Libyan Notes

An excerpt of a review from The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Volume 92:
VISITORS to the Museum of Ghizeh must often have been surprised at the facial expressions of the mummies and sculptured portraits of the ancient Egyptians. The faces of both mummies and effigies are in many instances neither Asiatic nor African, but show traces of the character-forming influences identified with the best periods of European life. Similarly travelers in Algiers have been astonished to find white men among the native population which represents the most ancient stock of the aboriginal inhabitants; these white men being in fact the descendants of the "White Libyans" whose existence was noted with curiosity by the Greek and Roman writers. Taken together these two facts suggest a sufficient motive for the researches which are given to the public in this volume. To be more precise, Professor Flinders Petrie and other students of Egyptian antiquities have advanced the theory that the prehistoric Egyptians (i.e. prior to the IV. dynasty) were of the same race as the white Libyans who survive in the Berbers; and the authors of "Libyan Notes" went to Algeria to collect evidence which should prove or disprove this theory. For the purpose they made very careful anthropometric observations of the Chawia and Kabyles, two Berber tribes untouched by European intercourse and undoubted descendants of the white Libyans of antiquity. The evidence thus obtained, it may be said at once, is against the theory. Shortly put, it shows that the Berbers (and therefore the Libyans), are round headed, comparable in this respect "to the ancient Germans of the Reihengraber, and to some of the mixed races of modern Europe"; whereas the prehistoric Egyptians - as shown by craniological evidence - were very longheaded, resembling "the Melanesians, Australians, Veddahs, Eskimo, and (which is much more important), the Long Barrow race of England, the prehistoric people of the Beaumes Chandes Cavern in France, and the few specimens which have been found at Lake Ladoga." The alveolar and nasal measurements indicate similar results, and the three tests taken together show in the opinion of the authors that " the' prehistoric Egyptians, so far from resembling the Berbers, are strongly contrasted with them in respect of breadth of head, projection of profile, and breadth of nose." On the other hand a study of the Kabyle pottery, and a comparison of its motives and coloring with that of the prehistoric Egyptians, reveal marked similarities; and this and other evidence point to the conclusion that the prehistoric Egyptians were identical in culture, though not in race, with the white Libyans of antiquity.
The anthropometric evidence is worked out with great care, and the results obtained are arranged in an excellent system of tables. In this and other respects the book is well and freely illustrated; and a most interesting feature of the craniological evidence is a series of photographic reproductions giving the heads - full-face, side-face, and vaults - of the individual Berbers who were measured. Some of the Berber faces are startling in their resemblance to French, Italian and even English types. And so, indeed, we are told they are in real life. "The Chawia," we read on p. 29, "are generally speaking remarkably European in the appearance; many might have passed for Irishmen or Scotchmen. The boys in particular when about the age of fifteen or sixteen would, if put into similar dress, be almost indistinguishable from English lads of the same age.."..