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 pene-

trated 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.