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Unwritten History

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Parent Issue
Day
22
Month
June
Year
1883
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

T. H. Huxley. A flood of light would be thrown on the unwritten history of Egypt by a wcll-directed and careful reexamination of several points. For example, a single line of borings carried across the middle of the delta down to the solid rock, with a careful record of vvhat is found at successive depths; a fairly exact survey of the petrified forests and of the rcgions in which traces of the ancient miocene sea-shore occur; a survey of the Sehsleh región, with a determination of the heights of the alluvial terraces between this point and Semneh; and an examination of the contents of the natural caves which are said to occur in the limestone rocks about Cairo and elsewhere, would certainly yield results of great mnortance. But, although so many details are still vague and undeterminate, the broad facts of the unwritten history of Egypt are clear enough. The gulf of Herodotus uuquestionably existed and has been filled up in the vvay he suggested, but at a time so long antecedent to the furthest date to which he permitted his imagination to carry him, that, in relation to it, the historical period, even of Egypt, sinks into insignificance. Ilo wever, we modems need not stop at the time when the delta was a gulf of the sea. The limestone rocks in which it is excavated and which extend east, west, and south for hundreds of miles, are full of the remams of marine animáis, and be long, the latest to the eocene, the oldest to the cretaceous formation. The miocene gulf of the delta was, in fact, only the remains of the wiclc ocean which formerly extended from Hindostán to Morocco, and at the bottom of which the accumulation of the shells and skeletons of ts denizens gave rise to theooze, which has since hardened into chalk and mummulitic Limestone. And it it. quite certain that the whole of tl.c a ea now occupied by Egypt, north üf Esneh, and probably all that north of Assouan, was covered by amy cieep sea Uunng the cretaceousepoch. It is also certain that a greai cxtent of dry land existed in South África at a much earlier period. How far it extended to the north i unknown;but it may well have covered the area now occupied b the great lakes and basins of tht White and Blue Niles; and it iquite jossible that these rivera ma_ have existed and may have poureo their waters into the northcrn ocean before the eievatory movemens- possibly connected with the outpow of the huge granitic masses of the Arabian range and of Nubia - com¦nenced, which caused the calcaeeousmud covering its bottom to becoim the dry land of what is now th southern moiety of Upper Egypt some time toward the end of tht cretaceous epoch. Middle and Northern Egypt remained undei water during the cocene, and . ern Egypt during the commence ment, at any rate, of the ïr.iocetii epoch; so that the process of eleva tion seems to have taken effect fron south to north, at an extrcmely slow rate. The northVard drainage o: the equatorial catchment basia thu; becamc cut ofF from the sea by a constantly increasing plain sloping to the north; and, as the plain gradually rose, the stream, always flowing north, scooped the long valley of Nubia and of Egypt, and probably formed a succession or deltas which have long since been washcd away. At last (probably in the middleor latter part of the miocene epoch) the elevatory movcment come to an end, and the gulf of the delta bcgan to bc slowly andsteadily fillcd up with its comparatively modern alluvium. Thus, paradoxical as the proposition may sound, the Nile is not only older than its gift, the alluvial soil of Egypt, but it may be vastly oldcr than the whole land of Egypt; and the river has shaped the casket in which the gift lies out of materials laid by the sea at its fcet in the days of itsyouth. The fourth problem of Herodotus the origin and antiquity of the Egyptian pcople - is much more difricult than the other three. According to Figari Bey's investigations, a marine deposit, which probably is of the same age as the miocene beaches of Cairo and Memphis, forms the floor of the delta Above this, come the layers of sand with gravel already mentioncd, as evidencing a former swifter flow 01 the river; then follow beds of mud and sand; and only abovc these, at thrce distinct levéis, evidences of human handiwork, the last and latest of which belong to the age of Ramses II. It is eminently desirable that these statemeuts should be verified; forthe doubts which have been thrown, to somc extent justly, upon various attempts to judge the age of the alluvium of the Nile do not aift-ct the proof of the .relativo antiquity of the human oceupation of Egypt which such facts would afford; and il is useless to speculate on the intiquity of the Egyptian race, or the condilionofthe delta when men bcgan .to pcople it, untfl they are accurately investigakd. As to the ethnological relations of the Egyptian race, I think all that can be said is, that neither the physical nor the phiological evidence, as it stands, is very satislactory. That the Egyptians are not Negroes is certain, and that they are totally different trom any typical Semites is also certain. I am not aware that there are any people who resemble them in character of hair and complexión, except the Dravidian tribes of Central India and the Austrahans; and I have long been inclined to think, on purely physical grounds, that the latter are the lowest, and the Egyptians the highest members of a race of mankind of great antiquity, disttnct alike from Aryan and Turanian on the one side, and from Negro and Negrito on the other. And it saems to me that the philologists, with their "Cushites" and "Hamites," are tending toward a similar differentiation of the Egyptian stock from its neighbors. But, both on the anthropological and on the philological sidcs, the satisfactorily asccrtained facts are few and the difficulties multitudinous.

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Ann Arbor Courier
Old News