Libyan Notes

Abstract

THE volume before us is, as the writers say, the result of an expedition to Algeria undertaken in the year 1900 with the view of obtaining such information as would lead to the solution of the vexed question of the early connection of the Berber tribes with Egypt. This hand- some publication contains fifteen chapters, which are illustrated by a large number of beautifully executed plates, and deals in an exhaustive manner with subjects which appeal as much to the anthropologist in general as to the Egyptologist in particular. The writers begin their observations by references to the pictures of the Libyans which are found painted in Egyptian tombs, and from which we learn that this people had fair skins and beards and blue eyes; such pictures belong to the period of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, but it does not follow that they represent, either physically or racially, the North African race or races which formed the indigenous substratum in the ancient Egyptian. Indeed, so long as M. J. de Morgan hesitates to apply the term Libyan to the predynastic Egyptians, less well informed mortals should hesitate before doing so.

Libyan Notes.

By D. Randall-Maciver A. Wilkin Pp. 113; 25 plates. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1901.) Price 20s. net.