190 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

Grecian dominion; doubtless, in the earliest times, the original inhabitants of Egypt, now a mixture of Persians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, &c., had another language, probably that which we now see on the ruins and monumental remains. No other equally old race with the Copts is to be found in Egypt, nor is there any notice of their having migrated into the land, nor is there anywhere else to be found a similar people ; from all this it seems that they must have been born in this land and be the children of the soil (hence the name Kopt, pronounced Kopt, for they do not accent the k); and only from the many wars of races, as also from mixing with their conquerors, can the original character of the whole people have become so altered as it is. It is held as certain, that down the Nile, from Ethiopia, came Egypt's first population; but that physiognomy is now nowhere to be found in the land, and a whole nation cannot have died out ; emigrated, like the Hebrews, they have not, and so there is nothing else for it but to hold that continued admixtures have thus totally altered the old people of Egypt. The belief, that the original race of Egypt was descended from African negroes, is held by the celebrated Volney. He says in his notices of the different races he found in Egypt, " que les Coptes sont les descendants des anciens Egyptiens; que les Copies ont le visage bouffe, I'oeil goufle, le nez ecrase et la levre grosse comme les mulatres ; qu'ils ressemblent au sphinx des pyramides, lequel est une tete de negre tres-characterisee ;" and he infers from this, " que les anciens Egyptiens sont de vrais negres de I'espece de tous les naturels de I'Afrique."* However, these negro features are now so refined and ennobled, especially in many of the beautiful women, that one would much rather (even had the Egyptians, on their first acquaintanceship with the Greek, had woolly hair) believe them to be a race with similar descent as the Habesch tribes, which had received some admixture of Ethiopian blood.

The Copts ohiefly reside in Alexandria, Cairo, Siut, Nagadeh.

In the first of these cities resides their religious head, their patriarch. The founder of their sect is admitted to have been Eutyches.

» See also L'Univcris, ou Histoire et Description dc tons les Peuples, de leurs Religions, Moeurs, Coutnmes, &c. Egypte, par M. Champollion-Figear, conscrvatetur k la Bibliothcque du Koi.