THE BLONDE RACE OF PALESTINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1975, 26 September 1889, Page 32

THE BLONDE RACE OF PALESTINE.

Professor Sayce has recently drawn attention to the fair-haired, blue-eyed people met in the mountainous parts of Palestine, and sometimes supposed to be descendants of the Crusaders, or other Europeans who found their way to the Holy Land during the Middle Ages. Recent discoveries of Mr Petrie in Egypt have, however, thrown a new light on these peculiar folk. The ethnographic types depicted on Egyptian monuments at Abu-Simbel represent blue-eyed, red-haired persons, known as the " Shashu of Kanana," and the "Amaur." The former dwelt to the south of Hebron, and the latter are the Amorites of the Old Testament. Hence a blonde population existed in Palestine before the fourteenth century, or period of the Crusades. According to Mr Petrie there is a painting of the Chief of Kadesh on the walls of a Theban tomb, showing him to have had a white shfa and light red brown hair. Kadesh was the southern capital of the Hittites, after their invasion of Syria ; but the Egyptian inscriptions describe it as being " in the land of Amaur," and that its chief was an Amorite is evident from the fact that the Hittites are depicted with yellow or orange skins, their hair being black, and their eyes dark. The Hittites, indeed, appear to have had Mongoloid features, the hair being arranged in a pigtail behind. The Amorites, on the other hand, are represented as a tall and handsome people, with large sub-aquiline noses, a short pointed beard at the end. of the chin, and long-skulled heads. The Egyptian monuments tell us that Palestine contained a white race before the arrival of the Israelites, and that it continued in the land after the Jewish conquest. Professor Sayce points out that the captives taken by Shishak from the cities of Judah in the time of Rehoboam have Amorite, not Jewish features. There is nothing in common between them and the Jewish-looking tribute bearers of Jehu seen on the black obelisk from Nimroud now in the British Museum. Hence he infers that in the tenth century b.o. the main population of southern Jifdea was of Amorite origin.