311 APPENDIX D. i I THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE SUDAN.

(Firfealsopp. 221-228.)

The three decades following the Egyptian conquest of the Sudan in 1819 were each marked by the appearance of a large work dealing with the antiquities of the newly-opened provinces. Unfortunately the authors of these works, Cailliaud, Hoskins, and Lepsius, have found no successors of equal means and perseverance, so that our knowledge of the actual remains stands about as Lepsius left it. When Cailliaud (1820) and Hoskins (183.'5) visited the Sudan, nothing certain was known of the ancient relations of Egypt and Ethiopia, and the wildest philological theories were in the air. The imposing monuments which these travellers found fitted the theories that Egyptian art was the oldest art known ; Ethiopia was supposed by some to be the mother of Egypt ; here, then, at Meroe, Hoskins fancied that he had found the cradle, not of Egypt only but of the whole civilised world. Criticism began with Lepsius (1842) : the style of these remains convinced him that they were not the archaic parents of Egyptian art but the late offspring of a mesalliance between Egypt and the luxuriant South. The progress made since his day enables us to recognise more clearly the main lines of development, though it will require years of research to fill in the details of our picture.

In the following notes the antiquities are grouped for convenience into four divisions — the Prehistoric, the Egyptian, the Meroitic, and the Christian.

1. Prehistoric. — We know now that the dynastic culture of Egypt was developed at Abydos, Memphis and elsewhere, long before it reached the Sudan, but from the very earliest days desire for the products of the south must have attracted the trader and the soldier, and so carried the culture of Egypt ever further to the south. The ivory and the skulls found in pre-dynastic Egyptian tombs, and the dwarfs and black troops referred to in the Historical Summary, are sporadic witnesses to a coming and going along the Nile Valley which must have lasted for tens of thousands of years. What and whom the early travellers found we cannot say : the country was probably partitioned among a number of petty princelets like the Meleks whom Burckhardt describes as reigning in the provinces of Dongola and Berber in the eighteenth century, and some of the old forts reported in this region and in the desert may date back to this period. To this epoch possibly belong also some of the groups of tumuli visible between the 4th and the 6th cataracts and elsewhere, but of them only one,* of the Bronze Age, has been hitherto excavated. A closer study of the surface will doubtless bring to light vestiges of the Stone Age, as it has already done in Egypt and Somahland.

2. Ef/i/jifian. — The first effective occupation of the northern parts of the Sudan dates from the Middle Empire, but though it is represented by several monuments noted in the list below, it did not last for long. The kings and queens of the New Empire returned to the conquest and exploration of the south, and left much more striking memorials of their greatness. The tablets found at Tel el Amarna are full of requests from Syrian princes for gold, which was exported to them unworked, and by them smelted and wrought into ornaments and vessels. Now the bulk of this gold came from the numerous mines which still exist between the Red Sea and the Nile ; in a word the Northern Sudan was the "Rand" of the ancient world. The shafts and huts of the miners, their washing-tables, grinders, and other appliances are found still in situ, and the position of some of the finest temples is now seen to be determined by their nearness to rich auriferous regions. This is, perhaps, the most important discovery made since the days of Lepsius.

Under the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties the Northern Sudan was an Egyptian province, an appanage often of , the heir-apparent, and the monuments of this date (see below) are thoroughly Egyptian in character. Under the twenty-1 second dynasty the conditions were reversed and Egypt became an Ethiopian province ; but, as is usual, the civilised [ power conquered its conqueror, and although Napata now reached its zenith, the character of buildings, statuary, and ' inscriptions, was not native but Egyptian ; this was only natural, seeing that the Ethiopians could command the best workmen in Egypt. It is not until the sixth century b.c. that we begin to see signs of a change. The inscriptions of •* The contents of this are now preserved in the Gordon College Museum at Khartoum.