16 PAST AGES OF CONQUEST

The tide of population and trade during ages

gone by has come in from the east, as in Europe,

and Asia overflowed into Africa by at least two

well-defined routes, an important one being through Axum in Abyssinia, the other following the Une

of least resistance by the course of the river from

Egypt.

From time immemorial the vast areas south of Upper Egypt have been known as the " Country

of the Blacks," and from time immemorial they

have been invaded by the peoples from the north,

and have paid heavy toll in human flesh and gold.

We find the first direct mention of them in a record

of the Egyptian King Seneferu, probably 3766 b.c,

first of the rulers of the Fourth Dynasty, whose

militant spirit caused him to send a conquering army into the arid lands of the Ta-Nehesu nearly

4,000 years before Christ. Yet in the time of the First Dynasty these areas must have been traversed to remote limits, as

mention is made of the bringing of a pigmy captive

to Memphis ; and in these days it would appear

that the pigmies extended into the country north

of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, now held by Shilluks.

The thin line of the river and a chain of oases

indissolubly connected the barbarism of the South

with the civilization of the opulent North, yet in

its history there are a few huge gaps which are

only explainable by inferences from the local con-

ditions of Egypt during these times. Monuments

of stone tell stories of the victories of Egyptian