PREFACE the country which produces slaves and gold. In spite of this, however, the history of Egypt shows that the peoples of the Sudan influenced in no small degree the ancient Egyptian religion and civilization, and, no doubt, it is this fact which caused historians like Diodorus to assert that the civilization of Egypt had its origin in "Ethiopia," by which, of course, he meant the country of the black sun-burnt peoples, i.e., the Southern Sudan. The Eastern and Northern conquerors of Egypt in the Dynastic Period imposed the veneer of their civilization upon the Egyptians with considerable success, but in fundamentals of belief and custom, the Egyptians, even in the Ptolemaic Period, had more in common with the black- skinned, but non-negro, tribes of the Southern Sudan than is usually admitted.

For the history of the Sudan from'about B.C. 4000 to the period of the rise of the Nubian kingdom under Piankhi about B.C. 750, our authorities are the Egyptian monuments, and much light is thrown upon the state of the country, and the conquests made by its kings from about 700 to 600 B.C. by the Stelae of Tanuath-Amen, Aspelta, and Nastasen. On the history of the next 1150 years, native monuments are silent, but it is clear that during this interval the great kingdom of the Sudan was split into two parts, the Northern having its capital at Napata, or Merawi, near Gebel Barkal, and the Southern having its capital at Meroe, some forty miles south of the mouth of the Atbara. The Greek and Roman writers, especially Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny, supply descriptions of the peoples of the Sudan, excellent on the whole, even if in places somewhat fanciful, but of the history of the country they tell us nothing.

In the early centuries of our era Christianity penetrated the Sudan vi(X Egypt, and it had permeated the minds of the Nubians so thoroughly that, in the second quarter of the sixth century, a native king called Silko succeeded in establishing a Christian kingdom in the Northern Sudan, and made Dongola his capital.

This kingdom flourished for some seven hundred years, and proved an effective barrier to the advance of Islam. Facts for the history of the Sudan, from the time of its conquest by the Arabs about A.D. 650 to the end of the fifteenth century, are scanty, but Muhammadan writers supply us with a number of statements ix