1. 2. XII. AND THE LIBYAN ELEMENT 17 Budge thinks from the list of products brought back by Harkhuf that he probably penetrated Kordofan and Darfur via the oases of Kurkur and Selima ; and Professor Navile accepts the inscription of Harkhuf as proof that the Libyo-Berbers were occupying Kordofan and Darfur and possibly Borku. The negroes, he thinks, must have ousted them at a later date.

Reisner thinks Harkhuf followed the river and doubts if he penetrated as far as Sennar. The products brought back, he points out, might, have been obtained in trade anywhere between Dongola and Sennar, whatever their ultimate origin. However, as large and wealthy Arab tribes have chosen to live in the Bayuda desert for centuries it is also likely in any case that races of similar habits and inclinations occupied it before them. That the earliest of such to do so were of Libyan origin appears to be sufficiently established, but the extent, if any, to which these races settled on the Nile and mixed with the Nubian population of the Middle Nubian period is still undetermined.

XI The Middle Nubian stock was also mixed, it is probable, with another strain, that of the red-skinned Bega from the eastern deserts. But in the main, from Assuan for some distance south of Haifa, it was negroid, though certainly not true negro.

Nubia in the Time of the Twelfth Dynasty XII During the time of the great kings of the twelfth dynasty (2000-1788 B.C.) events of great importance occurred in the northern Sudan'. At least three serious military campaigns were carried out, by Amenemhat I (1971), by Sesostris I (1962) and by Sesostris HI (1879). In connection with these a series of forts and garrisons was established from the Egyptian frontier as far as the lower end of the present Dongola Province, and at several of these, notably at Semna and Kerma (Inebuw-Amenemhat), regular colonies of Egyptians were founded. During this period the district between Aswan and Semna became populous and prosperous.

Every lateral valley had its village or group of huts. Every square meter of alluvial soil appears to have been cultivated. The people were I, 512. - Smithsonian Rep. 1907, pp. 549-64.

* See Sudan Notes and Records, Jan. 1918, p. 12.

* Bates {The Eastern Libyans) would go so far as to class the Middle Nubians as a race with the Libyans rather than with the Negroes. Giuffrida-Ruggeri combats this theory in Ma7i, April 1915. The question of Berber influences in the western desert at a later date occurs again later in this chapter.

* Seligman, loc. cit. p. 619. A discussion of the ethnic place of the Bega follows in Chap. 3.

* Reisner, loc. cit. pp. 12, 13.

' For the following see Reisner in Sudan Notes and Records, April 19 18.