The well known observation of Ammianus Marcellinus, “Homines Ægyptii _plerique subfusculi_ sunt, et atrati,” is sufficiently descriptive, and corresponds with other positive evidence, in relation to the great mass of the people; and when the author subsequently tells us that the Egyptians “blush and grow red,” we find it difficult to associate these ideas with a black, or any approximation to a black skin.[22]
The late Doctor Young, in his Hieroglyphical Literature, has given a translation of a deed on papyrus of the reign of Ptolemy Alexander I., in which the parties to a sale of land at Thebes are described in the following terms:—“Psammonthes, aged about 45, of middle size, dark complexion and handsome figure, bald, round-faced and straight-nosed; Snachomneus, aged about 20, of middle size, sallow complexion, round-faced and straight-nosed; Semmuthis Persinei, aged about 22, of middle size, sallow complexion, round-faced, flat-nosed, and of quiet demeanour; and Tathlyt Persinei, aged about 30, of middle size, sallow complexion, round face and straight nose, the four being children of Petepsais of the leather-dressers of the Memnonia; and Necheutes the less, the son of Azos, aged about 40, of middle size, sallow complexion, cheerful countenance, long face and straight nose, with a scar upon the middle of the forehead.” In another deed of the same epoch, also translated by Dr. Young, an Egyptian named Anophris is described as “tall, of a sallow complexion, hollow-eyed and bald.”
Independently of the value of the other physical characters preserved in these documents, the remarks on complexion have a peculiar interest; for they show that among six individuals of three different families, one only had a dark complexion, and that all the rest were sallow.
From the preceding facts, and many others which might be adduced, I think we may safely conclude, that the complexion of the Egyptians did not differ from that of the other Caucasian nations in the same latitudes. That while the higher classes, who were screened from the action of a burning sun, were fair in the comparative sense, the middle and lower classes, like the modern Berbers, Arabs, and Moors, presented various shades of complexion, even to a dark and swarthy tint, which the Greeks regarded as black in comparison with their own. To these diversities must also be added others incident to a vast servile population, derived from all the adjacent nations, among which the sable Negro stood forth in bold and contrasted characters.