have entered Egypt from Asia; and although we possess not the slightest account of the time, beyond that of its occurence between Noah and Abraham, and none of the mode in which this march must have taken place, from Assyria into Egypt; yet, the fact of the Asiatic orgin, and Caucasian race of the early Egyptians being declared in the Bible, and proved by anatomy, with monumental and historical corroborations ; it may be desirable to inquire how far geographical facilities smoothed their path, and whether topographical circumstances, in connection with localities in Egypt, admit of and confirm their introduction.

“According to the facts, set forth in Morton’s ‘Crania /Egyptiaca,’ we find the Caucasians occupying Egypt, at the remotest time we can descry ; and any errors unintentionally committed in speculating upon the road they took from the Asiatic continent to Egypt, will not affect the fact of their journey. :

“Whether their progress was slow, such as a pastoral people (we may infer they were at that primeval time) encumbered with families and flocks, would necessarily adopt; orwhether it was the rapid march of men driven by political convulsions, or family feuds to seek safety in countries remote from their first origin, are questions in themselves hypothetical, though the former speculation has most of probability. Whether their migration, from east to west, was anterior or posterior to the dispersion of Babel, I leave others to determine; in either case, we may recognise the all-wise hand of Providence, accomphshing by natural instruments, and according to immutable organic laws, the object of man’s creation. Whether, prior to their entry, they possessed any information concerning the fertility and salubrity of that smiling valley-land, whereon the “sacred Nile” by its periodical inundations, spreads its rich alluvium, must ever remain doubtful.

“ That they had their women with them is certain; as they preserved their blood, pure and intact, from amalgamation with African aborigines; excepting, in partial instances, of much later times, proceeding from very natural causes, and affecting mainly those provinces which were adjacent to these Africans; but no more influencing the mass of population in Lower and Middle Egypt, at any period, than is apparent, or usual, as I have before remarked, with the present Fellah and Arab inhabitants of these districts at this day.

“The simplest view of the case aaaa lead one to infer, that, in proportion as the increase of human and animal population rendered the area of Assyria too limited for the peaceful attainment of a sufficiency of food, small parties, offsets from the patriarchal tree, wandered, like the Bedawees of the present day, pasturing their cattle in search of forage, along the valleys of Palestine. The vanguard of these nomads, pushed forward constantly by the advance of later separations from the main body, or induced by other contingences, which we may conjecture, but cannot define, crossed the small desert, which even at the present day, in winter, offers every facility for similar migrations, and reached the valley of the Nile, somewhere in the vecinity of Pelusium.

“Once in the land of Goshen, it may be readily imagined, whoever came the first would not be long in inviting his friends and relations to join him (and to sojourn permanently) in, what must have been toa herdsman, as it is the present day to the agriculturist, a terrestrial paradise. Similar causes always produce similar effects. Population increased, and migration continued, until every atom of the then alluvial soil between the deserts of Suez and of Lybia, and from the sea beach to that extreme point, where an African climate becomes mortiferous to the white man (which region commences about the 16th degree of latitude in Ethiopia above Egypt,) was colonized Py. the Asiatic Caucasians;

and, in those remote countries, by their intermixed decendants. As population increased, the herdsman was forced, by interest, and want of pasture room, to become a farmer ; and the first spade struck into the yielding black mud of the receding Nile, was the first step toward that civilization and power which, for 2000 years, made Egypt the greatest country of the earth.

“I deem it requisite only to allude to the prevalent, but erroneous notion of the African origin of the ancient Egyptians, in so far as to express my

disbelief of the possibility, that the Caucasian route ‘from Asia to Egypt, could have lain, in those primeval times, across the Red Sea, at the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, or higherup. Let any one look at the map, and measure the distance from Assyria to Meroe, by that road—let him pause and consider the vast geographical obstructions to be encountered in Arabia: the time it would take to overcome them; and then let him consider the little chronological space we have for the events that occurred in Egypt between Mizraim and Abraham; and allow, that without overthrowing Scripture, this doctrine cannot be maintained.

“From Assyria and the plains of Shinar, even at this day (aside from human insurmountable dificulties) the journey through Arabia across the Red Sea, into Abyssina, over the deserts of Catareff, to Meroe, and thence down the Nile, 1600 miles, to Lower Egypt and the sea-board, would be almost impossible toa family accompanied by children and by flocks. It may be objected, that this migration

‘was not immediate, but may have occupied ages. In that case, my reply 1s, that their journey must have been rapid, and accomplished within a few years ; or we must reject even the septuagint chronology as insufficient. To. pass over the Red Sea with flocks and large family incumbrances, implies vessels; whence could they obtain timber on the western Arabian coast? how procure materials for naval construction and outfit, in those ‘primeval times?

““A mere glance at the map of Abyssinis wil present obstacles, after their supposititious arrival on the western shore of the Red Sea, to render their progress toward Meroe and Ethiopia, anything but desirable; nor is there any point, whereon the advocates of the African theory can hang a reasonable hypothesis, since the results. obtained by Dr. Morton, and detailed in his ‘Crania gy ptiaca.’

“ Asiatic in their origin, springing from the same stock as Shem and Japheth, and Caucasian in their osteological conformation, the keyptians were white men, of no darker hue than a pure Arab, a Jew, or a Phoenician ; and it is quite as justifiable, and equally reasonable, to draw the dusky and the sable inhabitants of Africa from Shem, the type of -the Hebrews and the Arabs; or from Japheth, the type of the Europeans, as to derive the Berbers and the Negroes from Ham, whom Scripture tells us was the parent of the Egyptians; and as such, Ham must have been an Asiatic and Caucasian, since we know positively, that his Egyptian decendants were Caucasians, as pure-blooded in orgin as ourselves.