But it should be observed that, in spite of the present absence of all primitive remains (whether mere flints, or actual graves with bodies and relics) of the primeval population between the Fayyum and el-Kawamil, there is no proof that the primitive race of Upper Egypt was not coterminous and identical with that of the lower country.  It might therefore be urged that the whole Neolithic population was “Mediterranean” by its skull-form and body-structure, and specifically “Nilotic” (indigenous Egyptian) in its culture-type.  This is quite possible, but we have again to account for the legends of distant origin on the Red Sea coast, the probability that one element of the Egyptian population was of extraneous origin and came from the east into the Nile valley near Koptos, and finally the historical fact of an advance of the early dynastic Egyptians from the South to the conquest of the North.  The latter fact might of course be explained as a civil war analogous to that between Thebes and Asyut in the time of the IXth Dynasty, but against this explanation is to be set the fact that the contemporary monuments of the Southerners exhibit the men of the North as of foreign and non-Egyptian ethnic type, resembling Libyans.  It is possible that they were akin to the Libyans; and this would square very well with the first theory, but it may also be made to fit in with a development of the second, which has been generally accepted.

According to this view, the whole primitive Neolithic population of North and South was Miotic, indigenous in origin, and akin to the “Mediterraneans “of Prof.  Sergi and the other ethnologists.  It was not this population, the stone-users whose necropoles have been found by Messrs. de Morgan, Petrie, and Maclver, that entered the Nile valley by the Wadi Hammamat.  This was another race of different ethnic origin, which came from the Red Sea toward the end of the Neolithic period, and, being of higher civilization than the native Nilotes, assumed the lordship over them, gave a great impetus to the development of their culture, and started at once the institution of monarchy, the knowledge of letters, and the use of metals.  The chiefs of this superior tribe founded the monarchy, conquered the North, unified the kingdom, and began Egyptian history.  From many indications it would seem probable that these conquerors were of Babylonian origin, or that the culture they brought with them (possibly from Arabia) was ultimately of Babylonian origin.  They themselves would seem to have been Semites, or rather proto-Semites, who came from Arabia to Africa by way of the straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and proceeded up the coast to about the neighbourhood of Kuser, whence the Wadi Hammamat offered them an open road to the valley of the Nile.  By this route they may have entered Egypt, bringing with them a civilization, which, like that of the other Semites, had been profoundly influenced and modified by that of the Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia.  This Semitic-Sumerian culture, mingling with that of the Nilotes themselves, produced the civilization of Ancient Egypt as we know it.