Rommany, and I doubt very much if they could
have done so.

Bonaventura Vulcanius, who in 1597 first gave the world a specimen of
Rommany in his curious book "De Literis et Lingua Getarum" (which
specimen, by the way, on account of its rarity, I propose to republish in
another work), believed that the Gipsies were Nubians; and others,
following in his track, supposed they were really Cophtic Christians
(Pott, "Die Zigeuner," &c., Halle, 1844, p. 5). And I must confess that
this recurred forcibly to my memory when, at Minieh, in Egypt, I asked a
Copht scribe if he were Muslim, and he replied, "_La_, _ana Gipti_" ("No,
I am a Copht"), pronouncing the word _Gipti_, or Copht, so that it might
readily be taken for "Gipsy." And learning that _romi_ is the Cophtic
for a man, I was again startled; and when I found _tema_ (tem, land) and
other Rommany words in ancient Egyptian (_vide_ Brugsch, "Grammaire,"
&c.), it seemed as if there were still many mysteries to solve in this
strange language.

Other writers long before me attempted to investigate Egyptian Gipsy, but
with no satisfactory result. A German named Seetzen ascertained that
there were Gipsies both in Egypt and Syria, and wrote (1806) on the
subject a MS., which Pott ("Die Zigeuner," &c.) cites largely. Of these
Roms he speaks as follows: "Gipsies are to be found in the entire Osmanli
realm, from the limits of Hungary into Egypt. The Turks call them
Tschinganih; but the Syrians and Egyptians, as well as themselves,
_Nury_, in the plural _El Nauar_. It was on the 24th November 1806 when
I visited a troop of them, encamped with their black tents in an olive
grove, to the west side of Naplos. They were for the greater part of a
dirty yellow complexion, with black hair, which hung down on the side
from where it was parted in a short plait, and their lips are mulatto-
like." (Seetzen subsequently remarks that their physiognomy is precisely
like that of the modern Egyptians.) "The women had their under lips
coloured dark blue, like female Bedouins, and a few eaten-in points
around the mouth of like colour. They, and the boys also, wore earrings.
They made sieves of horse-hair or of leather, iron nails, and similar
small ironware, or mended kettles. They appear to be very poor, and the
men go almost naked, unless the cold compels them to put on warmer
clothing. The little boys ran about naked. Although both Christians and
Mahometans declared that they buried t