Egyptians, The

Egyptians, The, of antiquity were partly of Asiatic and partly of African origin, with a probable infusion of Semitic blood, and formed both positively and negatively a no inconsiderable link in the chain of world-history, positively by their sense of the divinity of nature-life as seen in their nature-worship, and negatively by the absence of all sense of the divinity of a higher life as it has come to light in the self-consciousness or moral sense and destiny of man.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)