36 THE BEGA, THE BLEMYES i. 3. ii.

Armenoid influences and not to immigration by the brachycephalic Arab population of the Hegaz and the Yemen because where the Semite (Arab) and Hamite have mixed the latter have ever adopted the language of the former, and when mixed people have arisen I think it can be said that they are more Arab than Hamite. It is clear that nothing of this sort has happened in the Red Sea Province of the Sudan.... It is obvious that while the Bisharin have been most modified by the foreign round-headed element, the Beni Amer are the least influenced, so that, broadly speaking, their physical characters may be taken to be those of the original Bega inhabitants of the eastern desert.

III One notes in this conjunction that non-Bega traditions, as preserved in the native m'sbas, are united in attributing to the Beni 'Amir an Arab descent which is denied to the Bisharin and Hadendoa : "Beni 'Amir " too is a purely Arab name. If the greater brachycephaly of the Bisharin and Hadendoa were due to Arab immigration it is not unlikely that the fact would have been reflected, rather than tacitly contradicted, in the traditions.

IV A comparison between the physical characteristics of the Bega of the present and of the pre-dynastic Egyptians and the Nubian contemporaries of the latter shews very marked resemblances to exist, and, as Professor Seligman says, it seems... that it is justifiable to regard the Beni Amer, the least modified of the Bega tribes, as the modern representatives of the old pre-dynastic (and Nubian) stock, and it further appears that the modification undergone by the latter during a period of some 7000 or more years is extremely small.

V Very closely related to the Bega tribes are the 'Ababda, whose habitat is from Aswan and Kena to the Red Sea and of whom a lesser branch live east of Berber.

Reisner compares them with the Middle Nubians ("C Group") on the one hand and with the present-day Beduin of Lower Egypt on the other. Like the former they have been "metamorphosed by a cross with the negro" and therefore resemble the Barabra in race; but if tradition be any guide they have more Arab blood in their veins than the Barabra.

VI One may say then, in short, that when the Arabs invaded the Seligman, ioc. cit. pp. 603, 604.

* Loc. cit. pp. 606, 607.

' GiufFrida Ruggeri, loc. cit. pp. 51-54.

* See Part IV (index), and cp. G. A. Hoskins quoted by Cameron {Journ. Anthr. Inst. Feb. 1887, " On the Tribes of the Eastern Sudan "). In one case at least a whole section of them have joined a nomad Sudanese Arab tribe, viz. the Kawdhla in Kordofan, en bloc and to all intents become an integral part of them. (See Part III, Chap. 9.)