VIII. AND THE LIBYAN ELEMENT 15

probably descendants of the erstwhile conquerors of Nubia^. The

immigrating race, in addition, imposed its own language upon the

blacks in their vicinity, and thus are explainable the linguistic

affinities which have troubled so many generations of investigators. The Barabra, in short, do not speak a language akin to that of the

northern Nuba of southern Kordofan because the negroes conquered

Nubia,—the negroes probably spoke some language or languages of

their own that may still survive in the mountain fastnesses of the

far south,—but because the Barabra colonized the country round

the foot of the northern hills of Dar Nuba. The conclusion, however,

has here anticipated the argument and we must revert.

The Earliest Inhabitants of Nubia

VII As regards the earliest period it has been proved that those shadowy inhabitants of northern Nubia, who are known to archae-

ologists as "Group A," were contemporaries of the pre-dynastic

Egyptians, that both buried their dead in the same way and that in

cultural matters there were marked similarities. The two peoples must have been practically uniform^, and their stock may have

extended in a more or less diluted form from Egypt to the Blue

Nile and Abyssinia^. They were a "small, dark-haired, black-eyed,

glabrous people" bearing a close resemblance to the Libyans of the

southern Mediterranean seaboard, and were, in the earliest period

of all, devoid of all negro characteristics*.

The First Arrival of the Negroes

VIII Later, about the time of the third dynasty, negro types began

to settle in Nubia as far north as Aswan, and from now onwards

"the population that grew up was a mixture of early Nubian and

dynastic Egyptian with an ever increasing Negro element^."

(a) The Bahr el Ghazdl Type

These negroes were for the most part "short and relatively broad-

headed," of a type akin to that found at the present day in the south

^ Further evidence on this subject will be found in Part III, Chap, i, where

details of the Bedayria and other Danagla tribes are given.

^ Elliot Smith, Ancient Egyptians, p. 66, and in Arch. Surv. Nubia, Report for 1907-8, II, Chap. II; Reisner, Sudan Notes and Records, Jan. 1918, p. 7.

^ Elliot Srmxh, Ancient Egyptians, Tpp. 78, 79. Of this stock he also says (p. 54): 'There is a considerable mass of evidence to shew that there was a very close resemblance between the proto-Egyptians and the Arabs before either became intermingled with Armenoid racial elements."

* Elliot Smith, Cairo Scient. jfour7i. March 1909, pp. 56, 57.

^ Seligman, loc. cit. p. 614.