PART n.

A HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

CHAPTER I.

Away to the south of Egypt, beyond the mighty granite rocks which form the first Cataract, and beyond the region which is commonly called " Nubia," lies a vast country, peopled chiefly by tribes of men whose slcins are dark-coloured or black, and by Negroes. The earliest designation known to us of this country is that which is given to it in the inscriptions of tjie__aiicient Egyptians, who called it vaguely " Ta-Nehes u, i.e. the " Land of the_Nehesu," or " TlarUg " Ta-Nehesu was originally one of the four quarters into which the Egyptians divided the world as known to them, the other three being the " Land of the Thehennu," or Libyans, the " Land of the Aamu," or Asiatics, and the " Land of Men," or Egyptians. In other words, the Blacks occupied the southern quarter of the world ; the Asiatics, i.e., the inhabitants of the deserts of the Peninsula of Sinai, Palestine, Syria, and the shores of the Red Sea, the eastern quarter ; the Libyans, the western quarter ; and the Egyptians, who regarded themselves as " Men," pai' excellence, the lowe portion of the Nile Valley, or northern quarter. The Egyptians divided a portion of the Other World also into four quarters, and we learn from a text inscribed on the sarcophagus of Seti I ' that the Egyptians, the Asiatics, the Blacks, and the Libyans will live again in separate groups in the Fifth Division of the Tuat, or Other World. This text, which declared that the " Men," or Egyptians, came into being from the tears which fell from the eye See my Egyptian Heaven and Hell, vol. ii., p. 151.

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