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LANGUAGES OF AFRICA,
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cupied by Nubian tribes, and beyond, so far as the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile, are of Nubian or Kushite origin has never been determined. These inscriptions have their own alphabet, running from right to left, and considering that the words are divided, aş they are in the cuneiform inscriptions of Persia, there is no reason why we should despair of seeing them deciphered before long. Professor Lepsius thinks that they are not Nubian, that is to say, not negro, but Kushitic, and that the key to be applied to their interpretation should be looked for in the Beja, and not in the Nubian language.
Having once entered upon these remote periods of ethnic rather than political history, Professor Lepsius adds a most interesting chapter on another ancient race, the Kushites, called in hieroglyphics, Kash or Kish. These Kushites are separated from Egypt proper by the old intrusive negro population, and, though closely connected with the Hamitic occupants of the Nile valley, they had migrated, so Professor Lepsius thinks, from Arabia by sea, without passing through Egypt. Their original home was in Asia, and thence they moved on in parallel columns with the ancestors of the Egyptians and Libyans towards the west, followed after a time by their old neighbours, the Semites. They occupied the south of Arabia, and then passed on to the opposite coast of Africa. They thus became the first great maritime nation, extending their navigations over the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean; they were, in fact, according to Lepsius, the real ancestors of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast, though they had adopted a Semitic language, were known to Herodotus as emigrants from the coasts of the Red Sea, and in the Bible the Canaanites are mentioned among the sons of Kush; while in Egyptian monuments the Southern Kushites, both on the African and Arabian coasts, are known by the name of Puna-i.e. Poni and Phoenicians, the red sailors of
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