I. 3. VIII. AND THE NUBA OF MERGE 37 eastern desert they met in the interior a race of Proto-Egyptian origin which was more modified in the north by Negro and Armenoid influences than in the south and which was distinctly akin to the riverain peoples. It may be added, and further justification will appear later for the statement, that if there are not traces of Himyaritic infusion to be found among the more southernly of these Bega tribes, it is a very remarkable fact.

VII Now in the classical period there are frequent allusions to a people called the Blemyes on the east bank of the Nile. These Blemyes have commonly been assumed to represent the same people as the Bega, but hitherto this has remained "a mere theory, at present undemonstrated."

VIII Claudian (born c. 365 a.d.), Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 320-390 A.D.), Sulpicius Severus, Palladius and Olympiodorus refer to the Blemyes as close to Syene (Aswan) and the cataracts.

Olympiodorus actually visited their country betveen 407 and 425 A.D.: he specifies Primis (Ibrim, 60 to 70 miles below Haifa) as their last city on the Nile; and the inscription of Silko, who warred with them in the sixth century, corroborates this. It is also clear that they were a race of invaders holding in subjection the older Nubian and negro population, and practically dominating the whole of the Thebaid.

The name of Blemyes was, however, also applied to the desert nomads, presumably Bega, near the Red Sea, for we read in the Acts of the Martyrs of Raithe" of some three hundred Blemyes embarking about 378 A.D. on a vessel of Aila which they had taken near the Ethiopian coast and saiHng along the Red Sea to attack Raithe. But it would not be legitimate to insist for this reason that the nomads of Crowfoot, "The Island of Meroe," Arch. Surv. Nubia, xix, 35.

Carmen de Nilo, v, 19: " Inde vago lapsu Libyam dispersus in omnem Aethiopum per mille ruit nigrantia regna, Et loca continuo Solis damnata vapore Inrorat, populisque salus sitientibus errat, Per Meroen, Blemyasque feros, atramque Syenen."

' Bk. XIV, Ch. IV, sect. 3. (Also quoted by Quatremere, 11 {Mem. sur les Blemmyes), from Etymologicon Magnum, p. 13.)

* Vitae Patrum, p. 542 {ap. Quatremere, loc. cit., and Letronne).

* Hist. Lausiac. (ap. Quatremere, loc. cit., and Letronne).

« Ap. Photium, Bibliothec. Cod. Lxxx, p. 194 {ap. Quatremere, loc. cit.).

' See Chap. i.

8 H. R. Hall, Review of the Publications of the E. B. Coxe, Jnr. Expedition to Nubia, Man, May 1912.

» See Milne, p. 81.

1" Illustrium Christi Martyrum lecti triumphi, pp. 107-109, quoted by Letronne (loc. cit.) and Quatremere, II, 130 and 133. Raithe is near Sinai.