“Every rational mind must, therefore, readily conclude that the African race has been in existence, as a distinct people, over four thousand two hundred years; and how long before that period is a matter of conjecture only, there being no reliable data upon which to predicate any reliable opinion."[39]

It is difficult to find a writer on ethnology, ethnography, or Egyptology, who doubts the antiquity of the Negroes as a distinct people.  Dr. John C. Nott of Mobile, Ala., a Southern man in the widest meaning, in his “Types of Mankind,” while he tries to make his book acceptable to Southern slaveholders, strongly maintains the antiquity of the Negro.

“Ethnological science, then, possesses not only the authoritative testimonies of Lepsius and Birch in proof of the existence of Negro races during the twenty-fourth century, B.C., but, the same fact being conceded by all living Egyptologists, we may hence infer that these Nigritian types were contemporary with the earliest Egyptians."[40]

In 1829 there was a remarkable Theban tomb opened by Mr. Wilkinson, and in 1840 it was carefully examined by Harris and Gliddon.  There is a most wonderful collection of Negro scenes in it.  Of one of these scenes even Dr. Nott says,—­

“A Negress, apparently a princess, arrives at Thebes, drawn in a plaustrum by a pair of humped oxen, the driver and groom being red-colored Egyptians, and, one might almost infer, eunuchs.  Following her are multitudes of Negroes and Nubians, bringing tribute from the upper country, as well as black slaves of both sexes and all ages, among which are some red children, whose fathers were Egyptians.  The cause of her advent seems to have been to make offerings in the tomb of a ‘royal son of KeS_h_—­Amunoph,’ who may have been her husband."[41]

It is rather strange that the feelings of Dr. Nott toward the Negro were so far mollified as to allow him to make a statement that destroys his heretofore specious reasoning about the political and social status of the Negro.  He admits the antiquity of the Negro; but makes a special effort to place him in a servile state at all times, and to present him as a vanquished vassal before Ramses III. and other Egyptian kings.  He sees no change in the Negro’s condition, except that in slavery he is better fed and clothed than in his native home.  But, nevertheless, the Negress of whom he makes mention, and the entire picture in the Theban tomb, put down the learned doctor’s argument.  Here is a Negro princess with Egyptian driver and groom, with a large army of attendants, going on a long journey to the tomb of her royal husband!

There is little room here to question the political and social conditions of the Negroes.[42] They either had enjoyed a long and peaceful rule, or by their valor in offensive warfare had won honorable place by conquest.  And the fact that black slaves are mentioned does not in any sense invalidate the historical trustworthiness of the pictures found in this Theban tomb; for Wilkinson says, in reference to the condition of society at this period,—­