M. Constantine de Volney, Travels through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783-1785 (London: 1787), p. 80-83.

"When I visited the Sphinx, I could not help thinking that the figure of that monster furnished the true solution to the enigma (of how the modern Egyptians came to have their "mulatto' appearance) (It's features) were those of the Negro. The Egyptians therefore must have been real Negroes, of the same species of the natives of Africa. How are we astonished when we reflect that to the race of Negroes, at present our slaves, and the objects of our extreme contempt, we owe our arts, sciences, and even the very use of speech; and when we recollect that in the midst of those nations who call themselves the friends of liberty and humanity, the most barbarous of slaveries is justified, and that it is even a problem whether the understanding of Negroes be of the same species with that of white men!

In other words the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa and from the datum one sees how their race, after some centuries of mixing with the blood of Romans and Greeks, must have lost the full blackness of its original colour but retained the impress of its original mould."