Aha-Mena began the first of three successive Egyptian empires. This
lasted two thousand years, with many Pharaohs, like Khafra of the Fourth
Dynasty, of a strongly Negroid cast of countenance.

At the end of the period the empire fell apart into Egyptian and Ethiopian
halves, and a silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite possible that
an incursion of conquering black men from the south poured over the land
in these years and dotted Egypt in the next centuries with monuments on
which the full-blooded Negro type is strongly and triumphantly impressed.
The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so familiar to all the world, the Sphinxes of
Tanis, the statue from the Fayum, the statue of the Esquiline at Rome,
and the Colossi of Bubastis all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and
are described by Petrie as "having high cheek bones, flat cheeks, both in
one plane, a massive nose, firm projecting lips, and thick hair, with an
austere and almost savage expression of power."[7]

Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the Sphinx
at Gizeh: "Her features are decidedly of the African or Negro type, with
'expanded nostrils.' If, then, the Sphinx was placed here--looking out in
majestic and mysterious silence over the empty plain where once stood the
great city of Memphis in all its pride and glory, as an 'emblematic
representation of the king'--is not the inference clear as to the peculiar
type or race to which that king belonged?"[8]

The middle empire arose 3064 B.C. and lasted nearly twenty-four centuries.
Under Pharaohs whose Negro descent is plainly evident, like Amenemhat I
and III and Usertesen I, the ancient glories of Egypt were restored and
surpassed. At the same time there is strong continuous pressure from the
wild and unruly Negro tribes of the upper Nile valley, and we get some
idea of the fear which they inspired throughout Egypt when we read of the
great national rejoicing which followed the triumph of Usertesen III (c.
2660-22) over these hordes. He drove them back and attempted to confine
them to the edge of the Nubian Desert above the Second Cataract. Hemmed in
here, they set up a state about this time and founded Nepata.

Notwithstanding this repulse of black men, less than one hundred years
later a full-blooded Negro from the south, Ra Nehesi, was seated on the
throne of the Pharaohs and was called "The king's eldest son." This may
mean that an incursion from the far south had placed a black c