Races of The Old Testament PDF
Races of The Old Testament PDF
Races of The Old Testament PDF
XVI
The
A. H. SAYCE, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF
FRESH LIGHT FROM THE MONUMENTS
THE HlTTITES, OR THE STORY OF A FORGOTTEN EMPIRE, ETC.
l8 9 l
HORACE HART, PRINTER To THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE.
A 2
4 PREFACE.
portraiture ;
he seized at once the salient traits in an
individual face, and reproduced them with almost photo
graphic fidelity. The trustworthiness of his likenesses
can be proved in numerous instances. Doubtless at
times he may have exaggerated some striking feature in
the head of a foreigner, and Dr. Garson has remarked
to me that in certain cases the forehead is made to
recede unnaturally. But such exaggerations only bring
into stronger relief a racial peculiarity, and it may after
all be questioned whether the exaggeration is as great
as itseems. At all events a comparison of the Hittite
CHAP. PACK
I. THE SCIENCE OF ETHNOLOGY 9
APPENDIX .
.175
INDEX . 17?
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
>o, i. Head i
lae.atKamMk.
.
IJST 01 II.LVSTRATIOXS.
P. 109. Head of a Menti-Sati (of the Sinaitic Peninsula) from the gate of
Nekht-Hor-heb at Karnak. The type is
strongly Jewish.
P. 123. Head of an inhabitant of lanua on the Euphrates, in the country of
Mitanni, the Aram-Naharaim of Scripture, from the Great
Hall of Karnak, time of Ramses II.
P. 124. Head of a Rutennu of Hittite type, from the Great Hall of Karnak
(north side), time of Ramses II.
P. 125. Head of an inhabitant of Damascus, from the temple of Thothmcs
III at Karnak (southern face of the pylon).
P. 127. Heads of inhabitants of Ashkelon of a Hittite type from the cross-
wall of Karnak.
P. 153. Head of a Shakalsha from the fa9ade of Medmet Habu, time of
Ramses III. The type is Latin, and probably represents a
Sikel.
CHAPTER I.
WE
allusions
are all familiar with the fact that
divided into races.
to the Anglo-Saxon
Modern
race,
literature
the
mankind
Keltic
is full
race,
is
of
the fox and hare adopt the colour of the snow around
them. Some years ago an ingenious book was pub
by a German writer, Dr. Poesche the object of
l
lished ,
had not yet passed away the British Isles were still the
;
history was
relatively late, and the elements of their
were derived from the natives of the East.
civilisation
To this day a Russian peasant cannot be placed on
a higher intellectual level than his Tatar or Mongol
neighbour, and three thousand years ago a Babylonian
or Egyptian traveller in Europe would have had as
much reason for assuming the intellectual inferiority of
the populations he found there as a modern European
traveller has to-day in the wilds of Southern America.
The results of missionary labour
among the apparently
helpless Fuegians obliged Darwin to confess that
he had been mistaken in supposing those outcasts
of humanity to be incapable of rising in the social
scale.
It is the same with the moral as with the intellectual
1
Dr. E. W. Blyden.
26 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
1
It has hitherto been believed that the negroes in the southern states of
North America have, since their emancipation from slavery, been multiplying
much more rapidly than the whites. The census of 1890 has, however,
disproved this supposition, and shown that in reality the white population
has increased at the rate of 24-67 per cent., while the increase in the
coloured element has been only 13-90 per cent. (Census Bulletin, No. 48,
March, 1891.)
CHAPTER II.
and Libyan, with fair hair and blue eyes, is the repre
sentative of the north and west ; while the Asiatic, with
olivecomplexion and somewhat aquiline nose, comes from
the east and the valley of the Nile, like the land of the
;
Assyrian crown.
But the part played by the Kalda in Babylonian
history was not destined to end here. It has recently
been made probable by Dr. Winckler that Nebuchad
nezzar and his family were of Chaldaean descent. This
would fully account for the position attained by the
Chaldaeans in Babylonia and the predominating preva
lence of their name. In the Greek and Latin writers it
takes the place of all others. The whole Babylonian
population is called Chaldaean all other elements in
;
it are
forgotten, and the Chaldaean alone survives. Hence
it is that while in Hebrew the Babylonians are known
as Kasdim, in the Greek of the Septuagint they become
Chaldaeans.
It is probable that the Kalda or Chaldaeans belonged
to the Semitic race. This at any rate was the case as
regards the larger part of those who are meant by the
Kasdim in the Old Testament. At the same time we
must not forget that since the name of Kasdim is
frequently used of the whole population of Babylonia it
speech.
We have already seen that there are members of the
Semitic race who do not speak Semitic languages, and
speakers of Semitic languages who do not belong to the
Semitic race. There are Jews who know only English
or German or Spanish, while Arabic dialects are spoken
the rest of Arabia, and since the age of the Third and
74 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
1
i Sam. xvii. 42. Compare Ruth i.
4, iv. ip,.
THE SEMITIC RACE. 75
THE EGYPTIANS.
E earlier history of Israel is interwoven with that
1 of Egypt. It was to Egypt that Abraham went
this is never the case with the true members of the South-
not ;
hence alone the difference in the colour of their skin.
As we approach the southern frontiers of Egypt,
the colour of the skin becomes constantly darker.
This is due to long-continued intermixture with the
dark-skinned Nubians, who once occupied the whole
of this region. In a town like Edfu, where the Coptic
population has kept itself comparatively free from
such intermixture, fair complexions are the rule, but
we have only to step into the country to find the
Mohammedan peasantry darkening from brick-red to
a deep copper-brown. The combined effect of ex
posure to the sun and of a strain of Nubian blood is
often a colour which is but a few degrees lighter than
Nubian himself.
that of the
But although the pure-blooded Egyptian is a mem
ber of the white race, he is not, like his Libyan
neighbour, a blond. His hair and eyes are black.
F 2
84 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
is no trace of mummification ;
the bodies are placed
in tomb without any covering, and with
the the knees
crouched up and resting against the chin. It is a
mode of burial which was prevalent among certain of
the tribes of ancient Libya, but it stands in marked
contrast to the Egyptian manner of the disposal of the
dead, and the ideas upon which this rested. More
over, in these interments none of the objects so essen
tial in Egyptian eyes to the repose of the dead are
1
Die Mumien der Konige im Museum von Bulaq (Sitzungsbcrichte der
K. Preussischen Akcuicmif, xxxiv. 1888).
2
The measurements are those of Virchow in the paper quoted above.
90 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
that they came from Asia, and they brought with them
in their train vast numbers of Semites who occupied the
northern part of Egypt. Comparatively few Hyksos
monuments have as yet been discovered. These exhibit
a peculiar type of features, very unlike that of the
Egyptians. The face is thickly bearded, the hair being
curly, with a pigtail hanging behind the head. The
nose is broad and sub-aquiline, the cheek-bones high,
the forehead square and knitted, the lips prominent
and expressive of intense determination. The kindly
urbanity so characteristic of the Egyptian face in statuary
is replaced by an expression of sternness and vigour.
Among the ethnological types presented by the Egyptian
96 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
2
Kings xvii. 4, xix. 9.
G 2
CHAPTER VI.
to the legend the cause of the migration was an earthquake in the vicinity
of the Assyrian or Syrian Lake; this refers rather to the Persian Gulf
than to the Dead Sea as has sometimes been imagined.
THE PEOPLES OP CANAAN. 103
of the south and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the
;
and his eyes and probably also his hair were black. In
the tomb of Rekh-ma-Ra, a Theban prince who lived in
the age of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the tribute-bearers
of Kaft have uniformly black hair, with a long curl, or
rather tress, on either side of the face. I am informed
way to the very gates of the cities, and hired their services
to contending chiefs. At times some of them settled in
the plains and adopted village-life, but their savage in
the skin of the European is yellow, his eyes blue and his
hair dark the skin of the Asiatics being in one case
;
..::.:
" ""
- - -
:;-;:": - . . . . ~. . . .
not only had die complexion, bat also the precise features
attributed by the artist of Ramsrs III to the captive
A~ --_._._.-
In its surviving members the blond race of the
Mediterranean 5 and dolichocephalic. That these tall
:
-
,- \- -
. I- :
-
A.-"...: ::
-:
: . A.-- - _ : .-. .- : .
- ,--
-
";-
---
Il6 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
cussed (supra, pp. 53, 54). The Philistines are the Pulista
of the Egyptian inscriptions, the Piliste and Palastu of
the Assyrian annals, and their name still survives in
geography in the shape of Palestine. As has been
said, they were Phoenicians of Caphtor on the
in origin
coast of the Delta, and after their settlement in the five
chief cities of Southern Judaea they formed the Asiatic
i a
132 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
1
It is singular that the ambassadors to Assur-bani-pal should be re
possible to say.
In the fertile plain of Babylonia this aboriginal type
was mingled with several others. Berossos, the Chal-
daean historian, tells us that since the beginning of
history Babylonia was the meeting-place of different
apart.
The negro is dolichocephalic, and highly prognathous,
with a corresponding recession of the chin. His nose is
K
146 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
flat with wide nostrils, his lips fleshy, his teeth large and
good. The wisdom-teeth appear early and are lost
late. The cranial sutures are simple, the arm long, the
calf of the leg deficient, the tibia flattened, and the great
toe prehensile. As has been already observed, the
black colouring matter of the negro extends to his
muscles, and even his brain, the convolutions of which
are comparatively simple. He has but little sympathy
for art, except music, of which he is passionately fond.
He is moved by emotion rather than by argument, and
it is
alleged that negro children seldom advance in their
studies after the age of fourteen. In character the
negro isindolent, superstitious, affectionate, and faithful.
The two latter qualities have caused him to be sought
after as slave or servant. From the age of the first
Egyptian dynasties armed expeditions were organised
against the land of Cush, chiefly with the purpose of
carrying off negro slaves, and the number of negro
slaves in Egypt must at all times have been very great.
Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian, who saved the life of
Jeremiah, was probably a negro (Jer. xxxviii. 7-13), like
Cushi the Cushite, the great grandfather of Jehudi
the Jew (Jer. xxxvi. 14). Although in contact with
Egyptian civilisation for so many centuries, the negro
learnt little or nothing from it, except perhaps the art of
Ghadames Rohlfs (Qucr (lurch Afrika, i. p. 52), in the country of the Tibbu
Nachtigal (Sahara wtd Sudan, i. p. 307), and in
Kordofan Lejean (Hart-
mann, Nigritier, i. p. 41). C f. my letter to \hz* Academy, Aug. 9, 1890,
p. 117.
AFRICA, EUROPE, AND ARABIA. 149
Jan. 7, i8S8.
152 THE RACES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT.
SHAKALSHA.
1
None of the northern faces are Semitic in type. Thi* is the more
striking as von Luschan has found that the skulls of some of the modern
inhabitants of Lykia as well as of the neighbourhood of Adalia are .similar
to those of the Bedawin. The Solymi of Lykia were supposed by the
Greeks to be of Phoenician descent on account of the likeness of their name
to that of Hiero-Solyma, the Greek form of Jerusalem. The poet Chaerilos,
as quoted by Josephus (Cont. Ap. i. 22, Whiston s tr.), says of them that
they spake the Phoenician tongue with their mouths . their heads \\ere
. .
sooty, they had round rasures on them they wore flayed horses heads also
;
Rib-Hadad, the governor of Gebal, informs the Egyptian king that men
of the country of the Sute had come against him and slain a Serdanian
who was apparently in his service.
AFRICA, EUROPE, AND ARABIA. 155
,*!
HANIVU (GREEK).
glaciers and fiords have from age to age sent forth men
of irresistible bodily strength and adventurous courage
whom their native land could no longer support. In
historical times they became the Vikings and Norsemen
who were for so long a period the scourge of Christen
dom. In prehistoric times, before the sail or sagulum
had been borrowed from Rome, their migrations must
have moved along the lines of the great rivers. Wher
ever they went, they became the dominant and ruling
caste, like the followers of Rollo in Normandy and
of Roger Guiscard in Sicily. Except where the lan
guage of the conquered was protected by religion, law,
and literature, the populations they subdued were forced
to learn the language of their new masters. To the
difficulties they experienced in doing so we may ascribe
1
After an analysis of the classical Greek lexicon Mr. Wharton finds that
while 641 words are borrowed and 1580 can be assigned an Indo-European
etymology, there remain about 520 for which no such etymology can be
discovered. We may therefore regard a large part of them as belonging
to the language, or languages, spoken in Greece before the arrival of the
1
Mr. Risley, in reporting the chief results of the recent ethnographic
enquiry in India, states that three main types are to be found in the
160 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
leptorrhine type of the Panjnb and north-western frontier at the present day
we may recognise the descendants of the invading Aryans of 3000 years
ago, changed no doubt in hair, eyes, and complexion, but retaining the more
enduring characteristics of their race in the shape of their head, their
stature,and the finely cut proportions of their nose. Survivals of fair or
rather reddish hair, grey eyes, and reddish blonde completion are moreover
still to be found, as Penka has pointed out, and as I myself have seen,
among the Kafirs from beyond the Panjab frontier (Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, xx. 3).
AFRICA, EUROPE, AND ARABIA. l6l
being the back part of the head, the face oval, the
in
1
The name of Belgic has also been given to it from the Belgae who
settled in the southern part of Britain two centuries before the invasion of
Julius Caesar. It may have been represented by the brachycephalic race
who introduced the use of bronze into this country and constructed the round
barrows. But the skulls of this race agree with those which are found in
Denmark from the beginning of the stone age down to the present time, as
well as with the Helvetic skulls discovered at Sion in Switzerland and
with those of the modern Walloons in the Ardennes.
L
j62 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
are represented among the remains of the so-called
quaternary epoch, when man in Western Europe was
a contemporary of the mammoth, and his only tpol and
weapon was a large block of chipped flint for which
a handle had not as yet been invented. Now, however,
it is
alleged that this is a mistake, and that no brachy-
cephalic skulls can be assigned to that remote period
of European history 1 If so, we shall have to seek the
.
1
Salmon, Les Races humaines prehistoriqties, p. 20 (1888).
2
Penka {Die Herkunft der Arier, pp. ill sq^} quotes from General
Schindler (1879) that among the inhabitants of the province of Gilan on
the Caspian Sea individuals with blond hair are to be found, while
one of the Kurdish chiefs at Khorremabad had blue eyes and a blond beard.
Blonds are also to be seen among the Armenians of Feridan. The blond
type exists, according to Pietremont, in all parts of Persia, so that as
AFRICA, EUROPE, AND ARABIA. 163
amongst ourselves the members of the same family may be some of them
brunettes and others blonds (Bulletins de la Societe d? anthropologie de Paris,
y ser. ii. p. 406). A
considerable portion of the Kurds are tall men with blue
eyes and blond hair (Schweiger-Lerchenfeld in Petermann s Mittlu-ilun^cn,
45, p. u). Further east the blond Kafirs or Siah-Posh in Afghanistan are
well known (see Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 128).
L a
l6~4 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
CONCLUSIONS.
population.
Until I drew attention to it, no traveller seems to have
observed that a blond race with the features ascribed to
the Amorites by the Egyptian sculptors still exists in
Southern Palestine. Yet it might have been thought
that such a fact could not have escaped the notice of the
least observant tourist. But the ethnologist had not
been in the country, and the physical appearance of its
1
See above, p. 78.
172 THE RACES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Israelites
Edomites,
_g
w
o ^
-11
_
APPENDIX.
ETHNOLOGICAL TERMS.
Dolichocephalic or long-headed, brachycephalic or short
index from 107 \ to no, and pro-opic with an index above no.
Naphtuhim, 53.
Ramses III, 85, 89, 114, 126, 127,
nation, 10. 15- -
M 2
iHo INDEX.
sacred trees in Egypt, 91. 96, 100, IO2, IIO, 120, 122, 130,
131, 134, 143, 154.
Sagalassos, 154.
Sahara, desert of, 145, 148. Tello, 13 sq.
Salmon, M., 162. Teukrians, 152.
Thothmes III, 89, 121, 125.
Sarrug, Mr., 104.
Tibarenians (Tubal), 40, 48.
Scandinavia, 158.
Tires, 48.
Schliemann, Dr., 105.
Schrader, Prof., 143. Tirhakah, 99, 144.
Semites, characteristics of, 77 sq. Togarmah, 49.
Semitic race, cradle of, 71, 72. Tomkins, Rev. H. G., 96, 107, 121,
124, 133-
languages, 70.
Sepharad, 49. Topinard, Dr. Paul, 170, 175.
Shairdana, or Shardina (Sardinian;, Tosp, 136.
triliteralism, 70, 72.
150,154.??
Shakalsha (Sikels), 150, 151, 153. Tubal (Tibarenians), 47, 50.
Shasu ^Bedawin), 105 sq., 113, 114, Tulsha, or Tuirsha, 150, 154, 155.
117. Tyre, 55, 56.
Sheba (Saba), 65, 164. Uashash, or Uashuasha, 150, 151.
Shechem, in, 120. Uz, land of, 65.
Sheikh el-beled, 89, 90.
Van, 134 sq.
Shem, 40, 41, 59. Virchow, Prof., 42, 83, 88, 91, 97,
Sheshai, 107.
171.
Shinar, 61, 66. von Erckert, 135.
Shishak, 75, 77, 98, 99, 112, 144. von Luschan, 135, 153.
Sidon, or Zidon, 40, 56, 102.
Sihon (king), in. Wharton, Mr., 158.
Sikels, 154. white race of Palestine, 114 sq.
Sinaitic Peninsula, 73, no. Wilkinson, Sir G., 84.
Sinim, 166.
Yemen, blonds in, 163.
Sinite, 58, 130.
skin, colour of, 20. Zakkur (Teukrians), 126, 127, 150 sq.
So (king), 99, 144. Zamzummim, 118, 121, 128.
Solymi, 153. Zemar, 58, 101.
stature, 14. Zorobabel, 142.
Slopes, Mr., 87. Zuzim, 121.
i^?V/